Ben Adkins: 01:21
All right. One of the things that we see a lot of is we have a lot
of people that have been doing it for years. And this is the conversation that I have. Of course, it appeals to people that are new because it's something that's a lot easier to start out with. But what's so interesting is the people that have been doing things for years and they offer a really high ticket service. It's a really boutique agency. What they get into very easily as it becomes sort of a process that they can apply to all of their existing clients establish more of a regular type of income. Plus a lot of these people that have these high ticket agencies have this big chunk of people that they have that they've wanted to work with them. Because they typically do a good job of bringing possible prospects in, but that weren't really there.
Ben Adkins: 02:04
And so they've been able to go back to these people and say, but we offer this in the meantime, while you're getting ready for this. And what's so great is I, people that have these more established agencies, they do more boutique stuff. They're able to bring on one person in their agency that can handle a chunk of these microservice clients. So on one hand we have the folks that are brand new because this is something that's much easier. Like you don't have to be a Facebook ad expert to do this. This is something that pretty much right out of the Gates. You learn the process of what we're doing and it's really easy to explain to a business owner. It's really easy to actually implement. It's good. But on the other hand, we do see a lot of folks that have had agencies that have done really well for years, and this is just that thing that puts an extra on most, you know, in two or three months, an extra 2040 a hundred thousand dollars into their agency recurring because they're just taking something that an existing client base and applying the model and their clients are very, very happy that it's a much more simple thing than what they've had to do in the past.
Joe Troyer: 03:03
100% yeah, that makes total sense. It's like it's perfect for the beginner because it's not over complicating it. It's easy to get started. And it's really good for the boutique agencies that like boutique agencies have figured out lead gen, they've had to to be a boutique agency and to stay a flow. So for them, all the prospects that wouldn't pay them five 10 15 grand a month, right? Like they can finally actually make a sale to them and groom them and turn them into the customer that they want to be longterm for that boutique agency
Danny Barrera: 03:30
In the beginning. If you have absolutely no experience
whatsoever in anything that has to do with this online world
and you just want to go out, you know, I, I understand that there are certain programs that do give you that one. You know that one, Hey here, here are the campaigns for this niche. Go, go out there. And that gives you the confidence. It almost gives you like the results to go out there and do it. But if you don't even have that, maybe in the beginning you probably will test out the waters and see, you know, the different niches and maybe go to a BNI and all that stuff. But I'll tell you, you know, after I, I knew, kind of knew what I was doing when I decided to go all in, in one niche. It's almost like it just, I just went direct man.
Danny Barrera: 04:11
I, you know, I started picking up momentum and you know,
three clients turning to 12 and then 12 third turn. And now I'm looking at it, you know two years about two years later, we're, we're at 39, we're 39 clients, you know, niche focused. And it's a no brainer looking at it because it made my life a whole lot easier. You know, building the SOP is building the, you know, the framework for our team to be able to deliver all that stuff. It, it, it gets to a point where you're almost not guessing or not not scratching your head, man, it's just comparing going to work. No, you already know what's going to happen. So from the standpoint of delivery, it takes care of that. Now from the standpoint of client acquisition, learning, the client, the language of the marketplace, learning how they do business, learning how their clients hired them to do their business or how did land better projects.
Danny Barrera: 05:03
I mean, I can talk to any that could have concrete guys or
residential concrete guy and I'll tell you, I'll connect with them right now like that because I'll know exactly how to talk to them. When I, when I was as a general generalist I was leads, I was getting you more leads, more jobs, and I thought that was their language. But it comes down to that not everyone wants more leads. I'll tell you that right now. Not every concrete contractor wants more leads. So you're sending that email out, Hey, you know, I can get to 20, 30 leads, you know, and I did, I did that. And that's what got me started, you know. But at two looking looking, you know, from now to where I began in the niche, it being in the niche, it definitely gives me the confidence to just be an authority in the place. And when you're an authority, I mean it's people, you know, your, your prospective client, your marketplace really looks up to you and they come to you and then they compare
Danny Barrera: 05:58
You to whoever else is coming to them, selling them services. You know, it's a big difference. That makes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joe Troyer: 06:05
Yes, that makes perfect sense. It's I know that I, I thought that I
was smart, like you you know, building a, a contractor focused agency. And I built it very quickly to seven figures in just under four months just over 84 grand a month recurring. And man, I hated the business. I hated the business that I had built, you know, from sales was difficult. Churn was difficult. And it's for me, the takeaway after building that agency, hating it, and then ultimately exiting because I just hated the business that I built. It was like, man, I got to get serious about picking a niche and I got to niche down and I got to focus on, you know, putting the blinders on. And when I tell people and when I coach people that like, you got to pick a niche man. Sometimes it's hard for me to get a point a across how, how important I really think that that is. So, yeah, man, I think you did a great job talking about, you know, the rubber met the road ultimately in your agency took off when that happened and how fulfillment and sales and everything is so much easier if you'll just pick a niche and stay in your own lane. I say,
Matt Woodward: 07:09
Okay. I, I, you know, as I've built it and I've, I've made my fair
share of mistakes w why does anyone, why does a whole world talk about game of Thrones, right? It's because the content that they put out on that screen is so captivating, so engaging. So it ticks every trigger in an audience's mind. Like, and you know, those scripts aren't written by accident. They're jam packed to have open loops and, and, and it's a copyright in masterclass like any TV series script. It really is. So again, applying that lesson to the digital world, what made the biggest success to the biggest difference to the success of the blog is the quality of the content that I put out. And that's often where people skip over and they kind of glaze over that, you know, they're like, right, okay, I've got it set and I just want to build some links.
Matt Woodward: 08:07
And you know I call it obsessive compulsive backlink disorder
where people are self assessor of backlinks. They've, they've not taken care of building a foundation that Google loves or even humans love, right? And then from the get go, it's an uphill battle because no one wants to link to a piece of shit blog post. Like, you know what I mean? Like, so you're, you're pitching trying to pitch to get links and you're making your job 10 times harder than it needs to be because you've produced a crappy piece of content. It was actually excellent content. You wouldn't have a hard time link-building. And people are often so, so set on getting the links that they don't take care of that foundation. Google loves or humans love. So that I believe is the biggest what or why I saw the success I did. I looked at the problems my audience had.
Matt Woodward: 09:00
I made content that solved them and engage them with those
answers. And I was just recording what I was doing. It was nothing. It wasn't anything special to me, you know all and I couldn't use SEO at the start. That was a challenge. So I had to rely on content quality. I don't really have a choice. So that, that's, that's the biggest mistake I see a lot of people glaze over. The importance of the quality of the content is the heart foundation, the soul, everything. And without it you just can't succeed.
Joe Troyer: 09:33
I, I love the, a obsessive compulsive backlink disorder. We've
seen what the limp at in the, in the show notes as the OCB D. So absolutely loved that. But I think that everybody skips it. The skips, what you just said, because it's, you know, content is King and solving problems is really the, the, the big thing. And understanding your audience. I think it ultimately at the end of the day, it's like what's their pain and what's their frustration and then how do I have them get a result and what your content has to be about. And I think that people have just want so tactical focus that they've lost pers perspective of that key principle.
Matt Woodward: 10:15
Yeah. Yeah. And the, the, you know, lots of people build
Amazon affiliate sites. One question I love to ask is, what value does your site offer me over and above going direct to Amazon and searching for the product? And if you, if you, if you stutter with an answer to that question, you're doing something wrong. You know for me it was price comparisons. Granted, Amazon was mostly the cheapest, but it added the value that it couldn't have got that value on Amazon, you know? So if you're just writing for a keyword and, and, and all the rest of it, well, you've got, you've gotta look where it, where can I add value? And often adding value isn't that difficult. You just got to think a little, that's such a great question. So a lot of people, you know, and this is a mistake I made early on, you know, when you do something that can help a lot of people, when you're a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant or whatever, it feels like you want to cast the widest net, you want to say, well, I can help everyone, right?
Allan Dib: 11:17
I can help all business owners or I can help all everyone, you
know? And if we have that temptation, and the thing is about that is, you know, people want to deal with someone who is a specialist. You know, these days, especially when w when you think of, imagine your target market in front of that Google search box, they're not typing generalities. They're typing very, very specific things. And in fact, I, I saw my wife, my wife recently injured her knee and I was sort of looking over her
shoulder when she was on my iPad, on the couch and she types in knee specialist and then the area that we live in. So even though someone who maybe treats heads, necks, knees, whatever could help her, she's looking for that person who's a knee specialist in, in our area. And that's exactly what your target market is doing. They're looking for specialists. So when you really out a whole bunch of generalities and you say, we help everyone, that's equivalent to saying we help no one. So you know, someone has to look at your messaging and say, Hey, that's for me too. To connect with that
Joe Troyer: 12:23
Man. It's crazy. We, we help a lot of agencies and we do a lot of
work on behalf of agencies for other businesses. And I see that so often. They're casting this huge wide net. We work with everybody. And again, like they, they really are specialists and, and masters to, to nobody then and the value that they're bringing. And, and the value of their businesses reflect that. And I'm always trying to get people to buy into the end, right? You want to sell your business, right? Like this isn't a freelance thing. Like you're not gonna live forever. Are you going to hand us down? Probably not. So I find that I have to get people to buy into the, to the end so I can get them to even think about some of the things on your one page marketing plan.
Allan Dib: 13:05
That's so awesome. And that's something that I spent a lot of
time talking about in the book is how is this thing going to end? And you know, I think it was Neil Armstrong said, you know in going to the moon, we really need to solve only two problems, right? How do we get there? And then how do we get back? Right? and so, so many business owners in the excitement to start and build a business, they think about how to get there, how to get to success, and then how do you get back? Like, how do you exit and how do you, you know, what are you going to do once you've gotten to where you want to go? And like you say, there's going to come a time when you get bored with the business, when you have a health problem, when you find a better opportunity, when you want to pass it on or sell it.
Allan Dib: 13:48
And if you're only thinking about that at the time that you want to exit, that's really way too late and you're going to sell it for a massive, massive discount if you can sell it at all. There are some businesses that are just not saleable because the person is the business, they don't have a business. So that's such an important part is really getting some of those systems into place and being that specialist, you know. So and I believe, I think I heard, I think it was Ryan Deiss who said the days of like the general marketing agency are over and I 100% agree. You need to be an absolute laser targeted specialist in what you do.
Joe Troyer: 14:27
Definitely. If you look at the market sophistication level, right?
Like it demands that, like if you're just another generalist agency, what differentiates you from that businesses, you know, a nephew that now does social media, like why, why aren't they just going to give the job to them versus anybody else? So definitely I think you've gotta be laser targeted for sure.
Zach Babcock: 14:48
I decided to launch the podcast, became a top rated or in three
Zach Babcock: 14:51
Days and dude next week have Billy Jean is marketing on the
show. And so literally went from, nobody gave me the time of day to the next week I'm interviewing celebrities and stuff. And it's just been crazy ever since, man.
Joe Troyer: 15:03
Yeah, man, that's crazy. So I got to ask, how the hell did you do
that?
Zach Babcock: 15:08
Dope dude. So a lot everybody thinks like, man, I got to have a
huge audience, or I got to know somebody in Apple or you know, I gotta have the low down or whatever. And, and here's the deal, man. Here's how anybody can rank your podcasts right out the gate. It's, it's four metrics that matter on, on Apple. It's called Apple. Now. It used to be iTunes, they did away with that just recently. But the only four metrics that matter are written, reviews, ratings, subscribers and downloads. That's it. That's the only way you're going to get ranked up. Nothing else matters. So in that case, all you need to focus on, and when you just start out in a podcast, you know, there's a lot of people that have been podcasting for a very long time that have thousands, maybe even millions of downloads per month.
Zach Babcock: 15:50
So your downloads are really going to be small in comparison to
those others. But the metrics that push that up the most is the written reviews. So if you focus on getting written reviews right out the gate I've had clients that hit it within 19 reviews. Carlos Redlich or the copy closer podcast, hit it within 19 reviews was ranked up on iTunes and less than 48 hours. And then the most I've seen it take with any of my clients was Andrus Kaplan with shatter the mold podcast. He hit it with 56 reviews. So it doesn't take a lot, just pump those reviews out and you'll get ranked. You won't stay there for a very long time cause you're, you're just starting out. But having that screenshot and being a top rate of podcasts are you forever hold that title. Now you can use that to leverage to get other guests on your show. And likewise
Joe Troyer: 16:33
100%. So you're saying ultimately right out of the gate hit new and noteworthy, right. So ultimately written reviews is kind of the key leverage point to, to hit new and noteworthy.
Zach Babcock: 16:43
Yeah, right out the gate. Ian also the top 200 charts. So, and you
know, they, they did that, that algorithm changed. So it's weird now I'm still, we're still figuring it all the way out, but that new and noteworthy, they, they seem to only have one new and noteworthy category for all podcasts and they don't have it for all the subcategories like they used to. But yeah, you could still hit that. It's gonna be a little bit harder to hit that new and noteworthy. It seems like they're kind of leaning towards favoring more of like the celebrity type shows, but you could still get in there if you're a known name at the moment.
Joe Troyer: 17:14
Okay. Yeah. I mean I hit new and noteworthy I think, right? Two weeks maybe after we launched the podcast and I think we only had like 30 reviews, 25 or 30 reviews and all of those were from me texting people and just ask it just launched the podcast. I need a review. Please. Thank you. It's just all friends and family. Right? and that's that not me on new and noteworthy.
Zach Babcock: 17:40
Yeah. Dude, that's so smart the way you did it that way. Cause
like so many people will, they'll, they'll make a post on social media like, Hey, I need you guys to write, write and re review and all this and nobody's going to do it. If you do a post, it's not, it's not personal. If you take the time and be a real human being a message to my, Hey man, I need some help. Can you, can you do this? People are, yeah, people will do that for you. And that's the key,
Joe Troyer: 18:01
Like being a real human being and, and asking like, I really need
help. Please do this. Right. Who's going to tell, you know, if you're on a text message basis with them, everybody's going to go do it.
Zach Babcock: 18:13
Yeah, exactly. Cause it's a, it's a, it's a dialogue that's going on
and it's not like you're asking for 10 grand for a business loan or something. You're just asking for a written review.
Ryan Stewart: 18:21
Yeah. I mean, I think number one, people that people like, it
doesn't matter if they're in texting or the U S I mean, we've just been so fortunate to grow up in a system that gives us more leverage than other countries to put it, to put it bluntly, you know that doesn't make us better than them. It does make us smarter than them. We've just had a lot more opportunity, you know? So I don't like, I think it's like I, I agree with the statement that it's a bad thing to outsource. Like if you're, if I
have a coffee shop on, like it would be a really bad idea for me to go and hire an agency, you know, just blanket statement. It's probably a bad idea to hire a lot of agencies in this country too. You know what I mean? Like there's a lot of bad agents out there, so that I would agree with, but I would not agree with the fact that you shouldn't be outsourcing work, especially when you're a young company.
Ryan Stewart: 19:02
You know, like it's just like [inaudible] the trade off is this, is that
if you want to outsource, you have to spend more time. But when you're a younger company, you have more time to get those people trained up. But dude, I mean I've, I've, my developer, my WordPress developer has been two developers of it working for me now for five years. They show up every day. They work Saturday and Sunday. I don't tell them to, they just do it and I paid him $1,000 flat fee a month and they do American quality work. They're amazing. Also with the blueprint, we just hired a support guy. He's not cheap, he's 18 bucks an hour, but like no sequel knows Python. You know, he can fix a lot of the tools that we have in, in sheets. So if we were to get somebody locally to do that, we'll talk probably like a hundred bucks an hour.
Ryan Stewart: 19:42
So economically, especially with a young company like you, it's a
really good idea too, but you just have to make sure that you're giving them the right sandbox up front to play in the test to make mistakes. Just like you hire somebody locally to you know, like you have to train, you have to work with them, you have to make sure that they understand and it's a lot harder to do when they're not sitting next to you, but you have to put in the time to like continuously work with people, give them stuff to do, critique it, tell them what you want, like using videos is really, really important. Again, having like processes written up ahead of time is really, really important. So, yeah, I mean I'm, I'm, I'm all about outsourcing, offshoring whatever is good for the business really.
Joe Troyer: 20:21
Yeah, I completely agree. Like my, my viewpoint is the same as
yours. I think for me, the way that I look at it too is like are we looking for an expert? Are we looking for kind of to out task, right? Like if it's a job that anybody can do without any previous work experience, then I can save a lot of money and people are people, man, like how we train them and the results that they get. Like that doesn't matter where they're from or, or you know, what country they live in. So I think a lot of systems and processes can be ran from any country. It doesn't really matter. Right? Like there's some strengths and weaknesses, you know, if you're looking for like a writer, right? And they don't natively
speak English, but if you're just looking for somebody to find prospects and bloggers and local media people to, to send emails to [inaudible], does it matter if they're in the States or they're somewhere else?
Joe Troyer: 21:07
So I know that definitely we couldn't have grown our agency
and all of my businesses as fast as we have if it wasn't for outsource outsourcing or outsourcing. The main support guy is is in the Philippines. His name's drying. Ryan's been with me for like six years. And frankly, like you'd never even know that he was from the Philippines. And like, he knows, he knows like any product better than any American on our team, backwards and forwards. Like he could crush them in a test or a skills challenge like any day, and you'd have no idea where he's from. So but I think there are cases, like you said, with like developers to, you know me for, with me, with developers for example, I'm looking for the best talent that I possibly can. I don't care so much about price. So I have a developer in the States, for example, that makes like 40 grand a year, and I got a developer in Romania that makes like 120 U S a year, right? Like, but, but, but there's a big, huge difference in terms of talent.
Ryan Stewart: 22:07
Huge difference. And I also think that the us is actually very far
behind in a lot of things like development. I mean Eastern Europe is a powerhouse for developers. You know what I'm saying? Like you outsource development over there and end up paying more for it because their skill set in. I mean like all of our favorite SEO tools are not us tools also that's important to know. You know what I mean? Like all their developers or pull staff is from over there, you know? So I agree. Especially when it comes to things like design, I'm always willing to pay higher to get it done right the first room. Like that's the thing too is that like my developers are doing like work front end WordPress. They're not like building applications. They could, but I'm just building so many different sizes of constantly attic sites I like, I like to have developers on retainer that are just like, I talked to my developers more than anything because they basically manage my, all my sites and presence and all that stuff. But a hundred percent agreement I think becoming less taboo. I think it's a bad idea for just the everyday business owner to outsource work. But if you're an agency, like you're not going to make your ends meet at first if you don't, unless you're so good that you can charge a couple hundred bucks an hour and hire all local. But
Brad Costanzo: 23:08
Another one that I'm thinking here is the concept of Disney
dream storming. So Disney dream storming is a, is a process that I do. In fact, it's so integral to the success of my business.
Then my very first podcast episode ever was on this concept, which is to remember that whenever planning a project by myself or with my team or partners, is to break it out into three extremely distinct frames whereby you're either dreaming, planning, or critiquing. You're never doing two at the same time and you give equal to all of them. So in a quick example would be you and I want to start a business like we're going to create a new software to do X, Y, Z. So the first thing we're going to do is understand we have to step into this dreamers state of mind or this dreamers office.
Brad Costanzo: 23:59
You know, and the only thing we're allowed to do here is have
fun, dream and imagine. What would it be like if it was fully baked and amazing, but there's only two rules. We cannot plan it here and we cannot critique it because we're not in that frame of mind. And when the minute you start to planning critique a green, at the same time, you start to really water it down because you're like, Oh, shoot, what's going on? And then that leads to kind of like idea abortion. Then the next step is once you've got, I've got a cool dream in mind, you step into this role of of planning it out. Like this is the, the, the realist frame. By the way, the reason I call this Disney dream storming is it was modeled after the way Walt Disney built his empire. He literally did these things.
Brad Costanzo: 24:43
So in the planning office, there's, you know, you and I just
created this idea for this super cool software that runs your entire business without ever lifting a finger, right? Like artificial intelligence, super human computing. And we're like, all right, well what would, what would it take to get this done? How might we do this? And by the way, that the concept of how might we is from design thinking and it's also a, it's also used here because it's you're, you're not saying how do we do this? You're saying, how might we do this? How might we accomplish this? Because when you say how might we, it kind of removes the necessity to have it like be real like, well we might do this, we might do that. And it just opens up, you know, the, you know, ability to brainstorm. Now when you're planning it out, there's only two rules.
Brad Costanzo: 25:26
Don't add new stuff to the dream and don't critique it yet.
Cause third, when you're all done with the dream and all and all done with the plan, you do what most entrepreneurs do not do because it's no fun, which is you give equal weight to the critic, the spoiler Patty pooper. You know, you go in there and you go, listen, the goal of this now, so if you and I were on this team together, we're going to step into this other office in another setting and we're going to say, look, we've got a kick ass dream
and a plan that just might work, but we need to create insurance and there's a lot of things we may have overlooked in our delusional optimism that every entrepreneur has to have. So what are we missing? And you're going to ask questions like, do we have enough capital?
Brad Costanzo: 26:07
Do we have enough time? What are the resources? Well, how
will this take time and materials away from what we're already trying to accomplish? Does my wife want me to spend more time with her? And I'm coming up with this new idea that's going to take me away from that? You can probably guess what the two rules here are. Don't add more stuff to the dream and don't solve the critics questions while you're in the critics office. Like just wait, wait til you get out of there and then take it back to either the dreamer or the doer and go, all right, those are some really good points. Thank you critic Namaste day and now must stay over here and fix problem, right? Like how can I, how can I solve it using a different mindset than the, you know, the one who came up with the problem.
Brad Costanzo: 26:51
And by doing this you systematically operate at a much higher
mental level and you're able to come up with much better ideas. And by the way, you know we talked about like ideation. This is part of the ideation process. It's starting with a problem and then going through a framework so that you can create better ideas, more fully baked that are not either diluted by critiquing it before it really gets started or not so optimistically delusional that you just ignore, you know, all the critics responses that are going to derail you. And I've done that before. I've gotten really optimistic and I'm like, I'm just going to do this anyway. And I put blinders on. And, and the business fell apart because of the things that would have been easily preventable had I not had I done this process on it
John Kiekbusch: 27:36
100%. And I think that what's even, what's even worse though is
the majority of people that that I've spoken to that are starting out are really struggling to understand the concept of what is actually ROI for their customer, right? So they try to focus like, let's, let's just keep using the S a SEO as an example. They're like, Oh, we'll get you these rankings, or Oh, we'll get you this traffic increase and all of that as well and good and can be built into your KPIs. But realistically, there's only one thing that the business owner cares about and that is an ROI positive, right? And if you frame that right and you interview the business owner right, then you can understand how soon they need to be ROI positive. You know, how deep is that pocket and how long are they willing to work with you because SEO does take time and it does take time to achieve results and we all know
that, but you need to be really realistic about, you know, what is the lifetime value of those customers that you're bringing them?
John Kiekbusch: 28:39
What products or services does the customer need to sell in
order to actually get that max ROI? Right? And so I think it's so important to really interview your prospect to identify if they can actually be ROI positive, right? And then it's also important to review with them if they are, even if they're good at selling. Because ultimately you can get them as many phone calls as you like. If they suck at closing those phone calls or closing those email leads or whatever it might be, then they're going to be ROI negative no matter what you do.
Joe Troyer: 29:19
A hundred percent honored percent. And I think just to add to
that, like you got to ask about capacity, right? Because if you're doing a good job for them and you blow up their marketing like they ask you to, you could very well bury the business. I'll never forget, probably within my first 10 clients. I, I basically put, put a lady out of business where was doing well, we are managing our ad words and she came to me and after we had like quadrupled her traffic, she came to me and was like, Joe, I need you to double the business in the next six months. I don't really know how that's possible, but I came back with a plan. We got damn near close and we basically put her out of business because we made every little microscopic problem. Like we magnified that and it just blew up in our face. And it was an utter nightmare. So I think I agree with everything you said, Jonathan. I would say that you got to also figure out what the constraints are in the business so you can try to help the business owner avoid those or it can really go bad.
John Kiekbusch: 30:19
Well, and, and how willing they are to change. You know, this is
one of the reasons why as an agency, we don't take on reputation management clients is quite simply because a lot of business owners are not willing to change because, you know, and I'm sure we've all been there, we know everything better, you know. And so in rent management, I found it very frustrating that people would come to me and say, look, I need to burry this piece of news. And we're like, okay, that's fine, but have you actually changed the thing that's led to this piece of news? Being in, in the search results are like, no, not really. Like I just want this to disappear. And it's like, yeah, but that's, that's kind of frustrating because, you know, it was going to basically be an asshole to other people, you know?
John Kiekbusch: 31:04
And so that's it. And so for that reason, I think that sort of
coming back to the agency model, I think it's really important
like you said, to under identify how willing they are to scale, but also how communicative and how, how willing they are to scale. You know, once things get tough and they need to put some extra hours in in order to fulfill the demand that you've created as a marketer, no matter what type of marketing you do, it's really important that they are willing to work with you to to make those improvements. But I also think that if you are highly communicative and you are super honest with your prospects or your clients, then you know, you soon find yourself in a position where if things don't go to plan, you can actually work with that client to improve things and they won't just abandon you and drop off.
John Kiekbusch: 32:02
You know, we have a complete like no BS policy and our
business and we try to always be as absolutely transparent and honest as we can. And when things don't go our way, like you know, you sign on a client and in the first 60 days of the campaign they get hit with an algo update and lose half their traffic. You know, we had that happen. Actually in the, the, the June update we had a couple of lines in the medical field, lost half their traffic and at that point we have to be super realistic with them and say, look, this is going to take some time to to repair and it's going to hurt, but we're going to do everything that we can to help you get back to that. And you know, if you're willing to work with us, then we might be able to rebuild that. Now the alternative is to just basically hide and just say nothing and just send the report over that has the massive red arrows and just pray for the best. And before you know it, those clients have gone to a different client, to a different agency. In reality, you know, it's probably outside of your control. What happens to a website often algo update on a brand new signed up client. But the communication is really ultimately what's gonna keep them on board.
Rob Warner: 33:19
If you'd have asked me a year ago, I would've said start simple
with search because it works and it's really easy to track and we get great results on it. Fast forward to now I would say where possible, don't just sell search. The reason being the buyer's journey has evolved dramatically and continues to evolve far more rapidly than probably any point in history. The way mobile has taken over the way algorithms are increasingly affecting all our lives. The way we use our mobiles, where we're in the restaurant, the restroom, you know, it passenger seat of a car means that you cannot just run a search campaign today or at least you can and some people do, but it's significantly better if you don't couple it with retargeting, which just to explain the language for anybody who hasn't heard it, retargeting is
showing ads to people who've visited your website after they have left onto the platform.
Rob Warner: 34:22
So you show and so on. Or the websites or perhaps on YouTube,
on Gmail or on Facebook or Instagram after they've been to your website. We've all had that happen to us. Just go on Amazon today. If you haven't and look at something unusual, it'll follow you around the internet for the next few weeks. That's retargeting in action. You can't rely on the one and done approach anymore. You know, you might have got that person who clicked your ad while they were waiting for a bus, waiting for a train in a moment, filling time while something was on their mind, and by the time they then hit their desktop or their iPad or whatever to actually follow through properly your distant memory, you have to be now and retargeting them to be there in those moments where they're actually given proper consideration to a thought process they started earlier on and so we now find that wherever possible our go to is a combination of both and you can sell them either way around. Actually you can lead with the retargeting, you can legal PPC, you can do it either way, but Portland together and you've got a hugely powerful combination. And then in your point of view, Rob what kind of markup should an agency be looking for? Kind of minimum maximum. Just kind of any raw thoughts. And I know that like don't sugar coat this. I know for you and I, our opinions
Joe Troyer: 35:38
Differ a little bit on the subject. So you know, just from your gut
reaction, like what do you believe in that regards?
Rob Warner: 35:45
So let's say someone who is coming towards us starting price is
two 95 a month. That's when we start at whatever, forget currencies, let's just keep it simple. It's two 95 a month roughly. If you're a brand new agency, I know people selling that at 500 a month, so they're making 40%. I wouldn't recommend that. It's too tight. That gives you very little money to service that client. Think of that 40% has to do two jobs. It has to pay you in terms of profit and it has to pay the service cost of you maintain that relationship. You know, $200, I'm going to do it in my opinion. So you need to be pushing 600 700 and upwards and once you're into those kinds of numbers, I always relate it to the kind of supply client that you're working with. Though you and I have had this conversation, we do agree you can charge a lawyer more than the florist.
Rob Warner: 36:35
Fundamental service may be similar in terms of delivery, but the
value to the end user is different and ultimately the end user is going to make a decision as to whether they keep or kill your
services. So it has to be related to their value. So that $300 recharge may well turn into $1,000 invoice for a lawyer, it may well turn into a $600 invoice for a florist. I know, I think the most extreme one I have is I know one of our agency partners who marks is up by 80% so we're affecting the arts. We had 20% of his price point and has no problem because Mark is, he sells into and the service he provides.
Joe Troyer: 37:15
And obviously it's different too. If you have like a supply chain of
leads coming to you, so to speak, right? Like you're going to have fundamentally like a different type of business set up. Even if like, you know, let's say selling one to many in the florist niche, that might be you and you're taking a, you're taking less of a cut, but you're dealing with volume and you set expectations with the client in terms of how often you're going to talk and everything. Yes. But you might have, you might not, right? Like if you don't have those relationships and you're selling one-on-one, you got to take into consideration, like you said, door. But then also you know, where your commission for selling the deal or somebody in your teens and then actually maintaining that relationship as well. You know, that Mark up to be there. And so if you completely, if you have to choose to go out to the florist there, the lawyer I surely hope that you would choose to go out there with the lawyer just fundamentally because you have the opportunity to make a whole lot more revenue. Right? And without any other factors, like let's pick a niche where we can do the best day, right? Let's pick a niche where we could make seven 50 a month markup on each client or more versus, you know, two 50. Yeah. So there's a lot
Rob Warner: 38:28
Of Facebook agency, so to speak these days. You know, when I
first started it was just a social ad agency that happens to do Facebook. Now
David Schloss: 38:36
I get classified as a Facebook agency just because I run
Facebook ads. And so what I find is that a lot of the newbies in the space, they're just leading with the, the old school internet marketer, you know, money signs, right? I'm going to help you make $10,000, $20,000 and you're going to get plenty of clients doing that. But those guarantees can only take you so far. And that's another thing. I can't guarantee you make that money unless the funnel and the business is operating at a way where it's like I can close these sales efficiently, your team can fulfill. We get testimonials and social proof and thus that, you know, the chain effect happens where it's like we could bring in more people that way. A lot of agencies these days don't even consider that it's just closed the sale, get the work done. Some never even get the work done and it's rinse and repeat.
David Schloss: 39:24 So it's a lot of turn and burn and it puts a bad light on my
business because I ge
t classified with these people and then I have to do something different than what they had done for this person previously. So I get a lot of clients that are previously burned. And so what we do when we position ourselves in front of these potential clients isn't, is just we lead with results, right? So we put out the case studies and we break them down in depth, right? What was done? How was it done? Why do we do it this way? What mistakes did we make and here was the result from it. But while we're putting out these case studies, you know, you talk about my referral game is like, it's really on point. It's because I'm trying to educate people before they even work with me as to why they need to be looking out for certain things when hiring an agency.
David Schloss: 40:11
Right? So how am I communicating or educating you prior to
the process beginning? Am I giving you feedback on your offer? Am I giving you any sort of critiques around the copy used in your email or in the actual program itself that you're delivering to people? I don't feel most agencies do that. They don't really dig into your stuff. They just go, Hey, it's five K you pay it and they just promote whatever you got without ever looking at your material. And I know you've been through this, there are some people's courses or coaching programs where they're actually not even ready for market consumption. They have to be refined and tweaked a little more before someone buys it. And yet these ad agencies are coming out. They're saying, Oh yeah, no problem. We'll, we will, we'll get you 10 X your return. And they're making these false promises and it makes everyone look bad because they don't deliver.
David Schloss: 41:00
And so we're taking the opposite approach. I'll break down all
your stuff, I'll educate you. I'll tell, you know, I can't help you, right? Just I'm not going to take everybody. And I think that's more of a refreshing approach. Even though it's common sense to us, to the market. It's not because the narrative changed in the last couple of years. So the, the sophistication level, so to speak of the, of the industry has changed, right? Like we have people jumping in all the time, you know, we, we constantly, I mean nine out of 10 customers feel like they've been ripped off by some type of marketing agency in the past. So because that, like we have to
Joe Troyer: 41:34
Do business differently. And I think if you're trying to play the
same game that you were seven, eight, 10 years ago when we first met, it's not going to work very well. And you're going to be spinning your wheels as an agency. So I recommend that everybody becomes an expert in something, right? Like, you
went really, really deep with Facebook and then even based upon the year and what's really working for you and your business, you know, you're, you're specializing on eCommerce, on high ticket or these different places because you know that you can get great results. So that's fantastic. And I definitely recommend that everybody, you know, pick a niche and go deep in that niche and become the expert. Because at that point, like you can do things that don't scale well. You can blow up Facebook ads, you can do what you do and you can give away a bunch of stuff for free because you know that like, you're, you're going to get your money back in longterm.
Joe Troyer: 42:25
So I want to transition a little bit and talk about the, about I high
ticket funnel. At the end of the day, every agency I think should be niched down enough where they should be running ads for themselves. Right? And when you really talk to an agency about why they aren't doing it, it's because they don't have an offer. It's because they don't have a niche, right? Like they haven't put the blinders on and they're not focused enough. So like one of the first things that I do when I start working with an agency is I get them to stay in their lane. Like, just pick a niche, right? Then just pick a sub segment of that market that you want to help, right? And I get them to just say yes or no to a couple of things really quickly, right? And they're like further ahead than they've been in five years, right? By just making a couple of yes, no decisions
Speaker 1: 43:28 [Inaudible].
