The Marketing Innovation Show

How to Become a Thought Leader in the B2B Space [Mark Raffan]

Join Andrei and our guest on today’s episode, ​​𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐑𝐚𝐟𝐟𝐚𝐧, as they will be discussing turning B2B brands into category thought leaders through little known content marketing strategies. 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤 is the founder and CEO of Content Callout and a successful podcast host himself.

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 ​​​​𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤:  

𝑊𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒: https://www.contentcallout.com/

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝐼𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markraffan/

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐢:

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢: https://marketiu.com  / https://marketiu.ro   

𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑖 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/  

𝐸𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙 𝑎𝑡 hello@marketiu.ro 

 

𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦:

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Episode transcript: 

 

Mark  

They realise, hey, the investment for digital is oftentimes significantly less than the investment for conferences and trade shows, and the ROI is about the same or better. And so when you think of it from that perspective, a lot of companies, I think are still gonna go back and add in a conference or a trade show here and there. Don't get me wrong, I think they're still really, really good for a well-rounded programme. But I think that it's going to be less and you're going to see a lot more companies invest in digital, especially when it comes to content and social and trying to leverage social.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Hi, there! This is Andrei, and you're on a new episode of The Marketing Innovation Podcast Show. Our special guest today is Mark Raffan, the CEO of Content Callout and a successful podcast host himself. He turns B2B brands into category thought leaders through little known content marketing strategies, which is exactly what we'll be discussing today. So without further ado, Mark, it's a pleasure to have you on the show, pumped to see how our discussion goes and what secrets we find from you. How are you? How's the morning been for you?

 

Mark  

Yeah, fantastic. Thank you so much for having me, Andrei, I appreciate it.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Pleasure is all mine. Looking forward to catching up on the geeky stuff here in the B2B content marketing? Subject line. First of all, let's start with a quick introduction so our listeners here can get to know you a little bit and for them to know you as a person, and what was your journey as a marketing leader, and then entrepreneur. As well as podcaster if not. We can talk about your podcast as well because I had to look at some of the episodes and they are pretty cool. Why not talk about that as well?

 

Mark  

Sure. Thank you very much. So, my background is actually not in marketing. I actually come from a sales and procurement background. That's where I spent most of my career. And then five years ago started a company called Negotiations Ninja, which is a negotiation training and coaching business, which also has a podcast. And that's how we gain notoriety. That's how we built our thought leadership. That's how we grew that brand, through the podcast. And then just over two years ago, we started Content Callout, because we thought: Hey if we can do it for one brand, but we could do it for other brands, too. We started Content Callout with the intention of building that for other companies. And now we do B2B content marketing, which is basically anything in and around the content space. So if you think of blogs, white papers, case studies, anything that's written on social media, any kind of social media management, and then also any kind of video content, what we do not do is we're not a PPC shop. We don't do any kind of serious SEM programmes. We don't do full-scale demand jams, primarily focusing on content and content production. That's our jam. We've been doing that for just over two years. And we work primarily in the B2B SaaS space and the health tech space. So those are the types of companies that we work with on an ongoing basis. And we also have a podcast for that. It's called B2B Content Marketing,  The Content Callout. And we've had some amazing guests on from Joe Polizzi to Robert Rose to Lindsey Chip Kamma, like a bunch of amazing guests, and they've been incredible. And we've learned so much from them. And I'm really excited to hopefully share some of that information today on the show with you.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Great stuff. And I know that a good proportion of the listeners, or a significant one, I would say, come from these types of b2b backgrounds. So whether that is services, but specifically tech and software, there's been a couple of you guys emailing lately, I know. And health-tech as well, I think would be also tech for education. I know, we had a couple of conversations last week. So really great stuff. And hopefully, you guys will be able to get some nice insights from our discussion today. And Mark, as you have this background in sales as well, in negotiation, I didn't say to you in our previous discussion, but why not go into this area as well, because as marketers, you know, negotiation happens. And every point along the way, whether you are marketing in an organisation, you need more budget, and I know you had a podcast episode talking about, you know, internal negotiations for that as well. Or whether it's, you know, negotiating with your internal teams from sales or financing or whatever else. We encountered that as well. So, you know, negotiation and sales can also be good, parallel discussion topics that we can touch upon, whenever you feel would be a good opportunity.

 

Mark  

Yeah, fantastic. And you know what, a lot of people especially those who come from a marketing background, don't immediately see the connection between marketing and negotiation, but they're actually really really similar because both disciplines deal with influence and persuasion. And when you think of it from that perspective, we both got the same foundational aspects into everything that we're doing. Because we're trying to influence and persuade someone to do something on both sides. And so when I can break it down to its most fundamental levels, most marketers go, oh, okay, I get it. And I actually find that a lot of marketers are great negotiators. Once they can understand that there's a connection there. They're like, Oh, I can understand what we're dealing with now. So yeah, happy to get into that discussion, too.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Perfect. Okay, so first things first. Let's start from now and then go into case studies and the past and everything else. But how do you feel the b2b space as a whole has shifted or changed over the last one to two years? I wouldn't say from the beginning of the pandemic, because some of the things were happening before in this space, you know, white papers and all that, and content marketing to a certain degree. But do you feel there has been any particular change in approach across the board, from the clients that you work with?

 

Mark  

Fundamental shifts have been massive. I mean, especially if you think of any kind of budget dollars that were associated to trade shows moving to digital. So I think that is probably the biggest shift, although we've seen a big move back, as well. A lot of companies are reinvesting back into trade shows, reinvesting back into conferences. And that's because if you do it right, those things work, as well. So those are the big fundamental shifts. And what I think a lot of companies have found in the process of switching a lot of those dollars, from trade shows and conferences to digital is that they realise, hey, the investment for digital is oftentimes significantly less than the investment for conferences and trade shows, and the ROI is about the same, or better. And so when you think of it from that perspective, a lot of companies I think, arts are still gonna go back and add in a conference or a trade show here and there, don't get me wrong, I think they're still really, really good for a well-rounded programme. But I think that it's going to be less, and you're going to see a lot more companies invest in digital. Especially when it comes to content and social and trying to leverage social to the maximum they can, because social is like a giant conference if you think about it, right? The interaction, the engagement, all of that is a lot of similarities to the conference world. So being able to leverage that is really, really important.

 

Andrei Tiu  

And going into the content production area. And maybe you can refer here to written content marketing. So having that SEO component. Do you feel there has been an increasing competition here, when it comes to more brands producing more content, maybe to a more professional standard?

 

Mark  

Yeah, I think there's definitely been an increase in competition. Let me say there's been an increase in volume, maybe not an increase in competition, but there's been certainly an increase in the volume of content being produced. The upside for a lot of us in the content marketing space to that is it's given a lot of eyeballs to content marketing in general. People have started to realise the benefits of content marketing. And now there's a lot of people that realise, oh, my goodness, I've got to be playing this game. The downside, of course, is that you're now there's only one SERP right, depending on whatever keywords you're trying to rank for. So you've got more competition, potentially. So the opportunity for Category development is significantly higher, in terms of like a blue ocean strategy, I think there's a lot of opportunities there. And also, the good thing is that it's, it's allowed a lot of us to really invest in quality content, especially in the b2b space to stand out. Because anyone can throw words on the internet. But it takes really good writing and editing team, and a really good SEO platform to be able to make that writing count. So I guess there's been more competition, there's been more volume. I don't necessarily think it's hurt anyone who's been investing in it the right way, though.

 

Andrei Tiu  

And you touched upon something which I want to be one of our core discussion points and that is becoming a category leader or creating your own category. So if you would like to talk about some of the examples that you had with clients when you were designing a strategy for this, because I think this may be relevant to this 2 people that I know are listening to us and are in that sort of startup phase where they are putting the strategy together. And I just think this would be super relevant for anybody, but particularly, I know two people that will appreciate us that in touching on this point,

 

Mark  

When you think of category creation, right, if you think of HubSpot inbound, if you think of revenue intelligence, even Casted, which is a b2b podcasting platform, their categories amplified marketing, they basically created that category. And now everyone's talking about it. The thing that a lot of people really miss with category creation is the absolute requirement for volume. And the absolute requirement for your ability to stick with it. Because you're trying to create a category that no one is searching for right now, right? Like there are no eyeballs, right. So like, if you're thinking of PPC, there are tonnes of people searching PPC, if you think of content marketing, there are tonnes of people searching content marketing. But if you try to create a whole new category, there is no one searching for that yet. So there's no search volume, which means that you have to create a lot of the search volume. So you have to be really, really on it with PR, you have to be really, really on it with the volume of content that you're producing, you have to do things like this coming on shows to talk about the new category that you're creating, and how it's different and why it's different, and why people should pay attention. So your outbound push on what it is, you want your category to appear like to the marketplace, has to be very substantial and very sustained for a very long period of time, so that you can build up the search volume so that you can start getting inbound. Because there's no inbound, right, it's all outbound, to begin with. So that you can get all of that inbound built over a period of years. And it's going to take a period of years.

 

Andrei Tiu  

So looking at it from a content marketing strategy point of view, this will be the long term component of a content marketing strategy. Okay, good stuff. So do you think this would be something to be considered by anybody? Or are there particular niches or types of businesses that you found this working better for in the b2b space?

 

Mark  

It depends on what it is you're trying to achieve. If you're a consulting company, you're not creating a category, right? Let's be honest with each other, you're just not, you're a consulting company. So you have to compete on keywords that are already available, you're never going to be a Bain, you're never going to be a McKinsey, you're never going to be a BCG. So don't bother. Compete in your space and niche down, I would say be a very niche on that space. But if you're a tech company, and you have a new platform or a new product that changes the way that something is done, then it may make sense for you to create the category. And in creating that category, you've got to be really sure that that's something that you want to do because it takes a very heavy investment. And if you've got investors, they're going to need to understand that, because they're going to want to see, like a traditional investor is going to want to see ROI fairly quickly, or at least growth fairly quickly. In creating a category, especially when it comes to outbound marketing, that growth is still a requirement. And you also still have to do all of the outbound stuff with no search volume. Right? So when you think about that, it's a substantial investment that you're gonna have to make. It's not something that I would easily recommend for everyone. Now, if you're willing to be patient and invest and do the right things if you look at what Casted has done, for example, like ZACHARY And Lindsey overcast, Holly who's their VP of Marketing, they've done an amazing job, right? They've really built out the amplified marketing, the whole idea. They've built out that whole category. And now everyone's talking about it, I see Forbes articles about it, and entrepreneur articles about it. And it was really them that created that category. And it'll continue to grow more and more and more. But it was really them that created that and they're at the forefront of that category now. So people like you and I are searching, for amplified marketing, there's actually some search volume now. But it does take a lot of investment and a lot of time, so don't go into it lightly. For those of you that want to do this, just be very sure that it's something that you want to do.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay, so and then of course, if we go back to the theory of having your content organised into pillars and satellites and everything else, probably, if we were to think about it from an integrated point of view, this can be a pillar, but it has to be that pillar that always stands and will be there for years as you mentioned, Mark, to ensure that you build on top of it, but it will require a lot of resources because you need that volume. And then you know having the other content pillars that will enable you to rank for some keywords or key phrases that do have search volume. So in the end, you are able to justify for the business internally, but also for the world, that the content marketing and SEO that you are doing actually gets people onto the website, the relevant people, and then proves, you know, results to the business.

 

Mark  

Yeah, and you bring up a really very important point, Andrei, and a lot of people don't think about this is like, you still got to compete. Because there's still search volume out there for something that you probably do or part of something that you probably do. So you've still got to compete on that content, too. So you're creating content for the new category. And you've got to compete on the existing keywords of the existing categories that are out there. So those pillar strategies are essential to that breaking out a long-form 4000 5000 words, piece of pillar content and having that sort of hub and spoke model that you can create and do a lot of like internal and external links to create a lot of that inbound traffic is critical to your ongoing competitiveness. And again, it's something that you really do need to invest time and money and strategy into. And it seems like you've thought very deeply about this because a lot of people don't think about that. A lot of people don't think about the strategy that goes behind it, they think, Well, I'm just going to start blogging. And hopefully, some of this stuff gets picked up. No, there has to be a significant strategy that you put into it. Because you've got to think about okay, well, who am I trying to reach? Right? That's the whole idea of who's my ideal customer profile? Who are the target buyers within that ideal customer profile? Who are the influencers to those target buyers? What are they searching for on an ongoing basis? How am I going to reach those people? And then how am I going to differentiate myself from my existing competition who I'm competing with, on keywords? Right? So not only do I have to rank but it also has to be something that's good to read, when you get to the website, otherwise, the bounce rate becomes super high. And then what's the point? Right, like, why would you rank congratulations, but no one reads it. The point is to get someone to read it, not just to rank, we want to get someone to read it as best we can. Because when we get someone to read it, they get engaged, and then they move into our fun. So ideally, you want to get something that is really, really great readable content too.

 

Andrei Tiu  

And of course, long term if we are to think about it, if you don't have good retention on-page and people just navigate 10% of your page and that they drop or leave, then that will damage your page authority in the long run. So okay, you may be getting a great domain authority as time goes by. But that content that you struggled for, may not rank for too long, until it doesn't anymore, because another competitor may produce a better piece of content that targets those may be key phrases like the main key phrase that you target and you rank for.

 

Mark  

Yeah, and it's not just about production, right? You've also got to distribute. And that's the second half of content marketing that most people don't think about it.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Let's go into this one, actually, because I think, yeah, this is very under-discussed, I think, and I would really like to hear your thoughts on, you know, you produce and then what happens?

 

Mark  

Well, then you've got to have people read it, right? The strength of your content marketing and marketing is a function of two things. It's a function of the quality of the content that you're producing. And it's a function of the people reading that content. Without people, you could write the best piece in the world. But if people don't read it, then it's useless. Because the goal is to get people to read it. So the question then becomes, how do we get people to read it? Well, two different ways. One is organic distribution, right? SEO, social, all that kind of stuff. And the other one is paid distribution. So any kind of paid SEM, or paid social work that you may end up doing? Most people post organically, and then they're like, cool, and we're good, but they don't invest in the paid distribution. And I would argue that a big part of your budget not only has to be around the content that you're the production budget, but the distribution budget as well, if you're not spending 50% of the budget on distributing the content, you're really missing an amazing opportunity, because you're not going to get organic search like and you're not going to rank right away, right? Like you don't, it's not like you've posted and then you're automatically page one. That just doesn't happen. So you've got to start that process with the paid distribution. You've got to do paid social, you've got to do paid SEM. And without it, you're really missing a major opportunity to get people to read your stuff.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Have you found a direct link between investing whether that is Google or social media? So direct budgets into let's say, blog posts, but let's say a long-form blog post just to be sure that we have the quality element there. So investing or not investing budgets in a blog post and the speed at which it can increase ranking.

 

Mark  

Substantial. We ran this experiment recently with our own stuff, where we created a long-form piece, 4000 words, it was a guide on a b2b marketing for Sass companies, b2b content marketing for SAS company was the guy that we produced. And we made it ungated. And we just, we did almost like a really rough AB test, we posted on social with one post that looked a certain way, and we made it all organic, and really didn't get anywhere, and it was doing a little bit of ranking after three months, not anything substantial. And then we took that exact same post and just boosted it. Like we didn't even put an intense strategy behind it. We just boosted it on LinkedIn, because that's where all of our customers are. And the click-through rate was substantial. Like we did very, very well on click-through rate because we understand our customers. And the bounce rate went way down because people knew what they were going to read because they're coming in from social, and we ranked a lot faster. So now for the keywords that we're trying to rank for, which is content marketing for b2b SaaS companies. Was page one. And now what ends up happening is we've actually beat out what we believe is our major competitor, I won't say their names on here, but we've beat out our major competitor, and we rank higher than them. So we're number five, page one, within two months of doing that, versus three months of organic where it didn't really count. So a substantial difference that a result of paid marketing does to ranking as a result of that.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice. And would you be able or willing to share the budgets? If somebody thinks about doing the same, what would be a budget that maybe you invested or thought would be good to start with at least?

 

Mark  

Man, it totally depends on what you're trying to rank for. Because if you've got a consulting company, and you're a management consultant, let's just choose the obvious one, right, like, let's just say you have a dental practice, and you're trying to rank for dentists practice in your city, or whatever it might be, the competition is massive, right. So I would say be very, have a good SEO strategy on where you want to rank and why you want to rank there and choose less competitive keywords where you think you're going to get better quality inbound, as a result of those less competitive keywords. And don't be afraid to go longtail because you know, what a perfect customer is going to search for. So for example, in our case, we know that we really only want to speak to people or talk to people that are in b2b SaaS. And we really only want to speak to people in b2b SaaS, who are searching for content marketing. So our long tail is content marketing for b2b SaaS. And so the result of that, of course, is yes, we may miss out on a lot of higher search volume, but the search volume that we do get is better quality. And so we're able to compete on those keywords, and then do much better. Now, if you're in a very competitive industry, it's going to cost you significantly more, and your budget is going to be more now it doesn't cost us very much. I mean, maybe we spend $1,000 or $2,000 a month on any kind of paid distribution of our content. But that's because we're being very strategic about the keywords that we're trying to rank for, and where we're trying to rank in general. But if you sell cacti, and there are 1000 cacti companies in the world that are, you know, or in your area that is doing exactly what you do, your competition is going to be fierce. So, it really depends on what you're trying to do. It doesn't have to be substantial. That's what a lot of people don't understand. Like, when the people hear two grand, they're like, Oh, that's not that much money. You're like, yeah, it doesn't have to be right, like, pick out the keywords that make sense for your organisation and who you're trying to target and work with those, to begin with. Go from there.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Great insight. Thank you. Okay, and stalking content marketing. Now I mean, one of the big differences between content marketing and PPC, for example, as we all know, is that content marketing, mainly if we talk about reason, content marketing, you need patients to see some results. I mean, they can come sooner or later. Sometimes it takes longer depending on the competition, depending on the topic as well, but it may take a bit longer, As with PPC, you can present pretty soon some initial results. What are some, I don't know, maybe funny stories, or maybe challenges that you encountered in your discussions with decision-makers, let's say, in presenting content market or getting content marketing strategies or plans approved.

 

Mark  

Thing is, if you're working with marketers, it's never a problem, right? Because marketers get it. So if you say to them, Look, we're probably not going to rank for this for at least eight to 12 months. They're like, okay, cool. But they understand that after that eight to 12 months, you're going to as long as you're maintaining that page on a regular-ish basis, as long as you're updating, updating it, as long as your technical SEO is good. On your website, you're going to probably maintain that position or improve it over time, right, you're going to do very, very well over time. Whereas unfortunately, a lot of people who aren't in marketing, they expect immediate results for SEO. And then they're surprised when those immediate results don't happen. And I don't think it's their fault. I think it's it's I think it's actually our fault, as marketers, because we have done a poor job of communicating the differences between SEO and SEM. And we've done a poor job of communicating the differences between all of the things that we're doing within each of those major segments, and why we're doing them. And if you follow up and make a logical argument of here's what we're doing in all these different areas, here's why we're doing each of these things. Here's right why it's not an either-or situation. It's not like a, like, I would never say to someone choose sem over or over SEO, or like choose PPC, over content in there. They're not mutually exclusive, you should be doing both things. But our decision-makers are going to say to us, well, you have to choose one or the other because the budget is limited, right. And so you have to make a decision, I would much rather you take a smaller budget for both and try and do both, rather than pick one or the other. Because the SEM is going to get you the short term results that you need, in terms of the whatever sem strategy you're trying to run. And the SEO strategy that you're building, or the content marketing strategy that you're building is going to be the long term results that create all of the inbound traffic or a lot of the inbound traffic over a period of years. So it, our decision-makers don't know that. So we have to have a logical argument of why they should do something, then we have to say to them, well, here's why we should do it. And here's why it matters to our organisation. So you've got to tell them, like what's the benefit to them. And then you've got to be able to be credible enough to be able to carry that organisation. If you've screwed up the marketing budget for the last three years in a row, no one's going to trust you anyway. So just making sure you hit those three points is critical.

 

Andrei Tiu  

With itself. Okay, so now going into or touching a bit more on thought leadership. As we saw in b2b, this is being done in a couple of ways. So what we do here, podcasts is one of them. Then we have the interviews, roundtables, and white papers as well, for SAS, this is a very common practice. What, are some of the strategies that work well for you guys, for your clients, or some of the things that you know, like the hidden secrets that you can share? Of course, not all of them that you think would be worth looking at from somebody that activates in this niche?

 

Mark  

I think it depends on what you want to achieve. So if, if you're depending on where you think you need to hit all three major stages of whatever your funnel is, right? So awareness, consideration, and action or rare awareness, consideration and intent, however, you want to look at those big three parts of the funnel. I think a lot of people are really good at creating awareness-based content. But consideration content is where a lot of people really struggle. So white papers, case studies, all that kind of stuff, I think really comes into a lot of that middle piece of the funnel. So I would say, as a hedge, I wouldn't go a third, a third, a third, I would maybe go a quarter and then two quarters and a quarter for the bottom and have your intent content be the same sort of set and volume of content you're producing as your awareness content. I would spend more time in the consideration phase because that's where most people are going to be helped. You're going to be helping those people to make a decision. And then don't be afraid, to make sure that you're developing content for other sites as well. So a lot of guest posting a lot of backlinking, any kind of Reddit posts where you want to be available on social media be very present on social media, those are the major areas where I think you should be focusing.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay. And when you say, you know, social media, do you see it just as a medium of distribution for the written or visual content that you produce? Or are there other strategies that you currently implement in the b2b space and seem to be working very well? And we can get channels as well here, like if you have insights from Quora already, that you think would be relevant.

 

Mark  

I think a lot of it comes down to engagement, yes, distribution of the content that you have, but engaging on the comments of that content. So a big part of our, where that's where we spend, that's the vast majority of hours, the Labour hours in our business, for our clients, where we run social media for them, is based on the engagement, because that's where the quality of conversation improves. And that's where the consideration begins. So yes, you post something on social for awareness that can, that's only awareness, if someone engages on that, they're considering something, could be anything, just could be part of the conversation. But that's where the consideration begins for a lot of people. And then they're gonna say, Well, how am I gonna share this with someone on a Slack channel, or I'm gonna share this with someone on a text, or I'm gonna share this with someone on something else. And that's where you're gonna get a lot of the engagement beginning. So I would say focus on focus on engagement, more than distribution on social and try and create as much engagement as you can. So especially when it comes to social, make sure your first few lines are really, really good, right? That there's a hook. Like, why should someone read this? There's some interesting stuff that someone wants to read, we look at it through three lenses. So is it educational? Is it entertaining, as is it interesting, if you can hit at least two out of three of those, you're in a good spot. And remember that your audience is looking for something that's going to stop them scrolling. And that's what we're trying to do. So the first couple of lines have to be a scroll stopper. And then you can start getting into the conversation and then engage people on social. So if someone has liked it, where someone is one of the target audiences that you're looking for, tag them in the comments and say, Hey, I saw that you liked this. We'd love to hear your feedback on it. Whatever that person's name is,

 

Andrei Tiu  

the productive workers within.

 

Mark  

It has to be its people think that social is passive, it's very active. But you have to be very, very, very active. And there's a big downside to that because it just takes hours, it takes a lot of time. A lot of time,

 

Andrei Tiu  

What's your experience with groups, LinkedIn, maybe even Facebook?

 

Mark  

Not a big fan. I'm not a big fan of LinkedIn groups, I think they used to be something that was good. I haven't seen anyone being active on LinkedIn anymore. Like not for at least not for two years, three years, maybe Facebook groups, it depends on who's running the group, I find if someone's doing regular inbound into that group, meaning they're constantly building the audience and engaging the audience on an ongoing basis. And it's purely educational for that group. It can be amazing, and it can be incredible. It depends on who's running that group. But LinkedIn has really sucked for the last three years.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Whether they are kind of following in Facebook's footsteps, or maybe if Facebook is focusing a lot on groups these days, maybe they will want to work something out. I don't know. I was just curious here. Because, yeah, we did not have a lot of success with LinkedIn groups lately.

 

Mark  

Have you had success with LinkedIn?

 

Andrei Tiu  

Not much. I mean, not. We had a couple of trials, but nothing really popped out. So we were like, Okay, fine.

 

Mark  

Yeah, I think I think where if, especially if you're creating a category, going back to that conversation, the strength of the group is, is based on the strength of the community that you're building. And there are better community tools than a LinkedIn group, right? So creating a Slack channel, for example. So if we're going to make the comparison, why have a group to create the community, in my opinion, right? That's why you have a group. So I would much rather be investing my dollars in creating a small Slack community like an active Slack community than I would in a LinkedIn group there's really no reason I would create a LinkedIn group these days.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay, agree with that. Okay, another question that I had here, I'm avoiding you. So, you know, if you want to ask back here. But having your background as a, you know, more of an in the sales director, and content marketing in b2b Being a lot linked to the ability of that content to generate leads, or, you know, sales qualified leads in general. How do you or how do your clients find it? How do you find your clients? Make the choice engaging or not some of the content?

 

Mark  

That's a good question. I don't think it's an either-or, I don't think like everyone's like, Oh, you like there's a big trend lately to say something to the effect of never gate content? And then you've got other people that are like, no, no, you should always get content. And I think it depends on why you're building the content in the first place. So if, if you're, if you're doing it to get ranked, and if you're doing it to build up as your rank overall. And if you want people to read it on an ongoing basis, and it's a pillar piece of content, I don't think you should get it. I think that's something that you need to drive traffic to that you need to constantly develop and build. But if you've got a really technical white paper, that is really important for your business, like a lot of crypto businesses, have really deep technical algorithms that they don't want to share publicly with anyone else. Because it's really important. That gating is really, really important because it gets people who are interested in learning about the technology to download the white paper, or at least to have a conversation with someone to learn more about the white paper. So I think it really depends on why you're doing what you're doing. I don't think it's an either-or conversation, I think you can have both. And I think for a lot of companies, it makes sense to have both agreed, gated and gated.

 

Andrei Tiu  

One way that we found was working well for some of our clients was, maybe for you guys that are looking at refreshing your content marketing strategy for the summer for the second part of the year. I very much agree with you, Mark. And what we are doing at the moment is working out the content plan. What is it, as you mentioned, what can drive real SEO benefits, a lot of the subjects that we are looking to include do or are links to keywords or key phrases that have either a very targeted search volume, so they are really relevant to the business or have a higher search volume. But it's also very feasible for us to want to rank within the next three to six months. So for those ones will create content, even long-form that is not gated, but then in producing industry status reports, or these types of things that are very insightful for decision-maker, maybe, but there's not a high volume of searches on those specific keywords. Those can be gated, or you can create an excerpt, maybe like 1000 words summary, and then for somebody that wants to go in more depth, hey, you can you know, download this, if whatever. Leave your details or business info. And then we agree. Yeah. Awesome. Man, this was a very good chat, and you know, a record the amount of time.

 

Mark  

Well, you're an interesting guy, man, you've got great questions.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Well, you have great answers. So I think it's a match waitstaff. So what are you guys planning for the rest of the year now, to wrap up the episode and maybe get some inspiration from our discussion to our public that maybe the guys tuning in today can start to integrate and look at for the coming months?

 

Mark  

For us personally, for our business, a big part of what we're doing is trying to make sure that our sales and our marketing engines are in tandem. And just making sure that marketing is arming sales with all of the things that they need to do their outbound work, and then inbound work, and then making sure that they're set up for success. So just that sales and marketing alignment is a big, big deal for us. For the next couple of months. We've recently hired a couple of new salespeople, so we want to make sure that they've got everything they need to be successful. And the Blurred Lines, especially in the BDR roles between sales and market, it's so blurred now where I was almost the same because a good BDR person is going to be a good copywriter and a good copywriter. generally a good marketer. And so I think it's, we're gonna see more alignment over time. And the other thing that we're really, really focused on for this year is just making sure that we're active on social as much as we can because we really think that that's going to be our long term success, at least for non owned organic stuff. That's where we really want to play very well. So that's going to be big for us.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Great stuff. Thank you. Okay. And finally, for content, call out, tell us a bit about what you guys are doing exactly with companies if we have people in here that would like to have discussions with you, or, you know, connect and ask you questions.

 

Mark  

Yeah, that'd be awesome. So if you, if you listen to the show, and you want to connect with me, please do connect with me on LinkedIn, you can just search my name on LinkedIn, Mark Raffin, where you can go to our website, that's content callouts.com. And I've got a gift for everyone who's listening if you are interested in pursuing content marketing, in some sort of way, and you know that your company needs to invest in this, and maybe this is something that you've already got freelancers, but you're like, hey, maybe we should try an agency. We will be happy to provide you with a custom-tailored 1000 word blog post, completely free of charge. If you listen to this podcast, and you tell us that you heard us on this podcast, so please do reach out if you have anything.

 

Andrei Tiu  

much appreciation. Thank you, Mark. Okay, guys. So you'll have details to Mark's LinkedIn profile, as well as to the content cloud platforms in the description of this episode. And of course, feel free to reach out to mark directly if you have any questions that you think we can answer or help in bringing you guys. As always, feel free to email us or ping us on social or write to me directly. As well as any other questions or recommendations for future episodes. Mark. I feel this was a great episode. So if you're up for another debate sometime this year, yeah. Awesome. So let us know guys. Thank you, Mark, for today. This was a really nice chat. 

 

Mark  

I really enjoyed it, thank you very much for having me.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Guys. Thank you as always for tuning in and for being with us. Looking forward to your feedback and thoughts on the episode. And until next time, hoping this got a bunch of value to your marketing plans to your content marketing activity, and keep rock rolling. Have a nice one and keep up the good work.

Business Strategies for Uncertain Times [Stuart Leo]

Join Andrei and our guest on today’s episode, ​​𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐋𝐞𝐨, as they will be discussing business growth, strategy, resilience building and leadership development in the current still uncertain global market. 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐭 is the founder and CEO of Waymaker, an intelligent business management platform that helps leaders build a better business in 30 days.

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 ​​𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐭:  

𝑊𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒: https://waymaker.io/

𝑆𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝐼𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartleo/

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐢:

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢: https://marketiu.com  / https://marketiu.ro   

𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑖 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/  

𝐸𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙 𝑎𝑡 hello@marketiu.ro 

 

𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦:

▶️Watch the episode on YouTube: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-YouTube 

▶️ Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show 

▶️ Podbean: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Podbean 

▶️ Spotify: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Spotify 

▶️ Deezer: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Deezer 

▶️ Stitcher: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Stitcher 

▶️ Castbox: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Castbox 

Episode transcript: 

 

​​Stuart Leo  

But at the end of the day, the job of a business is to solve a problem for customers go get more of those customers solving that problem and deliver value back to the community, society and shareholders. And that actually is a very fun journey. And the marketing discipline is central to that journey. So I love it. At some point, every business and business leader will get stuck. And we've developed an interesting set of tools and processes and algorithms that help those businesses get unstuck.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Hi, there! This is Andrei and you are on a new episode of The Marketing Innovation Podcast Show. Our special guest today is Stuart Leo, who is the founder and CEO of Waymaker, an intelligent business management platform that helps leaders build a better business in 30 days. And today, we'll discuss business growth, strategy, resilience building and leadership development in the current still uncertain global market. Stewart, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. How are you? Let's rock it all.

 

Stuart Leo  

Andrei, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Pleasure is all mine. So let's see where we start because we have so many interesting topics that I hope we'd have time to go through today. I mean, probably a good starting point, actually, would be to introduce you a bit more to the audience. So giving you the stage a bit to tell us about your background, your story and the interesting stuff that you are doing at the moment.

 

Stuart Leo  

Okay. Well, I'll start with the now and then I'll move back to how I got to the now how does that sound?  Now I'm a startup founder, we have a platform called waymaker.io, which is an intelligent business management platform, there are some fluffy words, let me break that down and make it concrete. It's really four things. It's a method, it's a way of doing high-value strategic decision making. A method that gives you the highest value course of action every single time you go through the process. Two,  it's a software platform that is designed to run that, that process and embed continuous improvement and strategic compounding results across your business. And we might talk about how we achieve that. Three, we're an education community, sitting behind waymaker is a digital Academy, Waymaker Academy. That is a bunch of course content, toolkits, playbook frameworks, and stuff that helps people build a better business. And fourthly, whilst we're a startup, we are now a growing emerging community of leaders who love business and want to build better businesses and help leaders become better leaders in London, the US, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, and what unifies all of us is that passion for working with people and helping them find the clarity, alignment and outcomes to deliver some special results. That's what I do now. For about 10 or so years, I ran my own consulting practice. Before that, I grew up in a corporate world in marketing and management and product development. Before that, I was in some agencies doing classic agency side marketing stuff in advertising and stuff. And it actually grew up in my journey in business, through the marketing discipline. I love it. I'm an absolute sold-out believer in Peter Drucker's quote on there's marketing and innovation, and everything else in a business is an expense. And I know what he's trying to say, and I'm taking him slightly out of context there. But at the end of the day, the job of a business is to solve a problem for customers go get more of those customers solving that problem and deliver value back to the community, society and shareholders. And that actually is a very fun journey. And the marketing discipline is central to that journey. So I love it.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Looking at the way that you work right now with businesses where exactly are you bringing value into their journey or what type of businesses you guys are working with on a day to day basis?

 

Stuart Leo  

Our principal customers are business coaches and consultants Who, working with business leaders in improving their business. So we have two types of customers, the business coach or consultant that's using our platform within their business to diagnose businesses find opportunity gaps, and build strategic plans and outcomes. And then we have business customers who are using our platform to effectively run their business with greater clarity, improved alignment, and efficiency of results. That's the reason they would use waymaker. And they tend to be let me call them SMEs sort of five or 10, three to 500 plus ish. And, and we live in a world where we help businesses get unstuck. At some point, every business and business leader, whether they be the senior leader, or sitting on a leadership team will get stuck. And, and that business needs to get unstuck. And we've developed an interesting set of tools and processes and algorithms that help those businesses get unstuck. So we might talk about some of those, that principle tool is a method, it's a way of thinking, built off winemakers leadership curve, which is a really a sense-making framework that helps leaders and their teams make sense of the marketplace and the business they have. And then in doing so, ask and answer is a process, we call the seven questions, which help them find the highest very course of action to go and execute. And we learned that from, from your neck of the woods from the British military, and we, we saw what the British military did to transform their day to day operational thinking and decision making and strategic planning on the battlefield. And that was transformational for the British military. So I might as well tell that story because I think that's interesting as the British military, is that, okay?

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, sure. Let's go straight into it. I was about to ask, before we go into the story, just for the audience to get a feel of the type of situation that these businesses are in and they may find they would be more or less in the same? Or have been or had been? What type of stuck, do you mean, stuck in terms of growth stuck, stuck in terms of people?

 

Stuart Leo  

Yeah, we talk about stuckness. In three types of stuckness, if I can use that language. The first type of stuckness is and I hope listeners and yourself will align. And yeah, remember that is that moment when you realise you're incredibly busy, you're doing lots of stuff, but you're spinning your wheels, and you're actually not moving forward, you're potentially spinning wheels and sliding backwards. And, and that's the first kind of stuckness. And the second type of stuckness is okay, we've had a level of success with we're growing, we seem to be getting some things happening for us, found our market found our customer, but we've hit a brick wall, we've hit a ceiling. And for some reason, it doesn't matter what we try, or what we do, we can't seem to find a breakthrough in that next phase. It's just a brick wall in front of us. So we, you feel stalled. So we call that the stall stuckness. The first one is spinning wheels, everybody's busy, but not effective. The second one is everybody's busy, but you just you know, breakthrough whatsoever. You've hit a brick wall as a business as a team. And the third is very much around owners or senior leaders, where you may have built a business, a level of success, but you're trapped within that business, you've actually built a business around you, it's too hard for you to get out of it now. So you're constantly stuck in it. And that could be your team could be your function, your discipline as a marketing leader, or as a sales leader or as a business owner. And so how do you extract yourself out of that and move on to the next challenge either the next role or as an owner, move from Doer to the owner, and enjoy those benefits you get lifestyle benefits, the financial benefits. So those three types of stuckness happen to every business at some point, at least for more than once and so we help those kinds of organisations, a stop spinning wheels. If there are 20 people in that team, they're probably going in 30 different directions. We help them get clarity with goals, and clear outcomes, refocus that energy into a sharper focus and get wheels turning and spinning. If you hit a brick wall, our diagnostic in our platform, which picks up to 300 pieces of data across a business will surface gaps and opportunities. And you'll see where your next possible investments in skills and systems will achieve a breakthrough. And lastly, if you're trapped, then our methodology is a great way of embedding and empowering others around you to build the business with you. So you can shift some of that responsibility from your shoulders to others. That kind of makes sense?

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yep, it does. Thank you for clarifying. And now we can go into the story.

 

Stuart Leo  

Sure, yeah. It was interesting. I was coming out of corporate life 10-15 years ago. And I read some case studies and some articles on the British military as they were coming out of the 20th century into the 21st century. And in the 20th century. The theatre of war, and I mean, the world is in a state of flux at the moment. So this is relevant, but sometimes hard to talk about. But in the late 20th century, the theatre of war was changing dramatically and was moving from a very traditional structure. Probably the last traditional war that was ever had was perhaps the first Gulf War, everything since then it's been very non-traditional. And, and as that was shifting and changing from the traditional to the non-traditional. The need to be more agile, to be more adaptive, to be more decentralised to make decisions faster, was a pressing, pressing need, and the British military was, was looking at how they made decisions on the battlefield, has commanders and leaders and realise that the way they did a classic battle plan, you know, as marketers would call those campaign plans, was incredibly ineffective. It was time-consuming. It was resource-heavy, it was complicated and complex. And it was not going to work in this new world emerging. And the way the British military solved that was to step back and say, let's, let's simplify. And they developed a small number of questions happen to be seven questions that they taught leaders from Lance Corporal up to general, to ask an answer. If you were developing a battle plan, just seven questions. And if you asked and answered these seven questions, you would develop the highest value course of action to reach the mission objective, and the tactics to execute. And it was transformational to the way leaders thought acted and behaved on the battlefield. And, and so I was reading about this coming out of corporate life, moving into a consulting life thinking, My goodness, I've come from corporate life. I have loved corporate life. There are lots of zeros on budgets and bank cards and all those wonderful things. But there were also lots of committees and bureaucracy and politics. And I remember thinking, gosh, if the British military, one of the most traditional stuffy organisations in the world, no offence intended to my British counterparts, could transform the way they developed these plans and the way they made decisions on the battlefield, then surely, regular old day to day business could because they have the same problem. In the last 20 years, we have had significant financial disruption, significant geopolitical disruption, significant health disruptions, digital disruptions, you name it. If you've grown up in the last 15-20 years, of business and marketing and leadership, well, every few years, something comes along that kind of waxy across the face saying hello. And, and so businesses need it needs something like what the military had. To cut a long story short. It was how do we do what they did? And if anybody can go and google the British military seven questions, it's a method of developing a combat estimate. But it's designed to blow something up. It's designed to, you know, destroy. In business, we've got different objectives. We're out to build something up. We're out to find a customer who loves them solves a problem and does not leave distractions. Believe the opposite, hopefully, although sometimes you need to do the former. And so we set about building. And that's pretty much where the story starts with the British military. We said what if we could do in the business world what the British military did in the theatre of war? Could we arm leaders with a small number of questions that if they asked and answered regularly, would do what happened to the military and which was a decentralised the organisation push decision making powers to those closest to the problems to flatten the organisation? And, and ensure that if from Lance Corporal to general, there's a language of strategic decision making, and three, create agility and adaption in, in decision making and leadership.

 

Stuart Leo  

The seven questions can be asked and answered on the battlefield, hunkered down behind some Humvees putting the battle plan together in 30-45 minutes. Or they can be asked and answered back at HQ over 2,3,4 days, and you can put a complicated plan together. And business is no different. Sometimes it hits the fan and you got to stop and you gotta go. Right. In an hour's time. We didn't action plan for the next three weeks. Asking, here are the seven questions, you'll walk out with an action plan. Or sometimes it's the annual end of your strategic planning session, let's go away for a day or two. And let's have some deep thinking awesome, asking to answer the seven questions. So I think you're starting to get what this methodology is, and, and kind of just like the military, when they're asking and answering those questions on the battlefield, they're holding some software in their hands. And so we thought, let's go build some software. Let's go build a diagnostic tool and some strategic planning tools that empower you to more intelligently ask and answer those seven questions kind of like the military. And that's sort of what waymaker is. It helps you narrow and focus on your customer. By asking answering those seven questions. Keeping the organisation clear and aligned around who the customer is the problem you're solving, the value you're creating, and the actions that are the highest priorities in order to realise that value, whether that be in sales, marketing, service, team, employee, HR, wherever. And that's what we teach. That's what we teach people to do. We teach coaches and consultants to ask and answer those seven questions. And we provide the software for them to execute. That's kind of making some sort of sense for you.

 

Andrei Tiu  

And the natural I guess, the question here would be and I think this forms a basis for the following questions that I had. And I want you to go through with you which were revolving around growth strategy and planning resilience in this current market scenario/circumstances. But just to make it easy for people tuning in that wonder what these seven questions are?

 

Stuart Leo  

What are they? Yeah, you can anybody can go and get these seven questions from our website, is it we make a die, I hit the Learn tab, two or three options down, you'll see why makers leadership curve, it's got a thing you can download and screen view and see it. At face value, they're not overly complicated questions. One is what is our vision? Is it driven by purpose? What are the roadblocks to achieving it? Pretty simple. But in order to answer that, you got to understand your vision, you got to understand your purpose, and you got to understand the problem itself your customer question what their market is? Who is their ideal customer? What do they value? Therefore? What perceptions do we need to build? Okay? To be able to answer that, what market is to be playing? Awesome. How do we niche and segment into that market to find our ideal customer? What do they really value? That ideal customer? And therefore, what perception should they be holding about us our business and the products we serve the products we deliver? If you can answer that, then you're starting to go excellent. I understand my market, I understand my customers, and they're very drivers. I understand what they think about us already, what they do, what they should be thinking about us what those gaps are, and the gaps. We've got a close. That's classic brand management stuff.

 

Andrei Tiu  

I was about to say that there is a lot of marketing here.

 

Stuart Leo  

There is because I firmly believe outside of marketing, and innovation, everything else is an expense. And at the end of the day, our job as an organisation or business is to solve a problem. And there's, I think there are two things. I'm going to go off on a little side rant here and you can pull me back in line if you don't like it, but I think I think the world of marketing has made two fundamental errors in the last 10 to 20 years. One It's made purpose about issues not related to the problem you solve. And to it's through the technology explosion. It's become more about tactics and execution and less about strategic thinking. In Old World marketing words, we would say it's become a one P marketing. It's just about promotions and advertising. We've forgotten about product and place and distribution. Sorry, pricing to get my old marketing four Ps off the top of my head. So those two things have been to scope shifts that marketing has been through one, it's, it's fallen into the trap of thinking about purpose as something outside the organisation. Now an organisation has one single purpose which is to solve a problem for a customer, your purpose exists around that problem. When you answer the question, we exist to your writing a purpose statement. If you're Netflix, we exist, to give a platform for content creators to get to their audience anywhere in the world. That's why they exist, that is the problem they solve. That is their purpose in life. If your Facebook exists to connect people all around the world, this makes sense. And so as marketers, we have to own that, that is actually a central truth inside the organisation. And if we are not thinking about that problem, owning the solving of that problem, we're not being strategic marketers. And I think a lot a lot of times marketing gets caught in tactics and execution because tactics and execution are so complicated today, you don't look at Martex's classic canvas of technology providers in marketing, I remember when they came out with the first one, and there was like 500 on it, and then there was 1000. And then there's 2003 years later, and now they've just even stopped putting logos on the page because it's at 5678 9000. It doesn't even work. You know, as a marketer. When I grew up as a marketer, I had some pretty simple decisions when it came to media, buy print, television, direct radio, signage, you know, it really didn't get much more complicated that got a million dollars to spend, how am I going to slice and dice it? Today, that's a very different world. So I think that the world has allowed marketers to get off being marketers. If Drucker was right, where he said in an organisation, there's marketing, and there's innovation, and everything else is an expense. Then as marketers, we've got to step back into leadership positions and go hang on a minute, I'm on the market in this organisation. I'm the marketing manager, I'm the Marketing Director, I'm the VP of marketing, or I'm the marketing person. Okay. What problems does this organisation so do we solve them? Well, what products are we buying a building? And what services are we building that solve this product amazingly well, and get that marketing conversation going? So that organisations are purpose-driven, that own the problem, they're solving for their customer, and deliver excellence and achieve amazing outcomes? Okay, rant aside. I think there's a wonderful opportunity for strategic marketers to step up and lead. So when we think about the seven questions, we are thinking about the customer, the problem we solve for them, and how we start building the organisation around that. And, and so, yes, there's a heavy influence on marketing, as we build that out. And if I answered your question there, I certainly threw some food for thought on the table.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yep. And you set the ground for the first of the not so very long list, but I think it's good that he's not long, because I want us to go a bit more in-depth with the answers and the discussion here. So the first question that I think would be the goal here is, I want you to pick your brains on how do you feel about growth planning and growth strategy in this current market situation? I mean, because we are coming after a pandemic, and we have, you know, the military conflict that is in Europe, which affects a lot internationally. So this is a reoccurring issue that I personally find talking with clients but also us as an organisation fine in the different areas we activate. So how do you feel about it? What's your take?

 

Stuart Leo  

I think COVID has accelerated, societal, economic, social, and geopolitical changes that were already in place. And what's happened is that sometimes the world changes and it's a bit like boiling a frog. If you have that phrase in the UK or the US, does that make sense? We don't have it. Okay, yeah. So when you boil the frog, you put a frog in the water and you start turning the heat up, and it gradually gets hotter and hotter and hotter until the frog boils. But the frog never knows it's boiling it so it never hops out of the water. That's kind of the point of the site. What's happened with COVID Is the water stopped getting slowly and gradually hotter. And it got hot, fast. And everybody's realised, oh, wow, the world really has changed. And the world of the market has changed so much in the last 1015 years. And this is an I want to get into a bit of detail here to answer your question. If we go back to refer to some of my notes, but if we go back to 2006, there's a publish a report published by brand Z, one of the WPS brand tracking groups, and they published the top five brands by market valuation. And they were Microsoft. Sort of, let's call it 62 odd billion General Electric Coca Cola, China Mobile and Marlboro cigarettes. But that just thinking for a moment, that's 2006. It's not that long ago. It's somewhat kind of I'm looking at you thinking then you're probably still in school. But that's that could sound offensive, but you're motivating University. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah. I was thinking about cigarettes and how I mean, you know, having Marlboro, one of the top six is like, wow, okay.

 

Stuart Leo  

That's less than 20 years ago. So 2006, the top five brands, were Microsoft, GE, Coca Cola, China, mobile, and Melbourne. Fast forward five years. And I think these were the five years in Marketing Land that started to transform everything. Facebook was founded, oh, four, iPhone came out in oh seven. So between 2006 and 2012, had this rapid takeoff. The top five biggest brands in 2012. Apple, at 193 billion, followed by IBM, followed by Google, followed by McDonald's, he comes Microsoft, let's fast forward another five years, as societal change is accelerating. What are our five biggest brands in the world, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, I should go and check their most recent because I probably just published last year, early this year, the last five? And you're probably going to see a Tik Tok in there, maybe a Tesla. The point here is if we look at those brands in 2006, that were the biggest brands in the world. And we look at those brands in 2017 that was the biggest brand in the world, you know what's changed. And the biggest change is, is a digital revolution, a new way of working. And so this, this new way of working, a new way of living, has transformed our traditional brand landscape in terms of value. And that has transformed the way we work we have absolutely moved from an industrialised economy to a services economy to an experiential economy, which a couple of economic riders published a book in the 90s called the experience economy. And that has happened that and we see that in brands today. And so it experiences economy. It's a very different way of working. I think it was culture out last week, released their latest report on hybrid and working from home. I think the number was about 88% preference for working from home, or at worst hybrid across employees across the western world. That isn't an astonishing stat. headlines coming out today. Eric Schmidt, former CEO and current chairman of Google, I'm a traditionalist. And in fact, I took a screenshot of this thinking about this podcast that I would be I'd be on and have a listen to this. This is an amazing quote from Eric Schmidt. I'll just literally open it up right now. X, Google CEO, Eric Schmidt on why in office work is better. I don't know how you build great management virtually. Now if that doesn't sound like a dinosaur running one of the world's biggest technology companies. We are in the next evolution and revolution. These were the guys that revolutionised it 10-15 years ago. The market is saying 88% prefer working from home or hybrid and the chairman of one of the world's biggest technology companies is saying Ireland, how you build great management virtually everybody gets back into the office? Can you see the context here?

 

Andrei Tiu  

There's a new wave coming.

 

Stuart Leo  

Coming? It's here man. And some of the biggest and best strategic leaders of the last wave are still holding on to the last wave going, how's this gonna work. And so this affects how we think, how we plan how we execute. And, and so we are in a world that is different. And we've got to pick up some tools and some thinking a little bit like what the British military did and think differently. I'll give you an example of strategic planning, and decision making. The most common methodology and strategic planning decision making for organisations in the 20th century was a thing called the balanced scorecard. You've probably as marketers, we're probably provided data up into it. You know, classic vision, mission values, a bunch of strategic KPIs balanced scorecard, the world is stable, everything's organised, let's balance. Okay, when was the last time you had perfect balance inside an organisation? You know, that's, that's we're going back a generation or two now. So balance isn't the thing we should be striving for isn't. What we should be striving for, is the capacity to be adaptive and agile in order to achieve goals and outcomes. Regardless of the balance, that we've got to adjust and move along the way, you know, one of my favourite quotes from one of the old 1970s motivational speakers a guy called Zig Ziglar was it doesn't matter the way the wind blows, it matters how you set the sails. And I still think that's so powerful years later. Because as marketers, we were very good at zigging and zagging. We're very good at tactically moving and moving around. And that is a skill that is needed today, what we have to learn how to do is to shift from the thinking of a world that is stable, where we can plan three, five and 10 years ahead and work backwards from that and say, right, I've got to flip that on its head. In the old way, we'd write a five-year vision or a 10-year plan. And we'd work backwards saying, Okay, if we've got to be there in 10 years, then let's, we've got to be there in eight years, and there in five years. And except, well, that's, that's ridiculous. Most people probably can't work out where they want to be in six months in the current climate. So what you've got to do it, you've got to say, well, maybe in three to five years, a goal where we could be looks amazing, looks like this. But you know what? Now we're not going to worry about where we need to be in two years, we're just going to worry about where we need to be in 12 weeks or 24 weeks. What have we got to do now, that puts us in the best position in 12 or 24 weeks to say, what have we got to do now, in order to get to that thing in two or three years' time? Does that make sense?

 

Andrei Tiu  

I was hoping you say that, because this is exactly what we are, you know, I will go in the marketing sort of perspective now. Just to match it with your business approach as well. This is exactly what we were talking about with most of our clients because it's so uncertain like nobody was expecting war, when COVID was, seemingly coming to an end. So you know, you can't really count on much these days, especially when it's so much at stake - long term. So the best you can do is just make sure you get the most out of the current situation. And then you know, as you navigate well

 

Stuart Leo  

But that doesn't mean we throw away principles and how we work together. In fact, those things matter more. So what we've got to do as marketers go, I probably can't write you a one or two-year marketing strategy. But I could put a strategic goal in place for one or two years. And what I can tell you is how we can build an operating rhythm to make effective decisions based on data on whatever the cycle is, we need to operate on weekly, monthly, daily, whatever it's going to look like, starting with quarterly as a marketing operation. What are we going to achieve in the next 12 weeks that get our organisation to the best possible position? Awesome, let's do that. And every week, let's turn the sales to getting there. And so we need to design a way of doing that together. We need to think about the way we work together more than the things we want to achieve together. That's a big difference. In the old way, we'd think about more with thinking more about what we wanted to achieve together and less about how we had worked together. Because the world was kind of stable. And we could, we could apply the same rules that work last decade to the next decade, that don't exist today, we've actually got to get smaller, in order to get bigger, we've actually got to get deeper together in order to achieve greater things. Because we need to learn how to work well together because Long gone are the days of one market have been able to do everything, you have to have collaborative, internal and external hybrid teams functioning well together, which means you've got to step back. And the most important thing a good marketing leader can do today is to define how will we work together so that when we get on the field of play, we can adapt. And if we have that operating rhythm in place, okay, for what happens, will happen, we know how to come together and make decisions.

 

Andrei Tiu  

It also partly answered the second question that I had, which was around building resilience in this type of business, you know, in a world scenario. So if we were to sum our discussion up to a couple of actionable points that people listening today, can think about or maybe even implement in their routine, or in their approach to planning to help them be more resilient when it comes to unexpected changes or medium-term planning? What would they get from your perspective?

 

Stuart Leo  

Yeah, 100%. From my perspective, it's the operating cycle, and disciplines you put in place to gather the inputs required for decision making, have that decision-making process and execute those actions, and then rinse and repeat that cycle, which that's what we'd call an operating rhythm. And so the most practical thing you can do is think about that. I'll give you an example of somebody working recently in the tourism space. And they, they said, Okay, realistically, we work on a monthly cycle, thinking about forwarding bookings of 30 days for not sold, we can affect decisions in consumers and buyers, over that 30 day period through incentives, value adds packages, increasing spend, etc. Okay, so we need to actually have a 30-day cycle, where we're thinking about forwarding bookings and turning up the volume and the dials around multiple countries on how we execute that as a team. So if we can see that asset a in England is down and asset B in the United States is up, we need to turn the dial up on England and down on the US, you can get see where I'm going. We need a way of connecting revenue and operations management, marketing, digital media, we've got to have a way of working together that comes together every week or fortnight with a set of data inputs that we can make decisions around that just make sense is the way we work. Or the tactical execution, the thinking the strategy, excellent, that's going to happen there. So one of the most important things you can do to build resilience is to build a system. So my favourite analogy story on this is just a couple of months ago, I was watching something that must have been Facebook feed they go. And there's a NASA scientist up in the International Space Station. And he said he's taking questions from school students. And the question was what, what stops the International Space Station from, you know if something hits a bit of space junk or what stops it from bouncing off into space? And there is kind of simplistically two things. One, it's the Earth's orbit and the gravity that holds towards Earth. But what stops it from spinning wildly? Like it's a pretty big machine up there? What stops wobbling on that orbit? And explain the science of a gyroscope. And so he held up a little model of the space station, here's my Apple iPad pen. Let's pretend this is a gyroscope. There's a rod that a core and there's a space station wrapping around it. And he goes look, and he's in zero gravity if I hold this up, and he could take his hand off it because he was in zero gravity. I'm not so I'll use my other hand. And he goes if I tap this gyroscope like this tap in zero gravity, that little tap causes it to spin wildly off into space. You know, all are the scenes we saw in the movie Gravity with George Clooney and whoever. But he said let me Activate the gyroscope, any of the metal gyroscopes the core as marketers, we all know gyroscopes. That's what keeps the camera stable. When we were filming, he pulled the little cord and the gyroscope activated. And he goes, let me do it again. And he holds up a gyroscope, let me tap it and he just taps it, tap, the same tap just moves slightly. And he goes, Look, I can change the axis. And he goes, I'll tap it again, taps it, and it just moves, but it doesn't change access. He said the gyroscope is the cycle, the strength in the core spinning, that when change happens, doesn't send the space station off into chaos. And I think you're about to connect the dots here, if not already, the operating rhythm you put into your decision making cycles, is the core is the gyroscope holding your organisation together building resilience, so that if you know how to come together and make decisions in the face of change, then change can happen without causing you to spin off into chaos. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Very good analogy. Very good.

 

Stuart Leo  

The and I bet there are marketers listening to this, that, you know, put a campaign plan together. And three days later in walks, the CEO said, Oh, we're going to do this and it changes. And so you go and start working on something else, oh, we've got to do this, and it changes. And so you've got decisions being made outside of an operating rhythm, uncoordinated, creating chaos, with no stability and structure. That's not resilience. Resilience comes from this cycle, of the core structure. So the greatest thing we can do as marketing leaders is to figure out what that core is, how do we make decisions? How do we start that spinning cycle, if there are 12 weeks in a year, and it's we're going to have that spinning cycle on a monthly cycle, we've spent that 12 times that's a hell of a lot better than once writing one marketing plan, isn't it? Sometimes it's a fortnight. So if you can spin that more often in your organisation with stability, and you can bounce off decisions and come back and bounce off more decisions, you can sustain change. And that's exactly what the British military did with these seven questions. They developed a leadership and decision making methodology that was cyclical, continuous, and created stability, for change to happen. Because change can only happen on a foundation of stability. It cannot happen on a foundation of constant change. That's instability. Does that make sense? So we have to as marketers, in this world of chaos and change, come back in and develop that core for our businesses, because that's our job as marketers, we have to go out and communicate, launch products affect change. And the great companies do this. Look at Apple. Every March, every September, drop a July Developers Conference in the middle there, there's a structure, there's an operating rhythm, we're going to launch software in March, we're going to launch the product in September, we're gonna get our partners together in July, we're gonna hang out a year off, that doesn't work. Heck, yeah, it works. Just look at the way they launch products. So the best thing you can do as a strategic marketing leader works out how to build that resilience.

 

Andrei Tiu  

I love how we made a full circle here and how you get back to the initial story. Very good analogy as well. And I think this is a great insight for every, you know, just to wrap up all of our discussion into a couple of action, actionable points. I very much agree with you. This is also what we tried to do internally as well, trying to be able to make decisions more often and review the strategy a bit more often. And guys, for you tuning in that maybe are depending on more people to make such decisions or such evaluations, probably as you are saying a good place to start to be just to make sure that everybody's on the same page, there is a good feedback loop in place internally. And then you can sync upon making these types of strategic decisions as you implement and as you encounter changes in the economic space or political or anything that might affect great stuff, Stuart. As we are getting close to the end of this episode. What gets you excited for the coming weeks months? What are you guys planning with the business? Any good advice or insights that you'd like to share with our listeners?

 

Stuart Leo  

I'm a product guy, I love making products in our world, that's digital products and software tools and new features. So we've got some pretty exciting stuff coming up over the next quarter or two. Which if I told you I'd have to kill you so I want to talk about but you know, I What gets me excited. And is the thinking we can do as marketers and all include me as a marketer in this because we all are around, where's the opportunity? Where's the pain? How can we create something that solves that for a customer, and creates value for them? And when you can build those kinds of products, whether you're in tourism or property or professional services, or software and tech, it's the same thing. And, and that's what gets me out of bed. That's, that's what I love to play in, almost to the detriment sometimes. So yeah, I get excited about those things. We're launching, some new products within our platform. So that effectively features I'm also excited, to be honest, there's a lot of change, and there's a lot of chaos in this world. But that doesn't mean we have to be fearful. You know, courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is the ability to make decisions in moments of fear and take action on them. And so I think, these are the times as humans as people, as colleagues, as friends, as patriots, we step back and we go, You know what, building good businesses matters. It builds good outcomes in society. Good products, make people's lives better, and people's lives are better. They, tend not to fight with each other. That's a good thing. So we as business owners, leaders, and marketers, actually need to have the courage to wisely take the next investments into the next into these next waves into this next period of change. And our forefathers did it. You go back to the 1920s, the 1930s 40s 50s 60s. This isn't new. It's what they say about history, the best thing we know about history isn't the repeats, sadly. And so we have to look forward into the future with a good dose of boldness and courage and go yeah, these, this isn't insurmountable, this is winnable, this is over comparable. Let's figure out how to do it. And that I think is exciting. Because that is why marketers were born under the face of this earth. Because you guys are the problems. solvers, the creative thinking is in the innovators, inside the company. Everybody else's counting numbers, putting widgets together, markets have the best job in the world go and do the best way possible.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Great stuff, okay. And as waymaker, I know you guys have a free trial as well if there are people on the show that would like to see more of what you do, and maybe start using the tools that you make available.

 

Stuart Leo  

Of course, yeah, shameless plug, let's go. If you're somebody, thinking of becoming a coach or a consultant, talk to us about an amazing partner programme. If it's somebody who is a coach or consultant, and you're looking to improve the way you do that, save a lot of time create a lot of value, and increased customer lifetime value, then we help with that. And if you're a marketer, or a business leader going actually what you're talking about makes a lot of sense. How can we do that in our organisation? Just go and take a free trial, spin up the diagnostic, ask and answer several questions, and see where you land. Reach out to me, I'll connect you with our team. We'd love to help you.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Thanks so much, Stuart! Guys, you'll have the links to all the platforms, including Stuart's LinkedIn profile as well. Stuart, if that's okay with you, for people to link in with you directly.

 

Stuart Leo  

I suck at socials. But I purposely manage my LinkedIn. So if you connect with me on LinkedIn, or connect with you, if you message me, I'll respond. And if you got a question, I'll answer it if I can. Doesn't have to be about, you know, buying stuff from us. But if I can put it in the right direction, I will. So reach out, say hi.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Appreciate it. Man. This was a great pleasure having the discussion with you. It's midday here. So this was better than the coffee

 

Stuart Leo  

Andrei, thanks so much for having me. And wish you the very best with the podcast. It's been a joy.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Same here. Thank you so much for all the insight. Guys, as always, thank you for tuning in and for staying with us until the end. For any questions feel free to pop us an email, write us to write, Stuart as well. Check out waymaker. And until next time, take care. Take action and looking forward to seeing you soon. 

What makes a blockchain project successful? [Vlad Faraon]

Join Andrei and our guest on today’s episode, Vlad Faraon, as they will be discussing building and launching successful blockchain projects, from the idea to the growth through marketing and communities. Vlad is the Co-Founder and CBO of Coreto, a project that aims to be THE benchmark of trust and performance in the crypto and blockchain space. 

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐕𝐥𝐚𝐝:  

𝑊𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒: www.coreto.io

𝑉𝑙𝑎𝑑 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝐼𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladfaraon/

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐢:

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢: https://marketiu.com  / https://marketiu.ro   

𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑖 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/  

𝐸𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙 𝑎𝑡 hello@marketiu.ro 

 

𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦:

▶️Watch the episode on YouTube: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-YouTube 

▶️ Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show 

▶️ Podbean: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Podbean 

▶️ Spotify: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Spotify 

▶️ Deezer: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Deezer 

▶️ Stitcher: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Stitcher 

▶️ Castbox: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Castbox 

Episode transcript: 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Hi there! This is Andrei and you are on an episode of The Marketing Innovation podcast show. Our special guest today is Vlad Faraon, who is the co-founder and CEO of Coreto. A blockchain project that aims to be THE benchmark of trust and performance in the crypto and blockchain space. Today, we'll discuss building and launching successful blockchain projects from idea to growth through marketing and communities. So without further ado, Vlad, it's a pleasure to meet again and a pleasure to have you on the show. How are you? How's the day going? And how's the market at the moment?

 

Vlad  

Yeah, hi, Andrei. Thank you for the introduction. Really happy to be here. I'm really excited as well to talk about blockchain, talk about Coreto. It's been a long day up to this point, but I still have some energy, I will always have the energy to talk about what we are building. The markets are looking good. If you are too, if you are to have a look at the charts, it looks promising you are on the right track. But we will get there I believe in our on our call right here.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice. Nice, nice. Okay. Yeah, I know you guys have a lot of things cooking with the project as well. So maybe we'll touch on some of those as much as you want to share. I won't be very pushy. But yeah, I think just to get started and for the audience to get to know you a little bit as a person as well as to get a feel about the project and potentially as well as the blockchain space in general, since many of the people that tuned in today might not be very much into the space, although I know that many of us here on the podcast are interested about the blockchain space, and we have previous episodes. So I think this would be a great opportunity for us to get a bit of insight from you, since you've been here from you know, like for a very long while. And you also have the history of building Colorado and interacting with a lot of projects as well as with a lot of marketing influencers, people, and communities. So exciting times. But first things first. What's your story? And how did you go into the space? How did crypto come about?

 

Vlad  

Well, first, like you said, Yes, my name is blood. I am 38 years old, still young, still in power? I said Yes, exactly. So I am in crypto since 2017, early 2017, something like that. Previously, I spent my last 1416 years in corporate business development. And to be honest, I got sick and tired to be sick and tired. Although  I love big companies, especially big tech companies, as we see that they constantly evolve and develop a lot of useful apps or platforms that we are all using. When I came into when I discovered Well, I know about blockchain, I believe, since 2013 2014, something like that. I had some friends that were mining Bitcoin. And they told me about Bitcoin told me the idea of decentralisation. But at that point, my mind was in a totally different place than right now. So of course, like I believe a lot of people did back then I just ignored them and said, Hey, what's this? Nobody's gonna use that what are you going to do a bit and so on and so forth. But fast forward a bit to 2016? Again, because my friends were keep telling me about Bitcoin and decentralisation, I said okay, let me look into this already, this base was beginning to get some traction going. So, when I started looking into it more, more carefully, I saw the potential of the technology. So first, I saw the benefits of a decentralised network then I saw the idea of not having a central entity. And I will not go too much into a basic description of what Bitcoin or decentralisation is, there is a lot of useful info online. But I got into more in-depth somewhere closer to meet and 2017 so that means that I kind of got on the initial Ico boom. That was the period when crypto winter Bit more mainstream. Now, I will be honest. And I will tell you that at that time, I was just like any other new retail investor coming into this space. That means I had low financial literacy, I had lower knowledge about how to invest and how to determine if a project is good or not. So I kind of went with the crowd, which means that I went on Twitter, also known as crypto Twitter. I went to telegram groups, I even joined some paid channels, all with the idea of finding the quickest route to success. Of course, that ended up bad, because back then, and, I saw that it's still the same issue right now is that you do not know how to start. Where do you start when you want to start? Who whose opinion should you follow when you start when you know nothing? Okay, so you try to find those guys that maybe are in this space for a longer time. Or maybe you can find some way in which you can determine those individuals' knowledge.

 

Andrei Tiu  

So basically, what gives those people credentials to talk about creating? Yeah, exactly.

 

Vlad

So just like that, I started finding. So I just started to look for individuals that would look like they know what they were talking about. So when everything was blooming, are booming. At the end of 2017, I got some good investments along the way, I also began to understand even more in-depth how blockchain works and the other thing. And then when 2018 came, right before the bear market began, some of my investments started to go down the road as in going slowly, slowly, minus 20 minus 30, minus 40. And I began to question myself, Oh, how did I get into these projects? I even got scammed. How did I end up investing in such poor projects? And my conclusion was that I follow the wrong people. I based my investment decisions were based on the number of followers a particular individual had, I was very, it was very hard for me to identify a track record of that guy's performance, and past performance. So this was also the time when the idea of Coreto came to mind. In so summer of 2018 and 2019, I sat down with Justina Justina, who is my partner, both in life and also in business. She already was a successful entrepreneur she had to one of the first digital agencies in Romania. So let's say that she had a passion for design and a passion for developing growing debt in general. So after a lot of brainstorming hours, the conclusion was that the problem in the space at that time is that there is no place where you can evaluate the people that are talking about crypto investments, all of them are stating this is not financial advice. But at the same time, it's exactly what they are doing.

 

Andrei Tiu  

So if anything, sorry, for interrupting, but if anything, I think just got worse as the industry evolved, and the crypto became more, you know, adopted, because there's more and more people and everybody that has, you know, one successful investment. Oh, let me tell you how to do it. This is the project I'm following. These are my top 10 things. No.

 

Vlad  

I was full of videos, Top three coins to invest in. Top 10 coins to invest top five coins that are going to the moon. Yeah, so so then we said okay, it's clear that it would be very useful for the retail investor to have a platform on which people content creators that are joining can prove their worth can prove their knowledge. And how could they do that? Well, they could do that by being more transparent with how they work and being more good Let's say they should give more regarding their knowledge, applied knowledge. And this is the way that Coreto came to life Coreto comes from a community reward token. And the same time Coreto in Portuguese means a bandstand. So, this was a nice coincidence, because if we will, if you are to go even more into branding itself, we would say that we can give the stage for content creators and for influencers, to prove their worth, okay to perform for the audience, and the audience will reward them by applause, or booing, get off the stage, you know, nothing. Okay. So, and then we said, okay, so there are, it's clear that this industry, just because it, there is a lot of money in it, and let's not hide behind the finger. But that's the truth in crypto, there is a lot of money to be made. But at the same time, there is a lot of money to be lost. Especially if like we were back then at the beginning of the road, there is a saying in crypto that says never invest more than you are willing to lose. We all say but nobody. Myself included. Yes. So fast things forward. In 2020, Autumn 2020, we decided to go live. So it's when we started to look for ways to promote our project to spread the word exactly about what we are trying to build and what we're trying to do and how. And it was the first time that I was in direct content contact by being on the other side of the fence, I was not just a retail investor looking for projects, I was a project of I was a project looking for investors and looking channels in which I could fairly promote and fairly send out my message and our vision and what we want to do and want to build.

 

Andrei Tiu  

I will not make this a long parenthesis but I think it's relevant to the journey. For people out there that maybe have an idea in blockchain, and want to bring it to life. Or maybe they are, you know, setting up the team. What was your journey in setting up the team and creating this core group of people that have built Coreto then?

 

Vlad  

Well, our core team is made up of four people. Me and Iustina - are the founders. And then we have Vali who is our head of design. And Andrei, who is our head of development. Andre goes back with just enough since the beginning of their time. So they have a long history of working together. They are very compatible in terms of ideas and mindset. So it was very easy for us to send him our idea of what we wanted this platform to do in the end result. And so Andre worked with Justina for more than seven, eight years, something like that, along the way King barley, also the from the agency time. And what we love about volley is that he works very fast. And he does not need a very big brief. So he understands very well, the concept, and very quickly. And that's very important because there's one thing in crypto, which is you need to move fast. There was a saying that one day in crypto is like one month in the real world. So yeah, so this is how we put together the basic theme, the initial theme, and then we outsource part of the development. And in April 2021, we managed to launch our closed alpha version of the platform up to that point. Up to that point. I will get back to how I do the initial idea. Then we're now in the position in which we had to find the right marketing agency to support us although we all have a background in the digital world. It's something else to build for yourself. Sometimes you are very picky in your ideas, you are more of a perfectionist. So we tried to find someone who whether they were freelancers or whether they were agencies that could understand. First, they had to understand what we are building. This was one of the problems that we came across was that everybody was saying, Yeah, we will do A, B, C. D. Sure, very fast. We know how to do it. We did it before we'll do it again. But they did not understand our core values. Having in mind that the main use case for Coreto and its core values are based on transparency on trust in building trust itself. We couldn't use the type of marketing that is, unfortunately, right now being used in crypto, which is a lot of shilling. Are you familiar with the term Schilling in the industry?

 

Andrei Tiu  

I am, but let's explain it to everybody. 

 

Vlad  

In short, you see this mouse, the mouse is the best. What makes it the best I say so. So I'm shilling this mouse. And just like me, there are other 1020 30 so-called influencers that are saying the same. And they are getting paid by the manufacturer of this mouse to say that it's the best. And what's so good about it? Well, it has a scroll. Well, this crawl is so smooth. Oh my god is the best mouse ever. So this is something that is happening right now with most of the projects out there. Influencers, unfortunate, unfortunately, a lot of them are getting paid ridiculous sums of money. And the project themselves have no way in which they can track a return on investment. Very few are doing any due diligence on the price of those projects. So that's a big no-no in our book. So we did a lot of tests that were destined to fail. We also ended up paying a lot of money for very low-quality work.

 

Andrei Tiu  

That was in your trying to shape up your marketing, right as a project, initially, when you're setting up.

 

Vlad  

In the project, we're trying to identify the right individuals to work with to find those professionals that are, unfortunately, again, few professionals in this industry and those that are present. Just because they know that in crypto, there is a lot of money. They have huge fees that do not that have a structure. To give you an example, there are some that charge for just the basic ama sounds like five 6000 euros now. It's an AMA okay, but I have 100,000 followers, okay, but how can you prove that those guys are really following you because you are worth being followed? Or they are fake accounts, or they are just in it for airdrops or bounty hunters or sorcerer and so far. And to get back to your initial question. If you guys out there, want to build a project on blockchain. First things first, you have to really look into your product. And, of course, the same questions that need to be answered, answered, If you want to launch it in a traditional industry or if it's for blockchain, they are the same, which is, is it useful? Is it needed? What problems does it solve? What's the def and does it need the blockchain or not? After you have that in mind and said even if you are still at the idea stage, you have to put together your team of course. And then only then try to move into finding some marketing partners. There is a plus right now that there are a lot of Launchpad projects out there. And these Launchpad projects, what they do is that they already have a community behind them or the investors and they can help you out, but all of your ideas on paper, then help you spread the word about your projects inside their community. And with the help of their community, you can have some initial funding to get you started. Once you get started, and once you also your product begins to have a shape to get shaped to get in shape to do whether it's an MVP or an alpha stage, then you can boost your marketing moves in such a way to attract institutional investors. Because there are a lot of institutional investors that are now into crypto because like I said before, there is a lot of money here. And of course, Wall Street is not staying away from money ever. But also you have to be careful. Who do you partner with? Up to this point, we refused any institutional investments, because we wanted to have full control of how we build the direction that the project wants to go. We are strong believers in lean startups. Rather than building on hype and selling false dreams. This is a way that we gained the trust of our community. We were transparent. We are all public. We are not anonymous. So we are transparent. We always kept our promises. We are always under-promise and over-deliver. But just like in any tech startup, there are also a lot of bumps along the way. So we were sure we had to push our deadlines. We had to modify our roadmap twice up to this point. These are things that are normal when dealing with building a tech product or software product

 

Andrei Tiu  

Of course and mainly in a fast-moving industry such as crypto. I mean, it would be an issue if those things wouldn't occur, right? 

 

Vlad  

There are a lot of projects that along the way they had to adapt. And so did we, when we first started, there weren't so many options, or let's say, Blockchain protocols out there, or there weren't so we didn't identify the right trends. Well, that is one thing that I'm proud of is that even now after two years, our product is still needed. The issues are the same, which is it's very hard for crypto enthusiasts to identify the right projects or the right people to follow to find educational materials, quality materials, easily organised and with a good user interface.

 

Andrei Tiu  

So if you were to articulate what Coreto does within one meeting, what does Coreto do in one minute?

 

Vlad  

Okay, so just as I said, Coreto also means the bandstand. So we are building the stage in which content creators, are not afraid to be transparent with their knowledge and with their portfolios, and also with their own trading. They are not afraid to put it out there and say, Hey, this is what I'm doing. This is my past performance. You can follow me or not, but I'm doing it for myself, we are building a platform that wants to be fun. We are building a platform that is intended to also be engaging with the community because we are building our own community at the beginning right now. But we plan to open the doors and if we have time, I'll talk about that as well. So we are building the stage for you, the content creator for you, the trader, if you are bold enough, come on, collect on building your profile, post your content, and then our users' followers, your followers and so on and so forth. They will have other metrics to decide if you are worth being followed or not other than just your number of followers on Twitter or in your telegram groups. So we are helping the content creators prove their worth and the knowledge

 

Andrei Tiu  

Those people that are analysing the projects right? 

 

Vlad  

Yes. We are helping the retail investor, so to say, to identify those sources that work being followed. And we are also helping the project teams themselves, to reach new communities to help them build awareness around the project, to also claim on the official page on Coreto and directly interact with the community that is being built here. And also have a place where they can find content creators whose history can be verified. In short, we want to be the main go-to platform when it comes to due diligence, whether you're doing due diligence on projects, on your next trade or on which influencer or Trader deserves to be followed. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

One measure here for the people that maybe are tuning in today, but are not active investors, or maybe happened in occurred, like these struggles haven't occurred to them yet, because they weren't active in themselves in the crypto space. Basically, one thing that I know Coreto does, and I think it's really cool. And He does that by using Blockchain. So you mentioned blood that is verifiable and their experience and expertise. Anybody can go and look at their performance in the past and say, Okay, this guy's legit, or this guy doesn't really know what he's talking about. Basically, Coreto is using Blockchain so that it can track how many times people were right in the predictions that they were putting forward.

 

Vlad  

In time, if let's say you are a content creator, and you love doing trading, maybe you don't necessarily share your trades with the idea of building a following. You just share them because you yourself are now a successful trader, and you like the crypto communities and you want to give back in a way or not. And what we do is that your entire track record, we stored it on the blockchain so that it's immutable right now over there. And it's also transparent because this is another issue that we came across. And I'm sure I'm not the only one is that guys posting on Twitter or on Telegram, something about a new project or an existing project and potential I know, Bitcoin trade, that opinion is being lost in the newsfeed or even worse, it can be deleted, if it went south, or this is most of the cases, if they get it right, they will praise themselves, oh my God, how much they will praise and says, Look how good I am. Look how much money you could have done with my code, join my pain, my paid group and I will make you rich, no, that will not happen. Okay, so there is no easy way to do well, actually encrypted there is a get rich, fast way. But it's not necessarily the right way. So that's why we aim and we work on building a crypto reputation. This is exactly what we are doing. And our future plans are to take our algorithms of reputation building and implement them into third parties platforms. And up to this point, there is one partner that we can freely speak about. There is one forward protocol, they are called and they are building courses. We've also been in a lot of fields. And through our help, we will help them build the reputation of their content creators and of their teachers, let's say based on how their community interacted with their content based on their feedback based on real-life use cases, and so on and so forth. This is something still in development. But we are very eager because they were the ones that approached us. And they were just the first we are also in talks with other two big projects but can say more now. But yeah, our announcement channels and new news will come.

 

Andrei Tiu  

I know one of them. I mean who it might. You guys follow Coreto will have the links in the description of these episodes. So there's a couple of things cooking there. Also marketing-wise. So I don't know, Vlad if you are up for it. We can look at what you guys were doing lately and some of the plans that you have for the future. Also, a couple of announcements that I know are cooking in the background. So maybe if you want to share a bit of that, just to get give people a feel of how Korea has evolved. So from when you were having those initial marketing activities, so fundraising and then launching the platform in closed alpha, how did the product evolve? And maybe, what should somebody consider when it comes apart from the delays? And obviously, the things that have to do with developing the product in itself? I think it is super important to note that Corrado is actually one of those projects that is life now. So people can actually go in and they can be active on the platform, there is a community around it. But moreover, how are you looking to scale things up, as we were talking, about at the beginning of this episode, briefly, the market seems to be favourable now. So it may be a good time to actually, together with, in this case, correct, or there's going to be a lot of other projects that will claim to be the best, and they will claim to, you know, be the next big thing. So even more than maybe a couple of months ago, people will need, they'll want to get into the space will need to be able to research. And then, of course, it's an opportunity for careers to be there to help them research better in the projects that they want to get into. So what are you guys planning now for growth?

 

Vlad  

Up to this point, we had a private talk earlier today, and I was we're talking about what is the crypto investor type as a person? And, unfortunately, more than 70 80% of the people that are into crypto give to don't give that much importance to what is that project actually building? They just want to invest $100 now and maybe tomorrow have 1000. We also had that type of user on Quora. They were they did not understand why don't we do marketing like other projects do, which means a lot of hype, and a lot of influencers that are talking about us. A lot of bad, no promises, we're gonna do that. We're gonna do that when we talk about price. Talk about nice changes. So we had a totally different approach on that. We wanted, as I told you to have a Lean Startup, which means that our marketing efforts weren't that much focused on hyping the idea of Pareto, we wanted to keep our heads down and build. It was what we did. The committee that we have right now understood that, and we have people with us, even from the beginning of time, that understood the concept understood our vision, and also understood our way of doing things. And this was by being transparent. By always being in the community and talking with them. It was how we managed to gain the trust. And now that we have a product that, as you said, it's life and it's launched, although it's in closed, closed alpha, it means that you can join only by having your sport reserved on a whitelist. And we periodically onboard users because we use their feedback and a lot of their feedback to improve our product. So the point that we are now we are even closer to a better launch. But up to that point, we want to open up the gates a bit for coding, we want a bit more people to come to see it, to test it to see its advantages. And we thought of doing that by launching a referral programme. The referral programme is somehow a basic marketing tool, but it's very powerful. Because through the word of mouth and just through a referral link, you can organically grow much faster. So this is one feature that we're about to launch in the coming weeks. So up to this point, we kept our heads down and worked. We improved our product. We have now somewhere close to 2000 users, early adopters that are using and testing the platform. And very soon we are going to launch our referral programme. It might sound like it's the basic marketing move, but sometimes it's good to go Get to the basics because it will give you the best results. By always, we always know, tested. And we always listened to our community. It's also a way for which we can show them that their opinion is important. And their feedback is implemented. And we also actually have an exam there was one user that gave us feedback saying that, hey, it wouldn't be nice if I could have correct or something like my trading journal. And that was something that we will take and implement in the next updates in a way in which you can see exactly what was your journey up to this point, as a trader, you don't have to be an influencer, any user can create opinions on quality. But it's a way in which you can also track your growth. Am I a better trader now than I was a few months before? And Going back to marketing moves, we, as I said, we don't do necessarily what crypto does, and we want to take it slow and sometimes slow is good, and sometimes fastest, even better. So we try to combine these two.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, actually, I think, this referral programme that you mentioned, it makes a lot of sense for the community, since you are a community fuelled type of project, having your friends there with you, you know, analysing or challenging yourself or each other on the platform and having this community feeling to it and the social element, which I know you guys are following through with until the end, I think it's that thing that can make it fun and makes a lot of sense to have it. So looking forward to that I guess he's going to be some incentives attached to the whole programme.

 

Vlad  

Yes, if we are to speak, just briefly about the referral programme, we didn't want to build up a programme just like okay, here's my link, just subscribe, and get a discount maybe to some subscription-based content developed by a certain content creator. Being early in the platform right now, we did not yet publish the monetization modules for content creators. So that means we are still in the stage where you will benefit from Coreto through the learnings that it provides row. So basically, if I invite you, it will help me even more, if you do some tasks on the platform, one of the things that we are going to put a lot of effort into in the future is the gamification part. Everything has to be fun. In order, especially what we are building it's a community or based platform, it's a community-driven project as well. Word of mouth is very important. So if you are to go and talk to your friends about Coreto, it has to also be fun. So we'll put in place a lot of gamification mechanisms, one of them right now is already in place is one of the features that will help you build your reputation. It's called our staking of opinion pools. In short, you have an opinion, another guy has another opinion. Maybe I come along, and I do not agree with your own opinion. So we will create a pool of opinions based on a particular trade, and we'll let the market decide who's best insured. Okay, so like a trading challenge or something like that.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay, so that sounds good. And then I'm just going through our discussion right now, what it seems to me is that the way that Coreto differentiates maybe from some of the other projects that are launching or are just, you know, just not really adopted as a, at a very large scale is that as opposed to those projects that go for the approach of like the traditional crypto approach of having the influencers, do all the hype, sell the coins, etc, and then build the product or whatever that platform is this interview guys being built. Yeah, it seems as if you can just rock and roll then you necessarily need that many people to invest in the coin and so on. So this is cool. I think it's maybe you taking it a bit, not slow, but you taking the time to do the work before talking about the work rather than talking about the work before doing the work. puts you in a very nice spot and probably the people that you mentioned are with you from way back That's why they are still with you. So probably waiting for, you know, for you to talk a bit more broadly about what you're doing. And I think from that perspective, I think the referral programme would actually be nice because it will just enable people to work and see the utility of what you guys are doing at the moment.

 

Vlad  

Exactly. We were very careful. Also, for our token, we wanted to give it use cases, not just a coin or a token that can be traded or exchanged. So it will have a lot of utility within the platform itself. And now, our committee or coding committee, they, of course, they also began to question, okay, when are you going to get out there and let people know about what you've been building, and we've won their respect and trust because we constantly delivered on our promises. And right now, we are also one of the strategies that we want to follow, is to reach out to certain content creators or traders that are not, let's say, they are not the tier one influence that they don't have hundreds of 1000s of followers because they will not be so willing to start joining to join a platform and start all over because everybody starts from scratch when they start on Coreto. So we'll be reaching out to certain content creators that we've been studying and we saw know, how they communicate and how they interact and what type of content they are putting out there. And we will be inviting them to claim as an official product profile on hereto. And that will also help them to bring their communities on board. And to prove them once again, although they may be they already done that, they cannot now prove through a clear track record stored on the blockchain, that what they are preaching is also what they are doing and using. So that will also come as a plus. And once that, people will get to see the utility and also the that it can be fun to learn that itself would be a catalyst for new or user onboard things.

 

Andrei Tiu  

So going in, like judging from a marketing perspective than it can be, just to try to crystallise a bit in front of somebody that is maybe considering maybe they have this idea or are considering applying the blockchain technology to an idea that they had a business and they can see the utility of using Blockchain rather than not. So there are two popular approaches that they may go for one would be that of building the hype and just having the same community gathered, which is the root 90% of blockchain-based startups or businesses go for. And then using that money, whether that is from retail investors, private investors or investment groups, to build a product and to actually do the work and lounge properly. Or it can be the approach that you have, which would be the cloud, the more classical if you want a business approach, which is okay, let's build the product. And then let's market it and make it lousy to do a better fusers and then to the whole mass market. Right? These would be the two main approaches. Okay. But then, there's another thing that tends to be, you know, is not the right thing, but it happens. So many people use the price of a coin. I mean, every blockchain project has a coin. And then when people are looking at the projects available out there, maybe he tells investors looking to diversify their portfolios. Many of them follow the graphs of the coin, increasing in price or decreasing and, you know, judging a lot a project by that specific price and opportunity for growth and taxing their investment and so much, you mentioned just investing 100 today having 1000 Tomorrow, if not, I'm not happy with that. So how do you feel that impacted Coreto? Because obviously, it seems you didn't bring a lot of users and you didn't build that hybrid before building the project. That impact is a bit of fluctuation of the coin price I would imagine and also maybe where you are right now from a maturity standpoint as a project as opposed to other projects that are maybe in the same price ranges core.

 

Vlad  

Yes, the way that your price charities look, it's important as well. If when you receive when you research for a project, of course, that you also there are two options, either the project is about to launch. So it's something like pre-launch. So there is no price history, or there is a project that you discovered in your own ways. And you are seeing its price chart. And if you see something like there is a flat and then is a bomb, and then a flat as a bomb that well, that's something that could lift up some question marks, but not in the wrong way in itself. So when you identify that type of a project, then you have to go more in-depth and search for the fundamentals of that project and see why. How can you explain that flatline and then just a few bumps, then you can, you can discover that the project was, wasn't marketed very much? And there are a limited number of holders, and there are so many trading volumes. But if you look in-depth, and you see that that particular project is about to launch certain features, or he's about to announce new partnerships, or it's just about to burst, well, that's the best time to get into. There is also something that if that particular project only has a few weeks or a month as history if it's a parabolic growth, and then it goes down. It's something that who would want to stay away, from because it means that that was a hyped project. And then the market itself did its job. And when self when you look into new projects, it's good to see the perspective to have a steady growth to see that it goes steady. But still, it's in an uptrend of price action. It's somewhere that we are at ourselves. So we did not focus on the price itself. A lot of users were constantly asking us why the price is not going up. Why aren't you going? Why are you constant? Well, it's because we do not want to hype the token based on false claims. So we want to prove that the product is good that is needed that it works, and then level up our marketing efforts. And that's the point that we are at right now, like I told you.

 

Andrei Tiu  

So from the discussion that we had just before the show, I know that you mentioned the big focus over the next couple of weeks is going to be so you have the launches coming up the referral programme. And then there are another couple of features that you guys are working on for the platform in terms of marketing moves that are important being in this space right now be one the focus on community growth, so ensuring that you bring the right people into the project, not only the ones that look for the get rich, quick type of investment, but rather people that are interested in this, you know, the values that you shared, like transparency, and then traceability and so on. And people that will be able to benefit from the features that you make available in the platform, such as you know, staking of opinion polls, and sharing just information that is

 

Vlad  

yeah, right now as Cornetto, although it's a search hub, it also works as a social platform. Of course, there is a lot of content that can be created either through posts, or social posts, articles, reviews, and so on. But from a marketing standard standpoint, we are now focusing on attracting quality users. At first, we want to focus on attracting quality traders and content creators, because they are the ones that will attract the retail investor, Indian. Being a social platform, of course, your user base is very important. It's one of the reasons that we did not start with one open as far as anybody could join. And we wanted to focus on having people that will test and that will provide feedback. Of course, we had a lot of people that joined and did nothing. Well, we got rid of those and we onboard new people in the stage that is about to unfold right now. We will reach out as I told you to certain content creators, invite them here give them certain perks of course, because what's in it for them in the end, and with their help and with the content that they're building, and also with the features that we're having, and the person to give me vacations and everything, it will make it fun for them to share their opinions on in the social media, whether it's Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Tiktok. It will, it will be like a snowball effect is all we all know the phrase build it and they will come? Well, although I do believe in it, it's also important to give them some boost to help them, to let them know that we've built it. And how can we do that other than through committees, as Coreto is built for crypto communities, it will help it it is also a way for which we are now looking to expand. So we are also searching for projects out there, whether they are already well-known projects are also our projects at the beginning of the road, they will go through our own due diligence because of course, we cannot partner up with somebody that we know it's not trustworthy. And how can you know that? Well, the first sign is are you public, or are you anonymous. It's not a rule of thumb that if you are anonymous, you also have bad intentions. But that's one of the first things that come to mind when people see an NFT or an emoji instead of a public profile page. Now, so to give it a wrap, it's like, we will use the power of community to spread the word about  Coreto, which is a community platform. Because we work for we It's why we are building we are building this because we went through the pain of being robbed, pooled beings can be taking better investment decisions. So at the end, when you yourself are working on solving a problem that you yourself encountered, and for all the feedback that we're getting, we can see that we are not the only ones. And there are a lot of statistics out there. And a lot of media saying that a lot of scammers in crypto are very dangerous is very risky is very volatile. It's something that through Coreto we want to do work on and to provide that needed help that everybody at the beginning of the road really needs.

 

Andrei Tiu  

So, very good stuff looking forward to, you know, seeing the platform evolve, I've already made an account. So you probably already know that. So  I know it's working, I'm just cool. Looking forward to seeing a lot of activity there soon. Now, coming to the end of this episode. And I know you're a busy man as well. So I will let you go soon. But just want to pick your brains on a final thing. And that would be for the people out here that are you know, are building towards projects. What would be your top three tips or advice, pieces of advice that you'd give them when shaping up or launching potential blockchain projects.

 

Vlad  

Now, after you get everything done in terms of your team, initially, maybe you find some advisors as well. It's really helpful to find people that are involved in the space that are connected. Networking is very important because it's the way that we will be able to build up partnerships. One thing that I like in crypto is that most projects are very open to partnering up if and this is very important. You bring value to the table. There are a lot of I see community partnerships. They do nothing they just say we partner up with x coin Congress. Okay, but how will X coin help me and how and how will my project help X coin so attending different crypto events. Luckily, now, face to face events are beginning again. So attending live events that will be first because it's a way in which it will be easier for you to network. Also, mingle, always be communicative. Always try to speak your mind in different ways. groups, it's the way that you will see that you can build relationships online. I mean, in the end, come on we are in 2020. Anybody can build up a relationship online. And especially if you find groups of founders of crypto project founders, and there are some out there picking their brains. Well, how did you do that? How did you do that? If I were to start over, it would be this is something that I would do more carefully and more thoroughly. And which is building a network. Just like in any industry, your network is very important. So once you have your network built, then start talking about your vision and your project and your ideas. Because by talking about it, you never know, who is whoever will have a moment like, Hey, I could really help out these guys. I really like their idea. And based on my experience, and the people that I know, I'm certain that I could really bring value to the project. So never be afraid to talk about what you are building. It's okay to have doubts, and it's okay to be unsecured. Again, that's the life of an entrepreneur. I, myself had my own. But thanks to my team, and thanks to the people that have my back. That is something that I managed to move past. And the third one, and I believe that once your project gets some traction, this is the most important one, do not believe everything that is promised to you by different service providers in this industry. There are a lot of scammers among service providers as well. There was one fun fact, there was one marketing agency and crypto marketing agency that did approach the approach us and they said, we can help you build your community, and we have a lot of experience. We've built hundreds of 1000s of communities, they build communities with hundreds of 1000s of users. Okay. And of course, my first question was, please share a portfolio. And I had a pleasant surprise to find our logo in their portfolio blog. And that was like, wow, we already do work together. And this is one case, and there are others that say, okay, I can get your project trending on different sites for the small fee of $5,000. Really, how will that help me to just bring some hype, it will just maybe bump my price a bit. But once those new users that are coming into my project will see that I still have some work to do until I will fully deliver my project. They will sell as fast as they bought in. So that's also a big no-no. So to sum it up, be very careful when people approach you offering services. Again, based on the network that you are building, use them to refer different service providers in the industry. Have in mind that crypto, the crypto industry, unfortunately, also attracts a lot of scammers. So you have to be very careful out there. Okay. And of course, it will be another one. Be careful what you're doing with your private keys. private keys to your wallet are very important. There is no I forgot my password button. There is nobody that can give your funds back. Okay, so this is something that really has to be careful on the security side of both of your platforms or your project or wherever you're building. Make sure that your security guy knows what he's doing. And also this part is also very important based on recommendations. Okay. So I believe this will be my three and a half vices.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Let's move the last one to the first one.

 

Vlad  

I think it's very important to always take care of your private feed. Never share.

 

Andrei Tiu  

super glad it was great having you on the show. Thanks so much for being here. I know it's a busy time for you guys so appreciate you taking the time to come over. Really cool. Where people I mean what would be the best place obviously, I know you guys have the Telegram, and it's the place to be for following crypto projects. So your telegram we have here for people watching the show, it's t.me/coreto. For you guys tuning in for streaming platforms, you can find Coreto following this link. Vlad any other platforms that you think people would be worth following?

 

Vlad  

My direct messages are always open.  I'm always active in our group, you can find us on our on Twitter, if you go on coreto.io, you will see in the footer, all of our social media groups and channels, you can contact me directly on Telegram, LinkedIn on Twitter. I like to talk. So I hope that if there is anyone out there that has any questions for me or is at the beginning of the road, I will be more than happy to give you some of my own insights. And if I do not know, I will do my best to recommend somebody that can help you in this journey.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Appreciate it, and things. Finally, I know, we said we're gonna wrap it up. But I think these are relevant. So a question, can people now come on the platform, even if it's even if they need to be approved? It's open, right? So anybody can create an account if they want to first question. And the second is if people with projects are listening, and they would like to claim their project page, can they do that on Coreto? Or what would be the best approach to doing that?

 

Vlad  

Right now, they cannot create the profile directly from coreto.io. What they can do now they can whitelist their username on reserve.coreto.io. And we will onboard them. This is now but once our referral programme will go live, maybe they will get an invite link from some of our existing users. So the answer to the first question is no, you cannot create a profile right now you need to reserve your spot and your user name using reserve.coreto.io. And the second question, the project module is still in development. But I would encourage any project out there to reach out to us and we can talk and see exactly what they are building and what their stage is in. And if we find synergy between us, we'll find a way in which we can work together in the future. That's for sure.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Great stuff! Okay, Vlad, that was it. Thanks so much for being here today. Keep rocking it. and looking forward to catching up soon. Guys, thank you for staying with us till the end. Looking forward to your questions. If you have any as always, post them in the comments. If you're watching this on YouTube or otherwise, feel free to tag us DM us on social or write us at our email address. And as always, we'll be happy to answer as well as maybe you know if you need to put you in contact with Vlad although his DMS are always open so we will link those industries from the description of this episode as well and take care of your crypto investments.

 

Vlad  

Always do your own research. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yes. Looking forward to catching up on the next episode.

 

How to Advertise in The Metaverse [Mike Charalambous]

Join Andrei and our guest on today’s episode, Mike Charalambous, as they will be discussing The Metaverse, NFTs, marketing in this upcoming realm, as well as opportunities for early adopter brands. Mike is the CEO of Threedium, one of London's leading 3D technology solutions for e-Comm, display and AR. 

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐌𝐢𝐤𝐞:  

𝑊𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒: https://threedium.co.uk/

𝑀𝑖𝑘𝑒: 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝐼𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikechara/ 

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐢:

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢: https://marketiu.com  / https://marketiu.ro   

𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑖 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/  

𝐸𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙 𝑎𝑡 hello@marketiu.ro 

 

𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦:

▶️Watch the episode on YouTube: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-YouTube 

▶️ Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show 

▶️ Podbean: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Podbean 

▶️ Spotify: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Spotify 

▶️ Deezer: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Deezer 

▶️ Stitcher: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Stitcher 

▶️ Castbox: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Castbox 

Episode transcript: 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Hi, there! This is Andrei, and you're on The Marketing Innovation Podcast Show. Our special guest today is Mike Charalambous, who is an old friend of mine, a serial entrepreneur and founder of Threedium, one of London's leading 3D technology solutions for e-Comm, display and AR. And today we'll discuss the metaverse, NFTs, marketing in this upcoming realm, as well as opportunities for early adopter brands. Mike, really nice catching up! It's been a while. How are you?

 

Mike  

It's a pleasure, man. It's a pleasure. I think last time we were organising to catch up over beers in a physical bar, next time is going to be in a digital bar, in the metaverse. So times are changing fast.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah. See you at the central end? Actually, it's been a couple of years, maybe at least two since we last spoke. So that is sinking up, well not nice. But you thinking up with the start of the pandemic, and everything that came with that. And you have developed some really cool things meanwhile. I was following you mostly on LinkedIn and looking into what you guys were doing with Threedium. And I think this is going to be a really fun episode because it aligns very much with the specific of our episodes here on the podcast, which is getting our listeners closer to the innovation that is happening within the tech space and marketing specifically. And I think it's gonna be a lot of insight and learnings to take away for you guys out there that are looking to see any opportunities or are maybe interested in this web 3.0, the metaverse, NFTs and how the brands that you are marketing or your own companies can leverage the changing customer behaviour or, you know, this space in general. So, Mike, let's talk a bit about you. Let's introduce you to the audience. What's your story was story behind Threedium?

 

Mike  

We started 3d zoom over beers and nachos in a nice diner in London. But rewinding back, I was very much involved in the consumer electronics, and agency world back in the day. So I used to work with Nokia, on the tech scout team, finding different software and hardware,  solutions that could work for the Lumia phones. Then I changed shapes, I joined Wonder Man in WPP, we were still working with Nokia and some other consumer electronic companies, trying to support them on the brand strategy side about rolling different consumer products across different markets. And that's where we started seeing that e-Commerce, and in general, digital engagement was becoming very critical, very important for the brands. As a side hassle, we were meeting with a few friends, all of them were, experienced in different fields in their own ways. And we were thinking about ways to how we can further elevate the digital experience as to how brands can engage with users from a product display perspective, but also from creating commerce experiences that can elevate the purchase intention and trust for users to put their credit cards and buy products. So this is how Threedium was formed. With our mission to make 3D and AR solutions very much accessible to everybody to all sorts of different brands agencies, small to medium companies, to be able to to use them and elevate their, their commerce channels. Whether that is in e-Commerce or physical or omnichannel. Very recently, we also allow them to utilise them and distribute them within the metaverse. Threedium is a team of five founders. I'm one of the co-founders and the CEO of the company. Ever since the launch of the company in late 2017, we grew from a team of five to a team of 50 people. We are headquartered in London, but we also have offices in Serbia, Germany, and most recently in the US.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice, that's a very nice growth there! What fueled it? Was it tapping into the sort of metaversy spectre? Or was it the adoption that fueled your fast growth?

 

Mike  

I think ever since 2016 when e-commerce and mobile-commerce started to become important revenue and business drivers for the brands and retailers in general, we started seeing a much faster dependency on digital channels to be able to exist as brands and to increase market share. And this increased reliance on e-Commerce and mobile commerce allowed the brands to have much more available budgets to spend, invest and enhance their digital channels. But we are also seeing some tremendous talent being involved in this fault. So whole new eCommerce strategy. And we've seen some great teams being put in place from different brands, which helped to drive the adoption of new technologies, and more fascinating innovation in the space. So this is great foundation to see rapid evolution in eCommerce. And fast-forwarding from 2016 to 2020. We've been seeing brands slowly adopting 3D and immersive solutions to pilot a few of their product launches. But also the pandemic has massively, you know, escalated the need for digital transformation. So we've seen many, many brands putting digital transformation at the forefront of the strategy of their priorities. So eCommerce, mobile commerce, digital channels have been important elements that they had to further revolutionise in order to stay relevant in that ever-changing consumer, environment and ecosystem. We've seen massive adoption, acceleration of the need and use of immersive solutions, mainly 3D, because 3D is becoming an important component for creating digital assets, utilising in so many different ways for replacing physical products and the need to use physical products to create content, to sell products and to engage with users. As one can say, we were probably at the right time, in the right space, to get enough attention for all these big brands that they were looking to embrace 3D and immersive commerce solutions. So we had a product that was already quite advanced for its time, and it was able to cater to all these advanced and massive and scalable requirements that the brands, enterprises and agencies wanted at the time. And this is how we started rapidly gaining traction and market share. So right now in 2022, we have more than 3000 individual users, using our platform to create immersive continent solutions to top load and push up to their eCommerce channels. But also to use their physical channels as QR codes. We also have more than 40 enterprises across different verticals. Using our technology at scale, to innovate with their eCommerce, omnichannel and metaverse channels. All these users and enterprises are using our technology to be able to create 3D and AR product explorers 3D and AR configurators, 3D and AR display ads. And very recently, they're also using our platform to optimise their existing 3d models to create 3D metaverse ready, if you like, wearables and products, which they can then sell in the metaverse worlds directly to avatars. And as we typically say to our brands and partners, you create 3D once you use Threedium to sell it thrice. So it's the multiple ways in which they can benefit and utilise their assets and started seeing a great ROI across different channels using our engine. Some of the brands we work with include Diageo, Farfetch, a lot of brands from the LVMH group, some brands from the Richmond group. We also work closely with a lot of creative agencies and media agencies such as McCann and Wavemaker. And we have very strong partnerships with all different metaverse worlds such as Decentraland, Sandbox, Digital Village, and OPR.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Very nice. To have like a smooth transition towards the metaverse because I really want us to get there. But just so we have a starting point, what's the most popular eCommerce solution that you or your clients use from what you guys offer?

 

Mike  

Every six months the answer to this question changes. If you asked me that question a year ago, those would have probably been 3D configurators. A lot of the brands were looking to elevate their personalization experience on their eCommerce sites. So creating 3D configurators that will allow users to configure products in real-time, using 3D, using configuration techniques, really drove strong engagement and conversions for the brands. Then the more the brands kind of like mainstreamed the solution, they then started to see how they could elevate their product display pages, the so-called PDP pages. So they were using the platform to create different kinds of designs around 3D and AR viewers and explorers. So they were creating some interesting 3D viewers with different backgrounds and the ability to add hotspots around products so that they can create a more autonomous browsing experience for the users once they would land on the product page and explore the different products. And right now we're also seeing a lot of the brands coming to us asking they can use their 3D products to create 3D NFTs. But we're also seeing a massive request for brands to pilot their 3D products and sell them within the metaverse. It just changes every six months, depending on how much the brands are looking to innovate and push boundaries. We're seeing a huge uplift in the different solutions that one can use to generate from our engine.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Great. Okay, so just to start a discussion on the metaverse and focus on the solutions that you guys are working on with the brands there. And then let's been some ideas on trends and changing customer behaviour and what's out there for brands that want to tap into this territory in terms of opportunities. First things first, just to make sure that everybody listening to us understands the terminology and we are good on that front. So what is the metaverse?

 

Mike  

Well, I mean, that's a great question. With a not so straightforward answer. First and foremost, the metaverse can be anything for anyone, right? The Metaverse could be the moment that you go on to your mobile device and you immerse yourself in your screen and all of a sudden you forget everything around you and you're just scrolling and reading the news in your device. That's where you immerse yourself in a different kind of universe other than the one that you present right now. However, how we like to simplify the definition of the metaverse as to how it's shaping up right now through all these different news and publications people are reading. The Metaverse is basically the era where consumers and users and individuals like you and me are ready to spend $1, $100, $1,000 to purchase and own a digital asset, the same way that they would spend those kinds of money to acquire a physical product. This kind of need and demand for people to use real money in purchasing digital assets allows the creation of a fuel economy. So all of a sudden, a brand namely Nike could be selling directly to Mike, us a physical consumer, the Air Jordan sneakers, but at the same time, they can go and attract Mike's digital identity avatar and sell to him digital Nikes for his digital lifestyle. And that's what we typically tend to mean by Metaverse when we talk from a commerce perspective. And then why Mike's digital identity would be keen to purchase the Nike digital version is because he's building a lifestyle and identity of his own. In the metaverse, they want to be whoever they cannot be in real life, they want to create an Alter Ego. They want to go and have a much more gamified life experience that they don't let you have in real life. So it's a nice escape from them. And if you think about it, we are also kind of programmed already to be able to live in this kind of Alter Ego digital identities either through the existing so-called Social Media identities that we have, or either because we have grown up playing games, and we've always been kind of acquainted, and we always had that secret passion of us wanting to leave in the game. And right now, technology and browsers and internet connectivity kind of allows crazy people like us, and like, game developers, and Metaverse developers to be able to build this kind of worlds that allow the users and people to go and start building a second life, if you like in those spaces, and embracing all the different attributes that can come with that.

 

Andrei Tiu  

And on that note, mostly noting gaming. We are kind of there or have been for a little bit like people have already started to spend money to buy certain items in games, even if there's not a 3D experience in the way that you'd put an Oculus on. And then you are in the new Univers altogether, not seeing anything around you. But the immersiveness is there. So you are fully focused in there and you spend money on a game even if the infrastructure is not necessarily yet or has not yet been because, in recent times, we are getting close to that. How do you see the evolution of Metaverse or the metaverses depending on who looks at them or who defines them? This year over the next two years.

 

Mike  

Yeah, so basically, the metaverse is one holistic thing. And what we tend to refer to us to the different entities in the metaverse such as sandbox, Decentraland and what have you, those are just different members worlds within this universe. Right. So who's gonna prevail, eventually, whether it's going to be Meta's Facebook metaverse worlds, or sandbox or decentraland? We still don't know. But what is certain and the kind of, you know, notion that we're starting to see is that people and users entering into the metaverse, into these new internets, or the so-called Web 3 internet is that they're coming in with an appetite of decentralisation. And we are seeing a massive transition wave from the centralised web to the Internet as we know it, which belongs to like four companies. And a lot of users, feel that they have a first-class opportunity to be able to reduce the monopoly power that these companies had in the previous internet, owning and controlling so much personalised data. So we are seeing companies that are more decentralised, more prone to giving unlimited to the users to build and grow and flourish in this new internet to have more, you know, more demand, more welcoming kind of vibes from users. And this is why we've seen rapidly the likes of decentraland and sandbox growing in popularity, and people don't really care whether Facebook or Microsoft or Google are going to be present in this new internet because they don't really meet them. They're actually trying to build a much freer and a much more, you know, less scary if you like kind of internet. In terms of why this is going to continue growing, this is because we're seeing some obvious metrics are rising, especially from the younger generations. Last year alone, for the first time ever, we've noticed that children between the age of 10 to 12, asked for Santa's to offer them in-game purchases, and bolt-ons versus real-life gadgets. So we're seeing these new generations of future consumers who have the purchasing power already growing up with this consciousness that for them, digital ownership is powerful, even they understand it, and they want it. So for them, it's not going to be anything different. We're also starting to see with the use of blockchain, that the ability to own digital assets actually has proof to track back to the real owner, and therefore you can show off that you own that asset, and it's certified and it's authenticated. So it already fulfils all the needs that you won't have as a user, that that product, whether it's physical or digital, belongs to you. This is just the beginning. We're definitely seeing massive adoption of users going into the space and, and looking to spend money and wanting to fulfil that need and void if you like to own digital assets and see how they're going to be using them across the real lives and their digital lives.

 

Andrei Tiu  

You pointed out something really nice there. And I think it'd be worth us spending another five minutes discussing and developing the idea because I think it's very valuable to clarify this. So it and that is the difference between web 2.0, which is our web that we grew up with, and web 3.0, which is the web that these guys, 10 years olds that are asking for digital assets on their birthdays and Christmas are going to be growing with. And here well we talk about metaverse. One clarification or idea that I like us to discuss that I think is going to be very interesting is that when we talk about Metaverse is not only us going into some game-like universe that say a Counter-Strike map or something like that, and then just leaving, they're having these brands there and whatever, by using some glasses, some AR glasses, VR glasses, but also it comes with the component of decentralisation and with everything that like all the values that can be attached to something like Metaverse world which will be you know, Power to the people and digital transactions, non-monetary, like non-fiat currency and all these things. So, what's your view on this?

 

Mike  

I think it's bound to happen that eventually tokenomics, tokenisation is going to be a core component of the web 3. We are already seeing some interest in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Etherium, Polygon, even currencies from sandbox and decentraland, already starting to be used for people to transact. And we've seen a lot of people also storing these currencies in their wallets. And sometimes they tend to prefer to transact with them, rather than, you know, the fiat currencies, such as dollars and euros. And there are strong indications in the market that in the next couple of years, you know, there's not going to be much difference between which currencies users are going to prefer to transact with. As an additional ad on basically a benefit for the cryptocurrencies is that the tokenomics we're talking about is that we're going to start seeing fewer price deviations within jurisdictions. So let's say a can of Coca Cola, that it's worth 0.01. If in, in Germany, it will still be worth 0.01. If in Ghana, let's say. So, you're not going to be able to see too many price discrepancies in price wars between products and there's going to be much more realistic pricing basically, if you like, in the markets. On top of that, many many brands will now have the ability to create their own currencies, which in turn will allow them to reward their own users. If this engaging with the different brands with the different ecosystems, and this is also a huge component of the web 3, which is all about rewarding your users, either financially, or with different other rewards that can cement and show the respect that brands want to show to their loyal customers, to the loyal fans. So it's going to be an interesting way in how we see that shift of loyalty mechanics that we were acquainted with in web 2, and how we're going to be acquainted with them in web 3. So yeah, all of these things are just an interesting theory for the time being. But we were started saying that users are becoming more and more in demand of this kind of transactional and rewarding behaviours and experience.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Also, in terms of the attention and where people are focusing, I mean, basically marketing, we as marketers, try to get the brand in front of people where they pay attention to. So considering the specific of the environments, like when you are in the metaverse because you can do a lot of things in the metaverse such as you know, meetings, but enhanced from what we are doing. For example, even right now, when we are recording this podcast, we could be at a table in a Metaverse scenario, sort of like one avatar next to each other and talking as if we were in the same city, for example. So from that perspective, we can almost for sure that the people that are already looking to be present, there are going to spend a lot of time there. And this obviously takes away from the attention capital that a brand could have from its audience in traditional channels from today, and get it to those channels. And this, of course, drives the need for brands to want to be present or to communicate on those channels, or in this environment where people do spend a lot of time in or a proportion of the time depending on their demographic or their other criteria. But certainly, if you know your customer avatar and persona, well, you'd probably know whether they are more prone to spend time in something like the metaverse versus on a bus going to meet their friends for a bind to down the pub. So like for example on a Friday, rather than doing the same thing at their laptop from home, you know, setting that they choose in, I don't know, let's say the decentraland. So given this change of focus that comes with the adoption of the platforms, we believe and here I would like to hear your thoughts as well, that the traditional marketing channels or the ways that we communicate as marketers or brands with customers are going to be diversified or adapted as well. So some marketing infrastructure should come to the table or should be developed so that we can leverage this space using Blockchain probably because everything is happening on the blockchain rather than in a centralised way, as we do now for Facebook. I mean, probably excluding Facebook, and the other guys that are developing, centralised Metaverse is here you can contradict me if you have other data or you know, insights. But just to sum up and to have a discussion here, we believe that there will be some channels that will be available to brands so that we can use all the data that is going to be gathered by analysing the people that are going to spend a lot of time there and then deliver ads better or in a manner that also rewards the people that are viewing them or engaging with them, and then creating another level of brand engagement and relationship in the end with the brands that are going to be there and that can find their customers there. What's your view on this?

 

Mike  

So my view is that we wait too early to know how this space is going to evolve. But for sure if we see these as the new social media channels or the new social commerce channels, then definitely brands aren't going to take them very seriously and start embracing them. What we typically suggest to brands is that there is no longer a question of if they SHOULD GO into the metaverse, but HOW they should be going into this Metaverse stratosphere if you like. Basically, they should always go in and formulate a long term strategy, knowing what they will be doing once they go in. But in order to keep their feet in the water, we usually suggest they to have a short term strategy but with a long term game, a long term plan. So to first understand the ease, or how they could portray their brands and their products into the metaverse, we always ask them to do something small either to lease a pop-up store, or either try to launch like a wearable into the market or create a small discord group launch and NFT with some utility either in real life or in the metaverse to get people acquainted to understand that this brand is doing all the right steps to go in and starting to reward its customers and users in more web 3 kinds of manner versus the old or more, you know, traditional and conservative web 2 loyalty techniques. And then, once you start building a community, once you start building this kind of momentum, that they're now transitioning into this new era of socialising with their customers or building communities of becoming more Metaversy, that's where organically it's going to start growing for them. And they're gonna be able to make more, you know, mature decisions, more robust, more aggressive decisions as to how they're going to expand their strategy. And they're in their brand footprint into the, into the different members' roles. There are some quick growth hacks basically, that the brands can be looking, to achieve. So even though there are so many interesting metaphors, roles that they're about to go live, there are a few obvious ones that are easy for the brands to go in right now in which they have good accessibility like Roblox, which is more centralised. And it focuses more on children between the age of six age to the age of 1213, even, but it has 15 million users. And it's an interesting environment for the brands to go in. And also, we've got decentralised, which it's more decentralised. And it's fairly accessible from desktop soon from mobile apps as well. Anyone can go in with or without Metamask wallets. It's addressable to our younger audience between the age of 18 to the age of 35, maybe 40 Sometimes, and, and brands can go their lease part of a land or a shop, sell a few wearables, start building some sort of branding, and in interacting with the avatars to be able to synthesise their, their strategy and their aesthetics as to how they want to portray the brand in the metaverse. And then obviously each brand launching a small NFT, which will act as the legacy NFT as a provenance for the first unique set of consumers and users that are going to be owning that. That's also a great way to be able to start building a more long term and loyal community to get them on board on this journey so that they can voyage along with the brand as they're growing their experiences in the metaverse.

 

Andrei Tiu  

So what is something hot that you are working on right now that you think would be a good inspiration for people here that are maybe leading marketing departments and are looking at ways to be innovative or to reposition their brand and keep it fresh.

 

Mike  

For us, there are two main elements that we're going to be focusing on our Metaverse strategy until the end of the year. First is that we have created this mini luxury more plazas in different metaverse worlds, that basically enables the brands to be able to lease part of those areas where they can go in reskin them and place some products inside effortlessly without having to worry too much about cryptos and whatever. So it's an easy transition for them to navigate from the traditional eCommerce experience to the meta commerce experience. All they need to do is just convert their 3D models and make Metaverse ready. And this will allow them to start announcing that they have a place in the metaverse and start building a nice marketing and PR campaign around them, but also start extracting some interesting User behaviours and data that will allow them to synthesise a much more holistic meta commerce strategy as they grow and become more mature in space. The second thing that we're testing a lot is, is basically avatar behaviour. So we are looking to play around a lot with different APIs that will allow the brands to be able to see how avatars that purchase their digital sneakers or digital foodies are actually utilising them in the different member roles. Are they wearing them for XYZ amount of days or hours? Do they spend more time doing specific activities with that, and this will then ultimately allow the brands to see how they could reward their users through these kinds of datasets that they're amassing. So we're playing around with different new metrics such as where, where to earn or sweat to earn. So the brands can actually find new kinds of ambassadors and influences in the members which they can be rewarding them with, you know, Ethereum for every, every kind of Avatar that crosses paths with them whilst they're wearing their hoodie. Or if they spend XYZ amount of time wearing that specifically, walking around the metaverse are jumping or engaging into different sorts of activities. Again, they can be unlocking more rewards from brands. So you know, these are all interesting metrics and innovation touchpoints that we're playing around to see how we can further introduce new engagement strategies between the brands and the avatars. And consequently, that consumers.

 

Andrei Tiu  

So in their directory, for example, for a brand, let's say, fashion brand, to go now into Metaverse, shopping mall, let's say in decentraland, and have a pop up store there or have to lease on a shop that is branded up like where's their brand halves? I don't know the 3D models have one of their collections in there and people in the metaverse can visit?

 

Mike  

Yeah, so basically, this is actually what we tend to encourage the brands because first of all, we don't want them to spend too much money buying land and not even being sure if that matters, whether which they bought the land in is going to prevail, or it's going to die out. So in order for them to have less risk, but bigger exposure, we tend to be the ones taking the risk of like amassing the lands, and then giving the chance the brands just come in, start playing around the understanding of this is something that works for them or it doesn't work for them or what else they need to do to optimise their strategy without spending too much money without breaking the bank. And having a world-class opportunity to go in and just you know start interacting. So basically, I think that there is no right or wrong. But as I mentioned before, the easiest way for the traditional brands to be able to go into the matters without feeling too easy, too afraid, is to try and extract the elements that they are acquainted with in real life in the high street and just slowly use them using those elements and bring them into the members. So because you are acquainted with leasing premises because they are acquainted with visual merchandising, these are the key elements that we tried to extract from the High Street in real life, bring into the members with more Metaverse vibes, and with a different kind of engagement strategy for them to to be more appealing to the avatars and to the audience. That is right now spending time in the metaverse and we tried to smoothly bring the brands in without scaring them too much. And we got confusing them too much.

 

Andrei Tiu  

In terms of budgets, what would be a ballpark or an average, maybe the smallest budget that somebody should look at allocating for tests like this?

 

Mike  

This is really a question that varies according to the size of each of the brands. I mean, we can say 100k and would mean nothing for brands like Louis Vuitton. We can say 5k and it would mean a lot for small to medium retailers in the high street right now. The good thing is that there's a budget that can be catered for any kind of appetite. So Even with as low as $300, one can have a wearable ready and submit that wearable in decentralised. And they can have that wearable ready to be sold to avatars, through the decentralised marketplace, and they can start promoting it both in real life and through their social channels. And they can start generating sales to avatars.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Positioning themselves into, you know, that kind of brand that is there.

 

Mike  

Exactly, exactly right. Or they can spend $10,000 or $20,000, they can do a few pop up stores here and there, they can reskin them, they can put a few products as display, they can do in some, you know, events or webinars through those shops to get people in, they can launch some rewards. So, you know, it really, really varies, but a budget should never be an obstacle for them to go in. Because there's something that can be catered for any kind of budget sighs

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice. Man, this was such a nice discussion. And really insightful is the first time that we actually tapped into the subject on the podcast in so much depth. I mean, specifically Metaverse, we never really went into detail on it. So I'm really happy that we had the chance to do this with you. And also we had a chance to catch up a bit. Hopefully, we'll have the chance to you know, catch up off the podcast as well. Pretty soon, we should organise. But yeah, until next time, if there are people that want to get in touch with you and potentially explore directly these opportunities that we were discussing or they want to propose partnerships or anything to do with that, what's the best place that they can find your link up to you?

 

Mike  

Well, I would say LinkedIn is the obvious direct channel one can get in touch with. But then there's the CCO is be my email which they can get through you, I suppose. If they want to get in touch. And you know, somewhere here we will have the link to go to Threedium website so they can even reach out across and Contact Us.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Perfect. Yeah. So, guys, you have already seen the description of the episode or Yeah, depending on where you are streaming or listening to it. But yeah. Also, my thinking is, Mike, as you will have it in the title. So his name is Charalambous. But you have the spelling there in the title of the episode as well. 

 

Mike  

My alias name is Mike Chara, so I don't need to pronounce the entire surname. It becomes for a lot of people.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Awesome, cool, man. Thanks again for the time today. Really nice catching up. Looking forward to seeing you guys doing a lot of great stuff being us when you have cool projects, and maybe we bring them on the podcast as well and actually make case studies of them. And looking forward to having a beer also in the metaverse but also we realise that transition

 

Mike  

Wherever it's more suitable. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Thanks again, man! Rock it. Thank you guys for tuning in today and looking forward to catching up soon.

 

Mike  

It's been a pleasure guys and always remember to have fun!

The Power of Storytelling in Marketing [Jack Murray]

Join Andrei and our guest on today’s episode, Jack Murray, as they will be discussing modern PR and the science behind storytelling in marketing. Jack is the CEO of MediaHQ, a SaaS company of media contacts and a press release distribution platform. But not only he has also released his business book, “The Magic Slides: How to master the art of storytelling for business”, a bestseller in 3 categories in its first week from release.

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐉𝐚𝐜𝐤:  

𝑊𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒: https://www.murraystory.com/

𝐽𝑎𝑐𝑘 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝐼𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackmurrays/

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐢:

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢: https://marketiu.com  / https://marketiu.ro   

𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑖 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/  

𝐸𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙 𝑎𝑡 hello@marketiu.ro

 

𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦:

▶️Watch the episode on YouTube: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-YouTube 

▶️ Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show 

▶️ Podbean: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Podbean 

▶️ Spotify: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Spotify 

▶️ Deezer: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Deezer 

▶️ Stitcher: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Stitcher 

▶️ Castbox: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Castbox

 

Episode transcript: 

Andrei Tiu  
Hi, there! This is Andrei, and you are on The Marketing Innovation Podcast Show. Our special guest today is Jack Murray. Who is the CEO of Media HQ, a SaaS press release distribution platform that provides media contacts to marketers and media professionals. But not only. He has also released his business book, The Magic Slides: How to Master the Art of Storytelling for Business, which has become an Amazon bestseller in 3 categories in its first week from release. And today we will discuss modern PR, as well as the science behind storytelling in marketing. Jack, welcome to the show! Congrats for the book release. How are you? How's the energy on your front?

Jack Murray  
It's really good today, Andrei! The minute of we finished recording where I'm sitting right now is beside the Atlantic Ocean. And it's very cold. But the minute we finished recording, I'm getting into the ocean for a swim. So I'm very looking forward to our discussion. But I'm also very looking forward to that.

Andrei Tiu  
Crazy, like, how cold is it right there? Because I think it's like below zero degrees?

Jack Murray  
Well, yeah, the water is probably about seven degrees. So yeah, I have a lot of hot water in the tank. So I'll be having a bath when I get back up. But it's like, look, you know, it's great to see it live. And when you go into the ocean and the waves are crashing. So the high tide is in about 20 minutes, and the waves will be crashing over me. So I'm really looking forward to that.

Andrei Tiu  
Crazy man. Okay, nice. Thank you for being on the show today. We already found out an interesting fact about you, looking forward to, you know, picking your brains on PR and storytelling and everything that we just mentioned here, briefly, in the intro, because you have a wealth of experience. You know, you've been in the industry for over 15 years, you've been an entrepreneur for forever, really. So from the beginning of your career. And, you know, as we briefly discussed before the call, your family has been having this background as well. So really looking forward to hearing your thoughts, hearing your story, as well as discuss trends, and maybe tips and tricks that our audience can take away after this episode. First of all, I will let you tell us a bit more about you like: who is Jack, what's your story? What's your background? Maybe a bit about the book a bit about the company as well, as much as you'd like to share at this point.

Jack Murray  
So I would describe myself as a marketeer, an entrepreneur, and a storyteller. And as long as I can remember my family has been involved in business. And if I was to share with the audience to spark that got me involved in business and in storytelling. It's a story that my father used to tell us when we were small. And I have an older sister and a younger brother. Ireland was very poor in the 1880s. And my great grandfather was one of nine children. And they had a very small farm in the west of Ireland. And back then, the British ruling class would have had landlords that would have had small peasant farmers. And my family was to have a small farm holding, and somebody had to do something because they were going to get evicted off the land. And the chosen son was my great grandfather. And a 29 years of age, he left Ireland on a boat for New York. And he arrived into Castle Gardens in New York. And anyone who's seen that movie gangs in New York, it was that era. So like if the disease and the collar and all that didn't get you, the gangs might have gotcha. We don't really know what he got up to but he was massively successful. And he got a business idea in America for a general store. And he came back to our hometown and in 1886 he started this business and kind of bought a whole lot of property and started a milling business and started a sharp and a generator merchants and that business is still run to this day by my brother and my mother. And I suppose it was that story that got me engaged in storytelling. I studied product marketing, in university, I went to work first in a shoe company. Then I decided I want to get deeper in storytelling. And I studied journalism. I worked in political communication then as a young man. And a 30 years of age, I went out and I started my first business. I started Media HQ over 10 years ago. And quickly, I bought a business that was publishing a printed media directory for people to keep in contact with journalists. And it's kind of funny how big the SaaS industry is now. I was watching somebody recently talking about the ads on the Super Bowl, and how they were all SaaS dominated for the first time ever. And, like, we created software as a service platform over 10 years ago, before SaaS was even a thing. Because it was the best way to connect our users with up to date intelligence on journalists. And Media HQ has been a platform for well over 10 years, and has steadily grown. Has gone on an international development pathway. And simply as a product, our mission is to connect our users stories with their audiences. And that could be journalists, it could be podcasts, it could be Instagrammers. And we work as a place to find your audience and then to distribute your pitches your press releases, and to look at your results in your Analytics and to achieve your mission that way. And I suppose, you know, it was true that prison, we help loads of organisations and brands share stories on what you would call an industrial level. And it was through that this concept of the magic slice, which is, if you can imagine two circles, where one is what you want to talk about and the other is what people are interested in. Where they intersect is your magic slice. And it's your magic slice of attention. And it's that magic place where the attention of your audience is completely aligned with your intention. Their attention and your intention are matched. And that's what I wrote my book about. In addition to running Media HQ, I have a storytelling agency and I work with brands on how to find that place where the attention span of the people that they're trying to communicate with, is perfectly aligned with what they want for those people. And yeah, I love marketing. And I love the innovation space around SaaS where you can imagine something and you can build it really quickly. And you can engage with your customers and see how they react was

Andrei Tiu  
And how was like launching, you know, basically a business in a category that was just kind of forming right then? You're a bit of an early adopter. If you're one of the last to go there. What was the space 10, 15 years ago? 

Jack Murray  
It's really interesting in that, like,you'll get some technical founders and I'm not a technical founder, I'm a marketeer. I am passionate about our customers. And I am always the first customer for our product. So I'm a native public relations person, I'm a native storyteller. My instinct is to tell stories and to connect them with audiences. So you know, in one regard, I build a product for myself. And the other thing, from an early adopter point of view that I find fascinating is that we've always been a mission driven business. So our mission is to help our users connect our story with our audience. And that's agnostic of a way or a means to do it. So when I bought the business, it was a book. Right now, it's software as the service and in 10 years, I don't know what it's going to be in 10 years time. But the amazing thing about being SaaS and being mission driven, is that you find the best way to do it. And like, not withstanding the fact that I'm not technical. I am the kind of Chief, kind of creative innovation person in our company for new ideas, for new products, for new features. We have a product roadmap, and we have a North Star and like we always say at the start of every development phase, like does it achieve the mission? Does it help our users connect their story with their audience? And that's innovation and that's SaaS and I think if you're mission driven, you will find a way to fulfil your mission. And you won't get hung up on one means to deal with. Like if you look at newspapers as a physical object, there's a classic example of something they didn't really know for decades what business they were in. They thought they were in the newspaper business, but they weren't. They were in the news business or they were in the information business or the storytelling business. And they got hung up on on just one way of doing it.

Andrei Tiu  
Right now, how was your day looking like? I mean, you have the company also keynote speaker. You also have the agency for storytelling. What's your full circle of activity at the moment?

Jack Murray  
It's funny like I'm always fascinated with how Jack Darcy can run Twitter and run Stripe. I think any of us can do more than one thing. And part of my challenge on a daily basis is that I'm a trained marketeer. And a trained journalist. I like doing keynotes, I like talking on podcasts, like write books, I like cycling on my bike, I like jumping into the ocean. I like doing lots of things. And I probably have a short attention span. So like, part of my big focus is in my weekly journey, and I talk a lot about this to companies about the world post pandemic, the world is your oyster, so you can reach audiences. So we can go and we can talk to people. And the cultural barriers have fallen away. So you know, the language, the business languages, English. Now, everybody is just one other person on a Zoom call. So it could be your colleague who's four streets away, or it could be somebody in a country that's in four time zones away. And I suppose my big challenge on a weekly basis: I like the way software runs on to weekly sprints. And, you know, we have different functions from product development, to marketing, to customer success. And it's about managing those tightly. And look, the only resource that we're not getting any more of is time. And time is very valuable. And I think the challenge is to kind of respect that. But also balance. There's enough was enough time for swimming in the ocean. And there's enough time for hard work. So I also think one of the big challenges kind of post pandemic in the remote world is to you know, we try and organise our week on zones. So I would say Monday is very busy. I would say Tuesday's a time for reflection, Wednesday's very busy, Thursday morning can be a time for reflection. Thursday can be busy. And then Friday evening, Friday afternoon is the time for reflection. And I do think I do think you can build a rhythm into the week where you have busy zones, and you have time for reflection. And it's a good way to be productive as well.

Andrei Tiu  
That's a really good tip. Is this something that you are applying right now to the way that you are organising your activity? And if so, for how long have you been doing it?

Jack Murray  
Yeah, we've been doing it for over a year now. So Monday is busy, Tuesday is quiet. We don't shedule internal meetings on a Tuesday. Wednesday is meeting driven and busy. Thursday morning is quiet. Thursday afternoon is kind of sign off day. Traditionally, I don't like signing things off on a Friday, I'm not in I'm kind of a decision mode on a Thursday. And then a more reflective assessment phase on Friday. So we've a series of kind of sign offs and product developments and a whole host of things on Thursday afternoon. And then Friday, it's about you know, looking at the progress of the week, seeing what you need to do next week. And Friday afternoon is a period of you know, making sure you finish the week strong and you know, you get bits and pieces done. And as a rhythm we've been doing it over a year. And like, if you design it in a way that people aren't banging into each other, they don't bang into each other. And people will say: Oh, that's really difficult to do. It isn't really. And look, I lead the organisation. So I know if I set the tone and the tempo, the rest of them will follow.

Andrei Tiu  
Very good insights. Okay, and now going into the subject, this was very, a very nice insight for, you know, organising from a business perspective. And I think it's very nice that you noted this, because in the beginning of the year, what we felt, I mean, I can say this for our organisation as well, but also for the clients that we've been working with. Everybody was in full on mode, sometimes stressed, trying to get a lot of stuff done. But you mentioned right there reflection, which I think it's something that we should always take time to do, and can also inform better decisions or productivity, if done on a constant basis. So thank you for that. Going to the book, because I had a copy and I read a big chunk of it. I'm curious, and it's something that I think would be worth discussing now and I think it's gonna be a very nice plus to the people tuning in with us today. I would like us to explore The Six Step Magic Slice process that you mentioned. And you know, how to apply it in terms of business and where, where the stories you tell resonate perfectly with your audience.

Jack Murray  
The Six Step Magic Slice processes is about how you can do an audit on your brand or your organisation. So if there's anybody listening here now, look. SaaS is a very good platform for telling stories. So people do white papers, they do help docs, they do blogs, they do podcasts, they do them on video, they do them on audio. But how do you know that you're really achieving the objectives of your brand? And look, you know, everything is strategic, it's all about rolling a rock up the hill. So if you have a content strategy that's trying to achieve something for your business, if you put stories at the heart of it, how can you consistently do that to resonate with people and get a result? And so the six steps to it, and I mentioned the first one already. The first one is mission. If you pull your team together, and you say to them, like, why are we all here? What are we trying to achieve? People in your organisation should be able to recite your mission, like it's a prayer. And media HQ whose mission is to connect, to enable our users to connect our stories with our audience. And that's at the heart of absolutely everything we do. And your mission should be short, it should be specific, you should be able to own it, it shouldn't be overly technical, it should be understandable. And the first step in the process is to understand the mission. And like, you know, great brands like Patagonia, ethical clothing maker, can do really well. So when you know your mission, the second step along the process is to completely define your audiences. And in SaaS, we call these our target persona, buyer persona. That could be our verticals. The great marketer said, Gordon describes it in who are you for? So what are you building and who you're building it for. Be outrageously far who you're for, and you're not going to be for everyone. But before and the audience thing is about completely profiling the people you're for. I tell a story in the book about my first job working for a shoe company. And my boss was the marketing director, and he had a stack of women's magazines. And I joked with him the first day, and I said, Oh, you're reading women's magazines. And he said, there are our customers, you will soon start reading women's magazines. He said, get on it. And he said, We need to understand how they think, what they do, how they make decisions, and I'm still trying to figure out women. It'll be a lifelong journey. But he's right. It doesn't matter if you're selling yachts, if you're selling SaaS, if you're selling bicycles, if you're selling lollipops. You've got to understand the audience. So when you know your mission, and your know your audiences, then what you do is you look at the topics that you're going to be talking about. And you know, to look at the topics you're going to talk about, look at the trends in your industry, look at your core product offering, look at the knowledge base that you build around your product, and synthesise. Imagine there's a folder, and it says like my amazing stories, what would the headings in the folder be, the chapter headings and, and that's what your topics are. And when you have your mission, your audience and your topics, you can then actually say what your magic slice statement is. It's x brand, you know, is appealing to x audience through writing stories about X, Y, and Z. And it's only at that point, Andrei, when you know, your mission, you know your audiences, you know your topics, you write a statement that comprasses all that, it's only then that you actually start writing stories. And you start coming up with ideas for stories that would, would hook in. And like I give an example, like, you know, one of our magic slices is PR wisdom. And it's this notion of how can we share wisdom about public relations. And we commissioned a series recently called My Life in PR this much I know. And we go to senior PR people who are in the vertical and they might be working in houses, they might be working in an agency. And it's a simple questionnaire with 10 questions, and they fill it out, and it goes up on the blog. And the first two have been shared and been read 1000s of times on LinkedIn. It's kind of a career retrospective, and it's someone who's directly in the vertical, and they're sharing a career retrospective. And it's to that topic of PR wisdom, and it's sharing wisdom with other people and brings people into the product and the reason that we have a magic slide statement it's to be an editor. If you don't, and you know, from running this podcast, like, if you don't keep an editorial control of what you're doing, then it gets a little bit loose, then it's probably not talking to your vertical, it's not talking to your audience. And it's not really about your mission. And if you do two or three episodes like that, or two or three things, it all gets a bit fuzzy. Then it stops delivering. And if you think about the way it's done incorrectly, someone says, oh, we need something on LinkedIn, or we need a Facebook post, or we need an Instagram post. And they start at the end, they don't start at the beginning. So they're not starting at What's their purpose? Who are they talking to? What should they be talking about? They start with this, oh, we need something over here, because it's a blank page over here. It doesn't work. And the last step, then is when you have all of that done, you're constantly looking at your mission and your audiences and your topics, because the world doesn't stay locked in, and it doesn't stay static. The elements are constantly moving around. And that you revise and you edit, as per the moving plates and the moving discs.

Andrei Tiu  
So how did you discover the concept of magic slides? I think he was about seven years almost ago.

Jack Murray  
Yeah, I discovered the magic slice in that we were about to hit a really big milestone at Media HQ. So one of our users was about to share the 100,000 story on the network. And if you can imagine, in the admin backend of Media HQ, there is a live feed of the stories as they're being shared. So every day like there's hundreds and hundreds of stories shared, and we get to see them in the office, just before the journalists read them. And it was a big moment. And we were sending out a press release ourselves. And I began to kind of look at the stream of press releases. And I began to identify the people who were really good at it. And I began to see this commonality. So I had a bit of an epiphany kind of around that. And I suppose that kind of leads us nicely to like, we're talking about storytelling. And I think it's really important for the people who are watching, and for listening to the podcast, is to say, Well, why should you power your marketing or your communications with storytelling? and Andrei, it is the most powerful way to communicate. If I said to you, I can actually give you the gift of mind control. And I can actually give you kind of a full command on the brain power of the people you're trying to communicate with. And you can actually get into their brains and control their outcomes. Would you like that? And you'd say, Yeah, sure. Yeah. How do we do that? And the answer is with storytelling, and it's ostensibly about science. And if you could imagine, and I look, this is a game I've been playing for as long as I've been a marketeer over 20 years. Every opportunity, you have to communicate with your audience is a game. And every opportunity is a game where you can influence it positively, or neutrally or negatively. And storytelling is a really powerful way. Imagine you could wrap a story around anything. It could be a package, it could be arriving to a reception area, it could be receiving something physical through the post. Imagine if you put a story around everything. And the reason stories work is that stories trigger hormones, and hormones influence our brain. I tell a story in the book about this piece of research that was done in Princeton, by a professor called Yuri Hasson. And he got this graduate student to go into an MRI machine and she told this fantastical story about the night of her high school prom. She and her boyfriend had a face and he got drunk and she was driving the car and she had a slight tip in the car. And it's just this full of all of these kind of mad and interesting kind of colourful story. And they played the story, they mapped her brain waves in the MRI, she told us, and then they played the story back to 15 people. And miraculously, their brainwaves listening to the story, mirrored her brain way of telling the story there were like an absolute exact match. And it shows that if you want to control the audience, like a puppet on a string, a story is the way to do it. And like we're all addicted to Netflix, to Amazon, to Disney+, any story that's a whodunit triggers dopamine. And anything that kind of is personal and builds trust, triggers oxytocin. So if I told you something personal about myself, my life, my family swim in the sea. It builds trust. And you think you know me on a human level and it builds oxytocin. And then if I tell you something funny and you laugh, that builds endorphins, and that builds engagement. Dopamine builds focus. Oxytocin builds trust. Endorphins laughing builds engagement. And then the negative ones are cortisol, and adrenaline. And if I bore you, or if I stress you, you dial up cortisol, and adrenaline. And the way to bore and stress you is to stand in front of you with bullet points or to, like bore you just literally, if I bore you. And the way I can bore you is by kind of presenting bullet points are presenting dry factual information. And that's what lots of brands do. But once they dial up emotion and start telling stories, they start engaging people. And the mad thing is that if you present with bullet points and a PowerPoint 90% of it is forgotten within 30 seconds. If that's not the definition of the stupid thing to do, I don't know what it is. Yet, lots of people do it and lots of brands do. And it is the kind of reason that brands need to think, okay, how can I put out stories at the heart of everything we do, our origin story, how we communicate, how we hire, how we raise money, like so, you know, for going out looking for financing, or looking for VC backing or, you know, we've to tell a story to an investor. And all of it makes life easier at the heart of company.

Andrei Tiu  
I love that you brought up the sort of natural chemistry in our bodies, and how we relate to stories. We can go into the science of storytelling here, because I feel that this is a lot of it. And I would like our audience, when they finish listening to the episode to have sort of like a clearer understanding of how they can think about storytelling from a scientific point of view, for the ones out here that are more, you know, they find it easier to organise their ideas in such a way, like scientifically, to understand what this is about. I think discovery is part of it. But what other information do you think is relevant, then we can bring to this point?

Jack Murray  
Well, it's really interesting in that. Let's take people's addiction to binge watching television just as an example of science. And as we speak, I'm watching a French TV series called The Promise. It's in French, and it's subtitled. And it's about a killer who's adopting young children, and is a hunt for them. I'm just after finishing watching a German series made by German TV called Dark Woods. And that's about a murder as well. And there's a reason crime works: is that crime is about who done it. So it's about a slow reveal of a story where you find out at the very end, and a slower available story triggers dopamine. And I'll tell you a quick story to illustrate the point scientifically. And I use this story in some keynotes that I that I give. And a number of years ago, I gave a radio interview, where I was talking a little bit like I'm talking to you today about storytelling and the impact that can have in business. I came back to the office. And the reception rang and said, there's a woman on the phone. She just heard you on the radio. So I went and I answered the phone call. And she said I heard you on the radio. You're absolutely brilliant. I am the Marketing Manager for a huge corporate law firm. And we need a story strategy. It's going to be a huge project. Can you call me as soon as you can to meet us? And I thought I can come right now if you find she said, No, no, you can come tomorrow. So I arranged to meet with the following day. And she was in this huge office, Andrei, kind of big chrome steel building, in the financial district in Dublin. And I arrived into reception. And I said I'm here to meet the head of marketing. And her name was Angela. And she arrived down and she was kind of very fast moving and kind of, you know, bit out of breath and bit frantic. And she kind of sat me down and she said, No, I'm not going to this meeting. Three of our directors are going to this meeting. And she said it's a really big contract with a copy of 100,000 euros. And if you can convince them, you're going to get the job. I thought okay, this is a bit strange, but I'm going to go with it. And she said there in that meeting room down the hallway. And you go and I'll meet you afterwards. So I walked down and I looked in it was one of those meeting rooms with two glass windows on either side. And I looked in and I could see three really serious thoroughly faced man with grey suits on I thought, Ah, this is going to be terrible. And I put my hand on the door, and it was just about to go in. And just as I was about to go in, I could hear a kind of a noise behind me and then turn around. And I could see Angela coming towards me at speed, she said, there's just one thing that you need to know before you go in. Now, if I didn't tell you what that was, it'd be annoying, wouldn't it? And I'm not going to tell you, because that's dopamine. And when you dial up something where there's a reveal, and somebody really wants to know something, that's dopamine. And what happens when you deliver a story like that? People focus, they remember details, they remember all of you could go off this podcast now. And you could tell that story to that point to anyone. Next week, the week after, you'll remember all of it, and that's dopamine. And, you know, it's the same way with if you reveal something about yourself through a story, that's oxytocin, you can make somebody laugh, it tell a joke, people will remember a joke. And they'll tell it because it triggered their endorphins. And that's why storytelling, that's why the science of storytelling is really important. Because once you have that moment, you think, ah, that's what's happening. So like, the next time you're looking for a new TV series, you want to watch, you're looking for a dopamine rush, like, that's what you're looking for. It's the reason gaming is huge. It's the reason people, you know, the people binge watch TV all the time. It's the reason people gamble. They need a dopamine hit. And you can you can build that into your storytelling.

Andrei Tiu  
Very interesting, very good example, as well. Another thing that I had here in my notes, and I know that you were talking about in your book was finding your creative operating system. I like this parallel of, you know, like with the operating system. Can you tell us more about this subject? 

Jack Murray  
I suppose the net point from this is that everything comes from ideas. So and especially in like innovation, and marketing, and especially in an industry, like SaaS, everything comes from ideas. So if everything comes from ideas, being like the Irish phrase, like a busy fool, like being a busy fool is not going to produce new ideas. And your creative operating system has to be like, if the working week in Europe is 37 and a half hours, everybody needs to dedicate 10% of that, which is three and a half hours, half a day a week to creativity. So in our company, you know, we have quiet zones, as I mentioned earlier, in podcast, we have Tuesday and Thursday morning, sometime on Friday afternoon. And you know, it's probably to use a technical term, we over engineer it. So we give more of zones there for people to dip in and devote it and you tend not to and then you have to find ways to be creative. So like, post exercise is really good. I have some creative work to do this evening, I'll do it after I get out of the ocean. If that cold water doesn't dial up some hormones of some sort, there's something wrong. It could be heroin, it could be a cycle. You know, I wrote my book, I wrote a lot of it sitting in the front of my car waiting for my daughter's to finish their sports because I was kind of hiding in plain sight. There's a thing of a creativity where you know, if it's for your doing your accounting and your expenses, it's not going to work. And I think the one thing I would say to people listening in is that creativity is not a talent, you're not born with it, it's a way of operating. So you know, the more you practice creativity, the better you get. So the more you rise, the more you think the more you hone your ideas, the more time you spend at it, the better it will get. And we think that people are born creative. They're not like, you know, people who like you know, writing a book is like giving birth to a donkey like it's hard. And like you have to keep coming back and back and haunt. Nobody wrote ever wrote anything clean, crisp, amazing the first time you know, it's like as the famous sculptor said like, how did you make that piece of granite look like an elephant? He said, I just knocked away everything that didn't look like an elephant. You know, it takes time. But I suppose it is worth it. And great products, great engagement, brilliant ideas. They take time and I suppose the last thing I'll say on this is creative people are willing to fail. So writers, musicians, and in corporate culture there's a lot of people don't want to fail and companies and you'll see it sometimes they'll bring in agencies like me, bring in a creative person like me to tell their story. Because there's nobody in the bandwidth within the company. And these are big organisations. And one is that they don't believe in it, but also that they just don't want to. They don't want to be seen. And they bring in a consultant because it's okay for a consultant to fail, but they don't want somebody on the payroll to fail. And that's curious to me, and, like, investing in creativity will pay dividends. And look, I've been creative all my life, like the one thing I've a healthy fear about things, running out of ideas isn't one of them. And that's because I continually invest in myself. And to be creative, you have to invest in your body, and in your mind, and you have to do it, you have to you have to keep practising.

Andrei Tiu  
Love it. Jack, this was a great, nice way to end it on a high. But I feel this is something that we'll be here to stay. And I think it's good for people to keep as one of the final notes. Before we wrap up, because I know we're getting a bit late and the ocean is waiting out there. But we didn't touch so much on your company. And I think there was a lot of, you know, juice that we could discuss there as well. So just maybe a little intro, or a bit more details on it for the audience for the people that are running marketing departments. And they may need to, or they are looking at ways that they can leverage PR better. If you can please share a bit about who your clients are at the moment and how they may be able to use the platform best. We'll have links to it in the description as well. So guys, if you're interested, you can check it out. But Jack, just to hear it from you.

Jack Murray  
Yeah, so I suppose look, there's two things I'll talk about. One is media HQ. And the other is my storytelling agency, All Good Tails. Media HQ is a SaaS platform that helps brands, share press releases, and pitches with journalists. And if you need to get a press release out, or you need to tell your story via the media. And we traditionally work within House Communications teams, with PR agencies, and with independent PR professionals, there are our key target verticals. And the way people use this. We're a database with 1000s and 1000s of media contacts, and you log in you build lists for your key audiences, and you distribute press releases and pitches through the platform. And as I said, Look, our key verticals Our in house agencies and loan PR practitioners. We went on an international expansion in 2018. We are now represented in the media in Ireland and in the UK. And as we speak, we're working on a number of projects across Europe to roll out in other European countries partnering with other partners on the European continent to do that. And then on the other side, and this is linked in, my work with the book, I run an agency called All good Tails. And we do magic. So what's in the book, which is the magic slice, we are brought in as a team into brands to find their magic slice so that they can execute stories. And we would work with senior management teams and we would bring them through the six step process. It's outlined in the magic slice book, to help them have clarity and how they can put stories at the heart of what they do. The first step is to identify their magic slice. And the second step then is to put a plan in place and how to implement it. And implementing it can be everything from website copy, building brand newsrooms, you know stories around how you're going to hire better, how you're going to raise funding, pitch decks and all of that and kind of creating story cultures within organisations. So people who are doing work really well but know they're missing out on opportunities because they haven't captured it properly in a story. There the two offerings one is Media HQ, which is the SaaS platform, and people can read about it on mediahq.com And for all good tears then if they go to allgoodtales.com and my writing website is Murraystory.com. And they'll find me on Twitter as media Murray, our connect with me on LinkedIn as well.

Andrei Tiu  
Perfect. So guys, you have links to all these in the description of this episode if you are viewing it on YouTube. If not, it should be in the episode transcripts. Or as mentioned by Jack, You can follow his LinkedIn profile or Twitter or you know navigate from here. But we'll try to make everything as accessible as possible. So Jack, it was a great pleasure to have you on the show. Very insightful chat as well. Thank you again for sharing all the insights guys. If you want to read the full book, you can find it on Amazon. Jack congrats again for being bestselling author there in three categories in such a short time. And without further you know, until next time, feel free to share any feedback that you have with us. Jack, if you're up for it, sometimes we get questions from audience that can become episodes in themselves. So if you're up to maybe following up on our conversation today with another episode may be focused around VR or any feedback that we get from our listeners. Maybe we can organise.

Jack Murray  
 I'd love that chat. 

Andrei Tiu  
Awesome. And until next time, guys, as always, thank you for tuning in today. Thank you for sticking around. Hopefully, you found this episode insightful with some nice takeaways that you can implement in your business or review. As we were talking about the mission, values and how these are being translated into your stories. Feel free to connect with Jack. Feel free to share your feedback and until next time, wishing you all the very best of success. Speak soon. Thank you, Jack, for being here today.

Jack Murray  
Thank you

 

SEO & Content Marketing Trends for 2022 [James Scherer]

Join Andrei and our guest, James Scherer, on today’s episode, as they will dive deep into content marketing trends for 2022. From strategy shifts to AI and SEO drove content production. James is the VP of Growth at Codeless. He's helped 10 figure brands like monday.com or Nextiva dominate categories with content marketing at a massive scale.

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐉𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬:  

𝑊𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒: codeless.io

𝐽𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝐼𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-scherer-94709830/

𝐽𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟: @JDScherer 

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐢:

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢: https://marketiu.com  / https://marketiu.ro   

𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑖 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/  

𝐸𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙 𝑎𝑡 hello@marketiu.ro

 

𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦:

▶️Watch the episode on YouTube: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-YouTube 

▶️ Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show 

▶️ Podbean: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Podbean 

▶️ Spotify: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Spotify 

▶️ Deezer: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Deezer 

▶️ Stitcher: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Stitcher 

▶️ Castbox: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Castbox 

 

Useful links:

Monday.com: https://monday.com/ 

MarketingMuse: https://www.marketmuse.com/ 

Clearscope: https://www.clearscope.io/ 

 

Episode transcript:

 

Andrei Tiu  

Hi, there! This is Andrei, and you are on The Marketing Innovation Podcast Show. Our special guest today is James Scherer, VP of growth at Codeless. He's helped 10 figure brands like monday.com or Nextiva dominate categories with content marketing at a massive scale. And today we'll dive deep into content marketing trends for 2022. From strategy shifts to AI and SEO drove content production. Exciting times, a very insightful and practical discussion today. James, it's a pleasure to have you here on the show! How are you? How's it going?

 

James Scherer  

It's going very well. Thank you for having me. I'm excited about this.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, same here. Thank you for being on the show. Let's see. So without further ado, let's bring a bit of your background to the table. So I'd like for you to maybe make a quick intro. Let people get to know you a little bit. Tell us how you started in marketing. What was your journey so far? Maybe a couple of highlights. And then we have some really interesting case studies that we were discussing just before the show, so I'm really excited to get into them and talk a bit about, you know, hands-on marketing.

 

James Scherer  

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so a bit about me. My name is James Scherer. I'm currently the VP of growth at Codeless, which is a Content Marketing agency. I started marketing in 2013, I was an English graduate. And when I graduated, like a lot of liberal arts majors, I didn't really know exactly what I was going to do. And I fell into Content Marketing and writing totally haphazardly at a startup in Vancouver, Canada, where I was living, and really, really enjoyed it and suddenly had something to do with my degree, which was handy. And I moved from writer at a startup there to editor and then Head of Inbound. So when I left in 2018, that was kind of my role. And that was, you know, a lot of really good foundational understanding of digital marketing because I was writing on a lot of different digital marketing subjects because our agency or the company I worked for, did a broad spectrum of stuff. And then I went kind of remote, my wife and I started travelling the world a little bit. So I was writing. And I, again, kind of fell into writing for this content marketing agency. And then when I kind of settled back down here in the UK with my wife, back in 2019, I moved to Director of an editorial at Codeless. And then just in January, a VP of Growth. So my role here is really kind of revolves around. Initially, it was managing the editorial staff and the writers. And now it's more our internal growth, as well as kind of the strategies that we add on behalf of our clients. And we make recommendations to our clients and how they can grow through contact content and inbound. So that's me.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Fun time. Okay, so you started off with a sort of written content marketing type of activity, and then expanded and grew from there. And during your time when you were the head of inbound, were you guys doing mostly organic stuff Or were you also coordinating the paid channels such as you know, Google Ads or other types of paid acquisition?

 

James Scherer  

Yeah, so I was primarily focused on the organic side of things, though, I was pretty involved in the conversion optimization as well with the site, which kind of did touch on. We had a paid team, who we coordinated with for sure, just to like Target the SERPs they were targeting and vice versa, and then not targeting the SERPs they were targeting. But it was primarily my focus that has always been around inbound organic traffic, leads and sales.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Very cool. Okay, sweet. So, you know, I just can't be patient anymore. I want to go into the numbers because I'm really excited to talk - about it's probably one of the most or more popular case studies that you have been leading on and that you guys have been working on. And that is monday.com. So we all know as marketers, everybody probably saw ads from them or got visibility towards their brands in the past two or three years massively. And I know that you guys were behind their organic success. And more specifically, you were driving the activity there. So it'd be really exciting and interesting for us to bring as much as you can to the table from that case study. And then maybe we can bounce some ideas and make a little analysis on what made this case study be so successful? And also, what can our listeners take away from it to implement or to look at when they're planning their content strategy for this year?

 

James Scherer  

Absolutely. And you are absolutely right, that we all saw monday.com. I think they retargeted us - all of us - in 2021. I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah. So they came on with us in October of 2020, fall of 2020. And they very quickly wanted to do the massive volume of content. They had been in kind of the market for multiple content marketing agencies. And when we kind of started talking to them and said, like, hey, we could do double of what you want to be doing. In which they wanted to do 75 pieces in the first month. And down to the kind of like 75 to 50, in like the third, fourth, fifth sixth. So, in the first 12 months of working with them, we did about 400 pieces of content, which was, you know, massive volume. So coordinating the right key phrases for us to target and then determining, like, everything that we needed to form an outline creation stage for all of our writers to come in. We had like 35 writers on their account one time. That was all a bit, you know, it was a lot to do. But it was really exciting, of course, because you know, monday.com is one of those Unicorns of the tech space. So, as I said, Yeah, I think 425 Odd pieces were created in the first year,

 

Andrei Tiu  

Was this on-site and off-site or just for on-site?

 

James Scherer  

On-site exclusively. Everything they did was on site. Yeah, so, 425 ranking positions, out of 800 articles. So 750 articles in the first nine months, and then 800 by the end of the year, because they slow down. And I think more than half of those returned 350 of them breaking the first page for the private for the primary key phrase. So massive results, I think a total of like 23,000 new organic key phrases from those articles exclusively. And 825 first page rankings across the board. So yeah, so if 350 odd for the target keyphrase, and then 801st-page rankings for all the articles. So huge results for them. And it was really, really exciting to work with them and do it. And we're actually doing another 93 before the end of February for them. And that's just starting this week. So I am enthusiastic about being on this podcast, but I need to go help.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yes, it sounds very busy. So can we talk a bit about the strategy behind it? Because this is something that we discuss with our clients as an agency as well. And it's always a debating point, like how much should you write? How much is enough? How much is the minimum necessary? What was the strategy that you went for when working with them? And also what determined them to go all-in on the on-site only content production, as well as the very high volume? Were you optimising articles one per keyword and had a very long list? Were you targeting phrases with more articles at once, or what was basically what informed your strategy together and this case study?

 

James Scherer  

It's a big question. And it's a sort of, it'll be a big, big answer. So bear with me. The answer to the question of okay, let me sort of a bit of context. Monday.com has a massive marketing budget. They're a massive company, and they needed significant investment in inbound or in the creation of blog content, in order to compete with, you know, significant competitors really sizable competitors. They also wanted to break into the CMS spacers they weren't currently in as much as they wanted to be. They wanted to have an entire section on templates was of content which it didn't have its time. Let alone the fact that a lot of primary topics like the key phrase project match marketing software. They did not have content. So the answer to how much content should your listeners be producing, cannot be answered by what Monday did. Monday did the higher volume of content, 75 pieces per month of act 2000 words. Which is above and beyond what most businesses can possibly imagine doing, their marketing budget is significant. I think what we should discuss perhaps are the takeaways that like, quote-unquote, normal businesses can actually like learn from what we did with them. So the first step to identify the key phrases that they targeted was to structure everything around categories, which is how I do it with all of our clients and market size. What are the categories of content that your business wants to be found for? A lot of people business, like, think about SEO strategy around like what do I want to be found for when somebody types into Google what I want to shop for? Which is an approach for me, it's more what? What do you want to talk about? What do you want to talk about, in general, if you're a project management tool, like Monday, then it's Yeah, project management? But it's also productivity. It's also teamwork. It's also in their case, CMS is also like sales funnel optimization, because they were doing a lot of like, they added a lead form product. So it's okay, if these are the five categories of content we want to produce let's prioritise search terms within each of those categories. The priority process for them was a little bit more in-depth than I tend to go for, they included the kind of value from a paid perspective, into kind of the algorithm that they use to spit out a priority, a numbered priority for each topic. So for instance, project management software is a bottom of funnel key phrase, because it has the word software in it, they offer software. So that's people who search for that are only interested in the buying process, essentially, they want to learn what's out there and choose one of them. They're not looking to really know what project management is. So yeah, they kind of took those key phrases and ran them through this algorithm based on like, Okay, what is the volume of this key phrase that makes it like a high volume search term makes it a priority piece? What is the intent of this key phrase based on PPC cost? And what is the competitiveness of this key phrase, based on what is the competition doing and how strong are those domains, along with just like, there was like a fourth variable, which is just like, how much we want to rank for it like that je no sais quoi component of a search term that like, we really liked that one, it really lines up with what we're doing this next month plots, release, and etc, etc. So all of those kinds of variables added up to a priority list for each category. That kind of was from 100, down to one. We did all of them. But how they were done in the order in which they were done was based on that kind of structure of analysing each one and determining which one was the clearest opportunity for them. So yeah, then they just kind of did it based on how many can Codeless be producing in a given month. We, as I said, we had a list of 850 within the year. And we did all of them, we did I think 500 or so in the first six months, and then 300 or so 350 or so in the next six. So yeah, it was fun. Takeaways there would categorise the content plan that you have, and then think up some level of prioritising which pieces need to go live first, around, this needs the most love from a link perspective, this needs the most love from like giving it the most, you know, the highest chance to be indexed, and also the highest chance for social media to engage with it and etc, etc, etc. So get those priority pieces up first, within each category that you want to produce content with him.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Appreciate it. Now it was you know, a very good and insightful answer. One question here would be, for example, when you're thinking about the domain authority, and what you like the tools that you had in the beginning when you started to produce this content, how much did this impact the performance of the new pages and the new content pieces that were published on the website? Did you start off having a very good domain authority or were there other link building activities happening in the background that we're helping you in certain areas as you mentioned, for example, prioritising the pages that need the most link love and then doing that for internal links and external?

 

James Scherer  

Yeah. So the short answer is that monday.com had existing domain authority or domain ranking on a trend of like 80. And on SEMrush of 75, something like that. So they were already in a very good place, which of course helps. And I'd love to talk about another client as well down the line, which is kind of on the other side of the coin for a lot of those customers who were like, well, this is all well and good, guys, but like, my domain authority is 35. And I don't have any budget. So how can those businesses succeed as well? But yeah, now monday.com, had existing domain authority, they also had an existing link building team. And then they also use so-called this works with our sister company, which is a backlinking agency, called User. And so a lot of our clients also use them because links are such an incredibly crucial part of content success. But determined, so that helped a lot. That said, all the best practices that we executed on top of that existing domain authority are just as valid for a small business as they are for monday.com. So creating search optimised content, using tools like MarketMuse, Phrase, Clearscope, whatever platform you want, if you're an early-stage business, I would recommend something like phrase, it's like a cheaper in and they do a lot good work, MarketMuse a bit more expensive. And also, there's a whole auditing thing, which is a bit more intense, but also a great tool.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Can we talk a bit about them, like, sorry, for interrupting your flow, but I think it's important for people that actually want to look at them to know, what does exactly each of them do. If we can talk people a bit through how to apply, you know, their, you know, add value.

 

James Scherer  

So all of those tools, the primary function for content creation is actually the optimization component. They do more. But for our purposes, they basically pull the SERP over the top 20 search results, actually for a targeted key phrase. So you want to write, you want to pick a piece of content for monday.com, targeting project management software. These tools will pull the top 20 search results for that key phrase, identify the headers within them, and the second symmetric key phrases that are associated with the content that's already ranking. So when you draft an article, it will compare what you've written to the ranking content. And say, you haven't touched on task management within your project management software tool, or fundamental software article. And all the competition content does. So as far as Google determining the comprehensiveness of your content you are lacking in that area. So add in that semantic key phrase and that subject matter and you will create a more comprehensive article that Google will reward just from the content itself perspective. What these tools don't do is a review, you know, the size of the page, the page experience, they can't see images, the quality or the or you know, that the wage or size of those images. And they actually don't do headers. So it can't see that. In your draft, you have an h2, which is optimised for search or not. It gives you the formatting really either the kind of can bold the text, which we know is like a very minute SEO variable, but there's something there, that kind of stuff that can't see either. It's just really around like the subject matter you've included in your pieces. So all of those tools can do that. All of them also, actually clear scope and phrase offer you the ability to like run that report, and then send it to a freelance writer or one of your internal writers and have the kind of fill in the draft. And it'll automatically see what you like how it's compared to the making content. And you pay usually based on the number of reports you pull in any given month. Agencies, of course, are on agency plans. And so we pull hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, hundreds, but that's all our systems work. And they also allow you to do content briefs to a certain extent based on again, the SERP. So what are the headers in the ranking content and you can pull in inspiration from that content into an outline that a writer can then fill out? So really handy tools I would recommend people mess around with those. If you're looking to do high volume content, or even just create search-oriented content, those tools can really be helpful.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Thank you for the insights. Now, back to your original flow, or idea if you remember it if not do because otherwise, I have the other question ready to go.

 

James Scherer  

Yeah, hit me with another question. I'm sure what I was saying is we'll come back out for sure.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay. The next question was really just like continuing the idea that you started which was okay, monday.com was a very big company. They were already starting off having a big presence and massive marketing budgets. What do you do if you don't? So if you don't have high domain authority, or if you don't have massive budgets or resources to invest into content marketing or SEO, how to go about, you know, in that case, and here, I was keen to hear your thoughts and example on, you know, the other client that you mentioned.

 

James Scherer  

Fantastic. Yeah. So this kind of brings up another client, Early bird, or get early bird.io, I think or earlybird.com, they are an early stage, financial investment app targeting parents, helping parents invest in their children's, like, financial future. So cool company, cool idea for a business. And again, when they came to us, they didn't have a blog. Talking about domain authority, they didn't have a blog. So we worked with them to build out, okay, how are we going to start building domain authority, creating great content to get it seen how we're going to link back to this content? And how we're going to get this site kind of momentum from an inbound perspective? And turn it into purposes, a lot of the stuff we do with monday.com is similar to what we do with Earlybird. So it's around okay, what are the categories of content we're going to target for this client, and what do they want to be seen for? In their case, it was kind of the idea of gifting money, gifting in general. And then like investment strategy, budgeting for young parents, and in more recent monthly been in the crypto space as well. So if those are the categories, we do a pillar and post structure, which I would recommend people do as well, based, again, on the categorization of content, targeting the highly competitive high volume search terms first getting them written and indexed. And then every article that you do in that category after the fact say, say you're doing 30 pieces of content per category over the course of a year over the course of eight months or whatever. Three to five of those within each category should be pillars, and then the remaining 25 or so should be support pieces that backlink internally to the pillar pieces of content. A pillar piece is just a kind of the more pressing more general or more like broad-spectrum subject within that category of content that has a higher search volume. And inevitably, a higher competitiveness a higher keyword difficulty. Again, all this data you can get from a trash or SEM rush for miles or whatever it is. And so we created their pillar pieces and then started driving backlinks to them from support content. They also did work with a backlinking company, again, the one that we work with quite a lot, User. I think they were on eight links per month plan, which essentially, if Ava's worked with any kind of backlinking agency or service, you know that a lot of them pay, you pay for the quality of the link that you're getting back. So I think they're playing was like 60, plus domain authority, publications and domains that would do a backlink directly to their content with the anchor text that we wanted to be found for. So over the course of that first 12 months with them, which was about November 2020, to Yeah, just a few months ago, they went from zero to 20,000. And they were doing eight articles a month. Which is I mean, compared to what monday.com was doing, that's you know, nothing, it's a couple a week. But target intentionally, linking intentionally, creating bottommost content with high-quality images, customs, like graphics that are branded and specific, no stock images, formatting from flow down the page, pulling people down the page, increasing time on page, reducing bounce rates, all of that stuff based on the formatting of the content itself. And then making sure that page experience was really good, which of course, is an incredibly important thing since the May June algorithm change, which means, you know, little JavaScript light pages, compressed images, you know, are tight and less than, whatever 200 megabytes or kilobytes, whatever. All those best practices kind of came to the fore with them. And another component of it is what I would say to readers is, ambition is all well and good, but momentum will get you farther. So if you're just starting out, starting from scratch with content production, I would say give yourself a bit of a broken target lower volume, lower kg pieces in order to get something live on your page and sorted to get stuff indexed or to get a few backlinks. And I mean, create the pillar content as well. But don't expect it to rank necessarily create it so that it's there and you can backlink to it, but then feel free to focus your attention on those lower acuity pieces and know that SEO is a long game. But once this was taken over, like with Earlybird, once they got some that momentum and the wheels really started rolling, we did start seeing, you know, 50% month on month growth, and then 75% month on growth, and then for like six months in the middle of everywhere, 100% month on month growth. But it took us four months or so to get to 1000 unique visitors per month, and then 1500, and then 3000, and then 10,000. And very quickly, it ticked over to the 20,000 space. And now we have to have a whole conversation about converting traffic. There's a whole different thing.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, for sure. And also until you know, all the new articles and content pieces are being indexed. And then they get the age that they need to in order to I mean, and also build upon their own authority and when there's not bouncing off the pages, and so on. So indeed, it's a bit of a longer game. So the sooner you start, and you do things right, the better and the sooner you'll see results. Yep, totally on point. And I'm vibing with you, this is exactly what I believe as well. Now, let's go a bit into the techy side of things. What's your experience with AI apply this to content, marketing, copywriting. There have been some tools out there.  What's your experience with this? Have you tried to use AI-powered content generation?

 

James Scherer  

Yeah, absolutely. I've tested a couple of different tools that produce content based on a key phrase that you plug in, Marketmuse has been like the main one that I've messed around with. But it's interesting. The other question is like, are the computers coming to take your job? And the answer is, from an SEO perspective, it depends on what vertical you're in. The financial space is becoming more and more dominated by AI. Yeah, written content, but content that is very much helped by AI. I think that those industries that are far more fact-based, just like especially with, you know, with financial words, like the this is the stock change over the course of the past day, and connecting that piece of data with another piece of data that AI can do, as long as you put in what it needs to pull from your fine. From the kind of thought leadership perspective, the idea that you know, you want to produce high-quality content that readers want to read and bring something new to the table. AI is never going to get there. The idea of novel thought is simply something that's not going to come from these tools. Does that mean that you cannot use AI to create higher quality content? No, it doesn't. It means that you can use these tools and they are effective. And then you have to go away by yourself in the darkroom and come up with something new and find an interesting and put your own voice into it, you know, your own ideas into it, and come up with something original. On top of what that AI has already helped you do. But that's also AI written content and AI-generated content. There's also a topic here around AI helping you create content. And the fact of the matter is that AI and software have been helping us create content for 15 years, I mean, Microsoft Word 96 had that little red line beneath a word that was misspelt. And when I fixed it, that was a piece of software identifying where you had messed up and telling you how to fix it. And that is AI helping you create content. Grammarly, which has been out for however long, helps people create content and write content effectively every day and has been doing so for years and no one's been intimidated by it. The fact of the matter is that a lot of these tools, I think the thing that people are scared by is the idea that content computers and AI will write your content for you and then everything will just be regurgitated. You know, a grey matter that doesn't actually do anything or add any value and also the original creators, their content writers will lose their jobs. And I think for me, we use a number of different tools, including Grammarly, including Hemingway app, we use plagiarism tracking tools like AutoCorrect and writer.com. We use again those content outline creation tools like Clearscope and Phrase, MarketMuse. We use optimization tools. And then we use software to make it all kind of come together with project management software that helps us identify when, when an article has included the number of, you know, key phrases we wanted to include and all the rest of it. And all of this comes together to alleviate the human error in content creation. Which is kind of scary for a lot of people. The fact that matter is that human error is also what makes content, original and real and human. But we all make spelling errors and grammatical errors that we know are wrong, but we can't see them because it's difficult to edit your own content. So I guess the long-short of it is that so long as you are open to creating higher quality content, AI can help you but don't be concerned that it's going to replace originality anytime soon. But there are a lot of tools out there that are trying.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, I agree with you, though. It's like, for example, with music and when you say like, for example, when you hear these perfect music, and but it just doesn't touch you as much as he does. You know, a live song with, you know, having the E string on a guitar a bit out of order, like a band on the guitar is a bit out of tune, but just enough, so it's real. It's not just like everything recording to perfection and fitting it all together, reproduced on a computer. So yeah, I mean,

 

James Scherer  

That's also there's also is that components of it, which is like, Okay, if AI can create a piece of content, why can't a writer then come in after the fact and like, tweak bits and pieces to make it sound real and whatever, whatever. And talking to it, we have 75 Odd freelancers on staff, and if we pulled them, every single one of them would rather write from scratch, than edit an AI-generated piece of content. And the reason for that is exactly what you say with like, when you hear something AI like, you know, made by computer written by computer music, especially. It sounds perfect, which is weird. And with AI, it sounds close to perfect. But there's no written content that sounds close to perfect, but there's just something slightly off about it, and you're not 100% Sure what and it takes you five minutes of the element to figure out what it is. That's weird in that phraseology, or in that grammar, or in that syntax and structure. Any writer would prefer just to write the damn paragraph themselves, rather than having to find what's weird about it, cuz there's something that just sounds odd to my ear, and I don't know what it is. And then yeah, you explode.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, I can imagine having to go through, you know, like a normal 2000 words piece of content, doing that every day and then trying to figure out what's wrong every two seconds sentences and try to rephrase that. I think it drives you crazy. So you know,

 

James Scherer  

I just want to say just right.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah. Cool. So yeah,  I'm aligned with you on this one. And, you know, as you mentioned, I think it can sound overwhelming for somebody that has to do you know, content writing or production, for example, for the guys tuning in, that maybe are managing the marketing, but also producing the marketing or they are one band, one band kind of team or two people in on the marketing team, it can sound overwhelming. But again, there are some simple tools that can help accelerate or you know, just take some of the mistakes out. So for example, using a tool that helps you see how good your content is for your desired purpose, as opposed to what's already ranking, as you mentioned, or eliminating the grammar spelling mistakes. These are tools that are accessible, easy to use, and can certainly contribute to producing more quality content, potentially at scale,

 

James Scherer  

100% per cent. Nothing to add there, you are absolutely right.

 

Andrei Tiu  

So how do you see things going forward in 2022? We now robots will not take copywriters out. But what else do you see working well these days? Or what are you guys experimenting with? Where do you feel marketers should focus their attention towards?

 

James Scherer  

Yeah, so what we're doing now we're changing our strategy in 2022, for all of our clients revolves around two primary algorithm updates that came out last year. The first of those was back in January, February. This wasn't a major algorithm release, but a lot of businesses saw the effects of whatever they did. And essentially, a lot of our kind of affiliate clients who were publishing 5000+ word articles, the massive massive listicles saw significant ranking decreases overnight, pretty much. And it looks to be that Google was cracking down on those massively comprehensive guides, which a lot of businesses have been using for a long time to like Okay, well, if I don't have the domain authority to rank for this key phrase, and the article that's already there is good is already on the first page is good, I'm just gonna write something that's like 10 times longer in order to, to rank. And it worked for a while. Because, you know, if we're talking about semantic key phrases included in each piece, and when you have 150 of them. And a lot of people would, you know, link to those because they were comprehensive in scope. Google's cracking down on those because the fact of the matter is, is that the user experience, the leader experience was pretty poor, navigating those his own extra impossible. And so that was a that was the thing that we're addressing. We create your speciality long-form, high-quality content, that's what we do. That's our selling proposition, what is long-form in 2022? In general, I have not scoped out a piece of content that needs to be more than 2500 words in about six months. Because pretty much every subject realistically can be covered in that word count. And if not, you should write another article on the related subject matter, and then link to the original pillar piece. So that's the first one go a little bit shorter. And then kind of tied into that is focusing on paid experience, which again, that was the May, June paid experience algorithm update, which is all about streamlining your pages and your site in general, focusing on reducing the amount of code and the back end, focusing on, high-quality images that are compressed PNG file types that like, look really good, but aren't massive. The idea of when you go into Google Search Console, you should have no errors that talk about heavy pages or, or red flags around like these pages, whatever megabytes, when it gets crawled. And that ties really well into the like: if we're doing shorter form content of you know, 1215 to 2500, then there's no reason that those pages should be massive. And the pages that were massive, and I think this is probably realistic, is that in February, when that initial algorithm, we saw the results of that algorithm that was Google, like pushing out preliminary changes to the algorithm that would tonne of them come in in fall in the page algorithm, the paid experience update in major. So for all those guests like that, what this means is that your content needs to be tight, beautiful, the page experience needs to be a really good name, there needs to be clear interlinking between all content. Again, based on the category of content, you should be tagging within those categories. And there's no reason to go over 500 words on a piece, focus on creating high-quality content that's well linked internally and then driving backlinks externally. Again, I'm not saying anything, that hasn't been true for years, I think that I mean, people used to write long-form articles, and they get really long from articles and used to work. But what I'm saying is that everything that we like has been a best practice is just can't be messed around with anymore. Like there's no possibility of winning if you're creating 10,000-word articles that are poorly linked extremely heavy, it just doesn't happen anymore. So focus on those few things. And you should be okay, in 2022, nothing crazy, nothing. Mostly, Google will probably throw something at us, and then we'll have to scramble to fix it. But that's my expectation.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, and in other words, sort of what you also said is that, you know, we have video and all these other content formats, but in the end, the value of the written content stays there. And sticking to these best practices, and to the way that Google wants content to be produced by humans, is still going to be driving a massive amount of value to brands that are using this marketing channel, right?

 

James Scherer  

And video is ...even saying the video is the next big thing. I wrote an article in 2014 talking about how the video was the next big thing and that was my like, anticipation for 2014. And it's we've never been wrong. But for a lot of people really high-quality video is out of the realm of their marketing budget. Because it needs to be really well produced. The audio needs to be fantastic. The video quality needs to be fantastic, it needs to be edited really well. And it needs to be cut up into a bunch of different clips that go on YouTube and whatever, whatever it is being hosted by the right place. And those hosting sites can be expensive. So I'm not saying don't do video, in fact, I'm saying you should do video. However, if you don't have the marketing budget to invest in video, don't invest a little In the video, don't do bad video, because the bad video is worse than no video at all. And you can get a lot more bang for your buck with high-quality content that is evergreen and targets highballing key phrases and ranks for a good long time.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Great. James, we're getting close to the end of the episode together. But this was a very, very cool chat. Really loved the energy. Where can people find you? How can people come to you to help with or connect and discuss things?

 

James Scherer  

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think the easiest way to get in touch would be I'm on Twitter @jdscherer if you want to message me or anything like that. From a production perspective, head over to codeless.io and book a call with us. We kind of do consultations first and foremost because we care as much about identifying if the client is right for us as if we're right for them. So we usually do kind of an in-depth idea, like the discussion around like, what are you doing? What's not working? Why are you even like looking for anybody and then we can help direct businesses to other types of agencies or if we're right for them, then that's great. But if people are interested in doing content production, get in touch.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Super. James, thank you so much for being on the show today! This was a great chat. This is likely to be the most comprehensive video for this season covering this subject. So really happy that we had the chance to discuss this subject together. Meanwhile, guys, go over to codeless.io, check out what they do, connect with James on Twitter, on LinkedIn, you'll have the links to the tools that we were discussing about as well as to the platforms in the description of the episode or on social media if you watch this there or YouTube in the description as well. And until next time, thank you, as always for tuning in. If you have any feedback or anything that you'd like us to discuss in more depth, feel free to ping us at hello@marketiu.com or James. And James, if you're offering we can organise another episode, later on, to see if there's anything relevant to the audience that we haven't covered today.

 

James Scherer  

I'd love that, that would be great. Get in touch.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Super. So yeah, until next time, thank you everyone for being on the show. James Thank you again, wishing you an amazing year ahead because we are seeing the beginning. All the best of success and I'm looking forward to catching up soon. 

 

Using event technology to redefine human connection in B2B businesses [Julius Solaris]

Join Andrei and our guest on today’s episode, Julius Solaris, as they will be discussing how to best use shared online experiences and events technology to redefine human connection in B2B businesses. Julius is the VP of Marketing Strategy and Events at Hopin, Europe's fastest-growing startup of all time,​​ as well as a world-renowned event influencer.

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐉𝐮𝐥𝐢𝐮𝐬:  

𝑊𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒: hopin.com

𝐽𝑢𝑙𝑖𝑢𝑠 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝐼𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliussolaris/ 

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐢:

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢: https://marketiu.com  / https://marketiu.ro   

𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑖 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/  

𝐸𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙 𝑎𝑡 hello@marketiu.ro

 

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Episode transcript: 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Hi, there! This is Andrei, welcoming you to a new episode of The Marketing Innovation Podcast Show. Our special guest today is Julius Solaris, who is the VP of Marketing Strategy and Events at Hopin, Europe's fastest-growing startup of all time. And today, we'll discuss how to best use shared online experiences and events technology to redefine human connection in B2B businesses. Without further ado, Julius is a pleasure to have you on the show. How are you? How's the year started for you? I know you are in LA at the moment. So how was the weather there?

 

Julius Solaris  

Thank you, Andrei, thank you for having me. It's such a pleasure to be with you. And, you know, the very exciting start of the year, as you know, we navigate through the uncertainty and you know, whatever prospect is out there, everybody's excited. In the marketing and events industry to kind of go back to in-person everybody's looking at virtual as well as a long term solution to the issue. So we're navigating for both personally. The United States is slightly different from the rest of the world. So I've been able been fortunate enough to attend several in-person events, one of those last weeks for 3000 people. So yeah, lots of insights, we're definitely going back to in-person, it's not as fast as we wanted it to be. But at the same time, you know, there's a lot of innovation happening in virtual so I'm stimulated by both parts, I guess, you know, I come from them in person. Ward, I come from analysing in person, the business of events. But I've always had a passion in technology. Therefore, I'm like, drawn into this battle between virtual and in-person that is happening right now. Yeah, so exciting times.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yes, definitely. And I feel with, you know, with coming from the live space, and now going to digital and are coming back to life I think, however, that some changes are here to stay when it comes to the innovation that has been happening and the way that customers or actually people in general, as well as transposing the b2b space, have adapted to the COVID pandemic, and now going out of it, how they see events as part of their marketing strategy. So I'm really hyped for us to go through the ins and outs and have your insights from a technology point of view, as well as adoption and what you guys are developing at the moment. Let's see if we will go into AR and that side of things as well, if you want to, then that'd be really, really interesting. Because as you also know, this is a very hot subject nowadays, between our marketing audience. So exciting. I think a very good starting point would be to introduce yourself a bit to the audience. Tell us a bit more about Hopin, how you've come to be Europe's fastest-growing startup of all time because that's a huge statement. And I know from our discussion just a couple of minutes before, it's impressive as well. So if you'd like to take over the stage, it is all yours.

 

Julius Solaris  

For sure, so I've been in the events industry for the past 20 years, 15 of those have been in media been writing about events. So I come from a content perspective. And I've been doing a lot of analysis on the use of technology and events. So that's been my passion since 15 years ago, and I've been one of the first looks at the impact that technology could have in events as well as the impact that social media could have in events. I've been sort of defining the trends for the industry for many years, and have hundreds of 1000s of event planners download in my resources website called Event MB that I sold in 2018 to skift. And then, at the beginning of 2020, I got hit like everybody else by the pandemic. And I started doing virtual events. We did webinars before. We sort of elevated the experience of more virtual events and in a space of a year with six events, we got almost 60,000 event planners to attend those events, which is five times the size have the biggest event for the event industry. So quite a sizable audience for our industry. And in February 2021, I made the move to event technologies or working with one company then ended up at Hoppin a few months later. I started at Hoppin four months ago, joining the revolution that this company is bringing along. I don't know if you know the story of Hopin, which is very inspirational. Our founder, Johnny Boufarhat, actually based in London at the time, was sort of confined in his home for autoimmune disease for two years. So we built this platform out of the need to connect with people and to create better experiences for people that are unable to attend in person. So in a sense, he anticipated what the pandemic kind of made us all go through during lockdowns. And therefore, a platform that was built with that kind of experience in mind nearly got a lot of traction and became a sensation, and experienced amazing growth from a handful of employees, three to six, almost 1000 spaced out from some seed funding to $1 billion funding, and incredible ARR. That's been published in different outlets. And you can check it out there. So it's a, you know, incredible story, a trajectory of virtual events that we've all experienced during the pandemic. But also it's a story of bringing that concept of coming together forward into the 2020s. In a sense, I think this is a movement that is going to define the next 10 years. And the way our CEO defined that was by acquiring strategic companies that deliver on that mission of feeling closer to the event, the opportunity, the content by buying first Stream Yard, which a lot of us used, personally saved my life last year when I was running events. And then other companies in the in-person business as well, Topy, Attendify, Boomset, three companies that if you've been in events and use technology for your events, you will know because they are very strong in the in-person business. Therefore, paving the way in terms of what's coming next for the connection, also companies like Jam, there is more sort of meeting oriented type of technologies. So coming together at every touchpoint possible to make sure that you can meet wherever, whenever and however you want. There's no definition in terms of meetings these days that shouldn't be there, we pursue radical inclusion of whoever wants to attend. But also given the freedom to planners and marketers to plan their activations their events, however, they want. There is no fixed agenda, you shouldn't be forced to plan a meeting and personal costs or virtual costs, or hybrid at all costs. But you should follow your audience where they are. And also your situation, your country, the pandemic, all these issues, but also sustainability. You know, these are topics that are on top of the minds of current and future generations. And we feel that at Hopin we're at the core of it.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Awesome! So tell us a bit about your journey through the past maybe two years. So ever since the pandemic started, because this has been, you know, a time of change for you personally and professionally as well. So maybe how did you move through the activity that you had before and now taking the lead on the marketing front with Hopin? What was something exciting that happened there? And how are things panning out for you? Or what were the opportunities that you saw as we moved through the changing market, the changes that were brought by the pandemic and obviously the b2b space that had to adapt as well?

 

Julius Solaris  

So I always tell this story. In November 2019, that was the time when I was Editor Chief and we would write the trends for next year, every time so that's when we will actually publish them. And my top trend for 2020, so 2019 looking at 2020 was trying to anticipate a little bit with my crystal ball that I have here that I use to look at trends all the time. So try to anticipate and to be the top trends of 2020, where virtual events. Right, for all the possibly completely different reasons that what happened, I couldn't anticipate a pandemic. But to me, that was where the industry was going towards, because there was a need to include people that couldn't attend, there is a correlation between attendance online and attendance in person. The more people attend online, the more they tend to turn up in person. And also, there's a sustainability crisis that we kind of forgot during the pandemic, came back recently. But this is not a trend, this is a problem a lot of people are dealing with. This becoming a marketing problem to a lot of events as well with younger generations where they can't afford to be non-sustainable. And this is a big problem with some parts of the event industry, especially large trade shows that create monumental amounts of waste. And, you know, if you think about all the travel that it's involved, it's an incredible direct contribution to pollution and all the crises that we're experiencing right now. So, therefore, I was kind of positioned in February 2020, I was looking at the situation being Italian, I was looking at whatever was happening in Italy, like two, three weeks in advance compared to the US. And I put out a tweet saying: ”Listen, we should seriously look at virtual events because I don't think we're going to be able to do in-person events going forward.” And then March came, all the cancellations came. And, you know, everybody started to sort of congregating into virtual environments and the learning curve it's been incredible. You don't join the event industry, because you like technology, right? It's counterintuitive, you join the event industry because you'd like to stay close to people, you're like that offline feeling of co-creating experiences. But you know, through the years, I've seen the evolution of that some of the planners have been strategic about what they do. This is a tiny margin compared to the industry. So the whole industry has been going through a crash course in understanding technology. To be honest, with incredible resilience. I've seen businesses completely destroyed. I've seen people that have worked in the industry for 20 - 30 years to move away and like do real estate, or something else like, which is very, very sad. And we still have to get to terms with the impact of that. Because it's still ongoing with the last waves, we've seen again, and again, the same issues. So, therefore, a very, very tough time. But still, an exciting time on the other end to see all this experimentation from an industry. As much as we all value in a person. We all recognise right when we attend events that some events are better than others. Right, not all events are great, right? We've all attended conferences, there are boring, like with sales pitches from, you know, salespeople that have 10 point font presentation, and nobody could read, bullet, bullet, bullet points, and you just want to die, right? So the level of experimentation has been incredible. I like to think we've been at the forefront of some of that by experimenting with new formats. And then you could see all this attention in event technology. It's not just Hopin, the whole event technology spectrum, has experienced unprecedented venture capital investment, like never before. Like you have to think that the one of the biggest deals I remember before the pandemic was double dutch, raising $30 million, and then another 20 million. That was mind-blowing to us. It was an absurd amount of money. So to think we're now in the regions of 1 billion at Hopin is this incredible. So it's the time of our lives for people that have been in technology for a while in the events industry.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay, so, then it was 2020, the change was happening. And then how did you meet Hopin and how did you take the lead there on the marketing front?

 

Julius Solaris  

So I was at another company before in technology. And, you know, one thing led to another I had the pleasure to interview the CEO of Hopin, Johnny, a few times in my previous endeavours as Editor-Chief, so we develop the relationship. And, you know, there was a need from companies like up in to be a thought leader in events. It's a company that comes from technology a lot, there's a lot of people that have worked in Facebook, Airbnb and Google. There's also a need within the company to grow people that have been in the industry for a while. And I was part of that plan to bring me on board is to give voice to some of our wider marketing initiatives being grounded in what the event planning industry is about. So to bring that voice in, and, you know, give more resonance to all the content initiatives we would do. And you know, more companies, I feel this is a wide marketing trend or navigating towards becoming media companies almost right. So there's a clear direction in that sense. And therefore, I feel more and more companies are hiring sort of ex-editors,  ex-content creators to become part of their marketing effort. And I feel that was the thinking behind it. I don't know, we should ask the company about that.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Well, I'm sure your experience as an editor chief and media person in that sense, as well as an influencer, if you want. As far as your roster of achievements in the back, I'm sure that was counting a lot towards you joining or needing their team there. So if we were to think about the last couple of months, because November is not so much ago, like so much time ago, and it used to be a time when you were publishing this Trends report in the past. I'm sure that you know, the behaviour was still there when the time came so you're already looking at trends for 2022, assessing what was happening, and what was there to stay, obviously, the new Omicron variants and stuff, probably not many knew exactly how that's gonna unfold. But what are you seeing changed forever in the b2b event space? And also what do you see as happening, most likely, in 2022, when we will be able again to meet maybe as much as we want at conferences, and expos and these types of events may be towards the year?

 

Julius Solaris  

Totally. So the word forever, it's a tough world these days, to be honest. Because it's almost impossible, not even my crystal ball can give me that level of insight into the future. Oh, my god is changing so fast. Everybody's caught off guard, in most cases, you can anticipate, but nobody really knows. You know, you can see like science even changes every day. And when science changes every day, oh, my God, that's a clear signal that business is going to change even more, right? Because we try to shape strategies, and we try to gather feedback from a certain moment in time. So it was October time, we were here in Las Vegas, and one of the largest trade shows where the event industry 12,000 people, everybody was like, celebrating the return of in-person, and then a new variant hit. And you know, cancellations are happening again. So, therefore, it's tough to say forever. Said that there are things that we can talk about, there are practical, actionable, things that your audience specifically can think about. Whenever they're evaluating their marketing programmes, and thinking about their strategy to get closer to their customers, I feel that there's a new category is born. And we're just year two within that category. And that's virtual events. Virtual events have been around for 15 years, they've never been like the ones we've seen in the past few years. I'd like to say that we've seen more change in the past 20 months in terms of event technology platforms than in the past 20 years. The level and speed at which event technology platforms have been delivering features and change have been incredible. So if you think that, you know, virtual event platforms, because you had some experience in March 2020... So my number one tip and action for those listening is to go back and reevaluate platforms. Because there's been an enormous amount of change. There's been incredible feedback. It's almost like these platforms have been co-created with the feedback of planners and marketing professionals. For the past few years, this level of innovation has been incredible. I can think we ship new features on a daily basis and often, so it was just like, I can't even keep track of how many things we're shipping to respond. So the new categories are born and where does that sit? That's the major trend I feel for marketing professionals. So if you used events before as a strategy for your b2b marketing efforts, 75% of them professionals grip on them, or marketing professionals, pre-pandemic said that events are the number one tactic for b2b marketing the most effective tactic. So this is a study done by North America. Let me tell you exactly what's called, North America Content Marketing Institute. Pre pandemic. And constantly events rank in the top-performing tools in the toolbox of b2b marketing professionals. But let's say marketing professionals in general, the problem with events is being they are intangible. They're very tough to measure. Yes, you have the technology to measure the in-person experience with its cumbersome can be expensive. Plus, you have to travel people, there is no certainty. One thing we all know, when you work in events, finger things are going to go wrong. So all at all times, you can expect a crisis. It's not an easy undertaking compared to running a campaign on Facebook, right? And where are you left? Your left in person here at the top is one of the most direct, closer intimate types of interaction with your audience where you co-create the message with your customers, you can change it real-time stuff is incredible, very difficult to do. And then you have probably the next step is social media where you create that persona by your brand. There used to be nothing in between, maybe you have an email list, maybe you have a community if you're really forward-thinking. But that was that right? Now, enter a new category in the middle of the funnel, which is virtual events that are a much closer way to interact with your audience. That is not probably as personable as in-person events as direct as that, but creates an environment of intimacy that removes the noise of social media, and creates a much more direct touchpoint, if done properly, where your audience and the advantages are that is incredible, because if you think about the trend, the wider trend of community and brands becoming communities for audiences to come together, we believe that event-driven community so a community that has multiple instances of events, is probably the best way to kind of channel all that energy that gets created among your customers into content that you can create into closer brand interactions, into better in-person events that require less marketing to be promoted and attended. So that's the new biggest fan, that that we can talk about hybrid, we can talk about different interactions with that I feel the birth of this new category is there and we're just here to like we're just at the beginning of it, then we can talk about the metaverse as an iteration of that. But you know, this is like the beginning of it.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Got you. Okay, so now talking about this new category, you guys have a tonne of customers that you work with from loads of industries and obviously gather different products at them or them using you in different ways. For the people out there that may be taking some webinars or some basic online events within their b2b sort of marketing strategy.  Do you have some case studies that they can get inspiration from in terms of how they can use events technology to adapt to how things are going this year and are going to go in the future and potentially step up their game when it comes to digital online events in this case or hybrid?

 

Julius Solaris  

Totally. We work with companies such as the Atlantic, TechCrunch, Paleton, Target and all the biggest brands you can think of use Hopin to extend the level of their content marketing efforts into a more personal direction. So first mistake that I see all the time is using meeting technology to do events. So there's a difference there. Basic difference. So the tool that we're using right now to interact, oh, you know, there's multiple tools that we use every day in an office environment, I don't want to give names, because there's nothing personal against all of these great brands. But you know, a four-way, five-way meeting tool, it's a great tool for Team interaction, but it's not built to run an event. An event is a different game, especially if you're willing to reach scale. And if you run events, say, our customer Paleton, with hundreds of 1000s of attendees, you know, you cannot use meeting technology to do that. But even like at 500 attendees, even 200 attendees, you can't achieve through interaction engagement. So number one mistake is that don't assume that they're using meeting technology to do events is going to deliver on the number one issue that we have, with events, which is engagement. You got to get people to engage, you got to get people to interact, you got to get people to feel connected to what you're saying to the content and agenda you're creating otherwise is just a YouTube video. Right? What's the difference between YouTube and Hopin? It's interaction. People have the ability to get together, the ability to comment up both ask real-time questions, but also visit busy exhibitors booths, creating activations around their being connected in networking. One of the features that I love the most about Hoping is the type of roulette networking that you have, you get randomly assigned to meet someone that creates that kind of serendipity. So we've been seeing a lot of clients using it very strategically, even like matching two separate groups, to investors, and pictures for new startups, for example, you know, that's a great example of mixing and matching. But you know, there's a lot of activations is of all breed examples that we've seen on how people use our platform to create engaging experiences. So we've had people, for example, using Streamyard, and going around in the back of in person, sort of event showing the back end and like what was happening in the behind the scene, almost of the event and getting people to participate, virtually. We had people are limiting, like for example, inviting the audience to say like if you have something to say, say it now and come on stage and talk to us inviting them to a private screen yard link and be on stage doing a breakout sort of follow up session to discuss together, the issues presented. We had people doing activations, we had the National Student Pride of, for example, doing LGBTQ+ transactivation, such as, you know, drag aerobics, gender diverse cabaret, you know, transpose makeup masterclasses. We had people, for example, that disabled all the different parts of the platform to just focus on the content and just create a simple content experience for those that want to just engage with that. We had people that survey the audience before the event and actually asked, What would you like to see and then use that very survey into creating the virtual schedule for their virtual event. We are people that create, for example, premium tracks for their event with multiple tracks and make attendees pay just for one track. So they're able to monetize. We have people that immediately record all the sessions and post an on-demand video library Netflix type where you can pay on-demand to access those or you can access or repurpose those as assets for their social media, and why their marketing initiatives. So a million dollar type of case study that you can think of at the end of the day, gets down to the experience that you have.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, guys, so for you that are working in b2b and are looking at revamping or re-planning your strategy for events, Hopin also has an events Planning Toolkit on their website, which you can download. So you have the link in the description to get onto the website, but go there check out because you know, like these, if there's somebody that you can learn about event planning in today's age, they are your guys. So Julius I'm sure that you know if people want to reach out to you one to one, they can find you on LinkedIn probably as well as If you have any other platforms that you publish content that is relevant. And you'd advise people to go to shout out,

 

Julius Solaris  

for sure. LinkedIn Julius Solatie, at to Julius everywhere, @tojulius on Twitter, which is my go-to platform other than LinkedIn, and Instagram as well. So yeah, that's where I hang out most of the time, I'm not young enough to do Tik Tok.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Super. So I'm very insightful, very cool stuff. And I think we could discuss this for hours and still have a lot to go through. But I would like us to actually just me wanting to pick your brain on this. But you know, the metaverse stuff and the AR and everything is going so fast these days. And you know, NFT's are everywhere. I personally had a couple of interesting discussions with some guys that are developing this, like NFT systems for the events industry. And this is just popped up in my head now. But I'm sure that this is on your planning list for new releases and technology for the coming months. So I'm just curious, as much as you can give away. How do you see this space evolving? Like how do you see AR and VR being applied to b2b events? And maybe how soon do you see this happening? As well as do you see blockchain and NFT's playing a part in the way that events are being ticketed or, you know, integrated?

 

Julius Solaris  

I can't speak on behalf of the company. I'm far detached from product development or acquisitions or anything on that. So I'm sorry, I cannot give you the inside scoop on it. But like if you follow Johnny Boufarhat on Twitter, he tweets on the metaverse and he has a very, very strong opinion on it. So I would definitely invite your audience to check him out and keep an eye on his tweets because he likes to tweet very directly on these issues, and his experiences with them. But I feel you know stuff like blockchain. This is not like a trend of now. I think I covered blockchain in the use of blockchain for ticketing in 2017, for the first time, so it's been like four or five years in the making. There are companies that have been doing it for a while. It's inevitable. And I feel it's a direction that a lot of companies will take for security reasons for, you know, scalping, and all those issues that are associated with large ticketing. I think ticket masters and the likes have acquired blockchain technology companies in the past, therefore, that's not even a trend anymore. I feel it's just an evolution of where the ticketing technology is going towards, in a sense. The metaverse's an interesting topic. I agree with the founder of Meetup when he said on Twitter that meetup.com. He said on Twitter that Twitter is the 3d version of the metaverse and, you know, I agree with that. I feel that social media is already the metaverse in action. That's why the biggest social media companies in person investing in it. They see sort of the 3d version of the metaverse the interactive part of the metaverse as the next iteration of social media platforms. But I think in between those, we've experienced the first wave of what the metaverse will look like with the virtual events, revolutions that happened in the past two years or so. Because we were drawn into an online environment where we needed to interact with each other. And we were forced to do that. That's the biggest experience the world has had so far into the metaverse. So if you like that experience, that's what it's up for you in the next few years. If you didn't like it, then you got to build something to change it. I believe so. You know, it's pretty much in the making, for now, is just a buzzword. I like to reiterate what let me get you the Scott Galloway says that he actually thinks that Apple is the company that will develop the metaverse, not necessarily Facebook, it's very interesting to follow that because he's looking into patents and he says the Apple has a patent for cameras on air pods, which could really change the way we interact with our environment. So yeah, keep an eye on that. It's very exciting for the time being for me is just keeping an eye on things understanding the dynamics. There's a lot of buzzes, there's a lot of crypto bros making taking advantage of other people. Right now also in the NFT words, there are people just there for the money. I think there are concepts such as DAO, they're extremely interesting for the future of communities. So I'm keeping an eye on all of these. But until the market says we like this, you know, it's just buzz words.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yep. Cool. Agree. Awesome. So as we are getting to the final of our episode, and I know you're a busy man, so your days start now and is full from now until the end. So what would be a closing note that you'd like to say now, at the end of the episode? Where would you advise our guys here that our marketing leaders are planning for 2022? How should they look at events? How could they find using the best technology? And if they don't have a lot of experience, before, where do you where would you guide them?

 

Julius Solaris  

So experiment. Experiment with virtual gets on with it. We have a free version of Hopin, for up to 200 people. Just get on it and use it. Streamyard is free to use, up to a certain point. So you can experiment with this stuff with no cost involved, just your time and thinking and creativity, to be strategic about what you do. That's what it takes. We're enabling experienced creators as we call them, to do whatever they want, like you never had this many tools available for free, ever. So it's the number of tools available today to create experiences or content are just incredible. So dive into those and get started with it. Don't overthink it, just get on with the action and do stuff and make mistakes. Now's the time to make mistakes. In like two years time, you won't have that luxury to make mistakes, people will have very high expectations. They would expect you to have figured it out by then. They will have their preferences, they won't be able to discount your inexperience, they're already getting nervous. With some of it, I'm seeing people that are like year three, I cannot tolerate someone to be muted on a call, come on sorted out, you know what I mean? Like you got to be alert now. So our behaviours are evolving. So experiment, make mistakes, get on with it, build the tension with virtual but remember, the only way to release the tension that you build with virtual is in person. So don't forget that meeting in person is never going to go away. The stadium they're building here in Las Vegas, the biggest banners that they're building is for gamers. For Esports. This community meets online all the time. They're building huge venues for them to meet in person, meaning that the more you meet online, the more you want to meet in person. So that correlation, it's incredibly powerful if you know how to use it.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Love it. Awesome. Julius, this was a great pleasure. I'm super happy that you were able and happy to join us today. I think it was very valuable. And this is also the first time ever in our podcasts when we touch on events and events technology. So it's a premier. And I'm happy to have had that with somebody like you. Great pleasure. Thank you for the time. Guys, feel free to go and check out Julius's platforms, you have the links in the description of the episode. Make sure to check Hopin as well and download their free events Planning Toolkit. And until next time, Julius, thank you for being on the show again, wishing you all the very best. Rock it this year, and I'm looking forward to following your journey as well.

 

Julius Solaris  

Thank you so much for having me. Let's crush it.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yes. Thank you speak soon!

Influencer Marketing Trends 2022 [Igor Fedenkoff]

Join Andrei and our guest on today’s episode, Igor Fedenkoff, as they will be discussing influencer marketing insights from 2021, trends for 2022, as well as how to best integrate this channel in your overall 2022 digital marketing strategy. Igor is a serial entrepreneur and the CEO and co-founder of brybe.com, a platform for remote professionals and social media influencers looking for brand collaborations.

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐈𝐠𝐨𝐫:  

𝑊𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒: https://brybe.com

𝐼𝑔𝑜𝑟 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝐼𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/igorfedenkoff/ 

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐢:

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢: https://marketiu.com  / https://marketiu.ro   

𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑖 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/   

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𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦:

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Episode transcript: 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Hi, guys! This is Andrei, and you're on a brand new episode of The Marketing Innovation Podcast Show. Welcome to a new season! Our special guest today is Igor, a serial entrepreneur and the CEO and co-founder of brybe.com, a platform for remote professionals and social media influencers looking for brand collaborations. Today, we'll discuss influencer marketing insights from 2021, trends for 2022, as well as how to best integrate this channel in your overall 2022 digital marketing strategy. So without further ado, Igor, it's a pleasure to have you here on the show. Welcome to a new year, how is January been treating you so far? How's everything going?

 

Igor Fedenkoff  

Thank you so much for having me, Andrei, is definitely a pleasure. This has been a very, very fast start of the year because we are, as a company pursuing, some new avenues of the business. So the developers are hating me already, because they just got out of you know, the partying mode, but you gotta do what you got to do. This is going to be a great year for the industry. This is a great year for the company. Definitely excited about it.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Exciting! So what have you been guys doing? Or do you mention new avenues? First of all, if you want to present yourself a bit to our listeners, so they know a bit about your background, as well as what brybe.com does. And what are you guys preparing for this month or this year?

 

Igor Fedenkoff  

Absolutely. I am the co-founder, part of the four guys that co-founded Brybe two and a half years ago. And this company originally was a pet project, actually. I was working for a different company, I was a CMO for a technology company. And for their marketing efforts, which subsequently we were able to bring him out like 10x, I think almost, we ran a few influencer campaigns very quickly realise that a lot of platforms on the market weren't really serving the purpose of what we had to do. So we started building our own inventory of influencers. And I have a hospitality background is to the club in Los Angeles. So definitely dove into our regular warm network and got a lot of people that when you were to promote the company. It was very, very productive, really cool. So the database has grown over time. And then with additional investment, we sort of came up with an MVP, basically, as a side project. That started enjoying really good organic growth. And when the pandemic - I mean, obviously, for a lot of industries, it has been not the best development - but when anything online, including influencer marketing and freelancer markets, this has been quite an amazing, you know, change in opportunities and systems and platforms. So we were fortunate enough to receive router investments, proceeded with the developments. And basically, last year has been the year of us working on both verticals: on the freelancer vertical on the influence of vertical, gain ourselves positioned in the market. The company name, obviously, it's kind of catchy, so it's becoming quite recognisable in the space. Obviously, we're not up there with the large and huge behemoths of the industries. But I think the cool thing about that is that as a startup, we are able to very quickly change direction or adjust to different situations. I think the paradigm of influencer marketing has experienced a really big shift right now. On so many things that we'll probably get into a little bit later in this conversation, but a company or a provider of the service or the brand that is using influencer marketing that's capable to stay on the cutting edge of everything that's happening is going to benefit tremendously from everything that's going on.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay, and what are you guys is up to now? Because you mentioned you avenues so you used last year to establish yourself on both of these fees of users. And now?

 

Igor Fedenkoff  

Yeah, one of the biggest developments that we are looking to do is adding another group of users to the platform. The original aspiration for Brybe was to be a true marketplace. I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of the bazaar. So basically, that's what we're doing. We're trying to build a digital bazaar that will help the end-user which in most cases, buyers or individual verses of the services to find almost everything that they need. So the missing link was the educators and the coaches. As you know, at this particular time, there are a lot of coaches a lot of people that share their expertise, and an even higher and faster-growing audience of people that would like to get that knowledge and get it fast and get it communicated to them. So we are adding new coaches to the platform, we will be able to offer their courses for sale from the platform and as the user, you will be able to go on to Brybe, learn more about some conceptual enterprise that you're looking into then have freelancers - basically create your digital assets and then influencers, promote your company or promote your idea. And all of that is with an incredibly large quantity of professionals that are offering their services at very, very competitive rates. So what the previous year has shown to us is that the freelance industry and especially the influencer industry is shifting into the providers that are called the smaller ones, like the Nano influencers, the micro-influencers, the smaller, less-known providers of the new services like NFT's or crypto blockchain technology. Yet, on the same level with your regular logo design, and website design, all those small providers now can find a tremendous amount of jobs because even the large enterprise has shifted to getting more and more and more work, because it's a lot easier to work with, it's a lot more competitive pricing etc. But we should not forget that the most underserved group in this particular space right now are small businesses. Because they're used to doing everything by themselves. I am a small business owner back in the day, I remember, I used to do anything from plumbing to electrical to website design to promotion. But now they must realise that they have the plethora of talent that is available through platforms like Brybe, like any of our competitors, to get a lot of that stuff done from by somebody with expertise, for a lot less headache, and for a very, very, very competitive rate. What we have done, from the very beginning is focused on small to medium-sized businesses, as well as small to medium-sized providers. And I think this is the wave that a lot of larger companies are focused on large enterprises and missing. But also, it's incredibly important to make them realise that they are supported by platforms like ours. And they can actually sell their services as well as have their services bought.

 

Andrei Tiu  

One question here, because you mentioned creating a bazaar for virtual people that need all these areas of service. And there was a question popping into my head, I'm curious whether you guys are looking at integrating that within the platform at any point in the future? And that could be something to the likes of affiliate marketing or you know, having people that are integrating this form of payment as well, apart from just like purchasing courses, but actually having somebody that produces something with people on the platform, being able to promote via the people in the platform, which are influencers and maybe pay a commission. So that side of the business.

 

Igor Fedenkoff  

Now, absolutely, this is a great question, because this is something that we actually have been doing from the very beginning. Along with developing the platform itself, we have built a separate engine that is called Brybe affiliates, which is an affiliate platform. And originally, it existed apart, these two were completed two different things that serve different purposes. But we have created an integration now because we're coming out with these e-commerce solutions. And we're coming out with some different levels of subscription for enterprise buyers. So this will come incredibly handy. Plus, I think, affiliate marketing, to some is the unknown, and to some is, you know, the gold rush over the past 12 years. I think, again, we're getting back to the shift and general paradigm of how you build your business, how you promote your business. And you can invest millions and millions of dollars in Google ads or run TV ads etc. Or you can turn to the online community. Somebody that, as you said, is already present on our platform, or and the affiliates they're all over the world always looking for new opportunities. We actually will be presenting some of the stuff that I cannot tell you about right now but we will be presenting it at the Affiliate World Expo in Dubai in March of this year. So stakeholders maybe you can do a follow up with that because we're coming up with some really crazy stuff. It all boils down to just the simple thing. Thank you for asking that question, but I feel it's there to promote the services that we are using, we will be using them. Definitely, definitely.

 

Andrei Tiu  

So in terms of the markets, where are you focusing at the moment? I mean, what do you feel is the biggest rush when it comes to you know, we can talk about all of them so influencers, freelancers as well, small businesses, obviously, they're everywhere. But where do you feel is the biggest opportunity now for brands to collaborate with influencers and see results.

 

Igor Fedenkoff  

I think the biggest opportunity, just like I mentioned, is the micro-markets, the micro providers, and there are many different reasons that are completely transparent and very well understood and have been understood. However, the whole concept of influencer marketing still, a lot of times rotates around big names like the Kardashians or Lionel Messi or you know, Antonio Banderas, Jordans. And that's why it creates an entry barrier for smaller businesses or smaller influencers to promote their services. This has been our bread and butter from the get-go, but even if you look at the stats, a lot of companies already released the stats for last year. So micro-influencer business has grown by LIKE 2% share of the general influencer side. So this is actually, it may sound not very significant, but it's a huge huge improvement because the brands are now realising that segmented promotion when you use maybe geocentric or industry-centric groups of micro/nano influencers that have a much higher engagement, as our average engagement rate, is between 4 to 8%. We have nano influencers on our platform, which was like a 12 to 14% engagement rate. And that, compared to 0.8, 0.5 engagement rate over regular megastar. That already tells you what kind of how your message is going to be seen and consumed. Whether you pay the same amount of money that you would spend on one post to the megastar. Or you can run a six-month long campaign with a group of nano influences, which is basically bound to have a much bigger effect on your bottom line, on your return on ad spend. As opposed to running, like just one big and very expensive pose.

 

Andrei Tiu  

I love that you brought this up because actually, this has been a discussion that we've been carrying, from the agency side with all of our clients really, when trying to draw these comparisons between: is it worth investing let's say 10k dollars, or euros into a partnership that can provide you with maybe like a blog post and an on feed post on Instagram, or somebody super popular that has 5 million followers that are or are not following their content actively and being engaged with that content, and maybe just follow them because they're popular, so everybody follows them. But rather than investing the 10k in, I say six or maybe not six, but three months, campaigns with smaller influencers, that have targeted communities that actually follow them because they have a word to say in that niche. And of course, they can provide better engagement and better brand recall, as you run with more at the same time and have longer-term collaborations. And another thing that we discovered and our clients were able to use very well and I'm curious to see whether this was on your side as well as the same feedback or you will notice the same interaction through the platform in the data that you're capturing, that collaborations with smaller influencers were actually able to provide much better quality assets to be potentially reused in social media, for example, or in a content marketing strategy. And at a higher volume, than maybe, you know, having one blog post that can provide maybe one backlink of higher domain authority, but all right, and then maybe one picture. What have you seen from the other side? So from the data, from the platform front?

 

Igor Fedenkoff  

You are 100% correct. And actually, not even on the data side, there is an additional development that is taking place towards the word taking place at the end of last year now going into this year. On the legal side, if you look at any kind of agreement, I'm sure you've seen this side of things. Whenever you have a UGC, user-generated content, most of the time the purchaser retains all the rights or they try to build their contracts the way that all the rights are retained. The Creator, just created. And that's it, they're done. The general tendency right now, exactly for the reasons that you mentioned, is because a lot of smaller influencers create, they care more. They create their brand, they're actually building, what is becoming their brand. So two things influences actually becoming brands as opposed to just promoters or ambassadors. But at the same time, there is a general motion to bring in new clauses into these contracts where the use of user-generated content will have that brand or that creator, at least cited for the creation. And I think the similar thing, there's a lot of talk about NFCs, NFS s and everything else. If a lot of that content, even if it's bought as an NFT, and owned completely and entirely by somebody else that underlies my contract actually includes the reference to the creator. So we're seeing exactly the same thing. We actually are finishing up building what's called Brybe Academy, which is going to have several different levels of educational programmes for influencers or freelancers of the brands or anybody else who participates on the platform. A lot of stuff there includes information about what to expect because it's no longer about ROI. ROI and influencer marketing is incredibly hard to calculate. And if anybody tells you they can do it, or they can improve, it's probably marketing talk, not financial talk. Return on ad spend is a lot more down to earth number that you can actually see and figure out for what you're spending on a campaign, your return on ad spend will depend on how impactful the message is. And the message is no longer is mostly impactful because of the name of the influencer, it's also incredibly impactful by the quality of the content that is created. And these guys, they now realise that there is a huge competition out there. And they come up with methods of photography or video creation, or a very original presentation of the products that highly paid marketing teams of large enterprises are still unable to come up with because they're not in the space fully. So the influencers that we're talking about, and freelancers that, you know, just the creators of digital assets, they're out there, they're actually a few steps ahead in the technology that's coming out or in the news that are coming out the colour palettes, the behavioural factors of the audiences, they learn things that before used to be only privy to, like highly analytical departments that ran you know, presentations and the pie charts and whatever. Now regular influencer is completely holding their hand on the pulse of the industry and the developments because this is how they stay alive. This is how they build their brand. And ultimately, this is how they earn their living.

 

Andrei Tiu  

And in terms of the platforms now, because you mentioned there's something that was very important, which is, you know, them being the brands. So then, you know, earning a living by the fact that they are in tune with everything that's moving and being able to produce high quality, high end, modern content. What have you seen in terms of platforms? So we have all seen Tik Tok increasing quite a lot and influencers on Tik Tok from our experience with the agency and clients that we work with, tend many times to become more expensive to work with. It's not a general rule. But we encountered this a couple of times. Maybe because on Tik Tok, the organic reach can be higher if the content is good, as opposed to Instagram maybe in general, since the algorithm is working a bit more productively when it comes to organic content. So to sum it up, what's the trend that you're seeing on the platform and with the influencers that we're onboarding in terms of their reach, where they are building their brands? What they're advertising what types of accounts like they used to visit Tik Tok? Is it Instagram still?

 

Igor Fedenkoff  

I think anybody who is getting into this on either side should still have representation across the board or at least across the major platforms. As you know, the whole buzz of last year is that Tik Tok went to 13% market share, so they beat Google YouTube's 10% market share. Instagram is still holding, like 94% market share in providers in general, users and user-generated stuff. And very closely behind is Facebook which everybody already buried and said that it's dead. No, it's not. Trust me, it's completely not dead. It's just you need to know why and how to use all of these engines because, for a company, it gives you a well developed, well-rounded marketing campaign that addresses different sides for you one because even if you produce a product, you can still sell it to multiple different markets, right? One of my favourite case studies was Dollar Shave Club. They just went Instagram, all in subscription razors really cool the visuals. Nothing was working. Then what they did, they redirected their targeting from just men that need to shave to mothers, girlfriends, wives and sisters. Basically say, hey, no more ties, no more books, no more belts, no more socks, your guy really needs a razor, which is always sharp, and you know, it gives some groomed. And you'll need a well-groomed man. So here's your present. Their sales blew up. And this is a subscription-based company. What they did, they ran a Facebook campaign that addressed a more mature audience with more textual information with more case studies, more applications, then they ran an Instagram and the reels campaign, which basically addressed quick, flashy, hey, this is cool, really perceptive advertising. So this is another great example. Then as you can see, over the past three years, the shift went from graphic to video, right. And one of the biggest things that we're noticing right now is that obviously this is called Tik Tok when completely gone around the world because it's a short video, people are becoming more and more like goldfish, so they need, you know, the information right there. And then you can just digest and get hit with it and try not to forget it. But realistically, what we're seeing is still, as a Tik Tok influencer, you now have, obviously an opportunity to run much fresher, cast a wider net for following and run a more impactful message if you're trying to influence the following. But at the same time, for any platforms or any businesses that are trying to work with such influences, A, little tough to reach. B, if you work with agencies, then you're looking at, you know, lengthy negotiation as larger rates. Tik Tok itself has been completely prohibitive of integration with other platforms. So a lot of my colleagues in the space find that it's still almost impossible to tie the Tik Tok to your own API. So what is happening is because Tik Tok has, you know, rolled out their own suite of services where the influencers can run their influencer campaigns. Which is phenomenal, because that validates the whole existence of this space. Because the larger companies like obviously, Tik Tok or Instagram have their own developer suite now, digital creator suite. So all of these companies, all of these platforms are giving you more and more tools to run both sides as a brand or as a buyer of the service to identify who and how you want to work with. But then this is where, you know, we come in, because there's that disconnect. And for the providers of the service to give a larger scope or larger package of services where they can run the video on Tik Tok, where they can run textual stuff on Facebook, where they can run real-life stories on Instagram etc. So use them the opportunity to give to provide more service to earn obviously higher profit on that. And for brands, again, for the same money, you run a much, much more effective campaign like if you were to do it otherwise was just one channel like ads on TV etc.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay, and now talking about API's and integrations. Let's talk a bit about tracking. The marketing managers out there that you know, maybe are trying to integrate influencer marketing, but they are concerned with tracking performance or justifying budgets. How are you guys tackling this aspect, this subject? Are you tapping straight into the platform and getting insights from there? Do you have any types of integrations with or feedback loops with influencers? Do you have a workflow management system integrated within Brybe? How are campaigns being tracked?

 

Igor Fedenkoff  

Well, there are actually a few different things that are happening. Again, the business model of Brybe is very different from your regular influencer marketing platform. Because that's not what we are. We are a live two-sided marketplace. But what we do we run integrations with third-party providers like Hypeauditor, for instance. A phenomenal company, they basically lead right now on Instagram stats in the market. And with their reports, our buyers are able to A) track the efficiencies and the, you know, eliminate the fraud with influences that went before we're working with them. Then while they run the campaigns, there are companies like Q Mocha, which are insane! Like, we'll spend years building something like this, and it's readily available. What these guys have created is an analytical approach to any kind of post, they analyse the post on what's in it, what colours when it was posted, how many people are in it, what facial expressions, they go so deep. And these are the tools that now are at the fingertips of anybody who is ordering such services. What we do, and like I said, we collaborate with providers of analytical stuff like that, because our main goal is to create a platform that facilitates the communications between the buyers and the sellers allows them to control the flow of funds. And by that, we actually lower the amount of fraud that can potentially happen. The promises are fulfilled. And at the same time in that communicative process, they're able to use the third party applications where they would actually kind of check on both of each other, and the impact of the platforms and track the statistics. And most importantly, as I mentioned before, figure out their return on ad spend. Which is incredibly important. For anyone who is especially doing it on a budget.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Um, can you please repeat the name of the platform that you mentioned? The one with that is analysing the colours and everything within the image? How do you spell the name?

 

Igor Fedenkoff  

Q letter Q Mocha like, like a coffee drink.

 

Andrei Tiu  

QMocha. Okay. Nice. So we can all have a lookup there. See what they do. Thank you for the tip.

 

Igor Fedenkoff  

Yeah, absolutely.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay, um, so in terms of now going towards the bigger picture from last year. So looking back. From our discussion so far, it seems that the trend of collaborating more with micro-influencers, nano influencers and brands considering them more and more, as viable opportunities for them to tap into the channel is a continuous trend. Right? Then what else? Oh, what other data trends have you identified? Is there anything to do with the growth of budgets that are being allocated to the channel or range of industries, maybe that can start to consider this channel? Since before it was more towards direct, I mean, directly towards maybe commerce or lifestyle brands? Are you seeing an expansion there?

 

Igor Fedenkoff  

The expansion goes actually into the industry that is not mentioned, like I said, not very glamorous. But the rise of nano and micro-influencers in very, very different categories, has given the rise to orders from the companies that never thought they could use stuff like that. For instance, I've mentioned this in the previous discussion with another professional like yourself. It's really funny, we traced a rise in one of our categories, which is animal husbandry. And they use it as a case because not a lot of people even know what it is. I didn't know what it was and why the hell we had it on the platform in the first place. But there was one representative back in the day, one influencer that actually specialised in that so we added the category. And we've seen the growth because not only it's an obviously huge industry, especially in the United States, especially those southern states where there's, you know, a lot of cattle, but there is a huge satellite industry that comes with it. Technological appliances, belts, the construction stuff, anything that has to do with you know, animals making babies and certain surrounding industries. It's incredibly, incredibly large. So that was the industry that stayed to very, very niche marketing through just low call newsletters, pharma digest etc. Now, they're able to use influencer marketing, and a lot of freelancers on the digital side to create assets and to actually run campaigns that are geocentric to, you know, their area of expertise or their area of influence, which runs excusing impactful campaigns at the end. So the general trend right now is that, thanks to COVID, and you know, people are gonna hate me for saying that, but everything has changed. And online is some ephemeral space that used to be used, you know, for just jokes and information by a certain amount of people. Now, 98% of people around the world are online for their needs that they never used to have. Medicine delivery, food delivery, any kind of Uber-style services, and obviously more and more business online. So coming to your original question, sorry, for my own deviation. One, definitely huge trend is that more businesses, apart from your regular beauty, lifestyle, sports, and travel, which are dominating basically the influence marketing, the rest of 340 categories that for instance, we have on bread, actually, are seeing, and whether it's incremental, larger rise over the past year and going into 2022. There are more and more like I said, micro and nano influencers that are using the services of platforms like ours, because they're no longer at, you know, number 10, or number 100 page of search. They're able to be upfront right there because now the filtering and the search is a lot more detailed. So by speciality, not only by your followers, by speciality, by geo, by what you do by how you do it. And the filters are becoming more detailed, the industries are becoming wider. And the span of the influence done by these professionals is obviously becoming much, much wider.

 

Andrei Tiu  

What about the budgets? Obviously, each influencer has their own fees, which I guess on your platform to our you know, showcase, and then there might be some room for negotiation. But when you are looking at us campaigns that you saw were successful, or maybe you received feedback from super happy clients that had you know, maybe their first campaign is the first more integrated campaign and worked well. In 2021, what were the average budget or the minimum and the average budgets that were invested into influencer marketing collaborations?

 

Igor Fedenkoff  

We are looking at actually your general almost classically standard rate on the microsite. Some even of the larger and more impactful spending was done with teams of nano influencers and micro-influencers. And average, per service, average ranges at about, you know, 200 to $220. So you're looking at either a live post or a story post or two to post with somebody who has more than 10,000 followers. Now, we have run, obviously on multiple network campaigns. So for that, we educate our influencers to price themselves not based just on the following but actually based on your potential return on ad spend that you can offer to the company. And mind you again, we are not an agency. So we facilitate that need but we also offer a lot of educational information and a lot of tips along the way. So if an influencer has about you know, 5000 followers, and they're offering their services for 500 to $900. We do give them a little notice, you are free to post that, but you probably are not going to get as much attention because you should be probably within the 180 to 220 range. So the budgets, well, this will be the pricing. And the cool thing about that from like Brybe is that the professionals can actually post preset packages. Like I do the post for 50 bucks, I do the post and a story for 200 bucks. I'll do a week-long campaign you know for 500 bucks. And then when a company or a buyer comes in, they can just click on that and get going. Or if they want an individualised negotiation then they could get to that. On the side of the brands and the buyers, we've seen actually a huge step. The companies that ran the most impactful campaigns last year, were smaller companies, with a budget of about five to $10,000. But they were able to build campaigns. Like I said, with multiple influencers and multiple freelancers. So they created a really, really cool impact. We had companies that basically the largest campaign for last year was for approximately half a mile. And that was a larger marketplace. We have developed really cool relationships with some of the talent agencies in the US and across the world, that allows us to showcase their mega-stars on Brybe. So they're not self-registered, they're being showcased. And any brand collaborations that come to them from Brybe, we basically facilitate those. But the cool thing is, we're not going to sit, you know, and pray for the fact that Messi or Ronaldo or Penelope Cruz or Antonio Banderas will come to Brybe, self-register and start looking for campaigns, that's never gonna happen. We have all of them on Brybe, represented through their companies. So the marketplace that I mentioned, came to us having been exposed to mega celebs, their presence on the platform. What actually subsequently happened is that budget went into the medium to micro size, segmented campaigns that were run for a couple of months. And they couldn't be happier. Because like I said, they didn't get the exposure of the larger name through us, they actually were able to get it through a direct agency collaboration with somebody else. But they ran incredibly important, impactful social media marketing campaigns that they actually shared, I cannot share the numbers, but they shared with us that they could trace an increase in geo sales in those particular geographic areas where they ran those segmented ads. And for us, that was just like, you know, finally, what we've been talking about makes sense. So we are in negotiations with this company to run another set of campaigns this coming spring. It's a marketplace, so they do a lot of fashion stuff.

 

Andrei Tiu  

So I love it when I hear these types of success stories, because, you know, you guys are one of the younger companies in the space. And as you mentioned, two to three years, so it's amazing to see such fast growth and, you know, showcasing your value proposition to the world. So big up for that. So, in terms of the smaller influencers, it just popped into my head now a discussion that I had with, they were more like an influencer agency. But they had this issue that was brought forward by some of their independent small influencers or nano influencers. And when these nano influencers were trying to establish collaborations with bigger companies, or like with companies in general, there was this barrier, where it's more like a legal thing, but I'm just curious how you guys tackle this. They needed to, obviously invoice for the services. So they had to create a company and then you know, tackle the tax or, you know, be a freelancer and then again, tackled the tax, but what if some of them just want you to do it as a side hustle? And you know, just have it there? Maybe one campaign once in a while, but not leave out of their influencer career, let's say. How are these transactions through Brybe for example? Can anybody go as an influencer and start collaborating, and you guys help them with tax? Or do they still have to do it themselves? And similarly, from the brand's point of view, you know, invoices and these types of things.

 

Igor Fedenkoff  

There are a few things that I would like to mention because - thank you for bringing this up, this is incredibly important, especially for nano and micro-influencers that are new to the industry. One of the first things that I want to mention is whenever you get into a car, and you don't know how to drive, chances are things are not going to go the right way. By the same token, if you want to even just kick into the freelancing In industry or influencing industry, you must know what you can and cannot do. How do you do it? First, read the terms and conditions of any platform you're on. They are by the law of their geographical location, they're required to disclose certain things that a lot of them are pertinent to the legal or financial side of things. Like we are a US-based company. So our terms and conditions are longer than usual because they need to include a lot of exceptions, a lot of exemptions. A lot of privacy aspects, as you know, the state of California has their own privacy law, which goes around the world. So read the terms! Don't just check off the thing and like I've read the terms and let's go, let's earn millions. Read. Second, I highly advise finding sources of information that are credible, again, that is related to your legal and your financial rights. In our particular case, we collaborate with Robert Fronts. And I can give you the information later. He is probably the only attorney in the United States, they have put together an educational course for influencers, which gets them probably 90% of everything that they need to know about the legal side of things in the influencer marketing industry. Studying FTC regulations and explaining what they can/cannot do, what they can/cannot claim. What kind of hashtags they can and cannot use. How they can be prosecuted. For instance, in the US, before she did something wrong, the advertising penalty was you know, a couple of $100 Right now it's 46,000 per occasion. So if you're an influencer that ran a campaign, and earn your, you know, 200, 300 bucks, but then you got caught by FTC, and now you're looking at a $46,000 fine, you need to understand where exactly you're sitting in that particular case. So I'm not trying to scare anybody but as I said, this industry is becoming more and more validated for two main reasons. A) large players in Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tik Tok. B) the government is getting into the industry like the FTC now has regulations for influencers in the ads etc. And I'm sure companies in international markets are facing the same thing. So it's becoming an officially regulated industry. And while you get into it, you are responsible for knowing what your rights are, or what your responsibilities are. On our side as a platform, we are a double-sided marketplace, we facilitate but we don't create them. So we provide as much information as we can, regarding our geographical location, and as much as we can about GDPR and European regulations for people to know what they're responsible for. As a facilitator, we don't take control of that sale, the sale happens between the buyer and the seller. So they're responsible to know their rights and we provide as much information as we can possibly do. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Super useful. So you guys, listen to this. And maybe considering or already doing influencer marketing and wanting to get serious, we did make sure that you know, the regulations of the countries of where your clients or the companies that you work with are within, and also of course of your own, which hopefully, you shouldn't be already having down. Okay, so, Igor, as a sort of a closing note, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the trends for this year. You mentioned NFT's and you know, this is a hot subject is something that we've been discussing quite a lot like in the past two to three months, basically since the metaverse announcement from Meta so Facebook. What's your take on that? What are you what's your take on the industry as a whole? Do you have some highlights that you want to bring forward?

 

Igor Fedenkoff  

The general trends are actually very obvious even if you look at any kind of influencer campaigns that are run by larger companies or smaller campaigns. As a general topic of our conversation right now, obviously, the rise of the micro and nano influencers should be considered by the buyers and by themselves, because they are becoming a much larger driving force of the space and that's on both sides in finance and freelancer because we work with both. Obviously, the rise of the video that's going to continue the message that is the most impactful right now has to be not only informative but extremely vivid. And there are many companies that run research on that. A lot of influencer platforms come up with their yearly reports, influencer marketing hub is a great resource if you want to look into that. I know that a lot of companies, I think we will be seeing trends of a larger enterprise doing two things. What they do is they use influencers on a smaller scale on their geographical location. So let's say New Balance has a location in Boston, and they will run micro, nano influencer campaigns for Massachusetts or for the Boston area, for their issues in their stores. So it's not going to be a nationwide campaign, not just doing it segmented. But simultaneously, I think there's the rise of the ambassador programmes, a lot of companies, instead of just using agencies or using platforms, create an opportunity for the influencers to come to them and become their ambassador, as long as they measure certain criteria. Which, you know, it takes business from companies like mine, on one side, but on the other side, yet again, a lot of influencers, a lot of professionals that are trying to get into Ambassador programmes, they may or may not get it to them, but don't just focus on one thing. Use many different avenues where you can, you know, send your message to a much wider audience. There's definitely a huge trend, I think, is a universal message. I don't know if you're covering that in your interviews, but it's no longer a gimmick, it's no longer a political statement. It's no longer anything but an acceptable way of marketing. So the universal message was potential, gender-neutral message in many industries is becoming more of a staple rather than something brand new. I think this is definitely one of the things that we're seeing, majorly transforming the creative industry. And I think there's a trend, which originally influencer marketing and Freelancer industries came into existence to remove the rigid HR based departments and employments. But, now on a different spin of this evolution, we are seeing influencer marketing going from individual to the group. So companies are using groups of like multi influencer campaigns as opposed to just one. So now you're in a way the companies are hiring the teams of influencers. And this is where the agencies come in because they definitely want to monetize on that. And there's a general tendency of enjoying working with somebody. And walking away from using many different people for different campaigns, but to do repeated orders, either on the Freelancer site or influencer side. So good and bad, because if it is repeated campaigns with the same team over the same providers, this is cool, because it's going to be to have the same impact, hopefully, with smaller depreciation over time. But that also, we were laughing about this at the office, because we have created all of this, to go back to contractual employments and to repeat it orders to somebody being constantly employed with a company. So I think this is a trend that is happening. But I think both the business well, all three of the businesses, the influencers, and the agencies, slash platforms, should adapt to this particular situation and actually create business practices that will help them to exist, but at the same time to bring, I think this idea, this concept, to a little bit of a different level, so that it doesn't go back to Brick and Mortar and departments and cubes. But it stays on the freedom of expression and freedom of creativity, but on a different business model than it used to be 20 years ago. So I think these are the main trends that we'll be seeing this year.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Very insightful. I really loved our chat today. What I particularly liked about it was that it was very pragmatic. And I think it was very information-rich for everybody that is on either side of the fence, to say so. So you know, professionals as well as companies, agencies, marketing managers. Igor, thank you so much for being on The Show today. Thank you for helping us have an amazing start to the new podcast season this winter. And for you guys tuning in today, thank you for sticking around to the end. Thank you for joining us and for being with us for you know, so long. As always, if you have any feedback or any questions, feel free to reach out to us. If you're watching this on YouTube, comment below and let us know your thoughts. Igor, if people have questions, or they want to get in touch with you personally for you know, business avenues that you could explore or other types of collaborations? Where can they best get in touch with you?

 

Igor Fedenkoff  

The easiest way would probably be LinkedIn. My name spelling is in the description of this podcast. So find me on LinkedIn, I can't promise that I'll answer right away. But I do my best in trying to answer all the messages that are coming my way that are not, you know, marketing spam. And for Brybe, obviously, just go to brybe.com. And check us out. It's a free platform. Play around with it.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice. So you guys would have the links in the description of this episode as well. Check these guys out. They're doing a great job as Igor was talking us through the story as well. Igor, until next time, wishing you guys all the best of success, looking forward to news in March when you are going to Dubai and who knows maybe we'll organise another session to debrief that, as well as potentially talk about some other subjects that we didn't have the chance to discuss so much. And I think it'd be a nice explorative conversation such as NFT's licencing, creative arts and, you know, more of the fancy stuff in the news nowadays. 

Building and scaling start ups through marketing [Oliver Feakins]

Join Andrei and our guest on today’s episode, Oliver Feakins, as they will be discussing marketing strategies and tactics for scaling tech startups in 2022 and beyond. Oliver is the founder of Trusted Search Marketing and TrackFive, an online technology company that builds and manages intuitive web platforms where employers and talent meet.

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐎𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫:  

𝑊𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒: https://trustedsearchmarketing.com/ 

𝑂𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝐼𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverfeakins/  

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐢:

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢: https://marketiu.com  / https://marketiu.ro   

𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑖 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/  

𝐸𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙 𝑎𝑡 hello@marketiu.ro

 

𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦:

▶️Watch the episode on YouTube: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-YouTube 

▶️ Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show 

▶️ Podbean: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Podbean 

▶️ Spotify: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Spotify 

▶️ Deezer: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Deezer 

▶️ Stitcher: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Stitcher 

▶️ Castbox: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Castbox 

 

Episode transcript: 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Hi there, this is Andrei and you are on the Marketing Innovation Podcast Show. Our special guest today is Oliver Feakins, the founder of Trusted Search Marketing and TrackFive, an online technology company that builds and manages intuitive web platforms where employers and talent meet. Today we discuss marketing strategies and tactics for scaling tech startups in 2022 and beyond. So without further ado, Oliver, it's a pleasure to have you here on the show. How are you? How's your morning going? Because you are login-in from America, right?

 

Oliver Feakins  

That's right. Yeah, absolutely. So my morning just getting started and your day is just about the end, right?

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yes.

 

Oliver Feakins  

Great. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

 

Andrei Tiu  

It's a pleasure, pleasure, really looking forward to discussing today. I think it's going to be a very dynamic and interesting discussion. It's always nice to share thoughts with a fellow entrepreneur. You have even more experience because you found it more businesses during the past almost 20-ish years, right?

 

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah. 20 years. I started my first business when I was 14 years old. So yeah.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Wow! Okay, let's talk a bit about that one, maybe as a as a warm up.

 

Oliver Feakins  

An appetiser, right? So, yeah. So, um, you know, first off, I come from a family of entrepreneurs, but while mainly my father, right, so I'm actually as a sound here before the show, I was actually born in England, in Southampton, and, you know, grew up in London and Southampton and my father was in the Royal Navy, but he turned into an entrepreneur. While he was in the Navy, he opened up a catering company while he was stationed, you know, in the UK, and then he was stationed in Portugal and he opened up another catering company, he ended up selling it, making some money while he was enlisted, left the military and parlayed that money into other startups. So I got to watch the entrepreneurial process over and over and over again. My father was a somebody that really likes to manage companies. He was the entrepreneurs entrepreneur, he liked to get in scale, a company and exit, which is what a lot of entrepreneurs like to do. And by the way, for your entrepreneurial audience, like that's an important skill to recognise, right? Like, if there's a difference between starting a company and managing a company. They are not the same thing. Those two job descriptions and responsibilities are not interchangeable. They're two different things right? So you have to be able to reskill, refocus for both of those things. But anyway, you see my father do it and work tirelessly and work really hard. I was able to kind of get in to do a similar thing. So at 14 years old I was a DJ, like kids birthday parties and stuff like that, you know, and I worked for a company at 14, and they went out of business, and they were selling, they had like 17 different, you know, vehicles and DJ equipment sets. And they were like, they just wanted to get rid of it. So for like, 3000 US dollars, they were selling a van, all the music and all the DJ equipments and lights, everything you would need to get started, including the vehicle for $3,000 is a great deal. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice!

 

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah. So I basically wrote a business plan to my dad and said, look: I and my friend would like to do this. His dad is going to put in $1,500, I want you to put in $1,500 and here's how we're going to make this successful. So at 14 I couldn't even drive the vehicle. And, you know, I, you know, I started working on that right and grew up once I hit 16, you know, really scaled it up. I remember coming home from school and going to my dad's office, and one of our biggest markets was school dances, so looking to get the school. So, you know, I had to go sell this. So I would literally spend all night on the internet, like basically copying all the fax numbers, because this was 20 years ago.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah!

 

Oliver Feakins  

Of all the high schools and schools all across Pennsylvania. And I would like 1000s of fax numbers, and I would make a flyer, and I would literally one by one stay till 11 o'clock at night at my dad's office faxing these to, you know, attention to school dance manager, you know, and sending the flyer and you know, all day long, I was hustling it for 14, 15, 16. And I would get like one or two contracts for you know, the years worth of school dances from each one of these schools that came through. And I wrote that business all through school, through college and it really taught me how to grind and hustle. You know, my father gave me a really good piece of advice. He is a consummate salesperson. So he used to tell me, nothing happens 'till you sell something. And I lived those words to this day. And I've seen so many entrepreneurs silo themselves into specific things, whether it be: "We have to have the best product", "We have to have the biggest sales, we have to do this, this, this". And a big mistake of entrepreneurs is not really looking at this as a holistic, you know, a combination of things that have to execute at the same time. So that gave me that sense of hustle, it showed me kind of how to set this up. And you know, I went to go work for some tech companies and some large tech companies and then when I was about 21 years old, you know, I hadn't even finished college and I dropped out of college to work. And I ended up starting my own company scaling that company pretty well going back and finishing college. And then, you know, scaling other companies up as well. So I don't really know what it's like to work in my adult life for a company, I've always been an entrepreneur, so I don't think I could have it any other way.

 

Andrei Tiu  

That's fun and also, as you're saying, grind the hustle. But I guess during your high school, you were probably a bit of a rock star with the music business. No?

 

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah, it's funny, right? Like, you know, and it's fun, but I always tell people, like, you know, I've coached a couple of people through the entrepreneurial process. And, you know, sometimes I just, A. People give up too easy and B. I think that people underestimate the amount of time and sacrifice it takes to launch a successful business. You know, I wasn't going to parties, I was DJing them right, and getting paid, I was going and hanging out with friends, I was sitting at my dad's office, sending faxes, you know, when I launched my other companies, you know, I was coming home and you know, at 11 o'clock at night, because I was, you know, working and growing my business, because I normally did have to manage the clients and create the product. But also, with the sale, I had to do the bookkeeping, I had to do everything. So you know, the amount of sacrifice when you're at that level, and it's, it sounds like a lot of your entrepreneurs or solo operators or kind of just getting started. So I mean, that should resonate. But my advice to your listeners would be to really, you know, it is a lot of work. And the sacrifices are huge. Everybody wants to see the money and the nice cars and everything that comes when you become successful. But there's never a glimpse into what you sacrifice or how much work it took to get there. You know?

 

Andrei Tiu  

Mhm, Mhm. There was a nice thing. I remember I saw it, though it was probably a meme, it stayed with me. It was something like: "The value of anything is the amount of time you put into it." And I think this applies very much to just starting a business.

 

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

And also growing it obviously, because it's not just gonna pick up like this. So what was your next move after you, well, you went through college, and you dropped out? And what did you do?

 

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah, so I basically, I was working for an internet company that basically, you know, it was very early was kind of like very early social media, social networking, kind of like MySpace or Facebook. But instead of one platform, the concept behind this tech company was to create a scalable platform in a specific vertical or niche or location and then create the platform to be able to duplicate these very quickly, almost with a push of a button and give access to people. So you know, if you wanted to come in and make a marketing social network, you could launch an account, launch a social network, and you could populate it, run it, it would be completely free. But then this company was able to run advertising throughout the entire platform of social network sites. And then they could target it based on demographic, you know. If, you know, they had a golf company that's selling golf clubs, for example, if there was a social network targeting older people, or you know, high-end kind of interests or hobbies, they could just run it through that. So the company was founded with a couple of million dollars. We went through that process and ended up not surviving, it didn't do well. But during that time, I met another fellow marketing friend of mine. He had a side hustle, a little bit of a side business. And he was basically an SEO he did internet marketing, like me. And basically, what he did, was recruiting nurses through a little website, basically, it was nothing more than a page or two and a form. And this is early internet, you know, 20 years ago, he was getting nurses that were applying and setting up resumes. And, you know, for travel nurse positions, you know, transit physicians, and he was basically working with one nurse staffing agency and saying: "Look, I'll send you my resumes. If you hire one of these nurses or place them at a hospital, send me $1,000." You know, so anyway, he was running this for about eight months, and he was sending hundreds of candidates to this company. And, you know, he was coming to me saying: "They haven't placed a single nurse, and my candidates must be horrible. My marketing sucks, you know, what am I gonna do?" And, you know, I said: "Man, I think you've got this all wrong. And I don't know how you can scale this, I think I could turn this into a million-dollar business." So he said: "Really? Let's, partner!" So we ended up partnering together on it and completely change the model, from a performance model to a SaaS model subscription as a service or software as a service, where people are paying monthly, and I basically called that one client said: "We're gonna stop the candidates coming through because obviously, they don't work. You haven't placed anybody in a year. We're gonna sell this to your competitors now." Well, I got a call back in five minutes from the CEO of that company saying: "Oh, there was an accounting error. We placed 25 people in the last six months." And they said: "Great, thanks for $25,000. Now you have to pay a subscription fee like everybody else." Which they did. So we ended up growing that to about a million and a half $2 million business, it still exists in our portfolio under TrackFive today, which really TrackFive, my company is really just a portfolio company, we run multiple online platforms that are basically career sites or job boards for different professions. And that's what we do. We sell them and we market them as products and sell access to them, to the companies that need the towel.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Just a little question here. So we, so it's clear for everybody. So basically, you guys are developing the platforms that are then sold to companies and rebranded or branded according to their company?

 

Oliver Feakins  

No. So we build the platform as a business, and then we operate the business. So one arm of our site is making the product, but then we're up or we're running them as a SaaS, software as a service where, you know, we make the job board, for example, and then have our company we'll go and sell it to, for example, we have a really large job board in the transportation space, the truck driving space. In America, truck driving is a massive demand right now. Very, very big demand. The UK as well. Yeah, so we have companies that will, you know, subscribe to access to our platform to post their jobs, go into a resume database, get candidates applying to them, and they'll pay 1000s of dollars per month, each one to become part of this platform and receive, you know, hundreds of qualified candidates. So, you know, not only do we build the software and iterate the software, make the software better, and grow it, but we also have to run the business side of it, which is the pricing selling, taking care of the clients, the marketing for both the users and the clients and we sell to, and all the HR legal, you know, stuff that goes in around that as well. So we're launching like, we're basically a little startup company, all we do is launch a little startup and we run them and they're each one of them does, you know, million $2 million each year. So cumulatively together, they do, you know, a decent amount of revenue for us. And then we have a team, which is dedicated to each one of these platforms. And we will grow these platforms and stack them and change them as we need to keep revenue coming in.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Very cool! So you basically build a model that works and then just replicate it across industries.

 

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah. So we built the platform. And we basically, you know, we've tight, you know, each platform is geared toward a specific profession, nursing, doctors, truck drivers, pilots, things like that. But the core framework of our proprietary software, we can duplicate or replicate, and we just have to change the way it looks, the words on the site, the database schemas for you know, how the different types of jobs relate to each other. But it's, it's a push of a button, it's very quick. So, you know, making the site is easy as scaling in and bringing in the clients and the marketing and the candidates. That's what takes a lot of time and money.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Sure, sure. Okay. Interesting. I'm happy that we clarified this, so people know, you know, what you are doing at the moment, which TrackFive. Now, let's go back to the story. So you were saying about the way that you sort of started out?

 

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah, so you know, we basically, you know, I started with this one gentleman, a good friend of mine, and we started with one in nursing. And, you know, we joined together in 2007. So we basically switched the model. And it was crazy. I was 21 years old, I had no money, I was just getting, I haven't finished college, right. But I had an idea, I had a vision, and I knew that I could sell it, I knew I could market it. I knew we could get it where it needed to go. So we started launching it, we started getting really successful. And then 2008, the next year happened. And I don't know if it was the same way in the UK. But in 2008, we had the worst financial crisis in the United States we've had in decades,

 

Andrei Tiu  

Everybody, I think.

 

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah, so the whole world just got poor, like for a couple of years, right. And when they and recruiting is typical. So when, when the economy goes down, and companies start laying off, they're certainly not hiring. So their need for job boards and recruitment services that we offer, put down. So we, you know, I remember losing half the business, that I just spent every waking hour of my life building, like literally in two months, you know, and we had to go through some really hard times, you know, we weren't getting paid, we were working double the amount of time, I remember calling clients and begging them saying, Look, stay, you know, we'll lower the price stay on here, we're gonna do double the work for you. But we need you to know, I needed to secure cash flow to keep the business going. You know, we had to get really good and really efficient at internet marketing, which is where we kind of started, you know, about 20 years ago. And you know, to get those costs down, we had to really take care of our clients and get them the results so they did stay during downtime. And you know, basically, we were able to grow that back up and add more job boards and add more revenue now we're about a, you know, six-seven $8 million company so, you know, we're able to kind of grow out of that and keep pushing, but it would have been really easy for me to, to fold it up and go do something else or go get a job and would have been way less stressful. But you know, like I was saying earlier that hustle that grit that grinds. And also just knowing yourself and knowing what you can do, and knowing your market convinced me to kind of put in that extra effort, stay focused, and it paid off.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Super super. Okay, so how were the last few years for you? Because obviously, I don't know if we are heading towards similar scenarios in 2008 or not? It looks like it by some, some indicators.

 

Oliver Feakins  

It sounds weird, right? Because you're right, like inflation, I don't know how it is over there. But the US has rapid inflation right now, like 30 billion. It's just, I've never seen it like this in my lifetime. And, you know, you're seeing it everywhere the gas, you know, big problem. Bacon is like double the price. You know, that's like, that's what I use.

 

Andrei Tiu  

It is double?

 

Oliver Feakins  

It's like $10 or $11. Now, to get a little thing of bacon, it used to be like four or five $6. So that's expensive. Yeah, everything's expensive. So it's, it's hitting our labour markets. So it's making labour more expensive, which is good in America because you know, people get paid more, but it doesn't equal out to the inflation, the inflation still more. And what we're seeing now is that because people are so desperate for so basically, America was asleep for the last year with COVID, right, everybody was locked down in their homes, companies went under, you couldn't even go to a restaurant, you wouldn't stay in a hotel, like certain, you know, cruises were all parked, you know, Disneyworld was shut down, like, everything was shut down. And now with the vaccines coming out, and with, you know, just in general, America is sprung open. And everybody got a lot of stimulus money throughout the, you know, they got a, you know, a couple $1,000 from the government, some also businesses here got to take advantage of what's called a PPP loan, which basically, the government came out and said, you know, if you're suffering from COVID, we're going to inject you know, X amount of money into a million dollars from the government, the company's got hundreds of 1000s of dollars. And if you can show that you were, you know, if you kept employees on and did not let them go, you got to keep the money, it was meant to be a loan, but you ended up keeping it and then even better than that, they were going to tax you on it tax, it is revenue, and then they forgave the tax as well. So it's completely free money. So you have all these, you know, business owners that were that, you know, yes, they suffered, but they were also given some help. And the whole economy has just been saving money for a year, not going out to eat not going on vacations. So once the will say America opened back up, and people were allowed out of their houses and vaccines are available, America went on a sheer spending spree, as we've never seen before. And the rest of the world hasn't really caught up, you know, like, the factories in China are still dealing with it, their backlog, you know, everything shut down, you can't just turn on the global economy really quickly. So, you know, what that's helped for us for is that you know, people are hiring, and they're hiring all the people that they let go. And on top of that, because there's extra demand, you know, we grew 20%, you know, through COVID, you know, right at once we opened up, we grew like a rocket ship. And we've been really trying to keep up with all the demand. So it's been really good for us. But it's been challenged, it's going good from a demand perspective. But it's been difficult because of the challenges related to trying to find people to work, they increase costs, and every cost has gone up for us. But thank God, that demand has gone up as well. So it's just a very challenging increasing environment to work in. And I've never seen anything like it. Oh, you just waiting over there.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah. And Europe as well. Like, I'm not very aware of the situation in China and the sort of Asian countries, but here as well, I mean, I guess it has to do a lot with the increase in gas price and everything that has to do with the energy sector. But as you said, people probably have saved a lot. Certainly, a lot of businesses have gone bankrupt during this time. And now since things have started to open a bit during the summer, now they are sort of going back into a little sort of lockdown. But I guess everybody should be a bit cautious in terms of how they direct their, first of all, how they save up money for what's coming because we don't really know. And then, of course, just spend money more cautiously, then. I have a question. This doesn't really have to do with our subject. But since we are added, how do you see you know, from you guys from America. How are things looking economically? Do you have any predictions or are you taking certain measures to ensure that you'll do well? In a scenario, if you have a scenario even better, like the one that you believe will happen? I think that will be interesting for us because I guess many of our listeners are a bit like us in the way that they have their hands deep into the business world.

 

Oliver Feakins  

But like its interest are like the top 1% that especially like the business owners and things like that received a lot of capital from the US government during COVID. So the people that have the most disposable income at this point have a tonne of extra money to burn. And especially, you know, right now, with business going so crazy. And the stock market going so crazy in the US. You know, the big earners have a lot of extra cash, unfortunately, you know, people on the lower rungs that don't necessarily have that disposable income, they're getting the brunt of it, right. Because the inflation's here, they're spending more there is wage increase, but it just doesn't match. So, you know, but we are seeing the demand is just so huge right now in the US, and it's gonna take years to go through this demand, they can't even sell cars right now, because they can't get parts, there's a waiting list for just about everything. It's there's so much pent up demand, you know, from the consumers in this country, that everything is going really, really well, if you own a business. But if you're trying to put food on the table, unfortunately, it's a little bit tougher. But for us, I mean, really, with the entrance of COVID. And the variance, and I feel like it's musical chairs like COVID just goes around the world that comes back again, you know, like, well, we'll do really, really good. And then you hear Germany's, like, oh, Germany is doing really good, right? Then now they're having it again, or India's doing good. And then they go to her, you know, horrible or Italy or, or England or when Buenos Aires, Argentina, wherever right? Like COVID just kind of goes down the road, but it always comes back. So we're always kind of going in these little curves where it comes down, and we let our guard down. And then four months later, we have a humongous big spike. And you know, what that does, as a business owner, I think is make it very difficult to forward plan. Planning is almost impossible long term. Because you can't account for things like government shutting down, you can't account for, you know, inflation that's just moving around, you can't account for your office being shut down because of COVID infections and things like that. I mean, you can at some point, but you can't really put pen to paper and say what your business is going to be doing in two years from now, the market is just too unstable. So, you know, for us, there's a lot of short term planning, and really working on being agile, being able to move quickly to opportunities, avoid threats, but a lot of it too, is making sure that we have a lot more money in the bank than we ever did before. Because we want to be able to weather the storm a little bit easier.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Mhm, mhm, yeah. Good moves. I'm with you here.

 

Oliver Feakins  

And that's also why we started our Trusted Search Marketing brand, you know, we do, did we do, we've done digital marketing for, you know, 15 years here, TrackFive, we're very good at it. I mean, extremely good at it. You know, we spend millions of dollars with Google, we've been running these campaigns and SEO and everything forever. And, you know, actually used to own in 2010, after he started another digital agency, we grew that up to a $2 - $3 million agency and I sold it off. But we worked with some massive international clients doing SEO and digital marketing. So you know, for me, it's a pedigree, and for any company I touch is usually very marketing-centric. But for us, the reason we opened up this division of our holding company called Trusted Search Marketing, which is a digital marketing agency, is because we were so pigeonholed in recruiting when COVID hit, we lost, you know, 20% of our revenue because nobody was hiring. But I can tell you what, really what went 20% the other way is digital marketing. Because of all the brick and mortar, all the local stores, shops and things like that everybody went online, and they needed SEO, they needed internet marketing. So for us it strategically, you know, it allows us to balance, you know, the recruiting market with a non-recruiting market so that when one's going down, once one stays positive, or it gives us a little bit of a backup or reserve. So that's kind of why we did it. But we're also really good at it, the agency just got a credit credential from Google, or a Google partner agency, we've won some awards already. And, you know, we're, you know, we just have a different take on it. So we've been working with some clients in eCommerce, but surprisingly, because we have such a background in recruiting, we have a lot of recruiting companies that are coming to us, you know, truck driving companies, healthcare companies, asking us to do digital for recruiting talent, you know, so it's been interesting, it's not how we thought it was gonna go. We thought we're gonna be doing eCommerce and working with businesses. And that's what we thought was going to be, you know, that's what he wanted it to be. But as soon as we took our expertise in recruiting, and opened up a digital agency, all the people that use us know us in the recruiting space came over and said: "Can you do digital for us and should teach us how to do it?" 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Ah cool!

 

Oliver Feakins  

Its kind of like the market has told us what it wants from us. And although we could do both, we're gonna follow what the market you know, where the demand is.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, sure.

 

Oliver Feakins  

But yeah, it worked out well.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Mhm, nice, nice, nice. Okay, so now since we came back to the marketing subject. Let's see how you guys are planning your current marketing and given the sort of shaky environment. How are you guys looking at let's say the small startups that you are running? I don't know if it's fair to call them that. But let's say you are, you are launching a new platform. And it's from scratch. It's a technology product. And what I think would be interesting to do is try to draw up some points where that would be applicable for virtually most of the tech startups out there. So if you were to think through your experience right now of launching a new tech startup, whether that's a SAS or not, let's say it's a SAS, but not necessarily limited to it, what would be the approach that you'd have or maybe you already do, to put it out on the market now, at the end of 2021, beginning of 2022?

 

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah, so some really interesting things have happened in marketing in the marketing world, so to speak, in the last year or two. You know, we've seen obviously influencer marketing and content marketing really become its own thing. It was kind of lumped into, you know, SEO or lumped into just general marketing or PR, but now content marketing and influencer marketing have really matured to break out into their own segments. And that's a really fun space. And now oftentimes, you know, we see, oh, we want to do social media advertising, we need content. Now, we kind of looked at it backwards, where we have a content marketing strategy, and it's going to be fueled and promoted by social media, right. So we use social as an arm to promote the content that we're promoting. So, you know, getting into things like video, it's really huge. We're seeing some great results with some video marketing that we're doing influencer marketing, things like that. But for a tech company, it depends if you're a business to consumer or business to business company, if you're selling to businesses, there are a little bit different markets. So if you're doing that, what we call Account-Based Marketing, or ABM, where we're really working in producing content for that business. So becoming an industry leader in that business and having that confidence high into the solution that we have. So you know, if you're, you know, if you're a product, a tech product in the finance space, or the payroll space, for example, you may be producing content all around the payroll industry and niche and coming to the market with really breathtaking statistics or perspective that really positioned you as the expert for that industry. But you're using social, whether it be LinkedIn, or just even generally, some of the generic social platforms to really promote that. But some of the things that have really been interesting as well as we do a lot of paid ads. So a lot of media buying, whether it be Google ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, TikTok ads, you know, we're in all these. And what we've seen over the last year has been really interesting to this because Facebook, well, and Google pretty much well, they came out Apple came out with that whole iOS update about seven months ago, where you had to opt into privacy right. And that's been a, I think, a global trend, like everybody wants more privacy, right. It basically made it really difficult to place tracking cookies and use pixels to track remarketing and things like that. So across the entire world, everyone's Pay Per Click marketing campaigns became worse overnight, because one of the reasons these mediums work so well is because you know, if I want to find if I'm selling houses, I want to find what we call an in-market audience, somebody that they're looking for a house, I can identify that on YouTube, for example, I can identify that person on Facebook. Well now that the tracking is gone, they're less likely to be able to be as accurate or B. if I want to build a remarketing audience, so people come into my website and remarket to them, you know, not only can I not cookie them anymore, if they're on a mobile phone or an Apple phone specifically, they can also opt-out retroactively so they can opt-out and be removed from an audience that they were already in. So we had an eCommerce client that was selling tanning products, for example, a decent, you know, eCommerce product and decent commerce client. We were, for example, we were using what's called remarketing, right, so we were, you know, doing Facebook ads, Google ads, things like that, and we were killing it on Facebook, we were selling this at a five to 10x, you know, on this product, every, you know, every dollar they spent, they're making $10 in revenue off their product. And remarketing for us for them worked really, really well. Well, as soon as this iOS update happened and all of a sudden there were marketing audience group started getting smaller and smaller and smaller and the cost per sale ended up going from like a 10x to an 8x, to 3x, to 2x. And right before our very eyes, you know, it will happen immediately. Some of our brands that TrackFive is caught, you know, our cost per client acquisition doubled because of this because the targeting wasn't as good and the reporting isn't as good, the attribution isn't this good. So what is you know, so a lot of people went out of business, a lot of people cried a moan and they really upset and it is upsetting. It's very frustrating. But what are your options, right? You can go with it. And you could try to find a way around it or you can admit defeat. So we decided to go with it. So we came up with a bunch of ideas. We tested a bunch of ideas. Not only were we to bring those back inline those costs back in mind, but we even were able to make them even better than before. So I think what it's when challenges like this arise in marketing and changes in the global landscape for marketing, I think it really gives marketing people an opportunity to dust off those skills, and to solve the problem. And I think that's very, very entrepreneurial way to look at it, you know, it's like, you know, for me, whether it's a marketing issue or a business issue, it's, you know, I'm a fireman, all I do is put out fires, right? So like, I have to find a way to win, because I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna quit. So, yeah, right there

 

Andrei Tiu  

On this note, but you probably have found it as well, just worth mentioning, for example, what we found as a fix to the issue that occurred and was using a lot of the lookalike audiences and creating custom audiences and creating look alike on specific custom audiences. We are still doing it, and it seems to be working very well.

 

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah, we did that, we also use the Facebook API, you know, switch to the API so that we could do that as well. The difference for us in niche products, where it was a little bit harder to get that look like audience once you go down lower in the niche, once you are a little bit broader, and there are a little bit more multi-facets of the target market, then it was okay. But once we got a super niche, you know, super small in the targeting, it just became not as effective. You know, we also found some interesting things too. For example, testing different ad creatives, like video and image ads, and carousel ads. And we would notice that when we swapped the image, the impressions will throttle, right, so like, we went from image to video, for example, the impressions with throttle and the cost, the cost per click, or the cost per lead, or acquisition cost, would skyrocket as well. So we were able to test the distribution network of like Facebook and Instagram, for example, the find out what creatives actually produce because they don't show up in the same places and they're not promoted with the same force, right? So we did a bunch of testing to find out what the combination of you know, we as I said, we tried to look like audiences and things like that. And for our niches, they did better, but they still didn't get us to where we were. We ended up doing some things with video and some creative things work. And also, it helps you be a better marketer, because we took it all the way up the funnel, right? We started looking at our landing pages, like we started, you know, swapping up our ads, working on day parsing, and just getting all the fundamental things and marketing that sometimes we overlook, for the shiny objects like retargeting or, you know, look like audiences or, you know, programmatic, right? Like, you know, sometimes we're so focused as marketers on that type of stuff, we forget that our landing page hasn't been freshened up for a year, and the conversion rate has been falling, or the fact that we could be doing testing. And, you know, we just did a landing page change, you know, during this process as well and we're able to get about a 20% increase in conversion rate, you know, just from a new landing page. So that's without even touching the campaign. So we tie these things all together, we’re able to really bring that cost down. But yeah, I mean, it's been difficult, but it's been good. I mean, as I said, it's forced us - not that we are lazy marketers before, but I think Facebook made it really easy. And now I think it got a little bit harder.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yep. But as you said, it's not necessarily for the words, because, again, I think, you know, you are running a marketing agency, we are a marketing agency. I think it helps filter out the good agencies from not, I wouldn't say the bad agencies, but the agencies that shouldn't get that tight.

 

Oliver Feakins  

It's true, it's true. And like, you know, and even with that, right, like, we've had issues where we're just really weird issues where we've been like, no matter what we do, we can't fix it. We're like, man, we must really suck. Like, we can't - like why is this not like, in theory, what we're doing should work. So we ended up, you know, a good example, we actually reached out to Facebook with a rapper like, hey, like, what are we doing wrong here? Like, we can't figure this out. And next thing, you know, we get a call from a Facebook engineer. It's the only time in my life Facebook has ever called us. Or anybody that I know. It's usually like a live chat or an email. But to get a phone call from a Facebook engineer, you know something's wrong. So they basically said, Yes, you know, you guys were right, it was a bug on the platform, we're gonna address it. So we're like catching bugs on Facebook. It sounds like you know, Facebook's notorious for having bugs and breaking all the time. And right now they're attribution tracking and their reporting is garbage. Like they keep stripping away all these different types of reporting and they keep making it smaller and smaller and then put in disclaimers that it may not be accurate. And, you know, the 20-day attribution is, you know, it's just, it's like, it's crazy. So it's, you know like I said earlier, it's, it has made it more challenging, but as you said, the good agencies adapt, the bad agencies probably don't even know what the bad agencies don't even know that iOS came up with an update that has changed. You know, They're still wondering why their costs, you know, they are calling it seasonality. But, you know, it's, but like, you know, it's the same thing with SEO. Right? Like, SEO is difficult as well, you know, it's just, you know, Google coming out with updates. So it's just, it's just an interesting yeah. But you know what I say this now Android, but like, the, it's always been like this, right? If it wasn't this, now, this is a big one, like the face the iOS change, that's a big, that's a big change. I can't recall a larger change to paid advertising than that in my life.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, neither do I.

 

Oliver Feakins  

It's a big one. In SEO, we have them all the time. They've been better at it recently, but if you go back in time to like, Penguin, Panda updates, Farmer updates, you know, ‘mobilegeddon’, different specific updates, that were very, very restrictive, that put people out of business penalty related updates, spam-related updates, like, this is how it's been in digital marketing since I remember. And it's a really tough pill to swallow if you're a business owner, right. So if I'm selling you and saying we're going to do absolutely everything, right, we're going to check the box, we're going to execute at the highest level, we're going to be you're at marketing, but then Google can come in and make an algorithm change and wipe out all our gains temporarily, or Apple to come out with a Facebook issue and change your cost per lead and take away all the work we've done for the last three years of grooming your account, you know, or your history is going to go away or your reporting is going to have to wait an extra week now because we need attribution to settle down and get you the right numbers. Like, if you're a business owner, you're probably thinking what the hell is going on? So yeah, that but that's what it is, we've had to be really good with our clients, and just be honest, and say: "This is what's happening. It's not your fault. It's not our fault. And it's not even Facebook's fault or Apple's fault." This is digital marketing. And it's, you know, it never stops, and it always changes and you just have to continually invest in an operational sense that you have to keep going with it. Are you guys seeing that with your clients to where it's just, you know, people could say, like, you know, why is this different, you know? What happened, you know? Why is it this way, you know?

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, I think, you know, the biggest way was then with the update, but then again, we tried to let people know that there's going to be a change, we didn't know how big but obviously, we expected it. I mean, there are some clients that can still feel a bit of a shakeup, that are affected from. It's probably the clients that didn't have the budget to deploy everything that they were doing in a coordinated way. So for example, on more accounts, and they were kind of like taking one and then the other and they didn't have real-time data on all platforms to readjust spend or budgets, and then they kind of had to with us, to try to wing it until we got a glimpse of it and really the essence. But now everything seems to be much better. I think people got accustomed to the new world of marketing, let's say. And I think it's all going well. I mean, obviously, as you mentioned in terms of Facebook. Sorry, there is a bit of noise. One second. Okay, so Andre, when you edit, please, if you can cut out this little bit here. Because we have the video editing. Okay, so yeah, everything has to be everything seems to get much better now. So yeah, we're looking forward to the Black Friday time, and then Christmas. And I feel the platform also tries to, you know, strip out these reporting elements, and the algorithm is not great. But at the same time, I think they're doing their best to try to adapt. In the end, this is where they get the money from.

 

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah, I mean, they have to, right? I mean, I've heard of reading that Facebook is feverishly working on a different way to track conversions, that's going to be more future proof. You know, but we have another layer of issue, you know, when specified on the recruitment side, because we fall into what's known as a special category. So these special categories are obviously things like for those of your audience who don't know, think when you're in a market, like, for example, finance, or employment, or just there's like three or four other things that go into the special category. And I don't know if it's that way, I imagined it's that way overseas as well. But no, it's that way. Yes. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, it is.

 

Oliver Feakins  

So the idea being, you know, if I was going to put up a job to recruit somebody, and I said, the only people that can apply are between the ages of 15-30 that live in these neighbourhoods, that are these this segment ethnicity, that would not fly, right, we'd be flagged as discrimination and rightfully so. So the government came out here and that Facebook made the change saying, you know, if you're recruiting you have, you know, zero targeting and essentially, you know, you can try to target to a profession, but not all professions are representative and Facebook's options, right. So, you know, sometimes you have to pick something close and then essentially you would let the cookie or let the tracking, go through the learning process and optimise the conversions based on that, right? So essentially, in a special ad category, you're giving Facebook a jumpstart into the first level of this. But then you have to wait and be patient and let Facebook work through the learning phase of optimising conversions, you know, based on your performance. So the problem with this is that Facebook's targeting sucks. It's not as good as it used to be and the other problem is that they're not transparent with any data, right? So you can't even tell what Facebook is doing in certain cases. Not enough to me when you're in it. Like, for example, us being in a, I give you an example. One of our job sites is in nursing, right? So there are different types of nurses, RNs, LPNs. These are the difference between like the four-year degree nurses have the one or two-year degree nurses, they have very different skill sets, the demand is also much higher for the RNs registered nurses are, I would say, the real nurses, but like the ones that you know, the more senior and the LPN or the more junior, well, when you're targeting nursing on Facebook, Facebook doesn't give you the targeting options to target based on that - it's all nurses. It's too broad and too generic. But that's their only option, the only option they give you, right?

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah.

 

Oliver Feakins  

But the problem that we have, and we've been fighting Facebook on is that we are, you know, we're converting nurses, but they're, you know, LPNs nurses aides, they're not like the regular, you know, high-level nurses, right? And there's, you know, we can do look like audiences, we've tried that, but Facebook still can't disseminate the difference between these types of nurses. They're having a real hard time with it. So one of the things we're going to do is actually, you know, we're saying, okay, Facebook, you're giving us zero transparency, and you're getting us zero control and everything you're doing is tied to a conversion firing, right to be able to match a conversion. So we're going to play that game. So we actually have started, for example, when somebody comes on our job site and fills out a job, and they're an RN, for example, we actually send them to a different page as a "Thank you page" and we only put the conversion tracking on that page. So now, Facebook is only receiving, you know, signals back from that type so they can refine that algorithm. So even if someone would come in and convert and they weren't an RN, they would, it wouldn't, it would convert on our site, but it would not, it would be you know, not a fraudulent click, but it wouldn't be a targeted clinic wouldn't be a targeted conversion. So we're starting to experiment a little bit with how to train Facebook's algorithm a little bit better within this employment category and within the line of remarketing and things like that, to try and see if we can train the algorithm and then again, mixing up different ad creatives, different mediums. There are different exposures and different distribution networks applied to them. So testing is huge like I can't, you know, I have to let you know how it works. But it's uh, but this is crazy. We never had to do this two years ago, it was so much simpler.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah. And also, now you need far bigger budgets to execute something like what you just mentioned,

 

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah,

 

Andrei Tiu  

rather than just, you know, getting those 50 conversions in seven days or 30 days, with a, you know, like, kind of relatively smaller budget, definitely smaller than one required to, you know, filter out the convergence and go through the journey that you mentioned just now.

 

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah. And even just, you know, the seasonality and the changes, right. So we saw a lot of people swim to Google, when Facebook had these issues with salad mat, and not a mass exodus from Facebook, but a lot of people hanging up Facebook for a little bit, because they just weren't seeing the results and Google became more competitive, once Facebook started getting a higher cost per acquisition, right? So we saw that attribute to the higher costs of the auction within Google, therefore, also translating the higher cost per lead, but sometimes still better than Facebook. So there's just a lot. So that I guess this goes to why you really need an agency, you know, if you're, so if you're a startup company, right, and you're, you know, I speak to a lot of people all day, they're like, I'm doing this myself, I'm doing well. And yeah, you may get conversions, but you don't know-how, how well you're doing. I mean, we do a lot in recruitment, right? So we know what are our campaigns produce that and we work with companies in the industry that are spending, you know, 15-20 times the cost per acquisition that we get in the same channel, and they think they're doing fantastic. So it's, you know, we almost don't want to tell them what we're doing because it'll make them feel bad. But we, you know, you have to have the experience and you know, an agency like yourselves or us, I mean, you have to you just have to be in it all the time, you have to be.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay, so now, since we are… I'm really glad that we discuss all these issues because I think if we just told people that you really need to be cautious, maybe it wouldn't have waited for that much in the argument of why. So it's good that we may be brought these issues upfront. And now if we were to think about the person that is trying to organise their marketing efforts for the coming months, and maybe they don't have a large budget, and now to filter out even more because you mentioned the split between B2B and B2C. And I think at least from what I see in the market, there's a lot of B2C tech platforms that have gained momentum from platforms to, you know, selling eco-bio groceries to, you know, you name it, it's pretty easy to launch a platform nowadays. So or an online store, because it's still a tech product. It's B2B, B2C sorry. Yeah, I mean, yeah, let's not even go there. But let's say, you know, a software product that is B2C. What would you be your three points or three pieces of advice that you'd give an entrepreneur or a marketing manager in a space like this to look for when planning for next year?

 

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah, so I would definitely, so I would kind of, I tend to look at things in buckets because it's easier for me, it's easy to organise them in my mind from a sense of strategy than it is to kind of put this into one bucket of marketing, right? So I would tend to look at things like, you know, long term marketing, short term marketing, and also new sales versus recurring sales, right? So, you know, because they would have different strategies and different tactics and mediums, you know, long term, you know, you got to put SEO on play there, you can't really put SEO as a short term. You'll see short term gains, but it's really a long term endeavour, it's something especially if you're in a really complicated niche, it's gonna it could take you years. And to be honest, a good SEO firm would tell you that at some point, it's not even worth it, you know, if you, you know, we have we had somebody that came to us a couple of years ago, and they wanted to rank number one for skincare. And that was their, you know, pet term, and it doesn't matter what budget, they come to the table if they're not going to do it, you know, not, not within a couple of years. I mean, they're 10 years behind, you know, the biggest companies and billionaire brands, you know, have been doing that there's just there's, you know, so we tried to get them to focus on some more meaty middle type of keywords and longtail keywords to social short games. We call it a vanity metric, where a vanity metric for us is when the owner of the company just wants to tell his friends that he ranks for skincare, but doesn't really care how much it cost to get in there, or what business impact it has. So you know, we ended up not being a good fit, because we're just not gonna lie to anybody. But, you know, SEO is a great long term instructor you got to be in it for the long term, they got to go with the algorithm updates the changes, under that you're gonna be producing a lot of content and online PR that you can also recycle into your social campaigns. You know, pay per click, paid social, I love as a short term. I also like to do it before I do SEO, I like to do paid search and social first, specifically paid search because I get real-time, kind of real-time… What's the word I'm looking to validate?

 

Andrei Tiu  

Feel?

 

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah, real-time data, but real-time validation, on my keywords, my ad copy, my click-through rate. So I can actually start experimenting with things like a click-through rate right on an ad, I can have several ads targeted, and I can find out which ones produce better. Well, guess what those become my meta tags, or get my men and title tags on my website when I do my SEO because I have proven that I can optimise that that language for SEO keywords. But I've now done real-time experimenting to find which one has a better click-through rate. Again, as CEOs and internet marketers, sometimes they focus so much on the shiny things in front of them, they forget to look at all of it, right? So what's if I rank for number one on whatever term right I'm getting, I'm showing in front of millions of searches, but my click-through rate is half of what it could be, I'm losing half the amount of traffic and that you know, 1% click-through rate with 2% click-through rate on a head term that brings in hundreds of 1000s of clicks. That's a lot that could result in millions of dollars worth of sales. So from an SEO perspective, taking it a full stack of full-funnel, and really, you know, going from there using paid search and social and really experimenting there, I tend to bring content marketing at this point as well because I need it for SEO, I need it for paid search and social and I'll typically try to produce a content calendar with that mirrors all of them together so that they're all kind of talking about the same thing it's not kind of a schizophrenic type of like content strategy where it doesn't make sense together right? And they should all be pushing kind of what your goals are for that time frame. So Search Social PPC definitely rolling out with those and I would say also you know a lot of people there are startups are so focused on getting the sale. They sometimes again shiny object they forget to focus on you know, keeping the sale, upselling the sale, referring other people from the sale so having things like you know retargeting, good Account-Based Marketing where you're going out using things like email or social you know, retargeting throughout the social networks to get people to upgrade upsell keep them going and things like that cross-sell amongst other products, you know, things they left in the cart, that kind of thing if you're talking eCommerce, and so those are the things I would really work on for starting up, you know, content SEO, PPC and retargeting, things like that. I mean, those are my go-to is for those.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Love it, super cool! And also two things that I would mention and you can you know, you can argue with them if you feel like you don't agree. One of them would be there's nothing wrong with because we saw people that, then you'll see Google ads, for example, and SEO as not complementary, but rather having to choose from, from the two, one is nothing wrong with actually, it's good to have the two done in parallel because one serves, as you mentioned, in terms of buckets, the short term goals, and the information and data gathering while as the other one is a medium to long term activity. So you can you probably should do both in parallel, so…

 

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah, they also it's kind of saturate that first page of Google, right? Now you're taking up double the amount of space, you're pushing competitors down. And we know the click distribution from the top of the Google search results to the bottom right. We know that you know, once you get past page, you know, you know, position 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, so to speak, you know, it shrinks, right? So if you can get top positioning and a PPC positioning, you're really capitalising on a lot, but I would also just throw in the SEO stuff, too. You know, there's a lot more now than just ranking right. We got featured snippets, Rich Snippets, we have ads, we have, you know, videos, we have rich media, universal search, we have so many different ways to show up in Google right now. So SEO has kind of turned from this, like, we just want to rank number one. And I keep telling clients like, that's, you know, what way and not only that, but you have personalization, right? So I would say you want to rank number one, and whose search results like, you know, everything is so personalised right now. So, you know, we tend to look at things like page metrics over ranking and vanity metrics, just because it's a better conversation framing to have. Is more in line with goals. But I can't help it. Everybody still wants to talk about rankings, you know, it will never go away.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Time will come, time will come. Yeah, and the second one was with content marketing, very on point, to what you mentioned, and the way that I feel about it is that, because we can't really plan long term, what we tend to advise is to have an integrated content plan, but rather than having it for the full year, let's say for the fall of 2022, rather try to focus on quarters, maybe and then monthly plans, right? I mean, do you agree with this?

 

Oliver Feakins  

Absolutely. Because, you know, with especially with doing that you allow you if you've planned too long again, especially in COVID right now, the markets shifting so much, we need to allow your time, that time flexibility, but also being kind of nimble, and agile allows you to take advantage of opportunities, like a tactic called newsjacking, right newsjacking for us. If we find something in the news that we can bring our clients products to and take advantage of those searches, that's something we can spend together really quickly. So keep it short, like that allows you to you know, as I say here, roll with the punches.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice, nice, nice. Oliver, this was great to have you here on the show really, really enjoyed our conversation. 

 

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah, me too.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Tell us where can people find you? Or how people find support with you or with your companies.

Oliver Feakins   

Yeah, so right now you can check out our agency offering which is trustedsearchmarketing.com. I can check out our other portfolio brands over at TrackFive that's T R A C K F I V E.com and Oliver Feakins - you can find me on LinkedIn. Feel free to link with me, shoot me any information or any questions you have, I’ll be happy to answer them. So yeah, that's it.

 

Andrei Tiu  

I love it. Awesome. Oliver. Again. Thank you so much. This was a very, very nice conversation. Looking forward to you guys tuning in today, hearing your thoughts, comments, sharing your insights, if you have any or if you agree or not with us, let us know what are your thoughts, all of them are welcome. And as always, if you have any ideas or things that you'd like us to focus on, maybe even together in a future episode, let us know you can email us at hello@marketiu.com. Or just post in the comments on YouTube if you watch this on YouTube or otherwise, you know, any way possible you can LinkedIn me, LinkedIn with Oliver, and maybe we can sort something out to serve better your needs. Until then - best of luck with everything. Oliver, thank you so much again for being on the show.

 

Oliver Feakins  

Thank you so much!

 

Andrei Tiu  

I look forward to hopefully meeting you in person someday, in America or the UK.

 

Oliver Feakins  

Will see. Have you ever been, do you get to come to the SEO conferences over here at all? I guess now they're shut down, but.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, no, I haven't had the chance yet. I was planning a problem. I mean, previously, I was staying for this year, but now I think it probably will be next year. I saw America is now open. So hopefully it will stay like that.

 

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah, they're starting to bring conferences back so slowly. But uh, but yeah, but there are some good ones like Traffic and Conversion Conference. There's obviously like SMX, SCS. The mas conferences are great. I mean, there's, we've got some fantastic so offerings over here. So definitely anyone who's interested check them out. I mean, there's, you know, try to find one in Las Vegas. You know, it's a fun place to go. So I guess. That's my recommendation. You may not go to the conference, but you will have fun you know, so.

 

Andrei Tiu  

I just have to get it.

 

Oliver Feakins  

Yes, yes. Great.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Cool. Thank you so much, Oliver. Have an awesome day. And you guys as well for tuning in today. See you on the next episode.

 

Oliver Feakins  

See you!

The role of marketing in preparing a company for valuation / exit [Kylon Gienger]

Join Andrei and our guest on today’s episode, Kylon Gienger, as they will be discussing the role great marketing plays in preparing the company for evaluation or/and exit. Kylon is a serial entrepreneur, podcast host and president of Acquira. Kylon’s mission is to build and lead something monumental that increases the quality of life of millions of people. 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 ​​𝐊𝐲𝐥𝐨𝐧 : 

𝑊𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒:  https://acquira.com/

𝐾𝑦𝑙𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝐼𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylongienger/ 

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐢:

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢: https://marketiu.com  / https://marketiu.ro   

𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑖 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/  

𝐸𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙 𝑎𝑡 hello@marketiu.ro

 

𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦:

▶️Watch the episode on YouTube: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-YouTube 

▶️ Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show 

▶️ Podbean: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Podbean 

▶️ Spotify: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Spotify 

▶️ Deezer: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Deezer 

▶️ Stitcher: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Stitcher 

▶️ Castbox: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Castbox 

 

Episode transcript:

 

Andrei Tiu  

Hi there, this is Andrei and you are on The Marketing Innovation Podcast Show. Our special guest today is Kylon Gienger, serial entrepreneur, podcast host and president of Acquira. Today we'll discuss the role great marketing plays in preparing the company for evaluation or/and exit. So without further ado, Kylon, and it's a pleasure to have you here on the show. How are you? How's your morning going? Let's crack on.

 

Kylon Gienger  

Thanks for having me, Andrei. I'm doing good. It's early here. I'm located in Montana, USA. It's very cold outside. We're starting to get some snow woke up early for this. And I'm stoked, man. Let's do it.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Appreciate it. Appreciate it. Did you have your coffee, yet?

 

Kylon Gienger  

Uh, no. I'm drinking decaf these days. Because we're trying to get away from caffeine for a month or two. See how it goes on a week, two weeks into that. And so so far, so good. Okay, decaf coffee is kind of the Saviour there.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Well, you know what they say the first week or two are the hardest right to cut down on caffeine that you shouldn't be?

 

Kylon Gienger  

Yeah, fortunately, it wasn't that I think it's worse for some people than I had maybe a couple of nights where I kind of woke up with a headache. Besides that, no massive effects. But it feels good to have the self-discipline to be of something you've been on for years for some time that I'm 100% going back, altering caffeine again.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Cool, cool. Okay, so interesting stuff, interesting times, we have a very interesting subject today, as well. And I'm really looking forward to the stories because I know you have quite a few that will go through. I think just for people so you know because we do this in the audio and video format as well. And some people research more than others, I think let's just make it easy for everybody tuning in today, to let them know a bit of your background, who are you really and what you do. And then we can go into subjects and discuss strategies and all that jazz.

 

Kylon Gienger  

Let's do it, man. To me, I'm a jack of all trades, master of a few. I've done a lot of things in the last - I'm 32 years old - I've done a lot of things in the last little over a decade, I was in the military, I got out of the Navy in 2012 and promptly started a residential commercial painting company with a really good friend of mine. The first business I ever started, just wanted to cut my teeth, didn't want to work for anybody else and thought, hey, we'll try this thing. So I gave him 1000 bucks, we bought a van, we started hitting the road knocking on doors trying to paint houses that quickly grew to we had operations in six different states and learn how to hire and manage employees and also not manage employees, there's plenty of mistakes there almost went bankrupt at one point. Through the course of building that business built a couple of other brick and mortar retail businesses got into the house flipping game, I started a podcast called 'Successful drop out' that you know, grew quite popular, learned a bunch of different marketing stuff there, you know how to kind of niche down be a big fish in a little pond and stuff like that. That worked pretty well for me. That eventually transitioned to be working with one of the first guests I had on that podcast, who bought businesses. And that led to eventually over the next three, four years to acquire, I learned a lot about buying businesses, instead of starting from scratch as I have been, and how to identify great businesses and businesses that had great marketing or a lack of marketing that we knew we could add a lot of value to, post-acquisition. And that leads me to where I'm at today. Now I work with Acquira as part of the founding team there. And in a nutshell, we help people buy businesses instead of starting them. So I mentioned house flipping before, I imagine a lot of your listeners are probably familiar with the concept of house flipping, you buy something, you fix it up, you turn around and sell for more than you paid for it or you hold on to it, let it cash flow. We're talking about the same thing here when it comes to business buying just with businesses, which is a little bit more complex all around. But is, especially here in the US, a fast-growing interest among the entrepreneurial community we call the people we work with acquisition entrepreneurs, as opposed to startup entrepreneurs, which everybody's kind of familiar with. So that is me and what I do any kind of background in a nutshell there.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice. Cool. So how'd you get into acquiring and how did you change your perspective from starting businesses and growing them, you know, the way that you have done before, versus you know, figuring out there is an opportunity there to first of all to search for businesses that will be good to buy opportunities. And a question here is: How do you find them? And then of course, how to develop a business around that and to leverage your opportunity.

 

Kylon Gienger  

So how do you find you're going? How do you how do we kind of find these businesses to buy? Or how do people discover business buying?

 

Andrei Tiu  

Let's start with: What made you discover this opportunity, you know, like, make the switch from funding the business and growing it to getting something that is already set up?

 

Kylon Gienger  

Yeah, good question. I mean, again, the very first guest I ever had on the first podcast, I started business, right, I remember I was so nervous, I'd never interviewed anybody before I chugged a glass of wine beforehand, we had a fantastic conversation and hit it off. And it was a year and a half later, or something, he connected with me and said, Hey, come join me in what I'm doing. I'm buying these at that point, we were buying online businesses, content, websites, e-commerce, SAS, stuff like that. And I quickly realised, Hey, I've been doing this business, starting a business from the scratch game for a while. And here, I can find really great depth, leverage and ways to buy these companies and step right into an existing customer base cash flow, and the returns are much greater and come much faster than if I'm starting something from scratch. I don't have to spend the first two, three years blood, sweat and tears trying to build a customer base from scratch, build a product from scratch and prove the market raise funding. It feels like ethical cheating, you know, in a way, you're sort of cutting in line in the process of owning a profitable business and being working for yourself, right being kind of the master of your own destiny there. So, and a lot of people I think are discovering the same thing here. Particularly in the US, we have an entire generation that we call baby boomers that are reaching retirement age. It's millions of people here in the US. And the majority of small businesses here in the US are owned by this age group. And they're quite literally the backbone of the economy. And we're talking everything from online, SAS companies that were started a decade or two ago to really boring brick and mortar businesses like bat companies, plumbing companies, roofing companies, these are all owned by folks that are reaching retirement age. So quite literally, we have trillions of dollars worth of small business assets that over the next decade are needing to switch hands, or they will cease to exist, they'll just be shut down, they'll die. And they employ millions and millions of people, like I said, the backbone of the economy. So we have a lot of supply over the next decade-plus coming down the pipeline here. And one thing that Acquira is trying to do is raise a lot of awareness that, Hey, you want to own your own business, think about buying one stuff, starting one. And when we started out, definitely big fish in a smaller pond. Not a lot of people had heard about it. But these days, people are starting to catch on to this idea of acquisition entrepreneurship, and that's what we exist to. But oftentimes they don't have the capital, or the knowledge or skill set to tackle buying a seven-figure business by themselves. And that's where we come in.

 

Andrei Tiu  

I see. Okay, so discovered this market through your first podcast guests. And then when business, what are you exactly doing with Acquira right now. So just for everybody to know exactly how you come into the process of, you know, a business wanting to be invested into or sold to either a private investor or company. How do you guys work with, in this case, small to medium-sized businesses?

 

Kylon Gienger  

So at its core, I would say Acquira is an investment fund and an accelerator for business buyers. So if anybody listening is familiar with the concept of the company Y Combinator, they're an accelerator for startups and startup entrepreneurs, you get into their programme with an idea, they help you prove that idea. They fund you the launching pad for starting your startup, right? We're very much the same thing. But we're a launching pad and an investment fund for buying your first business. And how we help is we're training, we're very good at training. We're also very good at digital marketing, which means we can get a hold of a lot of people that are wanting to sell their business and also attract a lot of people that want to buy these businesses, aka you know me on this podcast is one, one way of attracting people through our funnel to help them buy a business right. We're also very good at trading. So we bought a lot of businesses ourselves. We understand on a deep level every part of the process of buying a business which broadly speaking is first you got to know what you're looking for. We call it your investment thesis. There's a lot of different businesses out there are a lot of different industries. Each business no business is the same every business is absolutely unique. To me, it's like getting to know a new person when I approach buying a new business. Each business has a personality that got to kind of dig in. There's a lot of different facets and nuances to understand there. So define what you're looking for. So you can kind of sort through the mess and qualify and disqualify fast, you know, the next step is to actually then find the business to buy sourcing. Where do you look? Who do you talk to? After you find a business that's intriguing,  how do you know it's actually a good business to buy, and it's not going to bite you in the ass after you put $100,000 on the line? So there's diligence there to think about. There's a legal aspect to it, there's a very, very heavy people aspect to it. After all, all the businesses at the end of the day, it's a collection of people working towards a kind of a common goal and rowing in the same direction working in unison. So you're talking to sellers, you're talking to brokers, you're talking to lawyers, there's financing, not everybody has, that the types of businesses we buy, they're larger, the smallest business we buy might be worth 1.5 million. Nobody has just 1.5 million sitting in a bank account. Well, some people do, but very few people do. Especially if they're smart with their money. They've got it. So how do you find the money to buy these businesses and leverage them right? And kind of have that capital stack correct? So and then anybody can buy a business? But once you buy one, how do you then operate it? How do you optimise operations so it runs smoothly? And then how do you grow it? Right? And how do you think about marketing and a lot of businesses we buy, have almost zero marketing. So these are all things we know very well, we have the training, we have vendors around them, you know, we have legal, legal folks diligence folks that we connect with, we've got well-packaged training that kind of outlines every step of the process. So that's where we come to help folks that are looking for businesses. On the flip side, we do have marketing funnels and landing pages, stuff like that, for folks that are looking to sell their business. But we're experienced in helping coach those folks on how to prepare their business for sale. But for the most part, we're very focused on the buyers, as far as if we're talking marketing, how our funnel is built, and our business works.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay. So here, I see, we have two categories of stakeholders or stakeholder groups, if you want, that I know our listeners would be falling within. So that one would be the entrepreneur - potentially the investor, in this case, that would potentially want to acquire a new business, and then the Marketing Pro, which will be the person that is responsible for the marketing department. And now in a way what you do as well, to ensure that the company has a sustainable approach to this sector, and you know, just helping the company grow for marketing. Since this would be more of what we have discussed. So far, I think, not not the last one. But the first thing which will be, you know, acquiring companies and this stuff. Let's focus a bit more on this so we can get to some actionable insights. And to build a context around the bit further. This is also very interesting, you know, just from a curiosity point of view, I think this is a very fruitful conversation. And the question that I have here, personally, but I think it's relevant to many is how do you find businesses to purchase? Or where are these folks that want to sell their businesses? How do you guys go about it?

 

Kylon Gienger  

So again, I'm going to be really talking from the perspective of somebody either based in the US looking to buy a business or looking to buy a business in the US, because that's where the majority of our experience is, and it's interesting, I don't quite understand the business buying scene in the rest of the world. I just haven't a lot of focus on looking in on it. But I know for a fact that in the United States, there is a unique large supply of these businesses to buy. And a lot of that has to do with this generation of baby boomers retiring, right. So if you're looking for business in the US, right, in terms of sourcing these deals, there are two routes you can go broadly speaking. There's on market sourcing. So through brokers, people, you know, third parties that have lifted these businesses and there's off-market sourcing, which is you connecting directly with business owners and asking them: would you like to sell your business? Figuring all that out yourself. We focus a lot on both. We have a lot of experience with both in terms of on market sourcing. There's a lot of business brokers out there. Since business buying is a new space. The business broker space is not well consolidated or standardised. They're just small Business Brokers are some large firms and stuff, for the most part, a lot of small, small firms are dotted everywhere, each has their own approach to finding and listing these businesses for you the prospective buyer to look at doing diligence, stuff like that. Not all are created equal. Some are great, some are bad. A lot of the businesses they list are found through a website called bizbuysell.com, which if folks are familiar with zillow.com, and what that is too real estate bizbuysell.com is for businesses for sale. So you can go to bizbuysell.com right now and see hundreds and hundreds, 1000s of businesses for sale, all different types, right. And most of these are listed through brokers. Brokers are incentivized by getting their fees at the end of the day. So they'll do a certain amount of diligence. They'll have prospectuses basically large PDFs they put together on here's what this business is earning and the risks and the opportunities for growth. Take all that with a grain of salt, you need to do your own diligence, right? Off-market deals, this is a little bit trickier. And we can coach people through this but if you like cold calling, this is essentially where you're calling up or hiring somebody to call up businesses and ask them Hey, do you want to sell your business? and the benefit there is you're not going through a broker you can connect directly with the seller, you can often even negotiate a better deal get a little bit more creative, stuff like that. But the con, the downside is you're doing a lot of education and you have to be good with people. But often sellers think their business is worth 10 times revenue, a right which in reality, it's maybe worth three to four times their seller discretionary earnings, SDE we call it or what they're actually taking home. Or, you know, another close proxy is like the net profit of the business. So there's a lot of education there. Oftentimes, these small businesses, could be multimillion-dollar businesses earning a couple of million dollars a year, but highly, highly disorganised and under optimised, you know, zero technology in the business, no marketing, finance is done on the back of a napkin. So having to sort through all of that and understand it is a chore by itself. So those are kind of the two approaches. And we can help coach people through that. And you want to do, again, there are some boxes you want to tick when you're first looking at these businesses. You don't want to buy or engage with a business or spend too much time looking at a business that has some very large red or black flags, we call them which are deal-killers, things that just make it extremely unattractive. And it's just going to bite you in the butt after you buy it, right.

 

Andrei Tiu  

So you mentioned there, the way that you look at valuating a business and I think I'm very aware that this is a very broad spectre of, you know, like, what things should you take into consideration when you try to put a value on your business, there are a number of ways I can beat that and what you mentioned there as well with, uh, you know, actual earnings that you take home, so the net profits and multipliers, but would you have some examples of certain business that was coming up for sale and the way that you were thinking of its valuation, in terms of things that you were considering. And, you know, maybe numbers as well, when it came to revenue versus profits and number of people in the team, accreditations and certifications, stuff like that.

 

Kylon Gienger  

Yeah, valuation is always a very nuanced subject. It's an art and a science, right? At the end of the day, the business businesses value is what the seller agrees to sell it for, and the buyer agrees to buy it for. Right. But having said that, I will say the majority of the types of businesses we target just to give folks some quick context, we generally they're doing over 500k per year. And this means they have anywhere from, you know, eight to could be 25, 30 employees, 60 employees, if they're doing more like one to 2 million in EBIT the per year, and you know, 10 to 15 million in revenue. The industries that we operate a lot in these days is home services. And I can go into why that is but things like plumbing companies back up, I bought an a plumbing company here in Montana. That's why I'm here, back in because almost six months ago now - roofing companies, the sort of steady stable businesses that are really recession proof, urgent, active problems that customers need, and while we seem to pay for it, the plumbing in your house is your most used utility probably and people take it for granted. But if your toilets broken or your your faucets not working or a pipe is leaking in your house, you will call somebody out there to fix it and you will pay that person to fix it. Even if you have a vacation coming up or other discretionary spending you want you have to get that that urgent act of problem fix. So that's why we like these businesses. More often than not when it comes to valuation. We're buying those businesses at between two and a half to five multiple of that yearly EBITDA. So it's earning a million dollars a year, you're probably buying it for somewhere in the neighbourhood of three $4 million. Right? If it's earning the owner about a million dollars a year. Now, there's all sorts of factors that go into that. How risky is the business or how turnkey is the business is it running really well does have a lot of systems in place, good marketing, is it on a growth trajectory, then it's going to be valued at probably a little bit higher on that multiple scale. If it's a, if it's a little bit risky, it could be valued a little bit lower. Or there's a there are ways it still could be valued higher, but maybe you're looking for ways to mitigate some of that risk directly into the deal structure. So for example, we've had some deals where they have some large customer concentration, right, and this is part of our diligence process, one thing we want to look for is, Where's all this revenue coming from, if more than 30% of revenue is coming from a single customer, that's a red flag, potentially a black flag,  because you have a large single point of failure, that customer goes away, that relationship goes away, the business is cut by 30%, all of a sudden, so something like that makes us a little bit nervous, you could argue that values the business a little bit lower, but the seller might not think so. So maybe another approach. And this is again, where the art of nuance comes in, would be to mitigate that risk straight into the deal structure through what we call earnouts, which is you just take a portion of the purchase price, if you're buying that business for a million dollars, say to mitigate that rescue say but I'll pay you 200,000 of that in a year after we buy it assuming the business continues hitting these certain benchmarks, right. And so that and if it doesn't, because maybe these risk factors are activated and business tanks a bit you don't get that out. So that's some ways to think about it again, a subject we could discuss at length for a very long time and every deal is different as part of you know, the art of the deal, right? The art of negotiation. But that's some quick context for folks. Not saying that you know, two to kind of four or five, multiple of EBITDA is pretty common for businesses earning 500k to 2 million in EBITDA per year, and here in the US right now.

 

Andrei Tiu  

So that would be total profits, the stakeholder’s salaries plus dividends, just for the people that don't know what EBITDA is.

 

Kylon Gienger  

Correct. There's, there's a thing called add-backs, right like that owner, often they could pay, they could pay themselves inflated salaries, maybe they're paying himself a 200k salary per year, right. And so that's taken away from the EBITDA on their books, but when they're going to sell it, they may add back and they brought probably rightfully so they would add back 100,000 of that salary back to the profit of their company. Because a new owner, if you're gonna step in and hire a general manager or something, you probably won't need to pay him 200k if you put maybe 100 - 120k per year. So there are even ways in which when these sellers go to sell their business, they are adding back certain expenses that a new owner would not have to incur moving forward, which inflates that EBITDA as well. And you do have to watch those. As somebody's stepping into the business, not every expense they're trying to add back is justified, it might be actually a necessary expense moving forward like I've seen sellers try to add back. And I'm kind of going off a tangent here. But hopefully, it's helpful. I've seen sellers try to add back certain random bonuses and holiday bonuses and stuff that they give to employees, they try to add that back to the profit of their business to get a higher valuation saying that the new owner won't have to do that it's not necessary to operate the business stuff like that, I would argue against that, right? If the employees are expecting that every year if it's part of the culture part of them staying happy, that's certainly part of operations moving forward. So we're not going to add that back and your business will stay at a slightly lower valuation maybe so there's a lot of stuff to this right. And that's a lot of what we do at Acquira, you're doing the work right this is your deal in our ecosystem, you are taking the action pursuing this thing, but we're there alongside you as sort of your Sherpa up this mountain, you know, of what it takes to acquire a business and we can help you navigate all those complexities.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay, super, this was very insightful. And now let's try to move a bit into the other stakeholder group which will be the marketers. So, there is a certain variation that can happen in terms of the way that the company is being valued, depending on a number of metrics, but marketing and the sustainability of their inbound leads funnel and so on. So the appearance albeit being on a growth trajectory from a marketing standpoint, and their ability to bring in leads that can potentially translate into sales so that they can grow their customer base is certainly one. So, from your experience so far, what are some marketing areas or things that have influenced positively the valuation of a company? And further, what can marketers do to help their company get better valued or be more sustainable from that front?

 

Kylon Gienger  

Yeah, so if you own a business, and you wanted to make it more valuable from the standpoint of marketing, and again, the best context I have is in these home services, brick and mortar businesses where buying and marketing might look a little bit different there as opposed to marketing on a blog, or E-commerce or any kind of digital property right. In here, a lot of that comes from, you know, we've got PPC, we've got SEO, these businesses get a lot of business, just word of mouth by just existing in the local community for, you know, two, three decades. Reviews, customer reviews are massive, when it comes to these businesses, Yelp, Google My Business, Angie's List, are all platforms.  There's a lot of room for optimization there that a lot of folks don't typically focus on- conversion rate optimization on those platforms on your website, you know, having your number right there, at the top, you have calls to action there. A lot of these businesses have websites that go back to the early 2000s. Right. So typically, we're seeing if somebody owns one of these types of businesses, there's always a lot of room for growth and marketing. So if you're a business owner, getting those things shored up first is pretty key, like practice, good SEO be pushing out, you know, at least a couple, you know, good, targeted articles of a month PPC, conversion rate optimization on your website. The thing that immediately comes to mind, though, for a lot of these businesses is with more marketing comes more growth, which means your operations have to change. And that's where we see a breakdown a lot of the time. A lot of the folks that we're buying businesses from don't want the growth that comes along with the marketing because it essentially means that they need to hire and train more people. And as they hire and train more people to do business to handle the growth of the business, they need better and better systems, and they need to run that business and build it like a well-oiled machine. And a lot of people just don't know how to do that. Or because of their age, they're just done there, let the business just sort of hum along and they're willing to sell it for whatever it's worth and go and retire. So that's the other thing to think about. I'd say when it comes to these businesses, we just don't see a lot of great marketing practices. Like I'm currently negotiating with a deal. That is it's a $6 million deal. These folks, they do 14 million a year, they spend 10 - $15,000 a year maybe on their advertising and marketing, their website is from 2002 all their businesses are relational and comes from word of mouth. Now one of the first things I'm going to do and I step in there is work on that marketing. But even that will take some time. And I have to sort of building the operational base up to the point where we can handle the additional business because right now they just don't need it. So I don't feel like that answer was as straightforward as it could have been. Because, again, a lot of the businesses we talked to just don't focus on it.

 

Andrei Tiu  

No worries. It was a very good context building insight. And maybe the question, the question could be put in another way. Do you have situations where you were negotiating a business and you were looking at this marketing department activity, and you were looking at other assets, saying, you know, I know you that if they had, I don't like x social media follower base, or if there were ranking through SEO on top positions for these and XYZ, you know, things that you know, marketing-wise, would be valuable for the business, I would be able to value them at, let's say five, the multiple of five but because they don't have them, I'm able to get their valuation down and to get this business for less, let's say 3.5 or something like that? Knowing that if you apply a certain recipe of success through marketing, then you'd be able to increase the valuation of that business a lot within a short period of time.

 

Kylon Gienger  

Yeah, 100%. Like, look, if you're a business owner, and you're focusing on those things, your social media, you got to be a great PPC campaign out there with proven results and low customer acquisition costs. And you've got SEO humming along. And you're ranking organically for, you know, if somebody types in again, you know, situation: plumber, Missoula, Montana, right, and you're ranking up there on top. That that speaks volumes. And at that point, it's like I was saying earlier, you have a lot much more turnkey business. So the buyer is not going to want to value us more, but you as the seller can certainly have an argument for being valued more, right. This, but again, me as the buyer, I'm also thinking like, it's great you could have, because actually this business that I bought, they were focusing and investing pretty heavily in SEO and PPC about a year ago. But it was basically a waste of money, they were doing a good job at it. But the actual business wasn't set up to serve all the new customers that were calling the phones. Right. So it was they were literally just throwing dollars away, and just marketing to the market. But the business and the operations were just not set up to handle the customers, the extra customers coming in. So as a buyer, that's also something I'm looking at. So you're great at marketing, great. Are you actually taking advantage of those leads you're getting and serving those customers? And is your business set up and your team set up and systems are they optimised to serve those folks so that business can grow as the marketing does? So I'm looking at that too. And those things just need to go hand in hand together. And that's more often the case with again, businesses we're experienced in which are brick and mortar, physical businesses. With online businesses, it can be a little bit different story, if you're selling digital products, right, you don't need a massive operations team to bring in a lot of new customers and make money.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay, cool. Yeah, this is interesting. So basically, to sort of getting into an actionable point or a conclusion for, you know, the marketing leader that is out here looking or listening to the podcast would be, certainly make sure that you know, the targets when it comes to marketing to fulfil the capacity of your business right now. So you know, your numbers, and you're able to get there for a scalable model of maybe lead generation or you tackle the SEO bit so that when, let's say operations changed, and maybe you get new colleagues or the management changes a bit, you as a marketer would be able to bring in leads to fulfil the need for those new clients so that you can fill up the roles. And then for the entrepreneurs/business owner, if you're looking at selling your business, certainly make sure that you know, you have your operations in place and everything clear. And also you can I mean, you can use marketing to ask for a higher price or valuation. Because you know, you can use that to your benefit, right? 

 

Kylon Gienger  

Yep, that's exactly it. Yeah, well said

 

Andrei Tiu  

Super. Okay. So I know you have a mental model, you've implemented into your life. Tell us about this mental model and how it's impacting you and the business.

 

Kylon Gienger  

I've got a few I could probably, I could probably go through if you want. I like mental models a lot. Think about them a lot. There's several, you know, there's the kind of 80/20 mental model. For Pareto Principle, right? That 20% of the work you're doing typically gets you 80% of the results or at it's the other way around, like 80% of the results you get can kind of be traced back to 20% of the work you're doing. So that's one in a nutshell. When it comes to creativity, you know, as an entrepreneur, you're always needing to bethink creatively, right? And often people think that to be creative, you need to have no constraints, the world's your oyster, you can kind of think of do build, create anything you want. I like to put in place creative constraints as sort of a mental model mental hack to create a trigger to creativity. So for example, don't just say I want to start a business, right, that's too broad and you'll be slow to make progress. Instead, give yourself several constraints. Like I want to start a business but it should only cost me $1,000, my timeline is three months. And in three months, it should be earning me, you know, 3000 per month and only take me three days per week of my time. And the business, the product needs to start with a P or something. These types of creative constraints will actually help you be a lot more efficient in coming up with a creative solution than if you have zero constraints so that's certainly another one. There's another concept I like to use I think it's helpful for marketers as well when you're testing new things - it's a concept from Jim Collins, if you've ever read any of his books would be great, Built to last, Fall of Giants, I'd highly recommend those but because the bullets and cannibals basically and it's sort of like the concept of minimum viable product as well. But if you have an endeavour or something you're wanting to test, right, he says fire bullets first, right and these are low risk, low-cost actions basically to take to test your theory. And once you start hitting the mark with those, you can then fire cannonballs, which are the higher risk, higher cost things to actually make this a reality. So I find myself constantly using that as well. So those are a few that are kind of up in my head that I use on an almost daily basis.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice. And also going to so we are now stepping away a bit from this very numbers-oriented discussions, you know, on business valuation and marketing and the first part of our conversation and going a bit softer now into you know, the sort of the mental models that you have discussed, which I very much agree to, I think that they are always great to take into consideration in your day to day life, you guys listening to as well, because this can very much ease your job, or guard you against investing heavily into stuff that you're not very sure is gonna work. Kylon, I know, you are looking at the company culture a lot. And one question that I had for our discussion today was how do you understand the company culture? And what are the ways in which you can establish and control a healthy work environment, from your experience with different companies that you have been working with so far?

 

Kylon Gienger  

Yeah, I like this subject a lot - the subject of culture. And it's certainly part of the art part of due diligence, when you're looking at a business, one of the scariest things in terms of buying a business is stepping into a business with an unhealthy culture. Because that can actually be it's just a bunch of people problems that can actually be very hard to fix. Without, you know, getting the right the wrong people off the bus and getting the right people on the bus, which is firing and hiring people. And that just takes time to retrain people. It's kind of a nightmare to get into a business that has a really, really unhealthy culture. So there's definitely in the diligence process. There are queues that we look for. One of the first things you can do, for example, is looking at customer reviews. Often customer reviews of the business will tell you a lot about the business's culture, In some reviews, you'll notice or mention certain people or positions in the company that are performing or treating the customer badly. That's always an indicator getting to know the owner of the business is also a big one as well because they're often an extension of whatever that that culture is. But in terms of the there's actually there's a great book out there called - I don't recall the author- but it's called 'The culture code'. If anybody wants to learn more about culture, and actually break down the science of it, I would really recommend that book this author, he interviews and studies, some of the most well known and healthy cultures out in the world, that is they're very productive, including Navy SEALs, the kind of Pixar and Disney creative teams and he, he breaks down what makes these cultures so successful, and the science of it and a few takeaways from there that I've always remembered and apply to the businesses I buy, in terms of building that culture is, first of all, it's under, it's helpful to understand just at its root, the word culture in Latin, it's a verb and it actually means to care. 

 

If you break down what a healthy culture is, right, it breaks down into a kind of three components. There's safety, vulnerability, and hype high purpose. So in terms of safety, a good culture is a place where people feel like they can belong, right? And he talks about these things called belonging cues- a pat on the back or gets a slap on the shoulder or, you know, a fist bump. These environments where you're safe here like this is family, you belong here. There's vulnerability, which is, in a company, oftentimes, it's just being honest about performance, it's the ability to sit down and talk very transparently about what's going right. But also what's going wrong, and how can we fix it, let's talk about our mistakes without attacking each other as people, but let's attack our poor performance in the systems behind that and look at fixing that. So, you know, he talks about Navy SEALs, they have, after-action reports they go out into they do training missions, or they do actual missions. And afterwards, they have after-action reports, which is where they critically break down everything that went right and everything that went wrong, and how that's gonna change what they do moving forward. And I do that now with our technicians out in the field, you know, every week, we have meetings, and we talk what's going right, what's going wrong, what's confused, don't have really transparent discussions about that. And everybody knows they're free to make mistakes, to admit mistakes to work through what went wrong. As long as we can learn from that, there's no judgement, right? And then there's high purpose. People have to live for something bigger than themselves. Everybody's looking for that at a fundamental level, I think including the employees of your business right there. You know, a business you could argue, it's there to make money to serve people or whatever, but what's the higher purpose you can draw out from that business, that's really going to get everybody on board? You know, for us with plumbing company here in Missoula, Montana. I told these guys day one, I said, I want to make this company the most highly sought after plumbing company in the city, I want to be actually one of the most expensive because we're the best, and people know what they're paying for. And I want our technicians to be some of the highest-paid and have some of the highest quality of life, as opposed to all the other plumbing companies in town. And so they're starting to cast this vision. And then we talk a lot about serving the folks in our communities, these guys are like, again, I call them the Navy Seals of plumbers in the area I call them the kind of the firefighters of plumbers in the area. They're coming into folks homes, much like a firefighter, they're having an emergency their basements flooding or something, they don't know what to do, they understand how their plumbing system works. And these guys are coming in fixing it kind of saving the day. So it's turning what's kind of an ordinary boring job into something with a higher purpose that gets them excited and gives them a bit of a vision. So that's another really strong component. And how do you tell that story over and over again, in your marketing, in your internal meetings, in your business systems? So that's sort of a bit of a breakdown on how I think about culture and 'The culture code' is a great book to read.

 

Andrei Tiu  

So birth, thanks for sharing. Sweet. So now as we are preparing to wrap up, I had a number of another couple of questions, specifically to do with your approach to marketing with Acquira and you know your plans for 2022. If you'd like me to share a bit on what you guys are looking for, at the moment, in terms of, you know, your plans for next year, some channels that you are considering for your activity, and then I think we can, it's going to be hard to just draw one or two main action points for each stakeholder group but I think it'd be nice to help people go away or go home with some actionable points that they can think of, or implement straight into their businesses or their approach to business/marketing post this episode. But let's start with what you guys are doing at the moment and what you find interesting or plan to do with their marketing further than your future.

 

Kylon Gienger  

Yeah, sure. I think moving forward, we're looking to do more of what we have been right, which is connecting with more buyers, we've had hundreds of buyers now go through our training we've talked with 1000s. So we want to continue to do that and just provide education to folks looking into buying a business. I think in terms of marketing. A lot of our efforts next year are going to go into connecting with more business sellers. Right. As I said, your first step is finding that business and oftentimes that can be difficult. And when you do find really good businesses, oftentimes you're competing with a lot of other buyers, especially if they're on market deals, through brokers and such they're being marketed. What we're trying to do is connect with more off-market businesses, which means we're building digital marketing funnels to connect with business sellers rank for certain keywords like I want to sell my business or how do I sell my business or how to prepare my business for sale. These are leading to a landing page where we talk them through our process, that we have this whole network of really qualified buyers to buy their business that they don't, they're not going through a broker so they can save on brokerage fees. And the kind of call to action there and how we capture information is through we give them a business valuation a very rough ballpark, and we explain that but we say here, give us your business information. And we have a calculator in the background that spits out a bit of a valuation. And that's how we stay in touch with them. So, you know, early testing on that is going really well. And moving forward, we're hoping to build that funnel up more, so that we already have a strong funnel of buyers coming through if we can get a very robust funnel of sellers coming through those to meet in the middle and Acquira can facilitate that. And so far, that's going pretty well. So that'll be a big focus. As far as actionable advice for some of your entrepreneurs and business owners out there. Look, the advice I have to give where I'm in the trenches right now is buying businesses or talking to people who want to sell their business. And if you already own a business, unless you know for sure you want to keep this thing is it as a general generational business in your family for decades and decades, you should be thinking even from day one on how do you prepare this business for eventual sale, right. Because, if you do it right, you can make a lot of money and use it to retire or start the next, you know, three businesses or something with the proceeds. But people often don't think about this, I talk to sellers every day that have owned these businesses for 30 years, and it's only been in the last six months, they've started thinking about selling this thing, and they've got,  they could have had years to pair it and everything's a mess. So it's simple things like just putting yourself in the position of a brand new owner that may not even know much about the industry may not have run a business like yours, what can you put in place now in your business, that's going to make their job easier, and your business more attractive, which is going to increase the valuation. So it's things like system, like have job descriptions have to have systems for all the different roles and responsibilities and things procedures that are happening in the business document those, organise them well. Do a good job, you know, keeping your books-  have your finances done correctly, and clearly and have all those up to date your tax returns, that's a big one as well. Keep all these things updated, I'd update them every quarter in just a data room somewhere. So you're always prepared. If somebody wants to potentially look at your business to buy it, you can shoot them a link that's been updated within the last quarter last three months. And all your information is right there. Work on your marketing, work on your growth, work on your culture, have a really healthy culture and some great customer service. Again, put yourself in the shoes of a prospective buyer that doesn't know anything about your company. That's looking at it and stepping into it, the more turnkey you can make that business, the higher valuation you're going to have when you want to sell it and start that process. Just please start earlier rather than later. It could literally mean the difference of a million dollars in your pocket. I've seen that. Yeah.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Cool. And do you already have the calculator, you know, working on the landing page, because I think if you're okay, and you'd like to, we can also include this in the description of this episode? So people that maybe have, you know, their business and their activities that you opportunities out there. We have quite a lot of listeners from America as well. So you know, people can maybe access it and start a conversation through there with you and Acquira.

 

Kylon Gienger  

Yeah, so I mean, if you are a person who owns a business that wants to sell it, that URL is acquira.com/business-sellers. So Acquira.com forward slash business dash sellers. And you'll see that that landing page.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay, I made over it as well. And you guys will have the link in the description of this episode. So to check it out.

 

Kylon Gienger  

Yep. And if you're a buyer, you can essentially just go to acquira.com. And you'll see plenty of options there and some videos and some stuff. Our team's ready to talk to you as soon as today on what business buying is all about. And if it's something you want to get involved in, we've got some programmes you can jump in right away. Actually, the very first thing you'll do is go through sort of a business buying test drive, we put you in the driver's seat of a prospective buyer, and we give you all the data on a business we've already acquired and we kind of take you through the steps of diligence on that and so you can kind of test drive the idea at first so if you're interested in buying there are opportunities as well.

 

Andrei Tiu  

That's very cool. Okay, super. So anyway, the link to the website is going to be here as well. So you guys will be able to find all this information in the description of this episode if you are either watching it on YouTube or streaming on any of the other platforms. Kylon this was a very, very insightful talk. And I feel we covered a lot of interesting topics, it was very interesting to me as well, since we didn't have these topics covered on this episode before. Very good insights on the culture of the company as well. I always thought this would be one of the most important things that business owners should be looking at from day one. Really happy that we managed to touch upon it. In this episode, even if we only spent a couple of minutes, maybe we'll be able to potentially organise something in the future, tackling more of this topic and how you- I mean success stories from the companies that you own, owned, or have been involved with when it came to buying and selling and, you know, transformations that happen for the process.

 

Kylon Gienger  

Absolutely, Andrei. Well, it's been a pleasure, man. Thanks for all the great questions that I've enjoyed sharing what we do here.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Super. Yeah, this was great. So last question. If people want to personally reach out to you or connect with you, or you know, discuss specific subjects, where's best to get to you? Is it LinkedIn or other platforms?

 

Kylon Gienger  

Feel free. I have a personal website. So my name is Kylon Ginger. It's just kylonginger.com. So it's KYLON GIENGER. And on there you can there are links to acquire. There are links to other stuff I'm doing personally, as well as my LinkedIn and those are good places to reach out

 

Andrei Tiu  

Perfect. Okay, so you guys will have these links in the description of this episode, Kylon's website and LinkedIn profile as well. Kylon, again, very big pleasure. Thank you for being on the show. Thank you for the insights. Very, very interesting and very inspiring. Looking forward to catching up soon. And meanwhile, best of luck with all your ventures and with the new business that you're discussing right now. I'm sure things are going too good to go great.

 

Kylon Gienger  

Appreciate it, man. Thanks for having me. Cheers.

How to run effective sales webinars in 2021 and beyond [Aaron LeBauer]

Join Andrei and our guest on today’s episode, Aaron LeBauer, as they will be discussing tactics and strategies he used to build and scale his business, as well as help 1000s of other entrepreneurs do the same in his niche, as well as insights into how to best run sales webinars and marketing in the health business to the patient sector.  Aaron is a doctor of physical therapy, business owner, author and podcast host of The CashPT® Lunch Hour Podcast. Dr LeBauer is on a mission to save 100 million people from unnecessary surgery by helping other passionate therapists succeed in business and learn how to market directly to patients.

Connect with Aaron: 

𝑊𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒:   www.AaronLeBauer.com 

𝐴𝑎𝑟𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝐼𝑛:   https://linkedin.com/in/aaronlebauer 

𝐴𝑎𝑟𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑛 𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑏𝑜𝑜𝑘:   https://facebook.com/aaronlebauer 

𝐴𝑎𝑟𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟:   @aaronlebauer  

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐢:

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢: https://marketiu.com  / https://marketiu.ro   

𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑖 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/  

𝐸𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙 𝑎𝑡 hello@marketiu.ro

 

𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦:

▶️Watch the episode on YouTube: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-YouTube 

▶️ Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show 

▶️ Podbean: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Podbean 

▶️ Spotify: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Spotify 

▶️ Deezer: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Deezer 

▶️ Stitcher: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Stitcher 

▶️ Castbox: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Castbox 

 

Episode transcript:

 

Andrei Tiu  

Hi there, this is Andrei and you're on The Marketing Innovation Podcast Show. Our special guest today is Aaron LeBauer. He's a doctor of physical therapy, business owner, author and podcast host. And today we look at together the tactics and strategies he used to build and scale his business, as well as help 1000s of other entrepreneurs do the same in his niche. We'll also discuss insights into how to best run sales webinars and marketing in the health business to the patient sector. So without further ado, Aaron, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. Excited to see where the discussion is going today. How are you? How's the morning going?

 

Aaron LeBauer  

I'm doing great, Andrei. Thank you for having me. It's an honour to be here on your show today.

 

Andrei Tiu  

It's an honour for me as well. I know that you just wrapped up recording for one of your own podcast episodes, right?

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I did a, it was a solo episode today on the number one asset in your business, which emails your email list. So I went through all the pieces of that. Yeah.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice. Nice. Nice. Okay, so you're all warmed up and ready to go, I guess. 

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

If you want, we can also go into, you know, email marketing at some point, because I'm sure it's gonna be relevant when we are discussing the sales webinars strategies. Right?

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Oh, absolutely. It's a huge key component of that.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay, so yeah, I guess let's just rock'n'roll and see where we go with this. So, first of all, impressive background and an impressive roster of clients, numbers and everything. I think a good place to start would be to let our listeners hear find out from you, or read about you, your background, how you started, what motivated you and how your growth look like?

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Yeah, I think the short version is I was racing bicycles in high school in college. And I think one day I was like, I think I was in high school. I told my mom how my legs hurt. I just don't feel like feeling that good riding. And she's like, You need to get a massage. I got a professional massage from someone locally. And I felt so great on my bike. And I was like, Wow, great. I went to college. Really, some of the options were, go into business, be a lawyer, be a physician. And med school wasn't in my future. They didn't know what to do with me. I was like, Well, let me just see if I can race bikes professionally. And I raced a little bit in Europe. And I spent a summer in Belgium, to law racing in France. So but I was super far away from Tour de France level, right. I came back to San Francisco, I moved to San Francisco and tried to get a real job,  in air quotes, a real job. And real jobs weren't for me. I ended up being a temp and I hated it. Temporary employee and then I decided, well, I could ride my bike and get paid if I'm a bike messenger. So I did that for about a year and a half. But long term, it wasn't fulfilling. And I had an epiphany one day if I go to a massage therapy school... My father and uncles, they're all physicians. And so that was definitely a path for me. And helping people, working with my hands, helping people heal was something that's kind of in my blood. And I was like, Well, if I can go to massage therapy school, I can work four hours a day, doing massage, and I can train on my bike four to five hours a day, and I'll make enough money to live. And I did that for six years. But eventually, people were asking me, Aaron, you're the first person to touch me where I hurt. I've been to physio, I've been to the surgeon acupuncture, chiropractic massage, and you're the first person to touch me where I hurt and actually helped me with this problem. And my girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife was like, we should go to become a physical therapist. I was like..No. And she: It's ok, you should. She encouraged me to do that. And eventually, we left California moved to where I live now, which is in North Carolina, on the other coast of the United States on the East Coast. And I looked into PT schools, and I went to PT school because it was going to give me the ability to help my patients understand when they would get better because they would say Aaron, so when is this going to finally go away and I'm like, I don't know. As a massage therapist. Our job is to help you feel comfortable and good and recover but it's not to predict when your injuries can go away. So I did that and went to PT school for that. On the very first clinical rotation. At the beginning of my second year I saw 43 patients one day, and I realised that day like 43 patients as a new student is a tonne of people that's four people an hour for over nine hours. I realised that day I already had a massage therapy practice, realised I just need to start my own practice and charge people cash, charge an extra $10 an hour. My clinical instructor was like, no one's gonna pay more than their copay for physical therapy. And I was like, Let me prove you wrong. If you're not, you don't live in the United States, we've got this weird, crazy medical system where everyone has insurance. But just because you have insurance doesn't mean it's less expensive or that things are actually covered. It really interferes with the way we practice therapy or people practice medicine, it just payment drives treatment. And I didn't want that. Because I didn't have that in massage therapy. And I knew there was a better way. And so that's where I started my own practice. Without relying on insurance. People started asking me, How do you do this? And then one day, someone said, what do I owe you for that? I was like, What do you mean, what do you owe me? She's like, well, you just gave me a tonne of valuable information, what can I pay you? And that's the day that I started my coaching and consulting business.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice. Okay, so it was sort of you didn't think about it from the beginning, but rather it just evolved organically from you're following your purpose or your passion in the sense, right,

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. It wasn't like, I didn't have this plan that I'm gonna sell 1000 courses and put a bunch of people in my mastermind group and write a book and start a podcast. It was like, How can I help people? And it was just the different things that people said, guided me along this path. And that's where I'm at today.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Super. So how do you go about establishing your first practice, the one that really helped you become a full-time entrepreneur to say so, as well as a doctor?

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Yeah, I think you know, and it's been 20 years since I started. I think the very first thing that I did was, well, I had to get licenced and tell people, but it was like, how do people know? So I had to start marketing myself in the very first book I read was Guerilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson. And I read books, I read a marketing book. And that helped me out and I moved to North Carolina, and I read a couple of books. And I was like, Okay, I'm on a roll, word of mouth was working really well. But when I got out of PT school, I realised that no one really knew what physical therapy was, they have this idea about what Physiotherapy is, and what it can do. But it's so broad. And what I do is very different from a lot of people's experience, had to figure out how to market it. So that's where I had to get a coach and to get a business coach to help me. Just save time, by giving me a lot of the documentation forms we would need, but coaching me on how to set my prices. And actually this for the next business coach coached me on how to build a lead magnet and build my email list. And that was in 2008, I think?

 

Andrei Tiu  

Wow, you are you were a very early adopter.

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Oh, I built my first website in 1995.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice, nice, nice. Okay, so what was your first lead magnet? So by this time you had your practice, you're growing organically? And what did you use as a lead magnet to grow your email list back in the day?

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Yeah, the first lead magnet I used. I think I wrote a blog article. And someone asked me if they could use my blog article as part of their like, ebook, they did like a collection of articles that said, you can use it as long as I can give away the book as a lead magnet. And they said yes. Well, then I went from that compilation of back pain articles to my own book on back pain. I actually, I'm now on like, my fourth variation of that. So, but it was around back pain, because most people, at least in the United States, 87% of people have back pain. And it's the number one reason people miss work. And so that was the target that I went for.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Gotcha. Okay, I know you have... I don't know if it's a secret, but it is, in a way, at least for us until you let us know. But what was the number one marketing strategy used today to reach, engage and help people? I know, your mission is a very impressive one, which is helping 100 million people through the work that you do. So, you know, that's a big, big, group of people. What strategy are you using - marketing-wise - to get there?

 

Aaron LeBauer  

The number one marketing strategy I use is email marketing, everything else that sounds exciting is supported by it. It's just like it is it. It's been what I've been using for when did I start? I started my email list in 2005. Probably. Yeah.

 

Andrei Tiu  

And how big is it now?

 

Aaron LeBauer  

I have a bag that two different businesses, I've got 23,000 total contacts. I've got about 8000 active when I send an email to my list this morning of 2300 people who are actually actively engaged with my content, they've read an email, visit a website or engaged with me somehow in the last 45 days.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay. And so you mentioned email marketing. I agree, this is super, super powerful, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is a good point where we could go into the webinar and email these building strategies that you have and then transition into the sales webinars and how to properly run these in order to be successful. 

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Yeah, it's perfect. Yeah, absolutely. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Awesome. Okay, so tell us how do you run your promotions at the moment? So obviously, email marketing is a big thing. What do you use in terms of channels? And basically, how do you reach your ideal potential clients?

 

Aaron LeBauer  

It's a, I call it ”give to get” if anyone's familiar with Gary Vee, it's the Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. You know, I provide a lot of value. It's one of those principles of exceeding someone's expectations, you have to give in order to receive and give your best content away. Because most people, most people aren't going to do anything with it. You know, when it comes to, let's say, fixing someone's body, like, for physical therapy, I can't actually give you one exercise that's going to fix your back. But I can give you an understanding of what's wrong. And what you can do about it, right, and I can help people see that. So what we do is - I try to provide as much value upfront before I ever ask anything in return. So we've got podcasts, I've got a blog. So a weekly blog, a weekly podcast, I've got a Facebook group, I've got Instagram, I do free webinars, I've got automated webinars, I've got read downloadable resources and a couple of different lead magnets. And like a free book, I've got an actual physical book that you can get for free. When you go to my website, you just cover shipping. And not only it's a lead magnet, but it's a great way to move people into my other programmes. And I lead with a give. And so all of these different channels lead back to the same place, which is you get on my email list. And once you're on my email list, I send you more information, I send you pieces of training, and I asked you to do something which is either to share something, tell somebody, click a link, or hey, here's your opportunity to join this programme before the price goes up next week. So that's the 30,000-foot view of it, I think the number one thing I did is to make sure you're able to build an email list with something that's irresistible. But leading into the webinars, the thing that built my list, the fastest early on was doing free online webinars. For physical therapists, I used webinars to build my list, and by 1000s of people a year. And it's been one of the most powerful ways, to do that. Because it's time spent with someone these days, people want to spend a little less time with you. But it still is incredibly powerful.

 

Andrei Tiu  

So I guess you push the webinars through something like Facebook, Instagram ads, right or?

 

Aaron LeBauer  

So what we did early on, like, in 2014 or 2013, I had a business coach, who was helping me. And he was big into webinars, and he still is and I just started doing interviews, but I did a used WebinarJam and I do a live interview and I invite everyone on my email lists to join us for this live interview, and I get their information in cinema replay. I didn't do a sales webinar for a long time. And finally, I had a product that actually converted through email. So I launched my course the cash PT blueprint. It was launched for like, to my email list of like 500 people for $197. And I sold 25 of them in a five day period.  I raised the price by 100 bucks.  I hadn't even built the course the thing is, is I had built the sales page, but it did not record the modules until I knew people wanted it.

 

Aaron LeBauer  

That's a very good approach. 

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Most people don't want it. Most people think they need to go build the thing and then try to sell it.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, I think Tim Ferriss was -  sorry for interrupting - but it just popped into my mind. I think Tim Ferriss was proposing a solution or this approach also in the four-hour workweek, I think, but he said I mean, he was an ambassador for also for other businesses, so not only for, you know, for courses for sure. But also this can be applied in any other business, I just test to see what the interest is. And then once the interest is there, and you can actually see some monetization happening, you can go and crack on.

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Absolutely. And one of the crazy things is that I use this for teaching people how to generate leads as well. Same thing like, don't go build your lead magnet, until you figure out if people actually want it because people will spend, especially physiotherapists, who are highly educated when I use the word ebook, they think 300 pages. They're like, Oh, no, I'll never do it. Or they go, right, this whole thing and no one. They're like, Why didn't even get me an email list, because no one wants it. And people aren't actually going to read it. They just, we just need an excuse for them to raise their hand. And so I have my coaching clients go and post a very specific script to social media. And generally, I mean, one of them, we just did this on Tuesday, she's got over 128 comments on her post. For people who want her video, and our lead magnet is just incredible. But she didn't make the video first. We posted about it first.

 

Andrei Tiu  

I see. Okay, would it be okay to go a bit into this specific tactic? Because I think it's a very interesting one. And we never discussed it on the podcast before. You know, how do you test a lead magnet? And how do you identify which one is best for you, because many of the people that we work with as well with the agency, leverage webinars for trying to get more needs? And also, it's still a very popular tactic. I totally agree with you that owning and having your own email list is super, super important for any business, because that's where the conversation actually happens, not necessarily on social media or not so much. And also definitely the sale. How do you go about choosing the right lead magnet and testing them?

 

Aaron LeBauer  

The first thing we have to do is we have to get our audience, we have to have an audience of people, whether it's an email list, a Facebook group, or a social media profile, something like that. And we have to survey them and ask them a question. Because you and I might look at someone's business and go, you need to be doing this for marketing, or you should be running this kind of ad that, but they may not want that they may think they want or need something else. So they're never going to buy what we know they need. But they think they need something else, we need to figure out what that is. So what we do is we will post and say, Hey, what's your number one problem with, you know, blank: back pain?  What's the hardest thing about growing your business? Or what's the hardest thing about hiring an additional new employee, you know, what's your biggest struggle around opening another location? Or launching a webinar? And then they'll tell us. And we'll find like, what's the commonality? And I may have to do that three or four times, I'll even send an email, you know, I might send them to a survey. But the next step would be, I take those survey results and say, hey, if I put together a free training on this, this and this, or this big thing, would you be interested? And if I can get 6, 12 or 128 people to say yes, then I'll go and put that thing together. And actually won't even build it. First, I'll put together a landing page or a sales page and say, Okay, here's the thing, I message it back to them, then they sign up for it. And then I'll go record the five-minute video or build a webinar or put together that, you know,  a five-week boot camp, which is what I'm in the middle of right now. I've done the exact same thing to do this. I've done it multiple times. But I can tell you, four or five years ago, everyone asked me to build a marketing course. And I built a marketing course on how I market my business and generate consistent leads every month. And I just went and sold it on a webinar. And not very many people bought it. And a bunch of people asked for refunds because it was too hard for them. And I'm like, Well, you want a business like I have you got to put in some work. But it wasn't what they wanted, right? They didn't want to work hard. They wanted an easy answer. And so that was a big lesson why I realised, okay, I have to get back to selling the thing first before I put the work and effort into it.

 

Andrei Tiu  

And if you're to think about what results like the best results that you are getting through selling, let's say through webinars, but you know, we can discuss any of the other lead magnets as well. And let's think about the last two years, let's say because when we talk about 2015, let's say, webinars were in the beginning so I think if you were running them then, you probably were getting a much better conversion rate because they were not so much noise. Maybe ads were a bit cheaper than but recently what type of products at which price point or how long were they the ones that were performing Super good for you? Yeah. And for your clients?

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Yeah, absolutely. You're right back in 2015 or 2016, I did a webinar and I sell 18, you know, $1,000 courses on a webinar. And then as webinars became more popular, it was less and less, it was less and less on the live ones. But I turned those into evergreen webinars, so much more on Evergreen. And now what I'm doing is on webinars where I make the biggest impact on myself and my clients is I sell a 12-month coaching programme. I don't actually sell the programme. It's an $18,000 programme. I don't sell that on the webinar, I sell a strategy call on the webinar, and I move people from the webinar to a one on one call with either me or someone on my team. And then into our course, or our you know, Platinum Mastermind Programme, and even doing webinars and then I don't even call them webinars, sometimes I'll call them a coaching call or a group gameplan call and I'll get people on a webinar or even into like a small group zoom. I did this just a few weeks ago to enrol people in our five-week programme. I said last time, it was a last-minute idea. And I was like, Why didn't I think of this? I have just been busy. Like, let's get together on Zoom. If I can get enough people and I had 12 People come to the zoom. And 12 People tell me that could come eight people showed up. One person bought a $2,500.05 week coaching programme, who's most likely to move into our Platinum Mastermind group at the end of that. And that was just from a last-minute email that I sent once. I did a 45-minute Zoom call with everybody.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, cool. Group planning plan. Know, what was the name of the group action plan? No.

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Like a game plan. A game plan call I did this last winter? I did. I did a game plan call where we did it was a coaching call where I built a game plan for people during the year. And we started with goals like what are your goals? Where are you now? What are your goals? How are you going to get there? And the whole idea is to figure out where they are now? And where do they want to go and create a gap and stretch the gap and create an open loop so that the way to close that gap is to come to join me in my coaching programme?

 

Andrei Tiu  

Absolutely love that this is the first time you know, I speak to somebody that refers to this specific, you know, phrase or talks about this development of the gap, as you mentioned. Awesome. So you guys tuning in, think whether this would be something good for your business because this is some real value here that Aaron is sharing. Aaron in terms of mentors or people that you learn from when you were designing your marketing strategy for the courses and you know, the programmes that you have right now. Is there a specific person that interests you a lot like Jeff Walker or Frank Kern or these types of guys, or?

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Yeah, my coach right now is Bedros Keuilian. The interesting thing about him is he knows a lot of these guys. And certainly, Dan Kennedy has been a big influence on me as well. But Bedros wrote a pot like blog post. And that I saw when I moved to move to Greensboro and move my massage practice from San Francisco Greensboro. In and I think right when I was moving, I was adjusting it from physical therapy to massage therapy to physical therapy. I was searching for physical therapy marketing. And I think I put in PT marketing and because he's a personal trainer, and I ended up on his blog post about how to rank your business on the first page of Google. And I did everything he said. And within six weeks, I got massive results. I was like, holy cow! Well, then 10 years later, I was showing someone that blog post, because I visited the website now. Was I got his Facebook pixel, he started showing me his new ads for his new podcast, the Empire podcast, and I listened to it, I went to his event signed up for his coaching programme, and we're going on our fourth year coaching together. And just that journey that I took is something that I implemented in my own business that worked and it's just been it's been massive. And I think the main thing that I've learned from him is how to see beyond my current capabilities and what's possible, but also the never quit attitude, you know, and how as entrepreneurs, there's no way we can fail if we keep moving forward.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, nice. Very cool. So how's your day looking like right now because it seems that you are a very busy man with all the calls and coaching and this stuff. Are you still doing the practical massaging and physiotherapy?

 

Aaron LeBauer  

No, I'm not,  spend about it, I spend two hours during the week, one hour, like coaching my team members over there and another hour just like on a team meeting that I split that with my wife. So that's about an hour and a half every week, I spent another hour answering emails and fielding questions for that business. And then in my coaching business, we have a weekly mastermind call for an hour. And then I spend the rest of my time and building programmes and building marketing strategies, recording podcasts, recording social media, meeting with you know, I'll spend, you know, three or four hours of me even five hours a week answering certain emails. But I've got a team member that helps with my customer service. And so because I've hired other people and trained them and built out systems for them, I'm allowed to spend, I get to spend a majority of my days doing things that I want to do. And I don't actually have to be here right now, if I didn't want to, I want my business to grow. But that's kind of how it is. I generally structure my day so that Mondays are a team meeting. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday mornings is time for me to do some deep work and build out systems and be creative and create courses and programmes. The afternoons are for coaching calls or meetings, podcasts recordings, and Fridays are kind of like an I record my own content, play with the technology, check-in with friends and go home early.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice. Nice, nice. Yeah, very cool. I think there's a lot of people out there that would like to get to where you got to today. And I think that some of the things that you and that we've been discussing here can be a real source of inspiration for many. And now to sort of bringing I mean to show how realistic it is too many people that maybe have another imagine themselves doing something like this. When you are working with clients, and let's say they are practitioners, maybe they have a small practice, and this I guess, can be physical therapy. But does it work for other niches as well, like plastic surgery or dental practice? Or?

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Yes, absolutely. You know,  I think the thing that people get into, is that my situation is unique. My situation is like, my job is unique or like you can't help me because like I can, I can tell you this or tell people listening, this is like your situation is not unique, it may feel unique. And it may be unique to you. And you know, a couple 1000 other people, but there are billions of people in the world and business principles or business principles. And we can choose to ignore them if we want to or not, or make excuses why we shouldn't listen to them or engage in them or use them. But what we do and what we teach our principals at work across businesses, it's one of the reasons like I consider like myself, and one of my, the guy who runs my Facebook ads and helps him to some on the ground marketing strategies, micro strategies, we consider ourselves snipers. We've built a robust follow-up system automation system, that of someone with a low friction business, like my physical therapy business because it doesn't take insurance is a high friction business. There's a lot of reasons why people wouldn't choose us. If someone in business had a lower friction business, like a physical therapist who takes insurance or surgical practice, he wants more clients, like if they use some of these principles, their business would grow tremendously. They just don't feel like they strong need to or why would I do something different? And do sometimes doing something different is the thing that's going to be the 10x factor in your business rather than what everyone else is doing. And this, I had to learn how to use this from outside of my industry, and I've just adapted it to physical therapy. And then plenty of things I've taken from my practice and moved them into my coaching business. So they oh, why am I not doing that? And then I move something from my coaching business over to the practice, like why wasn't I doing this kind of strategy call or something in the clinic, and we call it a total body diagnostic instead of a strategy call. It's the same thing. It's a sales call. So business principles or business principles, there's sometimes things that don't cross over but they can always be adapted.

 

Andrei Tiu  

And if we were to take this situation of...I'm still focusing on the Webinars and you know, creating these sorts of funnels because they are so popular today. And I think you are a very good example of somebody that is doing it well. And also being so involved with this and, having a resource to support your expertise. I think valuable for many people that are tuning in on this episode would be them. They are probably from different industries. I know, we are speaking to some of them that are messaging us after the shows and you know, also asking us questions or asking us to try to follow up with some of our guests on specific topics, which by the way, if you're open, maybe, depending on the messages that we get today, maybe we can organise a second episode as well on a specific micro topic to say so which I get the feeling that is what we're doing now, with sales, webinars and funnels. But, you know, because it's many people from many different industries, but the strategy is sort of, in a way similar, it just needs to be adapted to the industry as you did when you were adapting it to physical therapy. What do you feel is the one of the two, or the three factors that are super important and different from how they were maybe a year or two ago, when you run these lead magnets, like the webinar funnel, or the lead magnet, like what has changed in the way they've promoted the way that you follow up on it.

 

Aaron LeBauer  

The big changes that people's attention is divided, and it's shorter. Right? So we have to attract their attention really quick. We want to give them what they're asking for right away. One of the worst things I've seen people do is send me like from a Facebook ad, send me to a sales page. And as soon as I get there, there's a lead magnet offer that pops up, I'm like, but you're trying to get me to sell something, it's just like a, like, you didn't even look at your own ad, like or your own page. And so what we have to do is be very specific with the message. This is for and what it's going to do for them. Because it's people are thinking what's in it for me? And they need to be able to see that right of way. It's like, we just can't send people to a page with a bunch of options, we have to send them to one page. And so it's one message. And the other thing we're doing is, when we're running Facebook ads, we're not running Facebook ads directly to our webinars. I'm running Facebook ads to lead magnets - to blog posts, to get people into our email system. And then we'll email them about the webinars. Occasionally, we'll run an ad for webinars, especially if we do a live one, then on the webinar, it's I have to be very clear about who this is for, hey, you're in the right place and make it exciting and fun. So I've even got now an Elgato stream deck that allows me to make sounds and noises and cheers and, you know, like I can make a little sound, you know, things like that, to keep people engaged. And I also have to engage them by asking them questions and making it a conversation rather than just telling them because if I just tell them, they're gonna drop off. So questions like, Hey, before we move on, I'd love to know, what's been most helpful for you about this so far? So if you are actually listening to Andrei's podcast, just comment below the YouTube video, wherever you're watching this and let us know what's been helpful for you about this. And as I do that, in the webinar, I get people engaged, but I also start getting micro closes, where people are saying yes before I even get to my offer. And by doing that, that has been one of the biggest things that we've changed and allowed us to really capture people. One of my most successful ones was a two full-day live event because it COVID Instead of an in-person event, I did it online. And people had 90% of people there all day for two days in a row and we converted 20% of the room to my high-level coaching programme. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Super good. And when you say driving the traffic to a blog post, I guess that has to do with providing them with a free value right away. And then how do you capture their email address? Do you have a pop-up or something similar to that? Or do you have gated content?

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Yeah, Yes, and yes. So I don't run my own Facebook ads. I have someone that does it for me. So if we're working off of a cold audience, a lookalike audience will drive them to the blog posts, the blog posts or articles I've written in like Forbes or Entrepreneur. And we'll start seeing like, who clicks through and, and taking that audience and making it into a warmer audience. And then we'll send them in ads where it's a short video of me talking about something for, you know, one to three minutes, maybe five minutes, and we'll build an audience off of that ad who watched the first you know, 30 seconds of it, or who watched the first minute. And then from there, we'll go another level and send them an offer for maybe a strategy call or a lead magnet, or to, you know, do something out, come to join us on a webinar or something else, and we'll build these audiences, and they've seen us not too much, but enough, and we can start to predict what they'll do next. And that's kind of how we run our ads. And if anyone's listening, don't run Facebook ads, unless you have an offer that converts. And if you're listening, and you're a marketing professional and or agency and you help other people, you know, it's probably the biggest frustration is people tell you the Facebook ads don't work, let's because their offer sucks. You know, and the one thing that I've seen people do is they just run Facebook ads, but they don't work with their client on like making sure the offer works. And then the client is unhappy.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Very well pointing there.

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Right. So that's the other thing I want to point out to people is like, I know the pain points that people have. Right, Andrei, like, that's, I can tell you as I've talked to enough people who run agencies like that's a big pain point. But their clients don't know it. So if we know the pain points of our customers, and agencies aren't my customers, but I work with enough people who run them to know that what these pain points are, because my clients had the pain point, they tell me that I tried so and so's agency and it didn't work. I need more new patients. And what I really know the problem is, is that their sales system stinks. And their follow up stinks. And they just think they need more new customers.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Or the productivity expensive. I mean, depends a lot on your industry.

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Right? Absolutely. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Cool, cool, cool. This was such a good session, I've really enjoyed talking to you, man. So let's see, because we are sort of getting to the final points, at least with this episode, what we do typically is we try to draw three or five points are depending on you know, the subjects that are actionable, and that people tuning in, can take away and you know, for example, this weekend, go and implement into their business, or at least think about how they could be suited to their business. And I had in my notes here, one thing that I want you to touch upon and we did was, you know, the benefit of having these product elements to a service business to drive additional cash flow. So having a conditional cash flow channel, and how this can help a business, develop and build antifragility in a way. And also, you know, the things that we discussed now with, you know, webinars and marketing in the health sector, where you talk directly to patients. So this would not necessarily be as we talked a lot here about you and clients that own practices, it would be more about the clients that own practices, how they market further. And your experience with that, I guess from your personal experience as well, when you launched and grew your own practice back in the day. So if we were to draw these actionable points, what would you say are the top three? But I will not be very strict. If you want more we can we can have more action points. So what Yeah, it'd be and then what could people take away?

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Perfect, I think the top three things would be: 1. Commit to yourself to taking action. And one of the best ways to do that is to tell someone else what your goals are. Okay, or posted somewhere. But then really, it's posted on social media somewhere, like you figure out what's the biggest problem my clients think they have? Okay, then you're going to post to say, I just made a video on the three steps to fix or solve this problem. Would you like me to send you a copy? And see if any of you get it right, if you get the formula, right, you get the problem, right? People start responding. And now you got a bunch of leads. And now you need to go collect those leads into your email marketing platform. You just send them a Facebook Messenger, Instagram message, DM them, hey, here's the link and you just send a link to the landing page, like excited you're interested. Here's where you can go and get the video and they go get it so you haven't made the video. So you got to make the video and set up the reply email. But that was the first thing would be just post it and see what happens. The worst thing that can happen? Is it 500 people reply just like happen to one of my clients, Alexis, and you have to now go do some work to get them on your email list. That's a good problem.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, definitely.

 

Aaron LeBauer  

I mean, that would be like, if you could do that this way that might be enough like that as a takeaway. Most people probably won't do it. They'll be like, what if it doesn't work? And I would say so what? What if it doesn't work? And you just learned what message doesn't resonate with your audience. Try a different method. So then number 2 would be to try it again. The third thing to do would be if you do not have an email marketing platform or software, get one. Get one and start using it to add people onto it. I think the biggest excuse I've heard people say lately is, well, I don't have enough clients or patients to use that. Like, you don't need clients and patients and you don't need an email list to use it, you need to use it to build your email list, people have it backwards. And I do think that these are a lot of times excuses for people fear of failure. And the fourth thing to be would be to change your mindset this weekend, even if you have to write it down or tell everyone. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you want to help millions of people, there's no such thing as failure anymore. We're playing on a different field. And as entrepreneurs, when something doesn't work out the way we want it to or expect it to, we have to analyse the situation, learn from it, change something and try it again. Because you only fail if you stop.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Love it. Aaron, and like this was again, very good advice totally aligned with, you know, my thinking as well. I think it's spot on. And if people on the show, I mean, we don't know everybody, but we know they are from a bunch of industries, including health. And, you know, we might actually have some people here that specialise specifically in this niche or even, you know, why not? People, that have somebody in their family that has a practice or a friend or maybe even themselves? If they want you to engage with you directly. And maybe they want to take this to the next level and have somebody from your team or you know, yourself even help. What are the best platforms/ways in which you could potentially work together?

 

Aaron LeBauer  

We've got I've got quite a different, a few different options. I've got online courses, I've got books and coaching programmes, I think the best thing to do would be, go find me on Instagram, follow me at Aaron LeBauer. You'll find audited content, they're similar, hopefully, similar in alignment with what you've learned today, but also link there to get access to some of our other resources, podcast, books, downloadable guides. I do have one guide that is helpful for probably most people listening. I put together my top marketing strategies and put them on a list there are 35 of them. So it's the 35marketingstrategies.com If you want a free download cheat sheet of our best marketing strategies. You can go there, you can find it. When you come over to Instagram. Follow me at Aaron LeBauer. And if you have questions, feel free to shoot me a DM.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Super. So for the guys watching, you have here on the screen as well as handle and we'd have for everybody links in the description of this episode, whether you're watching on LinkedIn, listening on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify or whatever your chosen platform. Well, until next time, Aaron this was such a great chat really happy that we managed to sync up and to do this together. Thank you again for all the good insight and for being open about everything that has worked or not for you and for sharing all these insights with our audience.

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Absolutely, Andrei, it was a pleasure being here and was great meeting you and maybe one day we'll see each other in person but you never know.

 

Andrei Tiu  

The same, big pleasure here as well. Wishing you all the very best, keep rocking it, best of luck on your mission and looking forward to you know, if not in person soon maybe we'll just have another catch up online shortly.

 

Aaron LeBauer  

Absolutely. Thank you so much!

 

Andrei Tiu  

Thank you have an awesome meeting and rock it!

 

How to run effective referral programs for eCommerce [Raul Galera]

Join Andrei and our guest on today’s episode, Raul Galera, as they will be discussing leveraging this channel as an eCommerce business and how to best benefit from loyalty and word of mouth programmes. Raul is the Chief Advocate at RefferalCandy, an app that allows eCommerce brands to set up and run customer referral programs

Connect with Raul: 

𝑊𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒:  https://www.referralcandy.com/ 

𝑅𝑎𝑢𝑙 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝐼𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raulgalera/ 

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐢:

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢: https://marketiu.com  / https://marketiu.ro   

𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑖 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/  

𝐸𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙 𝑎𝑡 hello@marketiu.ro

 

𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦:

▶️Watch the episode on YouTube: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-YouTube 

▶️ Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show 

▶️ Podbean: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Podbean 

▶️ Spotify: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Spotify 

▶️ Deezer: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Deezer 

▶️ Stitcher: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Stitcher 

▶️ Castbox: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Castbox 

 

Episode transcript:

 

Andrei Tiu  

Hi there, this is Andrei and you're on The Market Innovation Podcast Show. Our special guest today is Raul Galera, the Chief Advocate to ReferralCandy, an app that allows ecommerce brands to set up and run customer referral programmes. Today, we'll discuss leveraging this channel as an ecommerce business and how to best benefit from loyalty and word of mouth programmes as well, during the upcoming shopping season. Without further ado, Raul, it's a pleasure to have you here on the show. How are you? How's the morning going?

 

Raul Galera  

I've got doing well. Thanks for having me.

 

Andrei Tiu  

No worries, it's my pleasure. You look very fresh. How's everything going on your side with the business, with life, with, you know, customers?

 

Raul Galera  

Pretty good. I actually recently just relocated to Mexico City. So this is where I'm speaking from right now. This is my first 48 hours here. I literally just got here like this past weekend. And things are going very well. I mean, in terms of ReferralCandy, as you can, as you can imagine, the ecommerce world has exploded over the past 18 months. So we've experienced a lot of growth. And with that, obviously a lot of new improvements that we've done to our app, to better serve our merchants. So yeah, it's a pretty exciting time for free comments in general. And we're trying to help us make Mitchison as we can.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Great, some great stuff. So, let's start by maybe introducing you a bit more to the audience and help our guys here understand your background and what ReferralCandy does? And how do you engage with the ecommerce players let's say, so that we can dive into discussion in more depth as we go?

 

Raul Galera  

Yeah, absolutely. So about myself, I actually been at ReferralCandy for the past five years now, mostly running the partner programme. So we obviously collaborate with a bunch of other companies in the ecommerce world. Whether it's their ecommerce agencies or other tech companies, or you know, media companies that touch in with marketing or ecommerce in general. I'm in charge of managing those relationships. And ReferralCandy specifically, for those that are listening that are not familiar with us. We are an app that allows e commerce stores to set up and run customer referral programmes. So think about the traditional the world-famous Dropbox referral programme, Uber referral programme in which you, us a customer, get something every time that you refer a friend and kind of like bring new brand new business to the store. So we basically allow brands to set it up and run it on autopilot, just by giving each customer a unique referral link that they can share with their friends. And we're able to track rewards. And it's basically an easy way for merchants to first of all, acquire new customers through a channel that it's completely owned by them, they don't need to depend on a third party platform, and we're talking about leveraging their customer base to acquire new customers. But also it's a way for them to retain those customers that they already have. By giving them an incentive the next time they and every time they refer a friend, they can get a discount on a future purchase. So you're kind of giving them an additional incentive to come back to your store for more. It's overall a good way to acquire new customers and retain your existing ones without having to depend on platforms or other algorithms that might change your entire marketing mix and overnight.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, it's also a very good way to you know, get people in, like directly involved with your brand not only consuming products from you, but actually having an invested interest in making money with you in a way.

 

Raul Galera  

Yeah, exactly. I mean, when brands typically think of the post purchase a kind of like flow after somebody has left the checkout and acquire the new customer. Something that it keeps seeing, not only as a somebody that works in ecommerce, but as a consumer myself, I see a lot of brands that are just like trying to get you to that second purchase pretty much right away, without realising they literally just made a purchase. You probably need some time until that happens again. So you know, there's a lot of push for promotions to get that second purchase and if you can switch the direction of the conversation after purchase and direct it towards a referral or maybe doesn't have to be a referral but maybe like joining a loyalty programme or leaving a review or like just doing something that's going to engage with a brand other than making a purchase, that's gonna pay off down the line. So it's another way, like you said, another way to kind of retaining people and make sure that you're brand staying top of mind without having to direct people to your product page.

 

Andrei Tiu  

You mentioned something really cool there. And I think this can be an angle for our discussion forward, which is what happens after the purchase happens. So you know, during the podcast, and as marketers as well, we have discussed a lot, and we are still discussing what happens, and how you can bring those people into the community, how you can drive traffic, drive conversions etc. But what's at least equally important is what happens after the first purchase, because mainly with ecommerce, the first purchase, not never, but many times, it's not necessarily profitable for the business. Many, if we talk about consumer goods, the profit lays in the repeat purchase. So how to facilitate that repeat purchase is a question that needs answer, needs, you know, a very good answer. And I think it would be a great framework for our discussion now, to tackle this point of the customer journey. And for you guys tuning in that own online stores, or that are marketers or activate within an ecommerce business, to think in a bit more depth on this topic. Hopefully, we'll be able to inspire you to, you know, take a couple more actions that maybe you are not at the, at the moment, are mainly in preparation for Black Friday, and also Christmas, because it's just around the corner really? Yeah, already, like, it's still a month or a month and a half. But really we should all Prepare from now. So, Raul. What's interesting in the business right now, like, let's talk a bit in the moment, what are you guys up to? How are your clients doing? What are they up to? That will be relevant for our people here.

 

Raul Galera  

Yeah, so I mean, as you mentioned, pretty much everybody is preparing for the busiest time of the year. Although there has been a shift in how these has evolved in the past year and a half. I mentioned this a lot, but I think it's pretty telling in terms of like how Ecommerce has evolved in the past year and a half. I was at a Shopify event in Amsterdam, in February 2020. So literally just weeks away before, everything just gonna change. And the CTO of Shopify was there. And he was showing us a graph up - this is actually his Twitter so maybe is still published there, and maybe people can find it. But he showed us a chart that showed kind of like the peak in sales that Shopify was registering every single year in Black Friday and Cyber Monday. So you could see the entire year just kind of like flat, kind of like the same level of traffic, and then boom, you see that hit, and in around mid November. And  something funny that that happened after that is that - we're in April, as a few months later, after this, he published the same graph and - updated obviously - for after kind of like the the shift between offline and online. A lot of businesses in March and April decided to go online so they could still sell to their customers. And they were registering, at least Shopify was registering Black Friday and Cyber Monday traffic every single day after mid March. And so that what's interesting, is that now I mean, last year was still experiencing growth in that holiday season. So it's kind of like gives you a sense of how big the ecommerce world has gone in just a year and a half. I read a stat that it just in a matter of weeks, ecommerce reached the level of market penetration levels that was expected for 2025 in that happen in April 2020. Right, so well, that means for brands is that there's a lot more competition now, there's a lot more brands that are selling similar products, they're at least going after the same target audience. Consumers have limited budgets. So we need to you know, brands need to compete in a smarter way. And in terms of  how they connect with those customers. As you mentioned earlier, the first purchase might not be profitable. So this is kind of it became a kind of a lot longer term route for a lot of brands right like that first purchase just about getting that customers out the door and then convince them that your products the best and kind of like given different reasons so they can come back to your store. So referrals is one of them. But I always like to nail it down to having a good product. Nothing can replace having a good product and having a good purchase experience. If you don't have those two things in place, a loyalty programme or referral programme. Nothing's free, really gonna change the fact that your customers are not going to be incentivized to buy from you or refer their friends really, because nobody's going to refer a product that they're doing and enjoy. So with that in mind, what our customers are up to these days is Jeff preparing for the holiday season, the busiest time of the year. And one thing in particular that we see is that they are making sure that their post-purchase flows are optimised basically that they have a clear path. For those new customers that are going to acquire, they're probably going to acquire through ads, or maybe these are customers that have been coming through organic search, because they've been kind of researching products that they're thinking of buying during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. So they're kind of ready. You need to have a plan for what are you going to do with those customers after they leave your store? And how you're going to get them to come back to your store? So yeah, we see multiple strategies there. Obviously, referral marketing plays a very important role there. But that's what's on everybody's mind right now. It's how we make sure that those customers that we're acquiring for the first time, are not just one, one-off purchases.

 

Andrei Tiu  

And the question here, you know, maybe for somebody that hasn't particularly considered this channel before, and they might consider tapping into it now, like in the near future, they might have a database. So you know, like some customers that have already bought from them. If they want you to implement a referral programme, could they leverage their current database? Or is it best to start, you know, as early as I mean, obviously, as early as possible would be best. But um, you know, like, yeah, what are some constraints when you implement something like this? And what should you have in mind, if you never did something like this before? 

 

Raul Galera  

Yeah, that's actually one of the main things that we recommend our merchants to do. As soon as they start a referral programme, it's not to find your past customers about it. Because the way a referral programme typically gets announced is that I mean, besides you know, social media posts, or maybe some blog posts on your, on your company blog to announce the new referral programme. The main way that brands are acquiring or I would say not acquiring, but they're turning customers into advocates or into ambassadors, is by notifying them after purchase. So either by showing them a pop up, or sending them an email, after purchase, and letting them know about the referral programme, and how they can sign up and how they can refer their friends. So if you have a database of customers that have bought from you, let's say I mean, either from the beginning, or at least in the past, you know, 612 18 months, you should definitely email those customers and let them know about the referral programme. The main reason is that they already know about your product, they, they, they pay for it, they used it, they probably made some referrals, that's another thing that we typically tell our merchants about is the fact that one of the reasons why you might want to consider a referral programme. It's because, you currently don't know how many sales are coming from referrals. And I guarantee you already have sales are coming from referrals. Because, as consumers, we talk about things that we buy, I mean, we recommend restaurants, we recommend Netflix shows we obviously recommend e-commerce stores as well, right. So if you don't have a referral programme in place, or a way of tracking where these people are coming from, you really don't have any numbers, any data that you can work with. And that's kind of like the that's that's the main baseline. So yeah, notifying customers about your referral programme, that's a key notifying new customers about the referral programme as well, either right after the purchase, or maybe after they've received the product so they can kind of, you know, vouch for it better, and they have a better understanding of how it works. That's the key. That's the I would say that's the main channel to make sure that your referral programme works.

 

Andrei Tiu  

So obviously, for you guys doing already ads or stuff like that on Facebook and remarketing and all that jazz, or you know, upselling and cross selling email sequences, that's perfectly fine. Personally, I think that something like this can be integrated flawlessly, within an already existing system, just like an extra thing. And as well, as you mentioned, just for I mean, even if we only consider the tracking facilities that are very much enhanced by something like this, I think would be amazing. And also, it's a great tool to get insight into what your customers actually think. But not only by what they say but what they actually do after they have used your products. And now I'm tempted to go in a bit geeky here, but you know, we are talking numbers we many times zoo on the podcast. So when looking at a referral programme, we usually as marketers, always look at the return on advertising spend the cost per sale, all these metrics that are essential for any store or store owner when it comes to you for the referral programmes, why, typically, referral, this referral commission, or how much do brands typically pay for referrals, from your experience and from your clients?

 

Raul Galera  

Yeah, so it really depends from one merchant to another, I would say that the main rule of thumb that we tell our merchants, when they're first thinking about what kind of rewards they're giving to their customers and their friends, when they're setting up the programme, and remember, a referral programme, there are two parts, you have the advocate that needs to get something to incentivize that, that they actually go out and make that referral. But there's also a very important part, which is the friend, the friend needs to also get some sort of incentive because they're going to buy from the store for the first time. So if you can add some sort of discount, or some sort of promo, or free product, or free shipping, or whatever it is to the friend, that's gonna make incentivize them more to try out the product that they've been recommended from the front. So once you have these two sides here, one thing that we typically tell our merchants to look at is look at your customer behaviour. So are your customers buying from you on a somewhat regular basis, I mean, do you have a subscription business, if you have a subscription business, you should definitely give your customers either a discount, or a free renewal for every friend that they referred. So that way, you're making sure that they're staying with you and, and just by making it automated, you're making sure that your customers, it's kind of like set and forget, right, they refer a friend, the friend makes a purchase, and then they know that next month, they're not going to have to pay for it for their box. That might not be the case for a lot of brands that are not a subscription, but you might have a product that your customers are buying, maybe not every month, but maybe they're buying it a couple of times a year, it might make sense for you to still give them a discount. So there you incentivize them to come back for more, or maybe give them a coupon code, that's going to add a free product to their next purchase, right. So it doesn't have to be a discount, it could be something that adds to their actual shopping cart. And then the third option that we typically look at is customers, or sorry, merchants that sell products that their customers are not going to buy anytime soon. The example that I always give beds, or mattresses, you're not going to buy a mattress more than once a year or more than once every couple of years, right. So if you're selling some, if you're selling maybe accessories, you could go with a coupon route that adds some sort of free products. But typically, if you're selling a product that your customers are not going to buy anytime soon, you can give them cash. And so that way, you know, nobody's gonna say no to free cash, right, and they can spend it on whatever they want. So that usually helps for this kind of setup. Now, when it comes to how much should they be given, you need to consider both sides. That you're, if you're given 10 and 10, that's it's a 20% commission that you're taking off your margins. So you need to look at your margins. And look not only at your margins but also your customer lifetime revenue, how much money is on average these new customer spending on your store over the next few years, right. And also compare it compared to different channels. So traditionally, customers that have been referred by a friend, they typically stick around for longer, and they spend more just because of the nature of how they were acquired, compared to organic traffic compared to ads. So it's really a matter of kind of like looking at your own numbers and see how much you can afford to give compared to how much are you paying for a new customer on Facebook ads, if you're paying $200, it might make sense for you to either match it knowing that the lifetime revenue of that customer is going to be higher, or maybe, or maybe just going to play safe, right and just go with kind of like the kind of the bare minimum, what you can afford, in terms of your margins, something that something else that we typically tell merchants to do. And again, this really depends on how well you know your customers is what's the nature of those recommendations. In a lot of cases, when we talk about referral marketing, we typically talk about people that are referring their friends and family, coworkers, people that are in their really close circle. And so in the majority of these referrals, the main driver of these recommendations is just the fact that you're going to provide something useful to somebody that you care about. So you're not going to necessarily do it for the money, you're going to do it because you're going to solve somebody's needs. So when thinking about what kind of rewards you want to set up, you might want to give more to the friend who's the one that needs to make the first purchase and needs to be incentivized to spend money rather than the advocate who's probably going to make the referral no matter what. So we've actually seen a lot of a lot of merchants that give a much, much higher reward or much higher discount to the friend than the customer that's making the recommendation. So like It's all really about understanding your customers, what incentivizes them, and then kind of applying that to, to your programme.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay, very good point. So basically, it's pretty common to have products that are rewarded rather than being, you know, being used as rewards rather than just percentages. Because now on the flip side, so my personal experience with these, or what I'm seeing with our clients, and what they tend to be thinking of first, is having a cash reward. I mean, many times between, we also have a couple of clients that do use sort of, like some sort of cashback rewards. And they tend to, to be between 1.5%, and I think, up to six, or something like that. But they are only for the person that makes the recommendation, not necessarily for the friend. But that is also because they have some others, discount schemes for first time buyers, for example. So yeah, this is for you guys that already maybe run something like this, like, this can be a nice add on, if you already have a first time buying discount, let's say voucher or something like that code, then you can use this one to, or some, you know, we can do something similar, like a referral programme, to facilitate the part that you don't have covered already.

 

Raul Galera  

Yeah, I mean, that’s sort of you describe, it's typically what we see for affiliate programmes. So when our customers want to, I guess the main difference between an affiliate programme and a referral programme is that it's the nature of the advocates that are recommending your store. So in a referral programme, like I said, it's typically existing customers that are referring their friends and family. So people in their close circle, when we talk about affiliates, the person that's making the recommendation might not necessarily know the person that's receiving the recommendation, it's probably somebody that has a blog or somebody that's, you know, it's an influencer on social media. And so, they are just like putting it out there, and people are taking this recommendation and making a purchase. So those are typically we do see those kind of setups on ReferralCandy, mostly for influencers. And yeah, they typically just get the influencer gets some sort of either a percentage of the friends or a percentage of the, of the purchase that they generate, it could be like you said anywhere between one five 10%, typically what we see and, and they may or may not give something to the person that got the recommendation. But because the kind of like the bulk of the rewards typically fall on the seller, right on the ambassador in this case.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Cool. And I know, before we started the live session, and we went live with a podcast you mentioned, it would be worth us discussing some differences between or you know, commonalities between word of mouth, and then referral programmes and potentially even affiliates. So, maybe here you have some examples as well, that you think are relevant for somebody that is considering this type of, you know, marketing channel.

 

Raul Galera  

Yeah, so word of mouth, it's typically, we refer to word of mouth as the organic type of event that happens when somebody recommends something to a friend. So if I, if I go and like, you know, tell my friends that they should go and watch Squid Game, right? I don't know if Squid Game will still be relevant by the time that this episode airing. But right now it really is. So if I tell somebody to go watch that show, that's that's word of mouth, I'm just I have no incentive, no financial incentive on some of my friends to go out and watch it now, but I'm just doing something that I think it's useful, I think they're going to enjoy it. And so I just, I just kind of like let them know about it and tell them and so that's what's behind all these, you know, like viral effects that we're seeing, it's just people talking about it in different venues, whether it's a group chat or social media or in person. And, and that's why I was mentioning earlier that that's kind of hard to track. Because you don't really know if I told my friend in person, you know, having a coffee or if I text somebody and tell them that they should buy X product, there's really no way for the brand to know where the customer is coming from. Right. So typically just it's organic, right? They just land them on the website, they happen to know their website, they landed there and made the purchase. So that's word of mouth. And that's kind of like the beginning of everything. referral marketing. It's, it's a series of marketing strategies, in most of these cases, is a referral programme that you implement to level up that organic word of mouth that you're already having on your store. So you need to have and this is something I tell merchants I guarantee if you've been around for a while. If you have a steady number of or a growing number of orders per month. I guarantee you You already have word of mouth happening in your store, and you just don't know how much what percentage of that new revenue is coming from referrals. Right? So that's the difference between word of mouth and referral marketing referral, marking something you build on top of organic word of mouth. And affiliate marketing. Yeah, what I just mentioned, it's it's slightly different in the sense that we're not talking about people directly referring other people in their network, it's necessarily, it could be bloggers, it could be people that you know, are influencers on Instagram or, or people that had just a platform where they can connect with, with an audience that follows them, who

 

Andrei Tiu  

Cool! Raul, so now looking at your current customers, maybe the ones that are super active, or the segments of customers that you feel are becoming more and more engaged with your product? Specifically, where do you feel it's the biggest buzz like which industries or which types of products tend to look more and more at this type of channel?

 

Raul Galera  

Yeah, so I mean, this is gonna be a cliche answer. But I mean, we've seen referral programmes work on pretty much any industry out there. Especially those I mean, it typically works well, those that have kind of like that, that viral component, right? That's something that you can just mention, maybe a physical component. So clothing, it's an industry that works extremely well. We've also seen that companies in the in the food and beverage industry, especially those that are selling a subscription, actually works really well. And I mentioned subscription, because one, we actually have a, I was looking at it the other day on our website, the majority of our case studies are something that they haven't come on to their subscription business. What's interesting about subscription businesses is that they kind of become part of your life, the fact that you're getting a product delivered to your door every single month or every single week. It's kind of part of your routine. And so it's something that you're more likely to talk about to your friends and family. So. So if we could mention subscriptions as an industry, then yeah, and then that's definitely an industry that the work is fairly well. But those products that have a physical, physical or visual component that you can also share on social media that you can show your friends that typically work really well. But yeah, if I have to mention kind of like the top three, I would say that clothing and apparel, it's probably number one, food and beverages, and then it'll be the second. And then third will probably be kind of gadgets and electronics, we've also seen that that industry thinks to work extremely well.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay, very good. And if you were to think about the more non conventional ways of starting before a programme, or you know, some things that you encountered, that you found, oh, wait, these guys are doing something that is not so, you know, often encountered, what would be some of the more out of the box, strategies that you found with your clients or, you know, ways of putting together a referral programme that is like, Whoa, I never seen something like this before.

 

Raul Galera  

Yeah. In terms of rewards, I've seen a few. So actually, in the clothing industry. So there's, there's one brand that I've actually been their customer too, it's called Wulin. And they sell their subscription service for unique T shirts. So every single month, they design a t shirt, this, they send it out to everybody who's subscribed that particular month, and they never produce it again. So you get you get a neat t shirt that you know that you know, if you ever come across somebody wearing that T shirt, you know where it's coming from, right. So it also has a kind of like that, that component of even creating some sort of sense of community around customers. And so what they do for their referral programmes that they offer, I, if I remember correctly, is a free subscription for the customer that makes a recommendation. So if you refer a friend, your next t-shirt, it's on them, so they don't have to pay anything for that. And the friend gets 50% off their first T-shirt. So the I mean that what tells me is that they are so sure that customers are going to love the product, that they're just willing to give, you know, a 50% discount to new customers just to acquire because they know that a large percentage of those new customers are going to stick around and probably make another purchase and then potentially also refer their friends. So that's one that's one that I've seen that works really well. So in the coating industry, thread beast, that's a customer that's been with us for a really long time. They follow kind of a similar approach. So it's also a subscription box with kind of like a set of clothes that they kind of match what you've selected as your as your style. And what they do is that they give us some sort of percentage off to the friend. But the advocate gets an additional box every time they refer a friend. So if you refer three friends, your next month is going to be your box plus three additional boxes full of clothes. So it's, that has created a kind of like a viral component. And actually, if you if you search for thread beast on YouTube, you're gonna see tonnes of videos of people unboxing their, their, the box that they have just received, and adding the referral link in the YouTube video description, just so people can make a purchase through it through that. So that's worked really well in terms of rewards, I think those are pretty innovative, and also pretty, I guess, pretty bold examples that they're just so sure that their customers are going to love the product that here's what they're willing to give pretty hefty discounts. And then in terms of messaging, there's one customer that I think they've, they've nailed it in terms of how to message or how to how to craft a message that's compelling in terms of how to sell referral programme. And it's called barren fig. And they sell kind of productivity tools, right. So mostly notebooks and things that kind of help you organise your, your work and your day. And they have a, they have a page on their website, where they explain what the referral programme is about. And they have a note from the team. Right. And in there, they have a paragraph that I think it's genius in which they say, instead of spending money on advertising, we’re rather given the money to you, right? And so it's more like, you know, why would we spend money on Google or Facebook where we can just give the money to people or lower products, which is, which is your right, and they also talk about how, um, you know, every referral helps them grow their small studio, so you know, adult, they're also kind of like sharing who they are as a company, the fact that they're a small company that are trying to grow their business. And so he creates like a very personal connection with that with the customer. So yeah, in terms of how to craft a really good message, that's always my go to example. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice, nice, nice. I love that approach. And now you mentioning about subscription boxes, I remembered now that I once was ascribed to this service of delivering not unique, but beers that you wouldn't always found in shop finding shops. And in UK, there is a lot of small breweries, so you invariably get a lot of beers that you don't usually get, and are also international and whatever. But I remember that they were having a mechanism sort of similar to this one, when you refer the friends would get I think 30% of it was for them. And then if you referred three friends, you'd get a free box or something like that. But I'm not sure how easy it would be, for example, for somebody that would consider us implementation like that, would it be something that that is easily done and automated through? Let's say, ReferralCandy? Like, can you have something to track when you get to free and then to automatically offer?

 

Raul Galera  

Yeah, so the Yeah, so we have a number of customers that do that. And so actually kind of also addressing the point of refer three friends and get a reward, you can also actually do that on ReferralCandy, you can select what's the minimum number of customers that that an advocate meets to refer in order to be able to qualify for that referral, I mean, for that reward. But that, yeah, that also that the easiest way to do kind of like the free product thing, it's by just creating a coupon code that automatically creates a new product. Sorry, that automatically adds a free product at the checkout. That's one of them. Another one will be just creating a referral, creating a promo code that automatically applies the promo, which in this case, will be a free product, and then sending friends from the referral link to that particular landing page. That's typically how our merchants do it kind of depends also, depending on the E commerce platform that they're on. But yeah, and actually the example that you mentioned about the beer, I mean, that's, that's also a very good example of a product that it's easily you can easily showcase to your friends, right? Like, if you get one of these boxes, probably the most, a typical scenario is going to be that you're going to have some friends over so they can try all the different beers that you bought. And you know, they can like them and everything. And then the conversation will just, you know, organically turning to Oh, where do you get this right, and then kind of a whole referral explanation. Consider?

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, definitely. So what are your plans for the coming months? Do you have any exciting behind the scenes stuff that you have going on? And you feel like sharing or things that you are developing right now that are hot in the industry?

 

Raul Galera  

Yeah, so I mean, we have some we had some major news last week, because we were certified as a Shopify Plus app. So that was something that our team had been working on for a long time. And we finally got it. So we're really excited about that. Especially comes with the Thank you. Yeah, come comes out the best, you know, pretty much best best time possible. As brands are preparing for Black Friday. And yeah, I mean, what's what's on our plate right now, it's just making sure that everything is running smoothly. I had of Black Friday and Cyber Monday or Mike, on my end particular, in my particular case, working with agencies, and their merchants to make sure that those merchants that are setting up a referral programme, make sure that they have everything set up by the time that Black Friday and Cyber Monday arrives. So yeah, that's, that's kind of our situation right now. We have some plans on developing some new features for the coming year. Right now, it's all, you know, kind of like whiteboard discussions. So fortunately, I can, I would love to, I'd we don't really have anything tangible to announce. But yet, we. But as I mentioned earlier, you know, we've had such a, with experiments, such growth in the past year and a half that, you know, we need to obviously address it with new features, and thanks that merchants are requesting.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Super, super. Well, that's a very good problem to have. So very cool. Super. So now, try to wrap up our discussion and joing the essence, what would be 334 points that you'd advise merchants that are looking at implementing a referral programme, that they should be considering, like top three things to consider when you are looking at launching a programme in order for it to be as successful as possible?

 

Raul Galera  

Yeah, so the first one will be to kind of like, figure it out, what's the best timing to announce new customers do the existing use of the referral programme. So it's right after the purchase, while you still have their attention, it's better to postpone it until they actually get the product kind of like you know, figured out what's the mean, you can always test it out, but figured out what's the best timing to do that. Also promote it to your existing audience. So not only past customers, but also social media and newsletter, whatever you have available, make sure that those people are are are informed about the referral programme. The third one will be just to basically decide whether you want to have it as an open referral programme in which anybody can can join and become an advocate and start referring their friends. Or if you want to close it to just extend customers we have we have merchants that go both ways, in my opinion, unless there's a downside of, of not having of not having customers, refer your friends, which is not typically the case, I would, I would recommend to have it open and have some sort of like call to action on your website. So website visitors can sign up for the referral programme and get a referral link and you think about if I land on a website that's selling a product that I'm not interested in, but I can get my friends to discount, and you know, it's it's a win-win situation, because the merchant has a new, a new customer, my friend, you know, found out about a store or product that they weren't aware of, and now they have a discount on something that combined that's gonna be helpful for them. And I met my friend happy, right. So you know, the all three parts are, are happy. So yeah, it's all about, it's all about promotion, as you can imagine, just make sure that there's some continuous communication between the between the merchant and the customers, and that everybody is aware of the existence of the referral programme, especially after they've made that purchase. And they can they can start interacting with a brand in a way that's not necessarily directed towards making another purchase. Right, but just gonna like stay on top of mine.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, like additional ways to be the relationship not just to asking for money again. 

 

Raul Galera  

Exactly. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Awesome. So in terms of you and the business, if we have somebody here that is tuning in, and they find this interesting, how can people best connect with you? Obviously, guys, you'd have all the links to those platforms. And before I can in the description of this episode, either on YouTube or if you are streaming, you have all the info there anyway. But Raul, where should people reach out to you best? And where do you prefer to have conversations? 

 

Raul Galera  

Yeah, so my emails,the best way to reach me so it's raulg@referralcandy.com. Happy to take any questions there. We also, you know, for anybody that wants to get started, we also have a little promotion going on so they can they can get through to the other software their first the first subscription after the 30 day free trial so it's kind of like extending the trail and its own try.referralcandy.com/podcast for anybody that wants to try it out but otherwisel, my email I'm always happy to take any questions and continue the conversation there.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Great stuff super roll it was a great pleasure to have his day. This was the very exciting topic and I think he was very timely guys tuning in thank you for staying all the way to the end. Hopefully, you found some inspiration here and we are actually both of us looking forward to your feedback. So you know if you're watching this on YouTube, leave us in the comments below the video what you found most useful or if you are considering this and if you have any additional questions that we might be able to address. Otherwise, if you are streaming as always for us email let us know if you would like us to focus more on certain micro topics within this broader topic of you know, offering for programmes and affiliate marketing specifically and Roland I will see maybe if you're up for it, we can meet again sometime in the near future and discuss in more detail if there are bits that are interesting to you guys as a community. And yeah, until next time, well thank you again for being on the show. This was a really nice evening for me morning for you.

 

Raul Galera  

Yeah, thank you for having me.

 

Andrei Tiu  

A pleasure and looking forward to hopefully meeting against them maybe someday in person. Meanwhile, a rocket with your promotions this season and wish you the very best of success with your clients and customers. Guys, you to again, you know, rock your marketing for this period because I know May I mean everybody's super busy during this time. So let's have a productive season so that we can chill out over Christmas. And until next time. Until next time, have a good time and looking forward to catching up soon. Cheers!

 

How to integrate Podcasts within your content marketing strategy [Elzie Flenard III]

Join Andrei and our guest on today’s episode, Elzie Flenard III, as they will be discussing podcasts, as part of a comprehensive content marketing strategy, as well as tips and strategies to run a professional podcast show. Elzie is the CEO of Podcast Town, the podcasting agency through which he helps people and brands connect, communicate and cultivate relationships with their audience through podcasting, coaching and training.

Connect with Elzie: 

Website:  https://www.podcasttown.net/about-us 

Elzie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elziedflenardiii/ 

 

Connect with Andrei:

Marketiu: https://marketiu.com / https://marketiu.ro  

Andrei on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/ 

Marketiu on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu 

Marketiu on Twitter: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency 

Marketiu on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/ 

Email at hello@marketiu.ro

 

Listen to the episode on your favourite platform:

▶️ Watch the episode on YouTube: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-YouTube

▶️ Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show

▶️ Podbean: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Podbean

▶️ Spotify: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Spotify

▶️ Deezer: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Deezer

▶️ Stitcher: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Stitcher

▶️ Castbox: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Castbox

Episode transcript:

Andrei Tiu  

Hi there! This is Andrei and you are on The Marketing Innovation Podcast Show. Our special guest today is Elzie, or, as many know him, ”The Mayor”. He is the CEO of Podcast Town, the podcasting agency through which he helps people and brands connect, communicate and cultivate relationships with their audience through podcasting, coaching and training. Today, we'll discuss podcasts as part of a comprehensive content marketing strategy, as well as tips and strategies to run a professional podcast show. So without further ado, Elzie it's a pleasure to have you here on the show. How are you? How's the morning / almost lunchtime going?

 

Elzie Flenard  

Well, first of all, Andrei, thank you so much for having me on the show. I am doing fantastic. It is around 11am. Almost lunchtime here in the US. So I'm excited and full of energy and ready to talk about podcasting.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Love it, super. So let's go! We have a very curious audience here. I know that podcasting has been, you know, on the marketers mind for five years now and things are moving forward in many cases. But I think the way that we will approach the subject today is going to be super relevant and super interesting. I'm excited to get to it. However, I would like to start by letting you tell us a bit about you and about your journey and how you started on this path. Are you up for it?

 

Elzie Flenard  

Let's do it.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Super, over to you.

 

Elzie Flenard  

So my journey started, pretty much by accident in terms of how I got into podcasting. I'll spare you the long version of the story, but essentially, I was looking to learn, and I was stuck in my side hustle and I wanted to quit my day job. But I didn't have the knowledge, I felt I needed to know more about business and how to run business in order to get over that hump. And so my bright idea was I was going to start this show called ”Enterprise Now” and I was going to invite these brilliant business minds onto my show and learn from them. And so that's what I did, I started my show, I started learning so many concepts and principles from these business owners that eventually, it worked! I was able to quit my day job and do podcasting full time. So that's the long and short story, but it was totally not my intention to start a podcast business, it just sort of happened.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay, so you initially just wanted to be a podcaster?

 

Elzie Flenard  

I wanted to do anything other than my day job, quite honestly. I'm a business guy, I love entrepreneurship, solving problems, and helping people get to the next level in their business and in their lives. And so I really saw an opportunity in the podcast space that it was growing, that the on demand culture was increasing. And this still continues to do so. And so it was kind of a timing thing where the problem presented itself at the right time. I had the skill set, and I jumped in both feet.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Very nice. Can I ask what was the job that you were hating before?

 

Elzie Flenard  

Oh, all of them. I've never had a job I liked, Andrei, like ever. I've had jobs that I could deal with, they were okay. But I've never had a job that I loved, until now, of course.

 

Andrei Tiu  

That's very cool that you managed to, you know, find your place here. So how long was the period of time when you were hating your jobs? And when did the switch happen?

 

Elzie Flenard  

Yes, so I've worked since I was 15 years old, Andrei. And I'm 39 now. So quite a long time, I probably worked my side gig in my adult career for about 15 years before I was able to make that transition. And, quite frankly, it was scary, you know, you're going from, and at the time I was making six figures, so it wasn't like I was making a job that I couldn't pay the bills with. Financially, I was doing all right, you know, and so, I made the transition and I could say I wish, in some ways I wish I had done it earlier, but in some ways I'm glad it happened when it did because I learned so much from how larger  corporations operate that helped me in my business now.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Sweet. So just for our audience to know in terms of the timeframes. How long have you been having this business and when did you actually move to being a full time podcast guy?

 

Elzie Flenard  

Yes. So my business started in 2011. So I think, if I'm doing the math, 10 years ago, and I've been running Podcast Town for about four and a half years.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice. So you're still a bit of an early adopter in that sense. Because in 2015 - 16, there were a few, but there were not too many podcasts.

 

Elzie Flenard  

Yeah, it's interesting, because podcasting has been around for quite a while. But  there'll be these ebbs and flows in popularity. When I started, not a tonne of people have podcasts. Now, that's not the case, a lot of people have podcasts now. And so, it's really cool to see the industry sort of grow and become an actual industry with an infrastructure and in some ways, rules and things like that. So it's been a pretty cool thing to watch.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay, so then, so that we can drift easily into the actual, you know, tactical side of the discussion. What's your day looking like right now, what are you doing?

 

Elzie Flenard  

Okay, so my day includes I did a little bit of bookkeeping this morning, onboarding a new client. I'm here now doing this podcast interview. So that's content creation / marketing / relationship building. Later today, I have to prepare for a webinar that we're doing in a little bit. And then I have to move to my to do list, looking at my operations to make sure that that's efficient. There's a platform that I'm thinking about switching over to. So right there, I've done let's see marketing and sales, I've done operations, I've done finance. Did I leave anything out of the four major areas of business? It's a mix of a lot of different things.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay, but your main activity now has to do with your agency and with working with people to have successful podcasts, right? So now let's put on the marketing / business hat. And let's look at this through, what I think would be our audience's eyes when we approach the subject of content marketing / podcasting. I think we can start with defining how a podcast can help a business and how we could bring value to a content marketing strategy. And here we have two angles through which you can integrate podcasts into a content marketing strategy: One of them is as a company or as an individual that wants to be the personal brand, to have your own podcast and to invite people and to associate yourself with these names and you know, sort of building on what you need in that direction, and create content on the way. Or you can look at being present on more podcasts so that you can, again, be the thought leader to say so by being invited to all these shows and stuff. And now, what are your thoughts on this? Or how do you approach this angle with your clients? How do you feel that podcasts can be best integrated into this content marketing framework?

 

Elzie Flenard  

Well to answer your question, the three things that I always think about whether you're guesting on a show, or you're hosting a show, is building relationships, growing your influence, and building authority. Those are the three things that whether it's a personal brand, if it's a corporate brand, you're going to want to do those things, right? You're going to want to build relationships, you want to raise your profile or your authority, and you want influence because those are the things that are going to segue into building your know like trust factor, which is the ground level. That's why people do business with people they like know and trust, right? So I'll start there, but I think, on a drill down level, you really have to understand who you want to talk to. I think if you're in business, the fact that you need a podcast, that's a foregone conclusion. You need to be in the podcast space. I mean that's, to me, my opinion, that's not even an option anymore. If you're not in a space, you're already falling behind. So let's just get that out of there. So, Mr. / Mrs. business owner, if you're listening to this podcast, The Mayor has declared that you need to be in the podcast space. Now, how you show up in the space varies depending on what your goals are, what your brain is, right? So not everybody should host a branded show. But you should at least be guesting on shows. Why? Multiplication. You get to take advantage of somebody else's, we just mentioned, they've already built the relationships with their audience, they've already established trust and authority, they already have influence. And so you get to borrow that, and cheat the system, so to speak, by being a guest on their show, giving a massive value to the listeners. And that's a cheat code. So, if you're not guesting on podcast and taking advantage of that, what are you doing? Secondly, I would say that, hearing your voice hearing, even as I'm listening to my own voice, there's something that happens to us psychologically, when we hear voices, when we hear audio, that is different from written, and is different from video. To have your brand's voice, literally, in between somebody's ears, is a very, very impactful way to present to them your message, why you exist, and how you can help them.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Very good point there. Okay, and, having that in mind, and knowing that this should be sort of like the discussion not if you should, or should not be on the show, but rather, what appearance should you have there. Let's say there is a business and they are sort of not anymore, a startup, they have a presence, and they have a marketing team. And they are considering podcasts, willing to take some action. Do you have a strategy with the clients that you work with are the moments to decide the direction in which they should go, like, for example, if they feel they would like to be starring on podcasts, they need to do this and they need to think about it this way, while as if they want to have a podcast show, then deciding on the content strategy that they want to build, depending on niche and everything.

 

Elzie Flenard  

Yeah, I always start with the end in mind. Every brand is different, every company is different, every company has a different internal resources and goal. Right? So if a company comes to me, and they say, well, Elzie, we want to leverage podcasting. My next question would be "for what?" What is the action? What is the end result of what you want to happen from your podcast? For some brands, it might be, we want people to just be aware of our brain and what we do who we are and why we do it. Our approach is completely different than if you say: "Well, no, we want to drive revenue with our podcast", what we do, how we do it, and why we do it is going to be different in that case. Or you might say: "well, I just want an internal podcast so that we can hammer in our mission, vision, core values to our internal employees." Again, we're going to approach it differently with that goal in mind. So I would say the first step is understanding what action you want to drive with your podcast. And then tailoring literally everything else to that. Everything from your segments, to how long the podcast is, your artwork, your show notes, the website, everything is going to be built based on what your end goal is.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Cool, very good answer. And to build on top of what you just mentioned, because we just had this discussion with two of our clients and I think it's good to put it out there for everybody that is considering this, is when you think about the podcast, and you decide whether you like to be a guest or you want to have your own podcast, I think it's very important to bear in mind your content marketing strategy as a whole, integrated, as a company. Because what you ideally want to do is to use this on your channel that you haven't necessarily tapped into before, so that you can drive sort of the same message at the same time, in line with your other communications. So as you were mentioning there and pointing out, this is your opportunity to put a voice to your brand. So if you do that, at least have a coherent message and be sure that the efforts that you do on one side are not going to be necessarily duplicated, but you're sort of following the same direction and everything is congruent from a brand messaging perspective.

 

Elzie Flenard  

Absolutely.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay, so now let's look at content marketing and content repurposing and refurbishing. When you work out your clients strategy for deploying or lounging podcast, First of all, do you have a launch blueprint that you could share maybe a bit of, for our audience here to understand what are some points that they should be considering, if they decide to go down this route?

 

Elzie Flenard  

I think, in terms of blueprint, it kind of goes back to my earlier answer, right? It kind of depends on the show what our goals are, but higher level, right? You want to look at things like your target market: Who are we talking to? What's our message? And again, that'll inform things like the title, your show notes format, what artwork, what colours are we going to use, right? Because a lot of people don't understand the psychological impact of colours. So depending on who your target audience is, you might want to add those colours into your artwork. So looking at that, looking at what is the format of the show. If you're trying to reach TikTokers, maybe you don't want to have a two hour long podcast, because they probably won't want to listen to a two hour podcast, they are TikTokers, they like short, meaty, or funny or entertaining clips. So again, just stepping through all of those things, title, market, basically putting together a creative brief of the show, so that everybody's on the same page, to your point, reviewing the organization's mission, vision, values to make sure that there's congruency and alignment there and really just understanding the approach. Is it every other week? Is it weekly? Are we going to do a daily show three times a week? So just really getting intentional about all those details.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Very cool. Would you be up to discuss maybe some podcasts lounge case studies, and then, you know, we can have a conversation there. I'm happy to be open with our strategy as well with the podcast that we are doing right now. So people that have been with us from the beginning, they probably noticed some changes as we went through the seasons and episodes. And maybe we can have an open discussion. Maybe it helps people that are debating where to start, or how to think about their own strategy. I can start just so I don't throw you under the bus. And then you can take over and we can, you know, debate certain decisions or ideas. Sounds good?

 

Elzie Flenard  

Sounds like a plan.

 

Andrei Tiu  

So basically, the story in this podcast is that we launched it in 2018. And we kept it up for a while, and then we just didn't have enough time to record anymore. So we left it there for a while, and then we decided last year in spring that we want to restart on it, because we've been out of this space for a very long while. And as you mentioned, in terms of the sort of voice channel, we didn't do much activity here. So we had graphics, we had a lot of content marketing in the form of written content, but not so much audio, and we want to generate more content that can be then repurposed. We also felt running the podcast would be a nice tool to be able to give back to our community of subscribers and to our community of "marketing leaders", in this sense, by inviting people that have more specialised knowledge from other areas of the world. So at the moment, we operate a lot in the UK and Western Europe, as well as Romania, in Europe. So we felt that, you know, helping people understand how things are going in the US or Australia or even Europe, but certain countries would be very relevant to building that knowledge base, and to complement the know-how. And it's also easier to consume audio, and more nice, you know, in that sense. So we launched and we were running weekly episodes, probably until this spring, so for about a year, and how we thought about the podcast, and we had some changes here on strategy. First of all, we wanted to produce a blog post of each episode. So we had the transcript. And then we also wanted to tap into the SEO benefit. So most of the episodes as we are discussing now, for example, you know, our discussion is on podcast marketing, and you know, content marketing, we would use this to create internal links and backlinks from certain platforms and essentially build on top of our SEO while also helping our guests platforms so we would backlink to them, and we use our platforms to create backlinks to them as well. So from an SEO Marketing point of view, that was beneficial for everybody. And then we use insights to create knowledge nuggets, to say so, so, you know, very little pieces of information that could be integrated into visual or more recently, we have started to use extracts from episodes on our TikTok channel. Making it easy to consume, but having a big chunk of content that we can then split and use across channels. And this has worked very well, but as you can imagine, it was a lot of time that we had to go into each episode, probably about 20 something hours. So with editing and producing everything, we decided to not have weekly episodes for this upcoming season and the last so we are running it twice a month and this gives us also a lot more time to promote and to get every episode to a larger audience, so we are kind of changing direction as we go. And as we feel, it would contribute best to our audience, as well as our business / marketing plan, to say so, and this was in short. How about some of the podcasts that you have been involved in, some nice stories that you felt were particularly relevant? Or some shows that capture your attention recently? What made them special?

 

Elzie Flenard  

Well, I can give you 2. So, everything you said was great. Yeah, same, we try to, again, when we're going through though, that the strategy and the angle, that sort of determines how much of the repurposing we do, where it comes from that type of thing. But naturally, the anchor content is the audio, so I have some clients where we'll do an article based on the content, and then we'll do a blog post, and then we'll do snippets.  So we'll do a number of, depending on their level of service, of repurposing from the audio, because again, we want to capture the voice and the message of the client and the brand from that audio. But a couple quick ones that I can think of offhand in terms of case studies is I have a client and they're coaches. And we basically designed her show to drive traffic to her coaching clinics. So when you listen to the show, it sounds like they do role play, there's some fun in there, and it really feels like you are going to one of their clinics, and we have doubled their clinical attendance. Because when people listen to the show, they get a sense of what it would be like to work with them. And so again, when people subscribe, they know and trust, they go to the website, they already know what it feels like to work with them what it might be like, and so they sign up, right? So that's what I mean, in terms of looking at the angle and then working our way backwards. For them, maybe we don't need all the extra repurposing stuff. Maybe we do, maybe we add it in gradually as the show progresses to even deepen the relationships and put gasoline on the fire. So again, it's always looking at the goal and then working backwards, right? So there might be a time where we look at it and say - Okay, well, we're getting good traction with the clinics, let's add a blog post to this, let's add an article, let's add some TikTok videos, or, whatever the case is. So again, our strategy is always looking at what our goal is, and what pieces of content Do we need to draw out of that anchor content, that is going to move people to the action that we want them to take. Another example is, I'm a musician, I'm a singer / songwriter.

 

Andrei Tiu  

I'm a guitarist.

 

Elzie Flenard  

And so my strategy is I'm going to launch a podcast and I'm going to take people on my journey on why I wrote the songs, what they mean to me, where they came from, what was my inspiration? And then on the business side, how much does this cost? How long did it take and all the details about this music, and that's my promotion strategy. I want to take people on a journey and then have the release in the podcast. And so the, you know, the jury's out. I don't know if it'll work or not, but that's my strategy. Is to really the develop that relationship with listeners, before the music even comes out so that when it comes out, we've gone on that journey together.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Very cool. Okay, can we zoom into music a bit? Because it's also one of my biggest passions. And I'm very curious, and I think it's gonna be very relevant to our discussion here in the broader context. Soyou have identified that podcasting will be a very nice innovative way, in a way, to promote and launch your music. What are the strategies to promote it that you have in mind to grow the audience from basically zero in the beginning, since it's a new one, to whatever, if you have a goal what's the goal? And what are the tactics that you are looking to deploy? To get there in a short amount of time?

 

Elzie Flenard  

Yes, so my goal is to get, I want to get 300 people on my email list. That is, that's my goal. And the idea is that I want those 300 people to share it with three people. Right. And so if my math is right, let me let me just get my calculator here. So if those 300 people, share it with three people, then I'll be at 900. So my goal is to get 1000 people on the email list. And then when I launch, I want to be on 1000 people's Spotify playlists, though, that those are my two main goals. My strategy to get there is, I'm starting with my personal Facebook, because I think a lot of the people, at least those foundational people, that's where they're hanging out. And from there, I'm going to start teasing it. And then once I launched the podcast, my only call to action is going to be, number one, share it with somebody that you think is also interested in this journey and I want you to put me on your Spotify playlist. So that is the action that I want the people to take. And so the journey is, I'm gonna I'm going to be sharing how I wrote the song, like, the inspiration and all that stuff. Starting with Facebook, I probably run some Facebook ads just to kind of raise brand awareness around what I'm doing, and why. But I really want the groundswell of people who who follow me, who want to hear the music, then  sharing with other people. So my strategy is simple. I want to gorilla marketing, share it with your friends. Starting with Facebook, we might look at TikTok, but primarily on Facebook.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice. And in terms of building up that email list. Are you going to create a subscription landing page that is different from your podcasts to subscribe them to your podcast? Or how is that going to work?

 

Elzie Flenard  

Yes, so I'll have a landing page, a squeeze page with a nice video on it saying, Hey, I'm Elzie bla bla bla, here's what I'm doing, here's what I want you to do, again, driving those same actions, if you if you're interested in the journey, sign up below, and share this with somebody that you think would also be interested in the journey. So there's two songs, so the songs will be at some point on that squeeze page so that they can download them for free. Or once they come out, or they can put a shareable link on there where they can share it to their friend right from that squeeze page. And then again, once the the songs come out, they'll be on that same squeeze page.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Very cool. Best of luck. This is gonna be exciting. One quick tip here, that might actually help you in getting boosted by Spotify and getting into those new commerce playlists would be if you can ask them to pre save your tracks. So from your artists account, if you can have them available to pre save, then pre saving them is going to help you when you do launch, get positioned a bit above. And depending on how you split it when you know when you have to choose the categories and everything. You might actually be able to get into some targeted categories.

 

Elzie Flenard  

Ah, well, thanks. Thanks for that tip. I will implement that.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, this could actually make a difference. And because you mentioned Spotify ads, depending on the budget, but, sorry, you mentioned the Facebook ads, but depending on the budget, if you want to get Spotify listens, you might be better off with Spotify ads, and they tend to be less expensive as well. So, specifically targeting music fans. The only thing that they are the only thing that you need to keep in mind though, is the only people that receive Spotify ads are people that don't pay for subscriptions. So you know you'd probably get to probably the younger audience. What's the music music, by the way, what genre?

 

Elzie Flenard  

It is worship music, so it's Christian worship.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay. I mean, you can at least have a look, see if it's something that you think would be like a channel that you think would work well. And, you know, from there, you can select specific artists that would be relevant to your style, and then you can target the audience of those artists. And this is very targeted. This could be a nice opportunity as well.

 

Elzie Flenard  

Cool, thank you. I'll take those things into consideration. Appreciate it.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah. Grace off. No worries, best of luck. Okay, and now let's go back to our podcasting session. Okay, cool. So where did we leave it in case studies, right? Both of them are nice angles to actually think a bit outside of the box and bring your brand to life better through, you know, an additional channel. And the question that I think is on many people's minds is how and when do you start to monetize? When do you know it's a good time? And what are the opportunities to monetize?

 

Elzie Flenard  

That is the million dollar question, right? Everybody wants to know, how do I make money with this thing? And kind of building off of the music discussion? I think if podcasters start to think about things similarly to music, we wouldn't be better off, for example, how much, how do you monetize music? Right? And then when I posed that question to people that I get this look like - "Well, what do you mean?" - because years ago, people actually bought music, they would, you know, I told you, I'm 39. So when I was younger, you will go to the store and they have these things called CDs, compact discs, with music on them, you would grab it, you will pick it up, it was a physical thing, you would take it to the register, and you would buy it and you will take it home and listen to it. People don't do that anymore. For the most part, now they stream it. You know, I can't tell you the last time I purchased music, it's been many, many years. And so making money from music is very difficult. And it's different now. I would say the same thing with podcasts. People never pay for podcasts, right? You never could go to a store and grab it off the shelf and purchase it. But what you want to monetize is, again, the relationships that you have built. What that looks like, practically is, for example, if you're a coach, you want to leverage that, like no trust factor, the relationship, the authority, the influence, to sell a course, or maybe it's an event, or maybe it's a product or service. That return on investment is a lot higher than selling sponsorship or ads, because for a reason that is unknown to me, the cost per 1000s is so low, that you have to have a lot of downloads for it to make sense for it to make it worth it. My opinion, right? So you have 10,000 downloads, that's 10 units times 335, that's $350. That's not a lot for the time that it's going to take you to present your podcast, your audience, your reach to a sponsor, sign the contract and do all the stuff that it takes to get a sponsor. My opinion, it's much higher return on investment for you to sell the service, sell a product that you have, than it is to go the ads route. So to answer your question, how do you monetize a podcast? is you really have to look at it as a holistic brand and how do you monetize the brand outside of just looking at the podcast? How many people do you have on your email list? How many people are coming to your website? Are people clicking on the links in your show notes? When you send an email, how many people are opening it? What's your open rate? Those types of things are all added value to monetizing your show. So if you're looking at sponsorship, make sure you include again, your email list, your web traffic, all of those things, how many likes and views and shares do you get when you post something on Facebook? That is a value add to a sponsor. So you really want to look at the podcast brand holistically, and what value it's bringing and then base your sponsorship on that and not just your downloads. But even with that Your own practical services the return on investment tends to be higher.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Right. So basically what we do here that we are running to agencies, and we do have podcasts, and we do this thing is basically just like a sort of giving it a marketing channel approach, rather than the revenue generating thing that we do would be, you know, for us now, but thinking in context of everybody would be of better value than trying to make it a revenue generating engine by itself. Right? And I think this can be valid and nice add on points to our discussion a bit earlier, when we were talking about how you should approach a podcast? Or if you want to have a podcast? What subjects Do you want to have on it, and you know, sort of proving value in this way, rather than by how much money you make off each 10k listens, as you mentioned? This was a nice insight. Right? So what do you cook these days, Elzie? What are we up to? What's exciting you?

 

Elzie Flenard  

For me, what's exciting me is just continuing to grow the agency. You know, we've been around a little bit now, in podcast years, and now it's just a matter of really refining our processes, our services that we offer, and being creative on how we get our clients results. And really just growing and, and impacting the world through audio, I'm a really big fan of the audio medium, right? Right now I'm spending most of my time in podcasting, but speaking, and music, and podcasting are all things that, you know, I have passions in and so I'm really excited about where audio is going as a marketing channel, and our little slice of the pie and saying that whole industry take off.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice. And in terms of the clients that you work with, I know you offer sort of like a 360 offering or pallet of services from, you know, having the production rooms to, as we mentioned now a bit of the strategy. I mean, the strategy element of the podcast, and everything has to do with this. You know, if anybody here on the show would like to have a conversation with you and see maybe store something together? Are you localised in your area? Or what type of clients do you work with typically?

 

Elzie Flenard  

My clients are all over. We don't have any international clients yet. But I mean, that would be great to work with people from other parts of the globe. But what we do is for the most part, we can do it virtually so we have clients in LA, New York and all over the US. So naturally, the studio itself, you kind of have to be local. But yeah, all the other services we can provide remotely. So yeah, I'd love to, to have a quick chat with anybody who has more questions or want to wants to just say hi,

 

Andrei Tiu  

Super. Okay, so we'll have links to your platforms in the description of the episode and everywhere, so people can connect with you directly. And just for the record, so because we have quite a few people that are joining from the US, and literally from everywhere on the globe, apart from, we don't have enough or not so many in Asia. But other than that, we are pretty international with the show. As it stands, where are you located? Just so people know.

 

Elzie Flenard  

We are in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, home of the world champion Milwaukee Bucks.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice. Okay. Elzie, this was a very big pleasure to spend this evening here with you. Very nice insights. And, you know, really appreciate your openness to all the subjects that we've been through. If there's anything else that you'd like to share with the audience, before we wrap up?

 

Elzie Flenard  

Yes, the only thing I want to share is, if you're listening to or watching this podcast, and you are in business, and you are not in the podcast space in some form, get in the space. Whether you're hosting a show, guesting on shows or sponsoring a show, you need to be in the podcast space, audio is going to continue to grow. And people want to hear from you, they want to hear your brand voice, So get in the game.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Cool, guys, thank you again for tuning in today. Hope you enjoyed our topics here looking forward to hearing your feedback. And you know any questions that you might have directly to Elzie you'd have his contact details in the description of this episode or directly to us. And if it's something that we can do to maybe you know, complement the insights that we brought to the table today, or maybe even organise something for the future in a more focused area of podcasting, then definitely let us know. And make sure you take this as homework and look into the way in which you can start to be present in the podcasting world. Seriously now, I mean this is definitely a space where you should be active as a brand and it's a lot of opportunity here. But Elzie Until next time this was a big pleasure wishing you the very best of success have a rockin good autumn and best of luck with your album. Hit us up as well when it's out or when you are pre launching it. So we can save that to our Spotify playlist soon.

 

Elzie Flenard  

I sure will, thank you so much for having me!

 

Andrei Tiu  

Thank you too! have a nice rest of the day!

 

Email Marketing strategies for Ecommerce [Black friday special] [Tyler Sullivan ”Sully”]

Join Andrei and our guest on today’s episode, Tyler ”Sully” Sullivan, as they will be discussing how to best prepare your online store for the upcoming shopping season as well as email marketing strategies to boost revenue and profits in eCommerce. Sully is the founder of BombTechGolf, an eCommerce store with over 20 million sold online since 2012. He also runs Ecomgrowers, helping Shopify store owners ramp up their online revenue and profits. 

 

Connect with Sully: 

Website:  http://Ecomgrowers.com

Sully on LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/tyler-sullivan-494b5426

Sully on Facebook: @bombtechgolf

Sully on Twitter: BombTechGolf

 

Connect with Andrei:

Marketiu: https://marketiu.com / https://marketiu.ro  

Andrei on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/ 

Marketiu on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu 

Marketiu on Twitter: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency 

Marketiu on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/ 

Email at hello@marketiu.ro

 

Listen to the episode on your favourite platform:

▶️ Watch the episode on YouTube: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-YouTube

▶️ Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show

▶️ Podbean: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Podbean

▶️ Spotify: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Spotify

▶️ Deezer: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Deezer

▶️ Stitcher: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Stitcher

▶️ Castbox: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Castbox

 

Episode transcript:

 

Andrei Tiu  

Hi there! This is Andrei welcoming you to our new season of The Marketing Innovation Podcast Show. Our special guest today is Tyler Sullivan, also known as Sully, who is the founder of BombTechGolf, an eCommerce store with over 20 million sold online since 2012. He also runs Ecomgrowers, helping Shopify store owners ramp up their online revenue and profits. Tyler here is hyper-focused on the customer experience and operating a lean business that doesn't just drive revenue but drives serious profit and cash flow. Today, as we are getting into the frenzy of Black Friday preparations for eCommerce in general, we'll discuss how to best prepare your online store for the upcoming shopping season as well as email marketing strategies to boost revenue and profits in eCommerce. Without further ado, Tyler, it's a pleasure to have you here on the show. How are you how's the day going?

 

Tyler Sullivan  

Good, man, living the dream. You know, drinking some coffee needs some more math to switch to whiskey in preparation for Black Friday. But life is good, we got to update that deck, we're at over 30 million sold. So we're doing you know, right around I think our trilling twelves, almost 10 million, and my own brand and the agency. I think we've got 40 clients right around that. So it's been cool to be on both sides. And both businesses, I kind of started with no real intention to start them, they kind of found me. And then kind of go into my founders store and how I got started if you like.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Perfect, yeah, I was about to pick your brains on that. And to actually, you know, help people here understand, as well as me, how you started out, and mainly, you know, running an eCommerce back in the day in 2012 - that was pretty early. So it will be interesting to hear your story and how you made a start on this.

 

Tyler Sullivan  

Probably very different than if someone has started recently. I started in 2012 - I was an accidental entrepreneur. I was just obsessed with golf and trying to hit the golf ball as far as I could. And in doing so, I ended up breaking a lot of golf clubs, right? It wasn't from my pure power or muscles, which I wish it was. But this local club builder was assembling these special clubs for me. And I would go around trying to compete in what they call a world long to drive. It's like the homerun Derby of golf. And I just did it because it was fun. I had a full-time job. And then in 2012 it is much harder to make a website, let alone a website that you could sell something off. And I just for some reason really just became obsessed and want to learn more and made a really bad website. But after six months, which may seem like a long time, I had no goals of making money with it was just for fun. I finally had a sale. I was on my boat and it wasn't a yacht, but it was on this boat I had. And I got an email saying ”hey, you sold something.” And that blew my mind. That was my first epiphany like ”Oh my god, I'm not at work. I'm not in front of my computer. But I sold something.” So I said,”Well, how do I do more of that?” And really, this is 2012. So it's a very different well budget started documenting what I was doing on Facebook, just kind of saying ”Hey, guys, this is what I'm doing today, what kind of clubs you play” and really having a curiosity and asking my potential customers. And during that process, I grew the following. And I had the crazy idea to design my own golf driver, which is not an easy feat. So I worked with, I actually called one of my buddies and we were just talking about what I was doing. And I had this idea and he's like ”well, you're not that smart.” And I said,” You're right. I'm not that smart. So I can't design a golf club myself”. But I ended up applying for a programme at my local College, the University of Vermont. And I worked with four students, and we engineered a golf club for a year. So we are actually part of the UVM engineering programme. And it was kind of a big risk. But I was confident in the design. I found a manufacturer through a very painful process that took me about six months, and cashed in my 401k and made some golf clubs. And during that process, I just was telling people what I was doing inviting their feedback on Facebook. And that allowed me to build a platform. So when we did launch we didn't do a tonne of sales, but I think we did 10k in a day. And I was like ”let's just do more of that.” So really, I was just going where the traction was early days like if something worked I've just tried to do more of that. And I think our next inflexion point, and there have been many epiphanies over nine years, but the big one was for us was how to scale right. It was a side hustle, I was doing like 15-20k a month, which may sound decent, but when you're making a product yourself, it means you're broke. Because you have to pay to make more. So cash flow was nothing. And then I had a big moment. I call it the, you know, go for a moment where I was fired from my day job the week before Thanksgiving, and I just found out my wife was pregnant. So I could not explain how much stress that year was because she supported me it was like ”Hey, you know, if you think you can do it, do it.” And she pretty much said ”Hey, you make BombTech work or not” and was supporting me. And we had a newborn on the way. And it was tough because I was working 20 hours a day, seven days a week. And I did that when he was a baby. I was doing all the wrong stuff: I was building clothes, myself, shipping them myself doing everything by myself. And then I was able that year out of the pure hustle. And Brian was able to scale it up enough to pay the bills and not be totally broke. And then next year, we went from one mill to like four mills. And we were able to use paid traffic. So we were able to figure out Facebook ads, I hired someone smarter than myself and that now we do, you know, around 10 million, and I only have two employees and I work about four hours a week. But it took me nine years, getting fired from my job to kids to realise like I don't have to be in the business now. I can hire people smarter than myself. So I think a lot of my advice and my experience, depends on you where you're at, in your own business and what life events you're at and dealing with.  If you talk to me five years ago, six years ago, and said, Hey, you can only work four hours a week, could you do it? I'd say no. So it all worked out, you do a lot of things wrong for a long time, and you figure out what you really need to work on. But, yeah, that's kind of where I'm at now, you know, I've worked on a lot less than half an agency, which is dual income, and I'm living the dream, and I'm just trying to find stuff to work on.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice, that's a very good problem to have. So you touched on something that I think is really important that is recurring in successful entrepreneurs, and that is burning the boats, whether you intentionally do it or not. So how do you feel burning the boats at that moment when you basically got fired from the job...

 

Tyler Sullivan  

But was burned for me. My philosophy is really like if you're in the startup phase, and you need an income work a day job. There's nothing wrong with that. But for me, that was just a moment where it was so much pressure from the family side, income, or lack thereof at this point, that I just had to make it work. You know, it wasn't like an option. So really, that was, I'm glad to happen. But at the time, it seemed like the worst thing in the world. And I wouldn't advise someone like ”Hey, you have a startup idea, you're doing some revenue, just go quit.” I don't I don't necessarily believe that everyone has their own journey. But for me, it was a lot of these things that have happened were right time and right place just for my journey. I don't know, maybe the business would have never taken off if I wasn't fired. That's what probably would have happened. So yeah, but the immense amount of pressure, and then having a kid. I mean, I don't advise you to do that.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Right. Okay. So you mentioned the sort of mini lounge that you made for the brand and then discovering paid advertising a bit later down the line. How was your marketing mix when you were small? And what changes did it suffer as you looked at ways to scale it up? And when you eventually had that second inflexion point.

 

Tyler Sullivan  

Yeah, so scaling was very difficult when I first started because Facebook ads really weren't a thing. So it was just Google. And I had no real budget to scale at that point. I was just paying for a product and really, every effort I did was organic. I was in different forums. This is before Facebook groups, even Facebook videos, I mean, this is old school, this is before the selfie. So a lot of my efforts were literally posting on Facebook, going into forums, having conversations with people and a lot of engagement. If I were to describe most of what I was doing was just having conversations on every platform - email, different groups or different forums and then on Facebook and Facebook was really the big one. So I would just ask questions, like on our page, and this is like when if you have 500 likes, says 500 people to actually see your stuff. Now we have 123,000 or something, but a good post, maybe 10,000 people see it so the reach was 100% back then So I will literally just talk to guys if anyone commented, and this is a good example. If anyone commented I would comment back and when the Facebook video first came out, I jumped on it. So like Facebook Live came out, we jumped on,  Facebook video camera, we jumped on, ads, we jumped so I was just quick and early on stuff. But I have a video in my backyard where I hit a ball to a net and sounds like a gun goes off, I hit it so hard, I say ”Does your driver sound like that?” And I boosted it for like 300 bucks and back in the day, that video got 300,000 views 10,000 comments. And not all the comments were great. Like we love it, we'll buy the club, but I just saw that it is okay, there's some traction here people were interested in some way. Let me comment back. And again, a lot of my decisions of what I did weren't driven by revenue and money. It was just driven by traction. Because I didn't have you know, I didn't start to say hey, I'm making million dollars here I just did it because I loved it at first and had the pressure and had to make happen. So when that video got 10,000 comments, I just comment on my Blackberry at the time, if you can imagine that until my thumbs were bleeding. Like literally I would comment on every comment because I just saw people engaging and that really was where we started to get like momentum and then we took those videos and those views and comments and scaled up it just started. I ran all the ads myself but that's how we went from like 400k organic to a million dollars with Facebook ads. And then I hired someone that actually knew how to retarget like actually knew when things were just coming out, he actually knew how to use it. And that sort of went for like a million to 4 million you know and then went to six and now we're doing like nine or 10, with the ability to scale those channels. Now to Facebook Google, we're doing Tik Tok different things like that. And then really, on top of the front end, we've dialled in the backend, you know, I that's really what lets me sleep at night, is that all I care about- if someone's willing to buy I want to wow them in such a way that I earned the right to sell to them again.  We do things that other people really just- I have a lot of secrets here but - in email, you know post-purchase flows, thank you voicemails, thank you cards, thank you videos, we all do that are tough to scale, but we do it because it's worth it. And we've kind of changed -  the comments were where we're getting our original traction, but now we take that same approach into where we drive the most revenue, which is email. So we really looked at the back end,  we're in PostScript with email and SMS. And we have that same thing where we don't necessarily say does your driver sound like that? The last questions we want to know the answer to like, Hey, we're launching two new products this in the next six months, or we're designing new to two new products. Which one of you do you want. And what it does is does two things. It gets people involved in the brand. It gets people engaged, it moves your email to the inbox from the promotions tab. And lastly, it gets you an answer, you really want to know the answer to our question. You want it answered a lot of times early on when I was like having a couple of good years were crushing it. I thought I knew what the customers want it right and we had a couple of launches or one launch, in particular, didn't crush it. Because I didn't really know if you'll want it. So now we just asked them. So our whole approach is having a two-way dialogue or a two-way conversation on the channel we can control and the channel that drives revenue the most, which is email. And that allows us to be profitable, whether it's Facebook, Tik Tok, Google, YouTube, connected TV. We could spend more because we know who we're going to repeat, we have a higher LTV, and it turns people into brand advocates. So it's a more mature way to look at it. And that's really at the end of the day, if we were to sell the company, or be bought, they're buying our customer lists. And our email list, which is our true asset, you know, a lot of people look at it like  ”I got to drive an ROI from my ad. But then they totally negate email and just blast them over the design newsletters, they get nothing done.”  So that's really like how we look at its two-way conversations that you actually want two answers to that keep get people to reply, and help you learn more from your customers.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Very cool. So this is actually one of the very few discussions with, Easter owners that actually took a lot of action in triggering that dialogue post-purchase, because, you know, many entrepreneurs know that they should be more active on the email than there are opportunities out there to automate. If we could zoom in just a little bit into this, and if you could share, I have two things that I think would be very relevant to the guys listening to us right now. And one of them is to draw a parallel so we can show through your case study if you want, the difference that email marketing can make, as opposed to if you are not running it. So for example, you have a cost of acquisition by running Facebook ads, let's say, but then how much you can increase the value of that customer by running very good email marketing campaigns? And that'd be one. And if you have some numbers that you could share, I think there would be building on to the argument. And then the second one was, what's your approach to marketing right now? Like, how are your funnels looking?

 

Tyler Sullivan  

Yeah, I mean, so I hate tactics, and hacks, and things like that, at this point in my life and business and both companies, it's all about mindset and strategies at a high level. So it's like, I can tell you ”hey, do this tactic or this will reduce your CAC if you do this type of funnel or flow” but that's not the reality. The reality is you need to have a true across every department - ads, email, customer service - you need to have an understanding that you're going to actually be real customers, and you're going to actually ask real questions everywhere. But if you just say  ”hey, do this one thing in email, it's gonna make a difference” it's not gonna matter. So it's a very different approach. The year we did our worst, we tried every tactic of strategy, and it wasn't an overall high-level view at it. So that's number one is like the mindset is probably 99% of this is changing how you look at email. Because I can tell you, hey, do this. If you do a one time or you don't do the whole mindset shift, it's not gonna matter. So you need to truly understand and appreciate what the inbox is and try to be native to it. Do you want to get into how we execute that and from a tactic standpoint? We write a lot of plain text emails - if you get an email from your buddy or you send an email, do you write it in HTML and make it look pretty in a newsletter? No, you send in text like ”Yo, what's up man? What are you doing Friday?” So we do the same thing that's native to that platform. It's a mind shift thing. If you want it to look pretty absolutely we can do that for you, but a lot of it is getting out of that ”oh this has to be on-brand, look pretty to like ”Alright, what's native to the platform?”. So we'll throw in you know question emails that are one line: ”Hey, Mike! What driver you're playing right now? And they just reply: hey, I am playing this. So we have feedback and that gives us data. Then we have my in house guys, this is from saying full mind shift, now my in house guys that are paid well my customer service guys, then will have a starter conversation with these guys. So they're almost we're having an ongoing conversation for years. So like we've got guys like Jim or Mike or Bob, whoever it is that is bought from us in 2014 that now they've actually had quite 400 email conversations with our guys in the house. We're like, ”Hey, man, I played this weekend awesome course” and then our guys ”but what do you shoot?” Like literally just building these relationships at a scale that no one wants to mess with. So I think that's the hardest part is like, completely shifting from emails a revenue source only I want money, money, money, money, I'm gonna blast bullshit, or overly design garbage to like, alright, this is a real channel, I'm gonna have real conversations and build something from that. Right? So like plain text and make some more native. And then really, the other one is just, you know, we do ask for replies for like, early access. So I think I don't want to go too down the rabbit hole of like this tactic thing, because again if you missed the first part doesn't matter, but will ask replies like, hey, do you want to, like, just be really casual, like ”Hey, we're launching a new club, you know, in 15 days. This is what it's going to be, do you want to get early access?” click reply, reply, boom, with one word, boom, early access. So then we tagged them, that they replied, now we're guaranteed to be an inbox or have a better chance to see that email. And just engaging. So again, these are small tactics you can do, I can go into a million more tactics for us. But if you nail the strategy of why the channel is important, and why you should give it a go, you'll be better off. You know, I’m really thinking of it as like, if Facebook ads died, if Google Ads died, would you be able to survive and sell through your inventory and continue to run the business? I would say probably 85 to 90% of clients that we look at their accounts would be a No, because it's been blasting things, and they need new customers to survive. We all want to grow. But if you couldn't grow, that's the exercise I asked is like, could you sustain and at what level. So that's how we treat it and we really changed that perspective. And then the second one that's really easy. To us it's just like, you shouldn't be emailing more and if you're emailing, stuff they care about emailing more will be good. But if you're emailing more about stuff they don't care about, you're screwed. So that's why he like tactics, hacks because if it's just one siloed hack or tactic, which I've tried all of them, it doesn't work without the high-level strategy, you know what I mean? 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay. And do you think or do you feel anything has changed other... No, actually, probably macro would not be the best angle to put the question from right now. But, in your niche, and taking the case of what you were doing before COVID and then looking at let's say the last Black Friday and now the upcoming one. In this sort of year period, because we are getting close to this so I'm curious to see what your position is and what you feel has been dramatically changed since

 

Tyler Sullivan  

What has changed from last year with Black Friday?

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yes, I mean, you know from before the pandemic and then going to Black Friday last year and now preparing for the next one coming this year.

 

Tyler Sullivan  

I mean, last year is gonna be, hopefully, the only year like that. It was a weird year overall because, COVID I felt weird personally because we were golf is up, eCommerce is crushing so to be doing better than ever when seeing sorry people suffer and have a tough time was hard for me personally to be okay with. I think from other clients and brands, I think Black Friday is gonna be massive. I mean, it's always big but income has sorted 15 years or 10 years with what happened COVID. People that wouldn't have shopped online are obviously shopping more online than ever before. We'll see how COVID is doing because if we're you know, I think people are just dying to do anything with friends and are doing stuff and getting out there so we'll see how that is. I think Black Friday is going to be big and really preparations have already begun. If you're not engaging, ask some questions and just having real conversations with your list you're screwed, it's already gonna be too late. So really, we're not necessarily my own brand a massive q4 brand like our summers is q4. You know, personally, with golf, I mean, you can't even get clubs made for a year now the lead times are so long and with shipping, I think that's going to be one of the true challenges is having brands stocked up enough because that has been one thing out of our control is the inbound shipping, you know, no matter where you go and stuff made, if you're shipping it, it's just been brutal, you know, normal shipping times for 30 days. For us now they're 90. So I already ordered everything for all of next year and have everything in stock for all of next year. For the most part, I got a couple more shipments, I think people that weren't willing to do that invest, throw down that cash flow or we're going to have a tough time and sell too quickly. But it's gonna be big. I mean, Black Friday, Cyber Monday is always a fun, our most fun time at the agency, because for a lot almost 90% of our clients. This is their peak season, this is the go time. So I think a lot of people are gonna launch promos super early. I think best campaigns that are best brands or brands that do the best typically launch something new alongside discounts. I've always personally struggled with this time of year because it's like, how hard do you want to push a deal? And then people will like, don't want to buy and fewer deals still exist. So we try to run it very tight window, how big the deals are, and say to ourselves, "okay, would we be okay, shelling this deal? Anytime year? "That's like my litmus test. And if I'm not willing to sell it, anytime a year, I really shouldn't be doing a Black Friday because it means the margins aren't right. Or it's not a deal, because you may get stuck if you go too hard. Because people be like, "Hey, I wanted that price." And we always honour those prices no matter what. So that's just one thing I'm wary of. Yeah, it's a fun time. And I usually, as I said, launches and new launches during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, is a good way to sidestep pure deals. So like, for us, we'll launch two new products or two back-in-stock products that are sold out. And those will do well because there's pent up demand versus just be like "Hey, 50% off. Good luck" because everyone's saying that. So that's one way to get around it.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Question here. Let's say because you mentioned the agency and you work with a variety of eCommerce stores already. Mostly Shopify as far as I know. Correct me if I'm wrong. Probably not all of them have a big database that they can leverage in advertising, throughout the year and including Black Friday. What are some of the top strategies that you feel are suitable for small, maybe niche, online stores that are looking to scale and maybe to prepare for Black Friday? So kind of these building activities that they can still run, preparing themselves for the period when they will be able to deploy something on email.

 

Tyler Sullivan  

I mean, we don't change strategies. Like again, I literally work two to three hours a week on my Econ brand because we have set plans and strategies for the whole year. We're not testing new stuff just because it's almost q4. I mean, you should be running paid traffic profitably and well already before Black Friday and gathering emails. This would be any time of year we want to make sure the pop-ups are dialled in. I mean, that's the biggest one. You only have two real buckets, in my opinion, you've got customers, so guys that are bought a product from you, and then you got people that have abandoned you need to get that email. So for us, the first thing we do with a new client is optimised your pop up. If you want to go down that hacks, tactic strategies of like, let's do giveaways, and let's do this stuff to build up our list in an artificial way for Black Friday, I think it's a mess, I think it's gonna be a lot of bullshit emails that don't buy. Whereas we just do it all day every day and don't have to pivot because we're doing it properly. So right now we have an email pop up that gets like 17%. And so that pop up the whole goal is to build that list, evergreen, every day, all day, all year. So when Black Friday comes around, we won't worry that we didn't have enough emails. You don't I mean, I think that's a big mistake. And if you're smaller, it's all fundamentals. You can't, it's not complicated, it's traffic, it's email and really we have like zero SEO on these other things, but you got to be able to drive traffic and then you got to be able to monetize back end and increase, repeat and that's really it. That's stuff you should be doing all year. If you're scrambling to do stuff new and different. Now I think you're going to struggle. So I would take a step back and say "what can we do to optimise for pop up to get more email or more SMS now? "whether it's Black Friday, this year, Black Friday, next year or any day, you know what I mean? It shouldn't be a special thing for Black Friday.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay, however, so I know you don't like this and I'm not trying to push the idea of only hacks and tips and strategies or whatever. I'm just trying to because I saw this in a couple of conversations that I personally had as well with some of our clients or potential clients lately, many people were kind of not switched off during the summer but didn't really push things forward as much as they should have and they kind of left them on the side it was a bit of insecurity in the market too and people really want the holiday, so everything kind of slowed down a bit with the smaller shops and stuff. And now as you know, autumn comes and then winter and Christmas as well. Even though it's not the best-case scenario, everybody tries to push things a bit stronger forward. So that's basically where I'm trying to get to as well in our conversation to maybe try to put together a list of like maybe three or five things that somebody that maybe has left these for last-minute can still do and still make a step forward in that direction although long term strategy is definitely the way that they should be approaching this.

 

Tyler Sullivan  

Yeah and I hear what you're saying. I'm not negating strategies and time of year you know if they've been just taking the summer off and we're doing it right I believe you should have it set up so you can take the summer off and do it well. But that's neither here nor there. Can you drive traffic profitably and can you hype well. So from things to do if you're sitting on your hand saying "oh damn, Black Friday is coming". It's is my pop up dial then meaning "Can I get more opt-ins? Yes or no? If it's under 15%?" Probably, most people are like 5%. Yes, you can do more, so dial in your email pop up to get more for people that are not buying. Does number two post-purchase anyone that is buying? Do they actually like you? And are you doing a good job, you know, wow-ing them so that's more of a customer service deep dive of like, what is your help scout rating, or whatever rating, because if people are not happy, you're not delivering on time, they're not happy with the product, happy customer service, you're gonna have a tough Black Friday from that segment. So I would audit that and say  "how are our actual customers what's a repeat or rate Do they like us lifetime value" all that stuff. And then really the last part would just be planning the offers. So like, if you are deciding Black Friday, Cyber Monday is going to be our big push, 95% outside of engaging the list, getting more emails and the list and hyping them, like telling people to come in that's most of it. But then it's the offer itself. And this is a hard one to really dial in because it's dependent on the brand, it's on inventory, it's dependent on what the normal deals are. But we've found special bundles typically do well. So like instead of like saying you got the best selling, I don't know, dog toy, whatever. Instead of saying, hey, this dog toy is only 20 bucks, but for Black Friday, it's 10. You're gonna have to sell twice as many of those to make up for that March. What I'd rather see is more time as the founder, saying, Hey, we have this one product that does well. And maybe we've got two other products that don't do well. Let's make a Black Friday bundle and bring them altogether if inventory can do that. And now we are aov instead of let's say, average order was $20 per item. Now it's 60, then the perceived value, when you drop it to 40 may be higher, you know what I mean? And now you're on a visa. So I think the power of the offer, whether that's bundling discounting, new launch or bundle, typically and not just massive discount is the make or break. We try to hype, I can't give all my strategies were hyped with email and SMS saying stuff is coming. So they're getting ready for it. And we run ads at full price or normal discounts and hold them back. You know, and we don't do a lot of this because we have a Black Friday count, but typically we'll hold that offer. So when they do see it, it's a big deal. But I would encourage people yesterday, your fundamentals, which is building the list, build your customers, make sure they're happy. And then just work on your offer, which is where you should be doing all your anyways, I know that's my thesis, I guess today. If you don't have an offer that's like, really exciting, dude, it's gonna be tough to stand out that day, that week, that month because everyone's going as big and deep as they can.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Great points. And another thing you mentioned, you will tell us a bit about your agency and how that came about. So let's zoom into that a bit. And what's the story behind it?

 

Tyler Sullivan  

Yeah, sorry, another accidental entrepreneurship moment. BombTech was going really well. This was year six, or something. And I had a number of articles come out a couple relevant, like really relevant to eComm. And people started messaging me I like Facebook, LinkedIn, like "Hey, man, I saw that you were killing it with your own eComm brand. Do you want to help us? I said "No, absolutely not. I can't help you. It's too complicated." And I didn't have the time and I had a young kid. I was like dude, no. And then I thought about it. And I just kept like getting, it was almost relentless with these messages of people wanting to help or wanting me to help their brand. I was like, I don't know if I can help and really, for me, anything I ever would do needed to be tangible. You know, I wouldn't be like, Hey, I'll do consulting just help you on a phone. I was like, it has to be tangible. So my number one, my first employee, Chris, who is my, you know, this, he's been with me now for four or five years, he was running all my email and do all the technical stuff, I would help him with the offers and the copy and stuff. He's like, hey, and he was a unique guy who was working like 80 hours a week on his own regard. You know, he would text me like two in the morning leaving the bars like, Hey, man, have you seen the conversion rate? I'd be like, dude, you go to bed. So he's like, hey, do you mind if I, as a side hustle, help these brands, see if I can help them specifically with one thing, which is email and drive more revenue. I said, Dude, I want nothing more in life than to support you. So if you want to do this on the side, I will, I'll do whatever I can do to help you. Let me know. So he close three of the deals that are three of the brands are interested in talking to me. And I said, let me know how it goes in 30 days I go, don't be an impact your day to day work? Let me know. So 30 days go by going What's up? How do you go? He goes, Well, I double the revenue from email. I go, Oh, that's good. What do you want to do? And he goes on to do more of that. So we essentially sat down, you know, had a couple of beers and said, How are we going to make this happen? And so we literally wrote out his transition plan from BombTech how someone would, you know, take it over or how we would do that and how we are building the agency. So that was three and a half years ago. And you know how he really runs that company, Ecomgrowers, I'm more of a silent partner in the fact that I just helped him with systems operations and getting him the right people and that's really all I do and he does all film it manages the team. So we have a lot of high-level strategy conversations of like what do we need from a company standpoint, but we've gone through many evolutions. Now we hover between like 30 and 40 clients we work specifically with eComm brands doing between one and like 3 mils a year, most of our brands are doing like seven to 10 and we run all their email. Email and SMS now so what we do is someone that's interested we'll do a full audit, so we'll go jump into there we only do Klaviyo and PostScript. We'll jump in because we're a platinum agency we're like top four or something, I don't know that what it is, in terms of revenue manager. We'll jump in and just audit their account see what they're doing and we'll give them a roadmap Hey, you don't have hires but if you were to that's exactly what we would do you can do yourself or you can hire us to do it. And we take the same strategies that we use in our own BombTech and use them for everyone else. It's obviously custom and tailored for everyone and it's been pretty cool you know because that was totally not something I anticipated happening and now that's doing over seven figures since we're going to eight very uncommon brands, seven-figure agency and I'm excited to scale that up. Very different battle running an agency, because there are lot more humans involved, because it's a service type of industry so we've done a lot now we have full healthcare, we've increased our salaries, our bonuses, a lot has changed. So it's cool to have another company that's growing. And it's cool to be right in the same niche. So again, I'm not wanting to be like, hey, leggings are trending, let me go sell leggings. Do what you love, and see opportunities when they come and I just told him like, Hey, I'll help you in these very specific silos, operations and, strategy, but you're the one in the day to day and it's worked out great. He's making, you know, 10x when I used to pay him and he's run his own company, and I'm glad to be a part of it.  I am pretty removed from day to day stuff, that's why like, I don't get deep in the weeds because I just have the right people to ping the things off because I'm not that smart anymore. I'm just a dam owner my job.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Very nice adventure there. You did quite a few very interesting things. And notable what's coming up for you right now? Like where are you focusing on, what do you want to scale faster? Maybe release? And you think that our audience can look into what you'd like them to find.

 

Tyler Sullivan  

Personally, I've just been trying to enjoy life more. And I've got two young kids, they're seven and four now I was just I was like, I can't live like that. So I when I had my second child, I was able to truly - and this was for me as one of the things I'm passionate about  I don't do anything like I don't monetize this - but I'm passionate about helping founders and mostly my co-founder Chris get out of the day to day so he can live his life because it took me I think too long the other day It took me you know, I don't know how many years. But now I'm truly an owner that has no levers to pull because I have all the right people. I'm personally passionate about that haven't monetized and turn it into anything but I like when I see founders get out of their own way and actually become an owner so you can live your life.  Which is really hard but from you know, most of my time I spend with my family or try to help Christopher the MC so if there are any eComm brands that are looking to prep for Black Friday or just want an audit of their Klaviyo account we'd love to do it at Ecomgrowers.com. That's really our biggest opportunity to grow. BombTech is well optimised and scaled and we'll see what happens with that and you may be hearing some news. But life's good, man. Whatever I can do to help and if they want to reach out to me directly on LinkedIn, Tyler Sully Sullivan and you know I'll probably just say hey, I can't talk medicine as my assistant because I don't like to work anymore. I'm kidding. But hopefully, I'm dropping some value and you know, I think it's a hard thing to go from a hustler every day to an owner and I think everyone's got to go through their own journey and I'm just old man, nine years deep, two companies and two kids. Everyone's got their own journey so I hope whatever they're doing, they enjoy it.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Very nicely said. So guys, for you tuning in today, first of all, thank you for sticking all the way until almost the end right now. Sully, thanks a lot for the insights. I think they were very valuable and practical, which I really loved about them. And definitely will have links to your platforms in the description of the episode. So guys, if you feel that Sully could help out with your email marketing strategy and the way that you are thinking about the channel, specifically, if you have a clear Klaviyo account, then definitely reach out. Same if you feel there's anything in this episode that we touched upon, and maybe you'd like to find out more information, you can also either if it's directed to Sully, then feel free to get in touch. If it's directly to us, or something that we could maybe organise together at a later stage, then definitely write to us and we'll be happy to see what we can do to best deliver towards that direction. But yes, until next time, Sully, this was a very big pleasure to have you here. Very happy to hear that everything is going well and excited to hear maybe the announcements soon.

 

Tyler Sullivan  

We'll see. One day at a time. I have a lot of secrets, but I appreciate you having me help with some value not to get too deep with tactics and hacks, right think mind shift is big man, you know, it's like, you get so deep in the weeds in the computer into the shop by back end doing the stuff, that it's hard to see what's really a bigger lever to pull and I think that comes through time. But it's if you're a founder and owner still in the day to day in your computer, I think there are bigger levers you can pull that will drive more revenue, grow faster just by hiring the right people and getting out of the way kind of so hopefully some value.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Great stuff. Definitely, this was a very nice chat. And until next time, wishing you all the very best. Thank you again for being on the show. And looking forward to catching up soon.

 

Podcast marketing strategies - How to launch and promote your show [Tom Donohue]

Join Andrei and our guest on today’s episode, Tom Donohue, as they will be discussing secrets of product marketing, and Tom's journey with Kitcaster, launching it into the market and growing it as a company. And in parallel, they'll also be looking at podcast marketing, and how you can market your podcast show if you do run or are planning to run a podcast in the near future. 

Tom Donohue, is the co-founder and marketing lead of Secure Digital Asset Group, a revolutionary cryptocurrency exchange processor, as well as the product manager for Kitcaster.

Connect with Tom:

Website: www.kitcaster.com 

Tom on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/thetomdon 

 

Connect with Andrei:

Marketiu: https://marketiu.com / https://marketiu.ro  

Andrei on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/ 

Marketiu on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu 

Marketiu on Twitter: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency 

Marketiu on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/ 

Email at hello@marketiu.ro

 

Listen to the episode on your favourite platform:

▶️ Watch the episode on YouTube: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-YouTube

▶️ Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show

▶️ Podbean: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Podbean

▶️ Spotify: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Spotify

▶️ Deezer: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Deezer

▶️ Stitcher: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Stitcher

▶️ Castbox: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Castbox

Episode transcript:

 

Andrei Tiu  

Hi there! This is Andre and you are on the marketing innovation podcast show. Our special guest today is Tom Donohue and you might already know him from a previous episode on our podcast when we were discussing blockchain and crypto technology. However, today, things are going to be a bit different and very exciting because today we'll be talking about actually the company that Tom has been a core member of, since the beginning. And there is also our main podcast booking partner, Kitcaster, which have been along the journey with us for the past year or so. So we'll be talking about the secrets of product marketing, and Tom's journey with Kitcaster, launching it into the market and growing it as a company. And in parallel, we'll also be looking at podcast marketing, and how you can market your podcast show if you do run or are planning to run a podcast in the near future. So, Tom, it's such a pleasure to reconnect them to have you again on the show. How are you? How's the summer treating you so far?

 

Tom Donohue  

Yeah, it's great to be back on here. Had a great time last time and look forward to talking to some more podcast marketing topics this time. Yes, summer over here in Denver. Everybody thinks it's always cold here. But the other day we hit like 104, we had a couple of 100 degree days. So we're sweating out here. We got the air conditioning turned down to the max.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Summer weather.

 

Tom Donohue  

Yeah.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Super. So let's get started. I think cause I've been thinking about the best way to build the context. And I think even though some of the people might already know you, as you know, the smart tech guy that was part of all these multiple projects in the past, including blockchain and other types of technology, I think this is a great opportunity for us to talk a bit more about you like the product guy, the product marketer, and entrepreneur that in partnership with Ryan and everybody else built, what is today Kitcaster. So if you'd like to share a bit of your journey with the company, and how you guys went about launching it, and where you are with it at the moment?

 

Tom Donohue  

Sure, definitely. For anyone who doesn't know, the way that I've been in contact with Andrei here is through our company Kictcaster that we've got here in Denver. We're a podcast booking agency, and we focus on booking top entrepreneurs, coaches, executives, on very targeted podcasts that can help them to promote their brand to the right types of audiences that they want to reach and network with. So basically what I do at Kitcaster, my entrepreneurship background had helped me to get into this position. And just to be clear, I'm actually not a founder of Kitcaster, but I was hired pretty early on. So you know, within like the first few hires that we have there. And I was brought on to be a product manager for the PGL service that we do, which is it's called the Podcast Guest List. It's an online platform where hosts can go to find suitable guests for their show. And it's pretty simple. It's an invite-only programme right now, Andrei, I know you've used it before, you're actually on there as a guest as well. That's something we like to do with the hosts is get them listed as guests as well as encourages a lot of podcast swaps and things. But basically, it's for hosts to go on, and send an invite to any particular type of guests that they might be looking for, that we might have access to. So it's basically just a networking platform that helps people connect, you know, we have a lot of guests who want to go on podcasts. And we know a lot of hosts who are looking for guests. We just built this platform to make that connection. And yeah, that's how I started working at Kitcaster to work on that. And now I’m also on the back end, like support email and database manager for the company as well while being a Product Manager. It's a lot. I do a lot of podcast stuff all day, every day. So yeah, just being on the podcast as well as another thing, too. It's another job.

 

Andrei Tiu  

To complete to the full circle. 

 

Tom Donohue  

Yeah, definitely.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Cool. So what's your feeling about the market? I mean, essentially, this is a platform to connect guests with hosts and essentially build up this online community, in a way. It's also a bit of a SAS in a way that people can use it themselves. Obviously, with your support to, you know, make sure that the bookings happen and everything is going smoothly. And you guys are doing a great job at it. 

 

Tom Donohue  

Thank you. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

No worries, nothing to thank you for. Thank you. So how do you see the market evolve over the last maybe two years since you started to prepare this for the market?

 

Tom Donohue  

I would say probably the most the biggest thing that has changed about the podcast market is the shift away from Apple Podcast to more spread out platforms, you know, we got like Spotify, Podchaser, Buzzsprout. Like there's an endless amount of podcasting platforms now, and the listenership is so spread out that one thing that has been hard for us is actually tracking engaging listenership for in terms of impressions, how many downloads is the show gets? Because originally with podcasting, like Apple Podcasts was the one and only like, if you go and see how many reviews or ratings a show has on Apple Podcasts, you can get a really good idea about the type of listenership, how much reach a specific client is going to get by going on a certain show. But these days, and especially within the past, you know, six months, we've seen such a huge expansion out to these different platforms, more indie platforms that are popping up for certain types of podcasts or certain types of demographics. Listenership is just spreading out so much between them that it's actually become harder to gauge the exact metrics that any certain show might have. So that's a challenge that we're facing right now. And we're kind of figuring out new ways to figure those things out. It's best that the host just tells you the numbers that they see. But it's kind of hard to ask that of a host. And we respect any show, smaller or large, and we think that there's benefit in going on any sort of show. Because as long as there's a great conversation being had, we see the best marketing tool that you get from podcasting as the opportunity for you to repurpose that content and use it in different places. So yeah, I would say the biggest change is just that spread out that jump away from Apple Podcasts onto these newer, more indie platforms.

 

Andrei Tiu  

And regarding your strategy in terms of going to market, and launching the PGL, which you are managing at the moment. How are things in that area? And the reason why or the purpose of the question would be, I know for a fact, there are a couple of people that are tuned in to our podcasts, most likely today as well. And they are preparing the launch of, well, everybody in their space, but the launch of platforms or marketplaces. So I think there will be a really nice benefit to them to hear about your story from way back when maybe the platform wasn't yet live, and why you chose it to be invite-only, how you got on to building the initial community around it? And also, maybe what's your plan for the future? Like, do you want to keep it like this forever? Do you have certain metrics or things that you are looking to achieve before going into the next phase? Does Kitcaster got to be the sort of product, And yeah, business launch? And growth strategy, from your perspective?

 

Tom Donohue  

Definitely, okay. So it's a couple of things. Definitely the PGL, I would say, for anybody going to start like a new platform or something like this, one of the best things that we had done is just simply, to the extent that you can, just give it away, like, let people use it for free. The free trial loss aversion model is, is huge in these types of subscription services. In a sense that: Hey, take this for free, try it for a while, and then also that just encourages users. And we get people on the platform actually using it so that when somebody hops on, it's like: Oh, there are people on here. I would say always, to the extent that you can, just to start off, give it away, get people using it in that way you start to figure out what is working with your platform, what's not working, where you can improve and just mainly what the people want. And then, as you start getting that feedback and refining the platform, you can go and start charging people and initially we did give away a lot of the placement spots as gifts to good guests that we know are good on the podcast, you know, maybe they were our clients on the agency side. And we gave them the spots on the PGL, just so that we had guests on there for when host Come on, and they want to invite somebody. And then eventually you start to understand what is good about your platform, and then you can start charging people. We started to, we phase out the gifts, people, you know, saying: Hey, either your free trial is over, or thank you so much for having on the platform. If you want to stay on, we'll give you this discounted rate or something like that. Ultimately, your goal is to have all paid users on your platform, right? But it never hurts to say, you know, if you have 10 really solid guests that a lot of hosts like to invite, it's always up to you to keep certain people on or do things that will improve your platform, just in any way possible, really. One of the things that we're really focusing on now is marketing, through LinkedIn, and just networking through our already existing podcasts and connections to try to get more hosts onto the platform. Because we've been pretty successful getting new clients and guests onto the platform who want to be on shows. But now one of the problems that we're facing and addressing right now through our marketing efforts is getting more hosts to be aware of the platform and know that they could come on here and use it for free. So just like some background, for your listeners, the way that the platform works, is that people who want to go on podcast pay a subscription to be listed on the platform, and it's actually free to hosts. So, you know, Andrei, you've used it to invite guests, it's completely free for a host to invite a guest. And we just make that connection and make the recording happen. But for the guests, since they're getting all the content, and the use of the interviews and stuff. That's where we decided to monetize this platform.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay, and what did you or what was the reasoning behind having it invite-only in phase one?

 

Tom Donohue  

The invite-only thing, we kind of wanted to just start out with people who we knew we're gonna get good use out of it. So we didn't want to have a bunch of random hosts that we didn't know coming on, and sending invites to guests and then flaking out on interviews, and then vice versa. We didn't want to have a bunch of random guests coming on. And then booking interviews with these hosts who are really excited to use the platform and then not showing up. So that was kind of the idea. Make it invite-only at first with people who we know are going to use it properly and hosts that we know are going to send invites, and also come through with the interviews and provide good content. And in that way, we just believe that, if we kept all of the kind of BS of people missing interviews, and all these problems out of the way would help us to figure out what was working and what wasn't working at the platform, a little bit easier, a little bit faster.

 

Andrei Tiu  

And then you start with VC funding, or I mean, was it a VC funded basis and beginning or you had to kind of like bootstrap it and grow it as you launched?

 

Tom Donohue  

The PGL was kind of an after, an afterthought, Kitcaster started as a booking agency where we have dedicated agents who pitch clients to specific shows. So the company's kind of split into like, we have the PGL, and we have the booking agency, the booking agency came first. And through, you know, revenue generated by the booking agency, we were able to, our founder, Ryan, just built the platform and use his network to fill it up with those initial spots. And then I came on, and I kind of took it over and tried to expand it. So I guess you could say is bootstrapped but really just funded by revenue of the booking agency,

 

Andrei Tiu  

Sort of like a second business pillar or a second brand or product of the same?

 

Tom Donohue  

Yeah, yeah. And in turn that the booking agency was bootstrapped by our founders, Ryan and Brandy.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Okay. What do you feel is different between Kitcaster and PGL? And other SaaS companies out there. Because I'd like these sorts of differences to be very clear as we advance through the conversation.

 

Tom Donohue  

We're seeing a tonne of similar PGL type services coming up. Guest lists that hosts can use to invite so we've got a lot of competition popping up in that room. And also, at the same time, there's a tonne of competition in the booking agency sense. But one thing that Kitcaster has been really proud of, and like we take is one of our morals: we actually care. We always hear for all our clients all the time, it's like: Hey, you guys are the most pleasurable to work with, and I think for the price point that we're set at, we provide so much value to our clients that are not only cheap but is just really full and gives them exactly what they need out of their experience. For a price that's typically lower than other services that are providing a little bit less than a little bit less attention to detail. At least that's what we've heard, from feedback from our clients. So we really just try to get to know the client as best as we can and do a really good job communicating and booking them on the shows that are going to help them the most. Rather than just throwing them on any given show to complete their contract or whatever. We really tried to give the clients the most out of what they're paying for.

 

Andrei Tiu  

So focusing a lot on this client - customer service end of the business.

 

Tom Donohue  

Yeah, it's a really personal thing for the agency side, especially when you have a booking agent who's dedicated to a certain client you really get to know the client, and you really get to know the things that they want to talk about on an interview, and there, the inner workings of their business and what they're trying to promote. You take that experience, and you go, and you find shows that are going to help them in the best way possible. And I think that they care that our agents put in are something that puts a step above a lot of these other booking agencies

 

Andrei Tiu  

Agree and approve. And in terms of the actual marketing of the business. I know, you guys, I'm sure this gets you a lot of word of mouth, in terms of referrals and your current partners referring and bringing people back into the business. But in terms of the communications channels, apart from LinkedIn, you mentioned now, what are some channels that have particularly performed well, for you as a platform, and as a business, maybe this year, in 2021?

 

Tom Donohue  

For sure, as you said, we do get a lot of referrals from previous clients and stuff. And those are usually, really good, because, we have our sales funnel, where referrals come in or lead come in, and they go through the sales process. And I'd say other client referrals are some of the most successful in terms of closing deals for us. But then, I would say, almost the entirety of our lead generation, and then ultimately, sales fulfilment, has gone through LinkedIn, especially in 2020. Just LinkedIn outreach, and then also, we use a couple specific LinkedIn lead generation software's for automation, that have helped us to network with the right kinds of people that we're looking for - funded startup founders, CEOs, executives, coaches. LinkedIn has been huge for us. And outside of that, I would say, the two other main things that we're using are Google AdWords, to drive traffic to the website, and then also Facebook marketing as well, though both Instagram and the Facebook platform. But now, in 2021, we've started to branch out a little bit more into more creative and specified content. You know, for podcasting, just to promote, our motto that we use is "Celebrate good conversation." And we've been trying to promote that through fun content and material that we spread around through Facebook, Instagram. Great visuals for people to see and enjoy. And, again, we book people on podcasts and interviews, to spread their businesses. We've also been booking each other on podcasts. And so we book the founders, Brandy and Ryan, and then we have a couple of other agents who go on the podcast as well to talk about us, just like what we're doing right now. We sell it, but we also partake in it as well. It's in our eyes, one of the best ways to promote especially to promote a podcast agency is through podcasting. So, yeah. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Walking the walk. 

 

Tom Donohue  

Definitely. Oh, and there's one other thing for our agency that we just started in 2021. We started sponsoring podcasts as well. So you know how shows we'll do like a midroll or like a pre-roll, a read or a recorded thing to say: Hey, we are an affiliate with this, with Kitcaster podcast agency, that's where we get our guests and things like that. So we started a sponsorship programme to also try to put some money back in the host pocket. So it's a programme that works by compensating hosts for the number of leads they can bring us through their show. And also, if there was a deal to be closed through a host, they would also get a portion of that as a payout in the affiliate programme. That's something we just started, it's fairly new, but we have really high hopes for that, and it's been going really well, so far.

 

Andrei Tiu  

I think it's an approach that should work because you kind of keep it in the family. It's also around,  kind of the same community, mainly if you want to build onto the podcast hosts. Then I think a lot of the podcast hosts are also podcast listeners. So I think that can work very nicely for you. Let me know how it plays out. I'd be really curious, but I'm sure you'll see some nice results from it.

 

Tom Donohue  

For sure, yeah, we gotta get The Marketing Innovation Podcast Show on there. So you can become an affiliate with us. Yes, it's really exciting. We have a lot of hosts who were really hyped to get started and as with many podcast hosts, a lot of times, you want to spread information and have good conversations stuff, but being able to monetize your show is a great goal to have as well. So, we wanted to help hosts figure out how they can do that. Yeah, after all, I'll send you the link, and you can check it out. And let me know. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

We'll discuss online. Oh, sorry, offline. Yeah, sure thing. So you touched on something that I think would be really interesting to develop. And that was using podcasting as an effective content marketing tool. Pushing the sort of audio channel was something that we wanted to do from our second year on the market. So in 2017, we started to write a lot about it, and sort of this voice channel was also developing with Amazon, at the time. We had our own app developed by one of our very close friends at the moment and pushed out in America. And that did so well, like way better than we expected in terms of user engagement and everything we have, we had an Alexa skill for marketing news, we might actually relaunch that because, at the time, it really surpassed our expectations. But podcasting is I mean, then it was pretty big, right now is gigantic. And it's something that in a way easily accessible from a marketer's point of view because there are more and more podcasts, more diversified. And as you mentioned, Tom, it's also a great way to produce your own content from thought leaders, positions or perspectives. So from your insights, and from your experience, both with the company, but also with the guys that go on podcasts and the guys that booked them. How do you see podcasts and content marketing going together?

 

Tom Donohue  

One thing that we always kind of think about, and one thing that really struck me when I started working here was like, we have these big tech CEOs and executives, as our clients, who are really very well thought out and like elaborate speakers who can say just the greatest things about their own company. But then again, these people are so busy that like: How hard would it be for you know, Amazon to get there? How hard would it be for Amazon to get Jeff Bezos to sit down for an hour and talk about Amazon for content marketing? It's probably pretty hard because that dude's doing so much stuff all the time. What we try to do is just schedule into these executives, you know, busy work weeks, and an hour here an hour there. And then in turn, what you get is an hour of your CEO or your founder talking about your company and through good hosts and everything, you can get these really great conversations that come out and we created a content marketing studio for our clients, as well, to help show them  - and we also do media training and things like that - to help show them how they can take the content and repurpose it. We turned it into blog posts, we turn it into little videos, screengrabs, audio grabs, quotes, all of those types of things. And you can take a 45-minute podcast interview and turn it into upwards of 25 pieces of marketing material that you can use for weeks on it. That's something we just started doing, with the content marking studio. And I believe what you said, you guys do something similar. This is just something that we offer to our clients, say they had an interview. Say somebody was on The Marketing Innovation Show and they felt that it went really well. And they wanted to get a little bit more out of that. They can commission us to create the entire suite of marketing material for that. We think that that's just, you know, the best thing to get out of these podcasts, interviews are all that extra marketing material that you can use. You're sharing it on socials, you're sharing it on, through email blasts, you're sharing it everywhere that you can, and really just dragging out and spreading that content that you get that might not be so easy to get from your founder or your CEO. These podcasts interviews are helping to provide those marketing teams with the core content that they need to create this material.

 

Andrei Tiu  

And in terms of the promotion of these podcasts and the marketing materials. First off, just to emphasise this aspect of creating content for the podcast that you record. For everybody out here that doesn't do that but they do go on podcasts, or they have their own podcast, guys, this is like the content marketing 101 strategy you should follow. And if you don't have resources, reach out to Tom here and see how these guys can help you if you are already maybe part of the Kitcaster family. But that is going to be even easier. Tom, we'll leave in the description your email address as well so people can reach out. This is something very important since you put in the resources and eventually even commissioned somebody to do this for you as a thought leader, getting your company or your marketing manager on board to develop more content around this one-piece is definitely something that you should do in order to increase your return on investment. And we actually do this with the podcast as well. And Tom everybody that's been on our show received a core marketing package, let's say. So that kind of helps us as a podcast in terms of promoting it, but also them, as the thought leader or podcast guest to communicate this position to their audience. And here we are going into our second topic, which is good ways of promoting podcasts. And here, I would like to speak less, and let you Tom talk a bit more about the really constant and direct contact that you have with podcasts hosts. What are some of the best ways and strategies that you found worked well for them in promoting their shows growing their listenership and eventually being able to monetize their podcasts because they were getting so much reach? 

 

Tom Donohue  

There are tonnes of ways that hosts can go and promote their episodes. And I'm always hopping on calls to help people understand these types of things and stuff. When you think about it, the easiest way that anyone could think of is just to put a little bit of money behind an episode to promote it. Which not always is something that's available to do, but when you can, it really does help. For example, we know of a couple of shows that from the outside looking in, their Apple Podcast maybe they don't have a tonne of ratings or reviews, but the show could be reaching 10s of 1000s of people and get driving great results for their guests and their clients and things like that. That's simply because of the money that they put behind their shows to promote each episode whether it's through Facebook, Google, through podcast marketing like with Buzzsprout or other podcast platforms that can help you promote certain episodes. We've seen shows just have a tonne of success in that way. And whether it's, we call shows that some shows will request you to pay for an interview, to pay to be on the show, we call and pay to play shows. Say you were doing that like a pay to play situation and rather than slamming that money in your pocket, you use it to promote the episode. That's a great way to kind of drive a little bit of monetization into your episode as well, in terms of interviewing a guest, it's a pay to play, and then you're also promoting it to get a larger reach. Then ultimately, you can grow your show that way. That's one thing that we suggest is to really put money behind the show. But then also another thing that we suggest as well, is to interview guests like. There's really nothing else to it rather than that. If you're bringing on guests with big followings, or important people, it's in turn, just going to drive listenership. And when you bring, for example, say you interviewed a big CEO with 100,000 followers, and they share that to their network. You could, you could be certain that at least a couple 1000 new people are gonna hear your show, and you can be certain that a couple of them are going to like your show too and listen to it moving forward, rather than just the CEO that they follow whenever they are on it. We suggest just even if it's a minimal ad budget behind the show, that could really do great numbers. And then also interviewing great like qualified guests who have good followings, doing things like podcast swaps with other hosts where say, like you, for example, Andrei would go on to another marketing podcast, they would interview you, and then you would take that host and interview them on your show. So then you're swapping audiences, and the same type of people who would listen to that show likely would be interested in your show as well. Those are kind of the three main things, we suggest: podcast swaps with other hosts, interviewing awesome guests. And then just putting a small but manageable ad budget behind promoting maybe not every episode, but if you have a really good episode that you feel really strongly about, you could promote that. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Super. And also here, I would just like to put out a thought. But I think this really delivers, again, to what you said now and to what we were discussing about content marketing. I think for everybody here, really, that has to show and produce content in this way. Apart from promoting just the podcast, remember that you probably also have a business and you can combine the two. And then looking at just, apart from really pushing the reach of your podcast, think about the other benefits that having a podcast can bring to your business. Because for example, through repurposing the content and maybe you have it in an audio or video form. But YouTube also has an SEO element to it. So if you do optimise your video well before uploading it, and there are a couple of tools that were free if you want to make a start, but you don't really have a budget to invest into YouTube, SEO or YouTube advertising, as in ads, then just doing some core optimization in terms of SEO can really help your videos reach more people and more relevant people. Also, you can transition the content that is audio or video into written content. And then you have new content for, first of all, for the podcast description, because it's really important from a quality standpoint to have shows that are multimedia, and that has a good description and everything else links. But for your business website, maybe as well. So apart from just putting the link to the episode on your podcast or on your website, you can also produce blog posts, and you can help your guests maybe, if you are a host, produce meaningful content on their website if they don't have the resource of the basis of the content that you produce together on the show. Then optimising that content from an SEO point of view, again, can be a very good opportunity to create new quality content and drive SEO results to your website or your business or your guests business. So maybe Tom, this might be something that you guys, I guess are doing as well through the content hub as well.

 

Tom Donohue  

Yeah, you said it right there yourself that I forgot to mention that in terms of the host side, but the same thing that we say to clients, like repurpose your content. Use it in as many ways as you can. And drag one episode out and spread it onto a bunch of different platforms, not just your Apple podcasts or Spotify, but get it onto YouTube, start recording video, start making Instagram posts from the video that you have or audio grabs a really great quote that came out of your show from a great guest, share that around everywhere that you can and it's going to help and it's going to make people want to listen to your episode really. So yeah, you said it yourself. And SEO is also extremely important. A way for you to get in front of more eyes for free without having to put an ad budget behind it. Just it takes a little bit of time at work to optimise that SEO stuff, but ultimately, sometimes that can drive better results, than Google Ads budget or anything like that.

 

Andrei Tiu  

And also, it's more sustainable from a time point of view, like once you get it, it's probably going to be recurring.

 

Tom Donohue  

Yeah, you can add it once you get it set up.

 

Andrei Tiu  

And now sort of like a more general question, but I think it's been on the minds of more podcasters, including myself. And you might have more data on this. But sort of like a closing question. What are your thoughts on podcasts or actually streaming platforms? So Spotify has been focusing a lot on podcasts over the last year or so. As you mentioned, a lot of new players have come into the market in terms of streaming. I don't know, how you feel about Spotify, for example, in comparison to Apple podcasts, and then what other rising stars have you identified in the streaming world?

 

Tom Donohue  

I think that one of the biggest changes we're seeing is the change from podcast downloads as a metric to more podcast streams. Because when Apple podcast was the sole, one of the main pod, well it is still obviously the main, but when it was almost the sole podcasting platform, the biggest metric that people were looking forward to promoting on podcasts and hosts were promoting is the number of downloads that they're getting. And now that's not even really a thing anymore. It's more about the streams. As this listenership is coming off of the Apple Podcast, I think we're gonna see a shift more terms, the same way that like music streaming is measured, how many streams does the song get? How many downloads, so it's a song, it was never really a metric, it's streams and listenership purchases. But with podcasts, I think we're gonna see the same thing. We're already shifting away from downloads as a metric. We don't really even discuss downloads as a metric with our clients anymore. We're starting to go into more about how many streams as a show have, or like ratings and reviews usually help, which platform do you choose, to use ratings and reviews from? It's been hard. So we think that ultimately, in aggregate will probably present itself pretty soon here, it's something that the industry is kind of need, and I think we'll definitely see that soon. In terms of other platforms that have been big that we've been hearing about and seeing pop up. Let me just see, I think I have a list here. But definitely, Buzzsprout is a huge one. Anchor FM is one that is also been pretty big for us. Lipson is another platform, Spotify has been getting much bigger into podcasts. Podchaser is another big one. There's just so many out there. Stitcher Radio. So just look at my list here. But then also Google podcasts hopped into it as well. Obviously, Google has to have a part in everything. A lot of posts are posting on Soundcloud these days as well.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Do you have any data on SoundCloud? We haven't been really active there. And I don't have a lot of first-hand data on the platform. Do you know how it does it in comparison with other platforms?

 

Tom Donohue  

We rarely see it as a place where it's like the podcasts sole platform. Sometimes we see people just uploading to SoundCloud because it's easy to let people download your episodes through SoundCloud. So maybe people are doing it as sort of a metric. Also another thing about SoundCloud, like say you're just starting out and you know, you're looking for a platform that you can use, like for free, SoundCloud is good for that as well. Because you can post episodes, for free, I think up to a certain extent, like, you can't post 10 episodes a day, but you might be able to post like, two to three episodes a month for free on SoundCloud. Which could be great to give somebody their start. And the bigger ones that we're seeing being used a lot are more of like the aggregate platforms like Buzzsprout, which is actually it's like a publishing platform where you could publish through Buzzsprout and it gets put onto all of the other platforms like Apple podcast, Spotify, all the big main ones. Those types of services are getting really popular now. Because it just makes things easier for the hosts and they also help with episode promotion and things like that. They give you easy ways to maybe put a little bit of a budget behind something and to get your episode to listen to. There's a tonne popping up out there. But yeah, those ones that I had mentioned before are kind of the main ones that we've been seeing through our experience. Throughout our agency, we probably touch on 1000 different podcasts every day, with all of our agents and staff. And, that's those are the main popular ones that we're seeing come up. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Great stuff. Yeah, we use Podbean, which has been pretty good since we moved to it. So yeah.

 

Tom Donohue  

That's another one that I got on here, too.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Super. Well, Tom, this was a really, really nice conversation. Really glad that we had the chance to catch up and discuss podcasting this time. Yeah, let's do more of this.

 

Tom Donohue  

Yeah. It's great. Thanks for having me on again. And glad that you were down to talk about Kitcaster time and get into the podcast marketing realm.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yes, yes, yes. So for the guys here wanting to find out more about Kitcaster and podcasting, maybe you already have a podcast, you want to find out what other opportunities there are for you out there. We'd have the links to Tom and also to Kitcaster in the description of this episode. As always, feel free to reach out to any of us or to me, and then I'll communicate with Tom if there's anything that you feel we could do more for you or if you have specific questions that you'd like us to try answering in a future episode. But until next time, Tom, again, it a real pleasure to meet again and to have the chance to discuss. Thank you for your time and insights and secrets and everything. Guys, thank you for tuning in. Hope you have an awesome summer and looking forward to staying in touch. speaks in. 

 

Tom Donohue  

Thanks, Andrei.