Agency Ahead by Traject

By: Garrett Sussman
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  • Summary

  • Want to grow your digital marketing agency? Discover what marketing strategies are working for the leading agencies, marketing experts, and business consultants. Learn how to lead your marketing agency, inspire your employees, and make your clients happy. Join host Garrett Sussman as he talks digital marketing with a variety of marketing experts about how they're navigating an uncertain world, adjusting their services for their clients, and improving their own businesses by better preparing them for the future. Find out how you can offer SEO, Social Media Management, Reputation Management, Customer Experience, Digital Business Consulting, and more to boost your revenue. Please subscribe to the Agency Ahead podcast today!
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Episodes
  • Developing Marketing Expertise and a Personal Brand with Dave Gerhardt

    Developing Marketing Expertise and a Personal Brand with Dave Gerhardt
    May 24 2021
    Dave Gerhardt is an expert's expert.He's the author of Conversational Marketing: How the World's Fastest Growing Companies Use Chatbots to Generate Leads 24/7/365. He's the CMO at Privy, a leader in eCommerce marketing for small businesses and entrepreneurs. He's the former VP of Marketing at Drift, a Conversational Marketing platform that combines chat, email, video, and automation to make it easier for customers to buy by helping them start the conversations they want to start on their terms.Dave even has his own marketing community, DGMG, a place where you can "get the marketing education you never got in school," a podcast, and a community where B2B marketers join forces to learn from one another.He's the guy who genuinely loves everything marketing, and so has found multiple ways to have fun doing it.He's also focused on the metrics that matter most to CEOs, namely, the amount of revenue that a marketer can generate for a company. If you're ready for some down-to-earth, no-nonsense insights on how you can improve your performance, you won't want to miss this one. The highlights:[2:07] Dealing with imposter syndrome.[5:46] Getting it all done.[7:52] Evolutions in Dave's marketing philosophy.[13:08] Why you don't have to prove the ROI of every last marketing activity.[19:41] Branding strategies.[21:17] Branding an individual vs. branding the agency.[26:44] Dave's cause.The insights:Dealing with imposter syndromeIf there's one thing you learn while interviewing some of the smartest marketers in the world – very few of them are immune to imposter syndrome. Some only face it at the beginning of their journeys. Some continue to grapple with it even while they're standing in front of live audiences at some of the biggest events in the world. Dave's no exception. "It's exhausting, at times, worrying about or thinking about whether someone's going to react the wrong way or be mad about what you've posted. I don't like that headspace sometimes."Dave admits that imposter syndrome has plagued him from the beginning."I remember being at Constant Contact. I was 24 years old. It was when I really got into startups and being part of the startup community. I graduated college with no clue about real marketing, or what to do. I just got a degree because I needed to graduate. I got into internet marketing and social media. I saw a lot of people in that industry had blogs about: hey, here's what I'm doing. I wanted that. I wanted a public forum to share what I was doing."He scratched his initial itch with a podcast called Tech in Boston in 2014."I wasn't even working in marketing. I was an account manager at the time. I started this podcast where I interviewed local CEOs in Boston. That's where I started to build my brand." Dave stresses that he doesn't feel like he did anything special."I was literally the only person who had a podcast about startups in Boston. That got me meetings with top CEOs and top VCs, and you know, once you get in that loop a little bit you can say: wow, that was a great interview, who else do you know that I should talk to, and all the sudden you're connected to someone else." From there, he went on to Hubspot, where he created The Growth Show. He wasn't even a full-time marketing person until he went to Drift."When I got to Drift they said: we're going to see how this goes, Unknown Guy, go ahead and do your thing."No pressure, Dave."So I got to get our website out for the first time. Launch the blog. Launch the podcast, do paid advertising, do SEO, do AdWords, do events. I literally got to do all those things for the first time, myself. I think that was a great benefit to the company to have an earlier person, early in their career to grow, and that kind of built from there. At Drift, I got to do marketing to marketing people, as a result of that I didn't have a personal thing because I was sharing to the world through Drift."Bottom line? If you're grappling with imposter syndrome? Keep putting yourself out there. It will pay off. It's just a feeling! If Dave, of all people, still feels it, it's not going away, so you might as well get out there and rock the world. Getting it all doneLet's take a moment to marvel at Dave's prolific productivity. How does he get it all done?Dave successfully adjusted to the Covid-19 crisis."Right now I can use my time how I need. I can run down to my office on Saturday at 1:00 AM because I had an idea. I do not think this would have been at all possible before being unchained from the whole cubical life."He contrasts it by noting that he used to spend up to 10 hours a day at the office."You're just there. You gotta do whatever's there. You're asking me how I'm able to do DGMG now? Well, I'm also able to pick up and drop off my kids now. Not that I do that every day. Go for a walk every day outside. Work out every day. This is one of many benefits I'm seeing from being fortunate enough to be able to work from home." Evolutions in Dave's marketing ...
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    29 mins
  • Selling and Prospecting for Agency Owners and Consultants with Brooklin Nash

    Selling and Prospecting for Agency Owners and Consultants with Brooklin Nash
    May 21 2021
    Sales, sales prospecting, and outreach. They’re always tricky. Agencies and consultancies rely on them, especially in the early stages of their business, but trying to figure out how to make these activities effective is a constant uphill battle. In addition, it's difficult to get it right without coming across as too salesy, and in a way that gets the right value in front of the right people at the right time.Meet Brooklin Nash, the Head of Content at Sales Hacker.  Sales Hacker is a website that offers discussions, articles, podcasts, videos, and sales training. It's a community that is "100% geared to helping salespeople gain new skills or improve their game." If you're running an agency, are a freelancer, or are part of an agency sales team, that means you. So don't miss today's podcast. Sales are integral to agency success and Brooklin has some great insights from his experience and community.The highlights:[1:35] The importance of researching your prospects, and what you're looking for.[4:46] The right amount of time to spend on research.[8:20] Where a cold email strategy starts to go off the rails. [10:30] Good strategy for cold emails.[12:06] How Sales Hacker approaches content.[14:01] The most successful pieces at Sales Hacker.[15:28] Traffic sources.[17:56] Favorite sales outreach tools.[21:07] Brooklin's causes.The insights:The importance of researching prospects, and how to do itBrooklin stresses that anyone engaging in the sales process should spend a lot more time on research than they probably would otherwise think to."Don't just do a light search on LinkedIn Sales Navigator, pull up a list, and then reach out to blast the whole list. Taking time to really qualify who you're reaching out to and why will be time well-spent before you ever send your first email." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIf3xD0mlQQAs for what you're looking for when you do all this research?"One, you're looking for a company matching your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). If most of your clients are of a certain size and in a specific niche, start there."The other thing you're looking for is a signal that they might be ready for help with their marketing."They have a new Director of Marketing or a VP, and the new executive came from a place where they ran a strong content marketing presence the new company doesn't have, for example." Brooklin says hiring can be another signal."If they're hiring for their marketing team, there's a good chance they're going to be looking for external help too. They might not just be hiring those content marketing managers. They may be looking for contractors and agencies to actually execute on the work. You can look for those signals pretty easily with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and build your list from there."Finally, Brooklin says you're looking for information that can help you with your outreach efforts."A podcast they just did. An article they just published. A question they asked. Something that puts the value first and the content first. Instead of: hey, you're in marketing. We're a marketing agency. Can we help you out? Start with where they're at, first."The right amount of time to spend on researchWhen we already have so many demands on our time, all this research can feel like a lot of wasted effort. So how much time is optimum for making the process work?Brooklin admits it’s hard to quantify."It's going to depend on how much you're reaching out. But unless you're a giant agency, you're going to be better served reaching out to ten dream clients than even a few hundred clients that maybe don't fit your ICP or who might be harder to work with or might be past your niche a little bit. So take the time to focus on the right prospective clients and I think you're going to have better conversations down the line."Brooklin has spent up to 30 minutes on an email in the past. "Quite a bit of time from a cold outreach perspective, but it paid off. We were only looking for a handful of new clients, so it didn't matter that it didn't scale well." He has also tried other strategies where he sent out hundreds of emails and tried to automate the process."I spent a couple of hours and only used intent data. When I sent hundreds I got a 15% reply rate. Only one of them became a client."Where a cold email strategy starts to go off the rails"The number one place a cold email strategy goes off the rails is when you make it about you vs. them. And that's something you can scale. Not as well as those hyper-personalized emails that take 20-30 minutes. You can take the time to make it about what their problem is, and then as the footnote what your potential solution is."Brooklin stresses that you really can't make it about what an amazing agency you are."It's: hey. I noticed you were working on this. Or you started this campaign. Or you just started this new job. How's that going? Make it about them first. This is essentially Sales 101, but I think content marketers often forget that, ...
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    26 mins
  • The Secret Digital Marketing Life of Franchises with Neel Parekh

    The Secret Digital Marketing Life of Franchises with Neel Parekh
    May 14 2021
    Ever wondered how your agency can start working with franchises? For many agencies, they're practically a "holy grail" client. Want the insider take on what it would require to impress someone who runs one?Well, listen to today's podcast and you'll get your wish. Today we're talking with Neel Parekh, Founder and CEO of MaidThis, a residential and Airbnb cleaning franchise that is rapidly expanding across the U.S.MaidThis is a tech-savvy up-and-comer that leverages every available digital technique to win and to help their franchisees win. That means Neel is also well-versed in the digital marketing world and has plenty of insights for agency owners and consultants. Check it out now:The highlights:[1:02] The business model.[2:15] Why franchise?[3:52] How MaidThis approaches digital marketing.[6:11] Educating franchisees.[10:46] The best way to get your foot in the door.[16:20] The best franchises to target.[19:05] Growing a remote culture.[20:46] Neel's cause.The insights:The MaidThis business modelThe MaidThis business model is fairly straightforward. It's a cleaning company that allows customers to schedule weekly, biweekly, or monthly cleanings through their website. Everything is automated.The other niche is Airbnb cleaning for vacation rentals, which brings its own unique challenges."One guest checks in at 11, the next guest checks in at 3. There's a bunch of stuff which has to happen between them, like checking for damages, replacing supplies, things like that. So we just link up with the host's calendar and automatically schedule cleaning after the turn-around."Neel says he really likes approaching this business in what he calls a "new age way.""As opposed to the old-school cleaning model where you get an estimate, you don't really know if they're going to show up or not, and you have no phone notifications." Why franchise?Neel says franchising was a really big decision for his company.He offers some background."I started the company in 2013. I did a couple of years part-time when I was working in finance. Eventually, I wanted to travel. So I left for five years before Covid, just traveling the world. That's why I made the business remote. Because I had to."At MaidThis, the only people who don't work remotely are the cleaners."In 2020, we decided we wanted to expand. The question was: how do we do that? Do we do it ourselves, or do we do it with a franchise model? A franchise model can expand more rapidly because you can multiply your efforts. We had the system set up in such a way because I was working remotely. We had to be highly, highly systemized to make it work. So it was very conducive to the franchise model."He says this approach is giving him a huge boost over other cleaning companies."I love that a lot of other cleaning companies in the franchise space are from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, so their digital marketing is not the best. The way they're targeting customer interaction with the crowd they're targeting is not the best. That was the reason we decided franchising was the way to expand. And so we launched in late 2020, at the height of the pandemic. We awarded our first franchise in Denver in late 2020 and are just going to keep  going from there." How MaidThis approaches digital marketingNeel says he really loves local marketing, and that love is helping him dominate the competition. "I think cleaning companies are two years behind the curve in terms of marketing and digital marketing. They're late with everything. As long as you're on pace with the way digital marketing is going, you're already ahead of the competition. It's not that hard in my opinion to beat most of the competition just by doing base, foundational stuff. A lot of local companies don't know what they're doing. If you're a marketer and you know what you're doing, you're ahead of the competition." Neel says it's critical for the success of his franchisees."Having an optimized website. Doing email capture. Actually doing email marketing. You'd be surprised. Most local companies don't do it. 45% of local companies don't even have a website."This is one area where Neel offers his franchisees a great deal of support."We provide the actual playbook of what can work. Here's how you set up a profile. Here's the ad copy you can use for your AdWords. It would be on the franchisee and maybe an approved vendor of ours to actually get that done. A lot of stuff is proven out."He says that there are a lot of changes from market to market that are good to be aware of."For example in Los Angeles, Yelp is huge. Yelp is huge in California. In the midwest, it's not that big. They like Angi. We don't want to force what's happening in their local market." Educating FranchiseesNeel educates each of his franchisees from day one and focuses on two key areas of digital marketing.The first is filling the funnel through SEO and email marketing."Afterwards, the number one key for us is Google reviews. I don't care where in the ...
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    23 mins
Leadership Marketing Economics
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