Joe Troyer 0:37
Nobody really has that concept of minimum effective dose. It's just like, we're gonna do all this stuff, we're going to serve all these people, we're going to do all these different services, we're going to choose all these different niches. And I tell people, I feel like till I'm blue in the face, like, Man, you got to pick a niche, like, you're really smart, you got a good thing going on, you build a great for all intensive purposes, like general agency business. But the reason like you really move the mark for like, the last two years is because you haven't picked the lane, like you. Like it's a it's no wonder, um, what would you tell somebody in that scenario, like being there and going through that experience, your first like, firsthand.
Mike Gore-Hickman 1:21
And I've seen so many agencies, like generalist agencies offer everything to everyone, like on their website, it's almost like a status symbol. For some people. It's like, Oh, I can offer SEO and PPC and Facebook ads and websites, and I'll mow your lawn for you too. Right? I mean, if you are, if you're in that spot right now, I mean, 100% of the time, you're going to be absolutely buried in client work, you get a client, you fulfill on their website, and then set up their SEO, and then whatever else. And then once you're done fulfilling for that client, it's like, okay, let's start looking for the next client. I mean, it makes sense. On the high level, you're like, hey, if I offer more services, I'm going to get more customers. But that's not really the way that it actually works. It's counterintuitive, it's like you need to pick one type of customer offer one service productize that service. So basically, like, give it your own spin. So you're not just selling PPC, you're not just selling SEO or Facebook ads, like you actually call it something like your, you know, the nuggets method or whatever. And then, and then sell that one specific product to that one specific person. Because that's you solving a problem you're gonna get. That's how that's how you really scale anything, because, you know, if you ever watch that McDonald's movie, what's it called the founder? Yeah, they're like, they like got mad at they're like El Paso franchise, because they're sorry, there's sound like being burritos.
Unknown Speaker 2:46
Yeah. And
Mike Gore-Hickman 2:49
you gotta sell burger, fries, drinks and shakes. And if you can perfect that, like, they obviously scaled and they're huge. But if you can just solve one problem for one person, not only is your fulfillment going to be a lot easier, and you're not going to be buried in work, but your sales and marketing is going to be so much easier, so much more streamlined. And you can start setting up automated systems. Like I have automated customer success, email, follow ups, I have onboarding, email automation, I have, you know, marketing, email automation, none of that would be possible. If I was a generalist offering different solutions to different people.
Joe Troyer 3:24
That makes perfect sense. So when you think about minimum effective dose, and specifically in your agency, like what are the big things that that you work on? Right? Like, if you took like 8020 practices principle, and you applied it to excel, I think that's 96 for right, like, that's what you do such a good job with, I feel is like, you don't let like shiny object syndrome get you near as much, I'm sure it still does. But near as much as most agencies and you're really focused on a couple of things. I think you do those things really well. And you let the rest just be as is. So if you are giving me advice. And Joe, if you can just focus on these three, or these four things, what are those things that you think are the big levers?
Mike Gore-Hickman 4:07
I mean, yeah, that's a good question. Um, and yeah, really important, probably the most important one. And number one is like you and as much as agency owners hate hearing this, you have to pick a niche, right? You just absolutely have to pick a niche, pick a service delivery. And basically, the way that you pick a service delivery is like, have all of the different services for this one niche? What's the one thing that's going to move the needle the most for them? Right? Is it PPC? Is it Facebook ads? Is it Seo? Is it a website? Is it whatever it is, doesn't matter? What is going to move the needle the most for those people? And then and then and then really just focus all your energy and time on finding more finding more people to sell this one solution to and and also being able to say no, if a customer comes to you and you know outside of your niche, and they're like hey, can you help with, like, I had a customer come to me and I know nothing about real estate leads, he's like, Hey, can you can you help my agency, real estate agents or real estate broker, get more home leads, like they they're ready to pay some serious money. And they heard about you somewhere. And I was like, I mean, hey, it would be nice to have an extra, you know, 3k recurring, but I will cost.
Joe Troyer 5:25
So there's there's a lot of people, obviously, that have been retail that have been very much in person selling things. And now we're wanting to make a shift to as they would say, digital and, and commerce, and have never been there before. And you come from a unique background, because you were never there before either. Right? Like, you kind of got in by pure happenstance and just kind of stumbled into it fell into it. What advice would you give to somebody that's, that's in golf right now or in something but but in a more traditional sense, local sense, physical sense. And now is looking to make the shift into digital? What would your advice be?
Tyler Sullivan 6:11
I used to have these conversations like way pre pandemic, and every time I did with someone had like a traditional store, like my parents used to have a diner. So I'd be like, yo, let's get some emails, let's do a giveaway, let's send an email, like free coffee or whatever. And they did. And like the one time they actually did it, they crushed they were super busy. And to transition that online, I it's one of those things where like, if you told me in 2012, I shouldn't ship the clothes myself. I say you're dumb. You're You're wrong. So it's like, I think everyone has to have their own epiphany and this, this is kind of it. And I think it's probably a hard transition. I can't get back in that mindset. If I'm all in person. That's all I know of how to even do that. But I think you got to go. I think the ones that pivot and really embrace it are going to win, but I feel like it's it's not one that they're embracing, at least from what I've seen with, with zelis. They're not like, Yeah, let's go online, they still are waiting for it to come back. I don't know, because I have never had a traditional retail store. But I mean, it is what it is. It's online.
And I was online before so I think it's just embrace it quicker than later. And those that can adapt and move are going to win. So I mean, learn how to do email marketing, get email, get all your current customers, send them handwritten notes. Like and say, Hey, man, you know, we really appreciate as a customer, I know you've been in the store before we're going online. Here's our new website, here's a coupon or something. I don't know what that is, or like, Hey, can we get your email and start building that list and making I mean, with Shopify, and clay, vo, anyone can launch a website right now, like pretty easily, which was not the case when I started. So I think doing stuff that probably takes take some effort, like, move slow now to move fast later.
So do stuff that kind of sucks, like, called maybe call every one of your customers and how many customers do you have in traditional retail? Maybe 1500 2000? I call them up like, hey, it's Steve from whatever, the store downtown, really appreciate your past business man, we just launched a new website. You know, we're delivering direct to you. We're whatever love just to get your feedback, get your input, or tell me what you want? and have those candid conversations? And, you know, make that transition, I would do the stuff that doesn't scale to then make it scale, you know?
Joe Troyer 8:33
Yeah. gotta hustle first. Yeah, get it working, build some momentum. Makes perfect sense. I'm sure that most of the podcast listeners If not, like quite all have heard of Sprout Social, you obviously were the first marketer ever at Sprout Social and help lead the inbound marketing and really helped spearhead that revenue growth, or at least a big part of it, going from zero to 100k, and then to 20 plus million, and then to, you know, over 100 million in revenue and then to their IPO. I'd love to hear about what you think kind of the 8020 was of the content marketing initiative. What was the big things not kind of the traditional title tags, meta tags, what were kind of the big things that led to that group to that growth in terms of content marketing.
Unknown Speaker 9:20
Yeah.
Nate Turner 9:21
So the the very first iteration of the blog was actually a little bit more of like, kind of like quasi news site. So almost like a Mashable type of look at like social and what's happening and just it was such an emerging space. And then when the editor of that left, probably like two years in or so I took over ownership of the blog and the team and and, you know, there was really kind of a well rounded effort within all of marketing, but we that's when we really started to shift into a lot of you know, much more like SEO content, and specifically creating on topics to be, you know, thorough and ranking, and I would say that, you know, at 20, from from content marketing standpoint was really, you know, understanding our audience and not just, you know, we could, we could write about social media topics.
But it really was understanding that our audience was social media marketers, it was digital marketers, it was people in agencies. And so understanding kind of everything that they were they had on their plate, which is not just, you know, tweeting or engaging on on a social platform, it's also channel, it's understanding, it's measuring pork, like, the impact all that stuff. And so really understanding the the broader audience led to topics that weren't necessarily totally tied to our product, but really, were still helpful to our audience. So built a lot of authority and trust there. And then also, you know, some of the CO marketing stuff we're able to do with, with other companies across, you know, Zendesk, and unbounce. And companies that were sort of tangential to what we did, but very much relevant to a digital marketer who's responsible for a lot of stuff. So I think that was was huge, just kind of not limiting ourselves to that one topic, but but really understanding our audience better and then and then catering to everything that they cared about.
Joe Troyer 11:21
Gotcha. Yeah. So kind of going full circle, so to speak on everything that they think about, they care about what you know, really dominating the conversation, not just on social, but everything that they would be thinking about. And then you said something interesting, you talked about partners, right? And working collaborating with other brands. And you talk to us a little bit about what that what that meant, Nate?
Nate Turner 11:45
Yeah, um, yeah, so the way we really approached it was, we know that social ties into a lot of places, so like, for Facebook ads, like, there's the social ads, and there's landing pages. And so like, that was an easy one. For for like, partnering up with unbounce, they do so much with with ads and landing pages, social is a big channel for customer service and customer care. So that's another area we can kind of branch into. So really, it was kind of looking at who some of the leaders were in those spaces, Wistia, we did one with with them for video, and like, video and social and how that works together.
And so the goal was always create a ton of value for for our audience and prospects and customers like, by essentially going and finding the experts in those areas, and then, you know, crafting topics that would overlap with social and make it relevant to our audience, but also, you know, just educating and making them better. So that was, you know, not just blog content, but the CO marketing like webinars or guys, we would do together, anything like that. And then of some of the other like research content that the marketing team is doing, like, always just trying to find ways to be a resource and make people better at their jobs and add value that way.
Joe Troyer 13:11
So it sounds like then ad pros does a lot more than just ads, right, kind of full funnel, if you will, if you're doing the services that you also, you know, run through on that scorecard Is that right?
Nehal 13:24
Man, before we used to do like business coaching, like basic business strategy, financial management, like all of that is integrated into what we're doing, because otherwise we're just biessing ourselves. And so we don't charge extra for that it's like for us as a non negotiable in order to operate. And so that's just how we go about it, should we be charging extra proper, probably like our sheets, and the way that we do stuff, and how we make decisions is almost always radically different than how decisions are made right now. And that is a critical part of being having the clarity in order to figure out if you're pacing correctly, or not, what adjustments to make, and then if you're actually going to hit those goals or not, and we know wait before the entrepreneur does.
Joe Troyer 14:08
That's awesome. Yeah, man, I think that that's so key. I think in this day and age, if you want to keep clients long term and really be able to serve them. You have to go full service like that. Because otherwise you just you're gonna just turn them non stop. Yeah, when they're going through those growth stages, and they've never been there before. Like, it's it's difficult. When we just first started to scale this funnel. I know, like, I was talking with one of our advisors that runs a very similar funnel. And he's like, what's the cost per sale? And I'm like, 1500 bucks. He's like, great. It should be two grand.
And I'm like, What? He's like, it should be two grand. Pay two grand, like, What are you talking about? Like, it's 1500. And I want it less. He's like, no, like, spend more money. Make it two grand. Like, all right, no, but now I get it like it's taken. emotion out of the sale like, you know, cost per sale being two grand like, that's easy. All right, like now it's easy to scale, it took all the stress out of managing that and looking at the stats every day is gone. And that's just like one little tweak. So without that, like, I would be a mess every day looking at the stats, and we're only spending like, you know, a little under 1000 a day, I can't imagine somebody spending, you know, 300 grand a month or you know, 200 grand a month.
Nehal 15:30
So that's very real. It's very real. So for example, like, the way I look at this as like, it starts with me outside of me is like all the families and stuff inside of ad pros, outside of that is all of the entrepreneurs outside of that is all of their families, and inventory and people who manage that whole ecosystem. So when we're able to execute the amount of lives that are actually touched indirectly, not including customers, is pretty significant. And when we have breakthroughs, there's a lot of good stuff that happens.
Joe Troyer 15:59
I know that working with influencers, you ended up creating this before method. Can you talk a little bit about what the heck that is and why it's important.
Los 16:08
Yeah, so influencers kind of made me realize, basically, the reason I created it is because we were making so much money with some of them and sending them like $100,000 a month checks just for them, that they stopped working or going to Hawaii or doing this and that I was like, man, like we still need content. So I was like, You know what, out of spite, because I'm kind of weird like that. I was like, I'm just going to become an influencer. Prove to these guys that it's not a big deal. That way. It also helped me when I sell people like listen, I'm an influencer too. It's not that crazy. And so I created this method. It's c four, which stands for content, conversations, community and conversions.
And this works really, really well. If you're doing high ticket. It also works for eecom. But for high ticket, let's talk about that. More. Really constant is something you need to be creating in everything. Like I've been doing a lot of stuff right now on clubhouse, I'm doing Tick tock, I'm driving all that into my Instagram, and they're seeing more content you get to know like, trust me, it's the influencer angle, right? But everyone, you're an influencer, because you're creating a creator, you're creating content. Then I take that into conversations. I move people from that into DMS, I use opportunities inside of Instagram, such as like polls and questions and I reach out to people Hey, I saw you voted on my poll.
Hey, reach back out. Like if you're interested in this and this, it starts the conversation if they're not ready to engage into an application or something, I'm moving into a community, whether it's a close friends group on Instagram, it's the little like the green thing. Or you can move into a Facebook group email list, whatever the case, it's a community nonetheless, right? Give me your cell phone number you there's actually a texting tool now called community which is just texting, right? And so if you have all those three things, you're consistently giving content, you're having communication with people communication is the new form of currency. Nowadays, everyone wants to talk everyone wants to see it's less like just buy this here. It is like why Who are you like, why should I do it? Right?
So you have constant communication. If you build a community, you have a rabid amount of the same people in the same space giving you testimonials showing results like really verifying and edifying you. And then conversions is just easy. Like you don't have to worry about it because you've put all the time in to these three buckets that when you're ready to make a sale people are ready to engage with you and sell or apply to work with your stuff. They already know you. The sales calls go from like an hour of like fake discovery, like Tell me why this is hard for you. And what would this mean to your life? You know what it is? This is what it is this how much it costs. You ready to go? I'm ready to go pro but let's do this. Perfect.
