How to Fully Commit to Your Marketing Strategy EP61

Today, we're talking about how to do things the right way and how to fully commit to your marketing strategy. Discussing topics like ICP research, marketing budgets, educating stakeholders, 

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When I was starting out in the SEO world, I was tunnel vision because I was looking at the metrics that I needed to look at to get to the success that I needed to reach. So I think as marketers, we kind of sometimes get stuck by people pushing us in the corners and saying we need to do all of these things and you need to figure out how to do it for this amount. Well, if you're in a competitive market, you want to see how frequently are other people posting content to give you a sense of, OK, what am I up against?If you're not going to do something right, then like, don't just don't do it at all. Well, welcome back to the Small but Mighty Marketing podcast. I've got Josh Becerra here. This is Eisode#3, and we're going to be diving into. Some things that just happened recently, it's gonna be around how to do things the right way and how to fully commit. And so really excited about that. But I wanted to catch up with Josh first, see what kind of updates that have happened since our last podcast. Well, first like kudos to you. So now we got this like really dope set up here. We got lights here, we got lights behind us, we got a light like, I mean Shin's done a great job. So hopefully you guys appreciate the. I mean, you're underselling yourself. He did do the whole layout of everything. And so, yeah, it looks, it looks great. I brought, I brought the books in. So some of my some of my favorite authors. How about you?What's up with you?You know, a fun personal updates. My wife and I are expecting a third, so we do have twins and this is gonna be our third, but it feels like it's weird. You know, I hear a lot about how the second child is usually the problem child, the one that doesn't listen. I was that and but the but since we had twins, I don't know if that means the third, you know, really curious how the third one's gonna, you know, turn out. Not at all true. I was the second child and I was an Angel. OK, All right, all rightYeah. So that's pretty big news on my end. And we're also making a lot of updates on the website. You know, we've done a lot of the ICP research. We know who we can deliver results for that we also enjoy working with. And so we're making those updates along the way on the website. There we go. So yeah, and we also have a lot of conversations. We we meet with them on a pretty regular basis and. You know what really sparked this episode today was a recent conversation you had, right?Yeah, for sure. So we received a RFP not too long ago. It was from a law firm, out of state law firm and. Basically they said we're looking for SEO services, we're looking for paid media services, we're looking for analytic services and some web dev help, which is great cause like that's all Agurian can do, you know, three of those four things really well and we partner on the web dev all the time. So like great, like this RFP sounds really good. Well, a little bit lower in the document, it said we're looking for proposals that'll come in around $3000 worth of agency retained fees for all of those things. That isn't something that's gonna work for Agrian, but I thought it would be worthwhile to get on the phone and just talk to the person who's in charge of the RFPA little bit and. You know, the way that our conversation kind of unfolded, I was just basically saying like, how are you tackling this stuff today?And she said, well, we have a vendor that's in about that price range right now, but they're doing a horrible job, right?They're. They haven't done anything with our paid media keywords. They're not running like more sophisticated campaigns or newer types of campaigns. It's just kind of been a set it and forget it for like 2 years, which I mean you saying set it and forget is already like that's not something you can really do. Yeah, exactly. And so I just said, so you're paying that vendor this amount of money and you're getting poor results like. Why do you expect to find another vendor for the same amount of money that's going to get you different results? And so that's where this kind of topic around like if you're not going to do something right, then like don't just don't do it at all. And that was kind of my message. To her was look what this stuff really costs and maybe I'm totally off base, right. But like as someone who's owned an agency and run an agency for quite a few years, like I haven't found a way to be able to deliver like really great services that get results for like that little money. Like I I just you need quality people. You need to pay quality people. To get results. And so if there's some agency owner out there who's been able to solve like how to deliver results for that little money with all that breadth of services, like kudos to you. But I haven't found it and I have a lot of these conversations. And so I think you need to either pause on your RFP or at least go back to your leadership team and say to them like, hey, I've. Finding that in order to actually do all these things, it costs more than what we have in the budget. And and I was just encouraging her to like kind of own marketing in that way and with other leaders. You know, I imagine that the budget got set $3000 a month probably by the CEO and the CFO and as a marketer if you unless you want to like. Dig a hole for yourself that you're going to bury yourself in in a year's time. You need to be able to stand up and say like, hey, this budget isn't going to work if we want to do it right. So either we got to choose out of those things, let's do one of those things and do it right, or we need a different size budget. Or if we don't have that ability, that's fine. Then we're just going to reallocate that entire amount of money to something that. Else that could deliver value from marketing perspective that could be like some really great asset like a a video asset that they could use on their website that they could use with their sales team. So I think as marketers we kind of sometimes get stuck by people pushing us in the corners and saying we need to do all of these things and it's and you need to figure out how to do it for this amount and and so that was my little push back in that conversation which. At the end of the day, she thanked me. She was like, thank you for, you know, having this conversation has really meant a lot to me. I've learned a lot. So I feel like, you know, while we might not be the right fit for this particular situation, what what we do need to do is like as marketers start stepping up and owning our stuff. Yeah, I mean there's there's definitely signs, you know, where the budget I think was a little bit higher, right. And then they lowered it. For this RFP, which can mean a couple of different things, right?Like the business might just be drawing down a little bit and they want to be more conservative or maybe marketing doesn't have the confidence secured with leadership to at least stay or acquire more or yeah, get more budget to to act on it and I feel like. You know, that's that is a tough challenge and that does require the whoever is leading marketing to really look back, assess what's going on, paint that picture for leadership. But also you have to be able to believe in this picture as well. So you've got to do a lot of research and so forth. But yeah, I mean I hearing the the number and what they're looking for in my personal experience, you know, I've done consulting on the side as well and being part of the agency. That is very challenging. And even if people say they can do that and they're saying, hey, I can use a I to do that. A I I will just tell you is not at that level yet. And so be wary when you get pricing that is in that range to do all those things. There's ways that I think people can do some of this, but but in the end. It's like, will you get the the, the results you need. And I think what we as marketers need to focus a lot more on is like educating stakeholders around how you in fact get those results. And sometimes stuff just has a different cost to it and you can't solve it with a I and you can't solve it by offshoring. Like we made a very strategic decision that we weren't going to try to do like. Campaigns or like try to acquire customers that were international in other languages like it's it's really hard. So and I imagine like how is it that our team would be able to like really effectively write campaign ads in, you know, a different language. The same is true like for when you're offshoring other places. So anyway. In the end, it's got to be about results. And in the end as marketers, I just feel like we got to own our stuff more. Yeah, for sure. I mean, but I would say, you know, when we're thinking about budget, right, I do think it also aligns with what stage of the journey or the maturity cycle are you in as a business. There are times where maybe that is all you can spend because what you need right now is someone that just. Runs the tasks, the administrative things. If you've got ads that are already working or it's you require more management as opposed to strategic thinking, maybe, you know, maybe that works, right?Cause that might mean you've got that set in stone. But as you evolve, as your marketing becomes more mature, the type of people you need are strategic thinkers, right?And that I think starts to. Create the gap between, you know, the pricing that you start to get from and bids that you get because what you're also paying for is the experience and the learning that they've acquired over time. And so when you are hearing bids that are maybe on the lower end, I mean, there's a couple of different things you're gonna have to worry about. Well, one, if they're underselling themselves, it usually leads to burning out on the account because they're just not getting the pay that they want. And now all of a sudden they're gonna start. Drawing away from your account to focus on other things. And then the other one is lost my train of thought, but there is that consideration there and you really have to be considerate of just and you should get rate pricing from a lot of different places so you can make an educated decision on you know where are you and what can you afford. And I think that the big take away here is, is that. The more you pay in terms of the the pricing and the bids that you get, it is usually because of the experience and that experience is so valuable, especially when you want to stand out amongst a competitive landscape. Yeah, I mean, I feel like the other thing that's a big consideration is like what is the lifetime value of whatever this prospect or this? Future client is. So you know this is a a law firm like their their lifetime value or like their value of a plaintiff is pretty high right in the 10s of thousands of dollars. And So what are you willing to pay to acquire that new customer?And I feel like sometimes we, you know set budgets not thinking about that. You know we have a. Clients that you know they're B to B really long sales cycles, multiple stakeholders that we need to touch and influence digitally to like get them to to like pull the trigger. But if we can get one customer to like buy because they're doing like huge projects, it's like worth millions of dollars to them. So then you know the question is, well, are you willing to spend?$10,000 to acquire like a customer if that customer is $1,000,000 customer and I don't think there's a business owner out there that wouldn't they they'd be like take my money, give me more of those people. And so I think it also has to do with the way that we need to like as marketers frame up this conversation with other stakeholders, right. It's like, OK, I understand that the we can only spend this amount of money, but really if we spent. More with experts, people who are strategic, could we get more and then what is the value of that those additional kind of leads and or sales that we're going to that we're going to drive with that more sophisticated partner. Yeah, the the other piece with with budget and I can dive a little bit into, you know, what's really required to do things the right way, right?When you want to do things the right way on the SEO side, you have to create content, but not just for the sake of creating content, right?The the difference between someone that's experienced and someone that might just be focusing on the tactics and know, OK, I need to check this tool, then this tool, you know, yada, yada, yada. What usually is missing is the language and being able to empathize with your target audience and how do you figure that out?And that is experience, right?And so that all has to go into content creation. And and then you also have to consider, well, if you're in a competitive market, you wanna see how frequently are other people posting content to give you a sense of, OK, what am I up against?Does it, am I gonna get to that level with this budget?To get quality content at the frequency that they're doing. And if not, then you might be otentially wasting money because you're not gonna even get out of the starting block you've got on the paid advertising side. There are some markets where to reach that person that you're going after is just high. The costs are high because everyone knows if my LTV is $1,000,000 and it costs 10, you know there's other people there. And so if you have a really limited budget, you might not be able to test, you might not be able to see it through that the ad that you do have that might be successful. Yeah, you run out of budget and you get three, you get, you pay for three clicks and your budget's gone. There's just not enough data. That's exactly it. So you have to consider that when you are looking at this, the pricing that you get, the budget that you have, if you really want to get there, you does require some research on your end to make the case because. If there are other people heavily investing, like look at the advertising activity of your competitors, look at the activity from the SEO side. And if you see that they're investing quite a bit into it, you know that they're on the other side, that they're getting some returns. And so that's a really good way to start framing your budgeting conversation and to set up to pitch the the leadership that we actually need to grow our budget, yeah. And that I think for me is the key to that conversation that I was having with that person. And generally speaking, I feel like that's where need the most help. How is it that I can communicate to stakeholders like what is really needed in order to be effective and to like hit these goals and these KPIs that are were getting set in front of us, the ability to like have that conversation with leadership. That they understand that isn't so like marketing jargon, you know, like what do you mean by that?We talk about talking about dollars and not clicks like, yeah, like there isn't a stakeholder in a business that doesn't understand if you're talking about dollars and if you're talking about revenue. And so I think. As as marketers, it's on us to like adopt our change kind of the way that we talk to internal stakeholders. So we're not talking about conversion rates and things that like they, you know, the CEO doesn't care if we're our conversion rate increased. They want to know did it generate more sales. Right. The sales team doesn't care about conversion rates. They want to know like are those quality leads that are leading to sales and revenue, right. So I feel like as marketers, yeah, we got to like shift our frame out of our own kind of jargon bubble and get into more of a business mindset and and speak to other leaders kind of as business people, if that makes sense. I mean that is that that's something that, you know, I've had to learn over time. When I was starting out in the SEO world, I was tunnel vision because I was looking at the metrics that I needed to look at to get to the success that I needed to reach. And so naturally those metrics became so important to me. And I just assumed that the other person that's not in the day-to-day with me should also view it as important. But the reality is, is that they aren't even looking at that. They've got other sets of metrics. KPIs that they are also tunnel visioned on. So once you start to talk about things that are outside of that vocabulary, you're going to, you're going to miss the mark. They're not going to listen or it's going to require a lot of education. And if they have to translate your conversation and your communication, I mean that's a losing battle. I think that's a very key component to clear communication. The other piece to this, and I harp on it all the time, is just this idea that we have to start shifting all stakeholders mindset. Into what we're doing is learning. This is about learning. It isn't only about those KPIs. And until we can kind of get that handshake in my opinion with other stakeholders in the organization that they understand that like marketing is there's a lot of science, but there's a little bit of art that's happening and. It's different from, hey, if we just buy this machine and put it on our manufacturing floor, we know that our ROI will happen in a two-year time frame if we manufacture this many widgets from that machine, like it's like very clear. And I've been in rooms where leaders are saying you need to prove to me that level of like ROI even before I'm willing to invest in marketing. And my response to that is like, I can't do that because I need your investment in marketing. In order for me to collect enough data to be able to present to you a compelling case of the business case for how we need to do marketing, what the size of our opportunity actually is and then what is the actual budget that I need that I can predictably scale into. And so I just, I feel like. We got to shift that mindset. Yeah, we got to like have people say it's part art, it's part science where we have the data, but part of it is experimenting to find where it is our prospective customer or client or buyer is and then how can we reach them and then what is it cost for us to effectively reach them. And you can't do that. You can't know that until you've made some investment. I think about your confidence framework and the communication piece of it. And you know, as we're talking and I'm listening to you and I think about the times where I had to convince, you know, people on a picture or vision that I have and even outside of marketing like this applies anywhere. When I'm, you know, hiring someone to do some work on my house or or something, sometimes they'll talk to me and they're they're gonna go in the weeds and I'm, I'm literally don't know what you're talking about. Well. I do a lot of bit about myself, so I do know what they're talking about, but I do. I did. I went to the endodontics yesterday to get some potential root canal treatment. Oh, how fun is that?Oh man, I was sweating. I didn't have to get it. I have to do something else. But the the surgeon came to me and she was telling me the whole situation and she was using so many different words that I couldn't understand. So I was just trying to piece things together cause this was a big surgery that I might have to take. And so I was just like asking questions left and right, trying to figure out, OK, what does this mean?Because my decision is, do I do this or not?Very simply. And I needed her to kind of speak a little bit more to the layman's terms so that I can then make that decision. And that happens at the leadership level. And I feel like budget or the money you decide to spend on something is equated to the belief that you have in this thing, in anything that you have a product. A service, a plan, whatever it is. And so in order to unlock that, it really does come down to speaking their language, which is why for us, we really focus on dollars, not clicks. We focus on what really matters to the lifeline of this business of the company and really if you can make sense. To the person that's not experienced like logically and and give them the framework like educate them, then they can buy in and now the budget conversation becomes a little bit easier because they can make sense of it now in their head. Yeah. Imagine if this person went back to the team and said, OK, so we said we needed, we had $36,000, three grand a month to do these things. Here's what I understand about our initiatives or our goals is like we want to see traction quickly. We we we aren't kind of like in a great place where you know let's just build this over time. We're we're fine making you know investments slowly. We're like we need leads now like we need to grow the business cause whatever we're trying to get it acquired in a in another year's time or whatever like. Once you start saying, here's how I'm thinking about where I want to spend that money and here's how it's aligned to like what we're saying the business needs today. So let's say it's like we need, we need really fast results, right. So then as that marketer, you can go show up and say CEO takes more time. So I think we should take that entire budget and put it into paid media and I want to do it right and I want to do it with the right people. So we may only be able to buy like a three month or a four month pilot, but at the end of that pilot, what we're going to understand is did it work?How much does it cost to acquire a customer?What's the size of the opportunity is our messaging and you knowLike design resonating with the marketplace, how are we stacking U against competitors?Like there's all these things that you will learn in this pilot and at the end of the day it'll help you build that like. Business case for further investment at the end of those three months, if you're investing it right with the right partner, with the highest degree of sophistication, at the end of that, you should be able to have like a very clear business case. Like here's what we learned, here's the size of the opportunity and if we invest this much more now going forward, this is what it will look like. So connecting kind of the dots of like where is the business at what it needs. And then saying, OK, we have a limited budget. So what's our best first step that's paired very clearly with like the goals and objectives, the short-term goals and objectives of the company. That's where I think some of the magic happens. That's where like that education happens and that's where as marketers we start to be perceived a little bit differently in the room, right. So. I would just, yeah, encourage people to think about their budgets in a different way and really align them to what you're hearing about like business goals. Yeah, I I kept hearing a few words, investments, alignment, right. And I think that's truly what leadership has to do. They need to invest in the right areas to hit. The goals, the direction that they're marching towards. And so it feels like if you are pitching something that is not aligning to where the boat's already moving, there's no way they're going to invest in that. And so that is a great call out where you do have to consider the situation. Where is the company going?What is making leadership, what is making them drive? Like what's making them emotional?What is, where is their eyes on?And if you can. Bring that into that picture of how that supports that direction. I mean, you're going to win half the battle. I think the next point then is, well, how does your solution or your strategy, you have to really paint that picture. Then you got to talk about how does this actually work?Because yes, I'm going to invest in you, but I also want to know how you're going to allocate my investment. Like, is it going to go mostly in ads just so that I can just get a good enough understanding?And then once you give them confidence that this is how the the investment's going to be used, then you talk about the benefits. You reiterate the benefits of once we do all these things, remember that vision, OK, these are the actual metrics or the things you care about. We should see this to get us traction. And then finally you do have to make that ask that the next steps like, OK, now you believe in me, you believe in the picture, you see how it works. This is what I need to make that happen. I think that, you know, again, then you it's just about the alignment, investment, communication and that goes a long way even beyond professional, you know, things too. So yeah, I do think that, you know, when we're painting that picture, we also need to be really careful that we aren't over promising things, right. So like part of. Instilling a learning mindset in an organization is like I think our best foot forward is to do this like 3-4 month paid media pilot and that and work with this team because they're top notch and we will learn these things from this. I'm I I never said like and we're gonna crush it. I never said that. I said here's what we're going to learn. We're going to learn about ourselves, our product, the marketplace, what platforms work. We're going to, we're going to have a lot more data and information. And at the end of that process, the decision might be like, you know what, paid media isn't right for this business, but. At least we learn that and we know that now before just kind of like spending $500 of a $3000 monthly budget on paid media, where at the end of the year we're like, do we know it works or not?We have no idea because we really didn't spend enough money and we didn't really have a great strategic partner behind us. So like. That's where building a learning organization is so important. And so when we're painting that picture, we just got to be careful that we're not promising things. But what we're saying is here's what we will learn. And I found that, you know, obviously we love to win and there's a lot of data in winning, but there's also a lot of data in failure. And so as long as we're like. Understanding that if some, even if it's just one campaign within a larger investment, this campaign didn't work. Well, that's a learn. Like we can learn from that. That tells us something. And so we can't just disregard the failures either. And it just always comes back to that, the learning aspect. And when we think about before we were talking about budgets, we're talking about, well. The better the talent, usually the more you have to spend. And it's it is because they've learned those things. And so when you are looking for agencies or consultants or in-house people, that is a really solid question like to figure out is how much did they learn? What is their learning framework like? Because the edge. Between this person and that person is learning. It's not that they're very good at this one tool. Yes, that will get you there. But the main reason why those people are able to get the most out of the tool or software or program is because of their thinking. It's because they thought, OK, I got to do this. Oh, this didn't work. That's how you end up, right, uncovering these little hacks, these these things that no one else is figuring out. And it's because of how they're learning. And so again, bringing back to that budget conversation, if you're seeing bids pretty low, it could usually mean they also don't have enough time to learn. And so that will mean you're gonna play the same game, get the same disappointing results and unfortunately. Even if let's say advertising, EO, whatever works, but it didn't work for you, they're going to leave thinking it just doesn't work for my business. Yeah, and that's. That is tragic as somebody who has conversations and they're like, well, we already tried that and I'm like, OK, did you like how much did you invest?What team were you working with?What, you know, like what was the velocity?I mean there are so many things to unpack when you hear the, oh, we already, we already tried that and it didn't work, doesn't work for our business. I just, I don't believe it until I see it so. Yeah, well, I mean, this has been a great conversation. We've got our next podcast episode, episode #4. We're gonna be talking about a great, great topic about elegating, delevate, you know, delegating, elevate. I got those mixed up. Elevate, delegate. That's a really hard conversation to have with yourself, you know?And that's what we're gonna be really digging into in the next episode. I know we've got it's gonna come out in a couple of weeks as well. I mean, this one's gonna be coming out in a couple of weeks and then that that episode we're gonna be shooting will be later on. Are there any other, you know, I just think that that whole delegate and elevate, if we connect it to even this conversation, it's like if you're a marketer on an in-house team, you have to make decisions about like, who am I?Delegating tasks to Am I hiring people to do that?Am I building my in-house team?Am I finding agency partners to do that?So I'm I'm super excited to film that next episode. And I know that we're even gonna have a cooler set up for that cause Shin's got some like mics and mic stands coming. So we're gonna get rid of the lapels. So it's it's looking good, man. Well. Thanks for joining again. This is always a great time to talk about small but mighty marketing problems and we're here to help. And yeah, really enjoy this time and can't wait for the next episode. All right, let's go.