0456 | Justin Croxton

My name is Justin Croxton. I am the CEO of Propellant Media, a digital advertising technology company with offices in Atlanta and Charlotte. And you're listening to EA interviews, EA.

Interviews, episode 456, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's Expert Authority Effect interview. You know, marketing is important for your business, but are you doing it well? I think a lot of people think they're doing it well. I've even had people say, you know, I could sell ice to an Eskimo or, you know, polar bear, whatever the case is. And it's just a matter of, do you really want to be doing it that way? You know, what type of ads are you putting out there? How are you doing the marketing? Are you using geofencing? This is something that's very exciting to me and why I'm excited to have Justin Croxton on today's episode. We're going to be talking about how you can leverage these new cutting edge technologies to move your business forward, get more leads and increase profit. I'm going to bring him up right after we thank our sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. And that's why I'm launching my new book to help you, regardless of where you think your current writing abilities are. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's eapublishingmethod book.com.

Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Justin Crockston. Justin, how are you feeling today?

Oh, I'm feeling fantastic, man. It's good to chat with you.

Yeah, I'm excited to jump right into it because I get a lot of people who want to come on and they want to talk marketing and it's like, it honestly feels like a dime a dozen. But when I saw what you were doing, I was like, without a doubt. Because there's not many people doing geofencing, like I said before, and there's not many people doing it well, even if they are. So why are you excited about geofencing and what have you, you found is the best way to leverage it for a business?

Yeah, I mean, well, for me, I'm certainly excited about geofencing because it's an incredible differentiator when it comes to trying to get in front of your target audience. I mean, if you're an advertiser, if you're a business, a brand, anything of that nature, you're just trying to figure out how can I find my audience number one, and how can I find those people who are actually in market looking to buy a product or a service effectively. And you know, you know, in many cases, you can target people based on zip codes and counties and cities that they're in, but sometimes that's just not tight enough. And with geofencing, you can actually build a virtual fence around like actual buildings and serve ads to people when they go to those locations. And so, great example is if, like you're a car dealership and you want to target other people who are in market looking to buy a car, you would geofence your other competitors. Why? Because people who are going to those car dealerships are, you guessed it, looking to buy a car. Right. And so if you use that insight with geofencing, it gives you some perspective on how it could be leveraged in many other different use cases to ensure that you are getting in front of the people that you want to have that conversation with. And that's the reason why for me, I'm excited about it. I mean, we do Google Ads, Facebook, you know, Instagram, targeting, LinkedIn. But the geofencing is really a great differentiator that I've come to appreciate over the years.

I love that you shared that. And I got to be honest with everyone right now and you, I already learned something the few times we used geofencing because we never really had a brick and mortar car dealership, but it was for live events and I thought it was cool as heck. You could even do like the sidewalk. So if people are walking by or stuff in the area, I never thought about the competitors. You can absolutely fence in their business and run like, that's genius. Tell me more about that.

Yeah, so let's go back to the car dealership example, right? Car dealership says I want to reach more people who are in market looking to buy cars. I already do Google Ads, Facebook, all these things. Car dealership says, I have 15 other dealers that are within a three mile radius. We would be able to go onto our tech platform and build a literal polygon geofence, including the showrooms around those particular locations. And when people with their mobile device walk inside of that location, we are able to capture what's called their mobile device id. It's all anonymized, but essentially their mobile device id. And when, at that point, when a person opens up a mobile browser or an app, that's when we have the ability to serve an ad to that consumer effectively. Both while they're inside the geofence and then for up to 30 days after they've left the geofence, sometimes longer than that. And the cool thing is we can also measure foot traffic back to your physical storefront. So if you want to get a sense of how many people from this car dealership or this one actually saw or clicked on your ads and then came back to your storefront, that can be, that's another way to measure performance. And so that's really part of the process. I mean, that's, that's really in essence, but I mean, it's so many different use cases. You can take a restaurant who says, you know what, I just want to focus on customer loyalty. And they might geo fence their own location and just keep serving as a come back for more. Come back for more. I mean, there's just so many different applications for it. I certainly wouldn't, you know, you know, have that take the place of someone's other digital channels like Google Ads and Facebook. But it's an incredible complement to what companies are already doing out there.

Yeah, it sounds like it. What would be a third use case or example that you've worked with? So I can relate to the restaurants. I had a lot of restaurant clients, auto body salons, stuff like that back in the day. What are some other scenarios you've used it?

Sure. One that just came to mind is a university system that says, you know what, I want to reach students that are looking to go to college in the Georgia area or within the Atlanta metro. Right. So you may say to yourself, okay, what are some of the better places that I could geofence? You're probably not going to just geofence like other colleges. That probably doesn't make sense because at that point those people are, have already made their decision. Maybe you want to target high schools because, you know, targeting high school just naturally makes sense. You want to raise your, your brand profile to those high school students. But maybe you don't want to also hit the high school students that are in like the 9th grade and 10th grade, you know, maybe just 11th and 12th. So you may get some waste that way. What we would probably suggest is why don't you just find all the test prep center locations and then also the ACT and SAT score locations where people are actually taking their exams. That way you're reaching actual locations where, you know, there's this particular audience that's probably looking to go to college eventually. I mean, yes, if they're in 9th grade, you know, 11th or 12th grade. They probably are. But if you want to leverage actual physical locations where sats, you know, act, SAT prep locations, or test centers, that would be a great way to geofence, raise awareness of your college, of your university, and ensure that's part of your omnichannel marketing plan as you try to feed them down the funnel.

Wow, you're getting my mind going here. Because what I'm hearing is you take this approach of like thinking not just to the actual address, but all the stuff around it. And what came to mind is, I got to ask you, have you ever worked with bookstores before or physical locations like bookstores?

We have definitely worked with plenty of. Now I don't know if we work with bookstores. Okay. But we have worked with, you know what? I think we have actually worked with a couple bookstores actually now, I think because they're more specialty.

But yes, if one's in a mall or something, you could target all the other places people are shopping to bring them into there. And the other thing is with the car dealership, AutoZone or O'Reilly's or any of them, the car dealerships, you could target them, especially if they're in a, let's say, five mile radius. I'm thinking of somewhere near me. It's like the main. Does anyone use the word thoroughfare anymore? But it's like a main road that you go here. There's 15 car dealerships, fast food restaurants, auto parts, a mall. I'm like, oh, my gosh.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I mean, you find all the complimentary stuff before you actually start tagging the actual buildings, the physical locations.

Yeah, I mean, what I like to do is, you know, for me, the question I always ask myself is, does this location give me a sense that these people are in market looking to buy my product or service? And if they're not, are they at least. Do they at least fit within my target audience? Right. And you know, maybe they fill both of those buckets. Maybe they fill one of those buckets. But that based on that, I then may have like three different tiers of locations. Right. May have one tier where I know this person's in market, they're looking to buy. Now another tier might be it's my target audience, but they may not be at that stage of wanting to buy a product or a service, you know, that kind of thing. And then based on that, I use that sort of as a baseline for, you know, based on budget, building out my entire digital media plan from a geofencing standpoint.

All right? So I Gotta ask, is this something people should try on their own and can they do it or is there no way because it's too complex?

I would, I personally would hire a company. You know, I mean, we've been, we've been doing this for six, seven plus years and there's still new things that we're learning, you know. And, you know, there are times when, first of all, there's certain platforms that require way higher. Spends like tens of thousands of dollars. There are other platforms where you can actually spend $2,500 a month, $2,000 a month, use this car, be fine with it. But I wouldn't go out and say, all right, I'm going to just figure it out myself and I'm just going to go to this platform, build some fences and see what happens. I mean, it's, it's a, you're kicking it with a stick at that point.

Just like with anything, aren't you?

Just like anything. It's like, oh, I can do my own Google Ads, but.

Has his own platform, but should you. Right.

They sent me the postcard in the mail for a hundred bucks. Now I'm set the rest of the year.

Right. I think I might be able to learn how to, you know, you know, you know, suture up my arm, but probably not a good idea. You know, let me go to a doctor who can suture up my arm if I got a big cut. You know, it's not the same, but you get the drift.

Yeah, it's astonishing to me. I mean, people don't realize that the companies just want you on their platform. You know, I know they want you to be successful, but to them, if you're spending money, you're, you're making them happy. It's like I've never seen them send even a training or a book on the subject. It's like, here, go spend the money so we can get you in the system. So.

Right, right.

I wanted to bring that up because some people are like, they just have the attitude of like, I'll go try. Same thing with book publishing, like what we do. It's like, yeah, you can do it, but good luck taking a year and a half doing it and being dissatisfied with it. So you mentioned the different platforms. You know, you can't even get into some unless you have a professional service like yours. What are, what are the best performers you've been seeing in the last year or two?

You know, there are certain platforms that takes more of like a radius, but it's a radius, like all the Way down to the contours of the building, if you will. And there's others where you can build a custom polygon system. We actually leverage all of them. Many of them have 10, 15, $20,000 minimum. Some have $50,000 minimums per month. Effectively, we. What we try to do is leverage the ones that we think is going to make the biggest difference, and the ones that we like to use have more of a custom polygon system. So it really just depends on the use case. It really depends on the client. And, you know, you know, you know, where we believe it actually does make sense, you know, but for us, we like to use more of a custom polygon system. It's about 12 coordinate points that you can build around an actual physical building. And that's what we've seen is. Gives us sort of that granular nature of targeting exactly where we want to target.

Yeah, because you can incorporate the property lines, the sidewalks, and extra stuff where people might be hanging out or whatever, and you still can. They don't need to physically be. You know, what if there's a line out the store?

Right, exactly, exactly. And so that gives you the exact. Well, yeah, and to your point, that gives you the flexibility, which is what most people want, but. And then you can still report on which locations are actually driving impressions, clicks, you know, sometimes conversions, walk in conversions, things of that nature, which is nice. And so you want that flexibility across certain platforms that you might be working. Working.

So you're not using any one particular system. It sounds like a lot of the platforms now, when. When we used it years ago, it was tied to whatever. If you're on Snapchat or Instagram or Facebook or whatever it was, whatever was tied to that system. It sounds like it's more robust nowadays. And you can go, hey, we want to do this system on these channels. Correct?

Correct. That is correct. Yeah, that is correct. Yeah. That is correct. Yeah. We. And what we've done recently, and not a lot of firms can do this, but what we've been able to do is do geofencing, you know, across our programmatic platforms, take that same audience and push that audience over into Facebook and Instagram. So now you're geofencing over here with your programmatic display ads, and then you're reaching those individuals directly in. In Facebook and Instagram. So now, again, you have a little bit more of an omnichannel media plan versus just one particular digital channel that you're trying to reach an audience in.

Safe to say you're retargeting as well.

Exactly. Definitely. Definitely retargeting. I mean, that's the thing with geofencing. When someone's walked inside the fence, they can leave that fence and we can still retarget them for a period of time as well. So that part too, on top of what you just said around the other aspect of retargeting, could you go a.

Little bit deeper than that? For anyone listening that doesn't know what retargeting or remarketing is or cookies or any of that. I, it's, it's a fantastic thing I, I believe you should be doing. But what's your take on it?

Yeah, well, the first thing is I'll explain it and then I'll give my pov.

Excellent.

The first is anytime someone visits a website and they leave, that's effectively retargeting. So, so imagine that all the folks that are out there, if you have been to Amazon and then you've been shopping around and you leave and you start seeing the ads on other apps and websites, that's site retargeting. You went to the site you left and we were retargeting you from after you've, you know, been to our website. Effectively any brand that's out there, I don't care if you are a brick and mortar B2B does not matter. You need to be doing some form of site retargeting because anyone who has been to your site is the viable customer, number one. But I'd say 97, 98% of folks don't buy sometimes just not the right time. Sometimes you need to have a different message. Sometimes you just need to get them back to the website so that they can convert some capacity. Site retargeting helps you accomplish that, number one. Number two, think about and there's a lot of like, how do I say, you know, you know, coaches that are out there or folks that just kind of have like a sole proprietorship where you know, you're just kind of like networking, building relationships and whatnot. But so you're not getting a ton of traffic to your site, but you're getting some. Think about all those high value conversations you have with folks and bringing those people to your site, but then they just forget about you. You know this, that is a powerful way. Site retargeting is an incredibly powerful way to remind them about your value proposition, your firm, your products, your services, all those different things. I can't tell you how often we tell folks like don't just.

Shake hands and do some direct mail or do TV and then think that all these people are going to just remember you and convert on the first go. Like you need to feed them into the funnel. You need to remind them about yourself. Site retargeting is a great way to do that and it really does help bring down your overall cost of customer acquisition across all your channels, not just within the target, the retargeting space itself.

Yeah. And the great thing about it is it can be so specific like we're talking about with the, especially with Geo fencing because that actually correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that drive your ad spend down and conversions up because you're not wasting it. And the platforms go, oh, this one actually knows what, what he's doing.

That, that is correct. That is correct. And, and, and you know, I, I know that there are certain channels that perform better than others. Totally get that. Google Ads, a lot of people are in market Facebook. Sometimes low quality, sometimes really high quality. You know, it depends. But I personally feel as though as long as you're hitting your target audience and if as long as like one channel isn't too high cost per conversion versus others, but you're hitting that audience wherever they go and you're feeding your overall funnel, you're giving yourself more opportunities for success ultimately. Think about, go ahead.

I'm sorry, no.

And then you just think about how you allocate your media across which channels you think are is really driving the most, not just the most than just one, but you know, across all of everything that you're doing. And it's its own sort of recipe.

If you will, you're creating that synergistic effect. And you mentioned direct mail and billboards and TV and all these other things. And it's always hilarious to me when you know, I have nothing against billboards, but if you want to drop ten grand a month on one location, hoping people are going to stop on their freeway to log onto your site and buy what you need. Now I think if you use that as a complementary approach to the geofencing and retargeting and the stuff we're talking about, you can actually if, if there's like an order of operations to start, it's like start where you can get the most direct feedback and track people so you have that data to know what's working. And then the rest I would say is more like a reinforcement authority building. Because I mean, who doesn't think someone on a billboard isn't like top stuff?

Well, you know, to your point, and I get that too, a Lot of politicians, a lot of folks that want to be just be able to see themselves, a lot of attorneys, personal injury. I can't tell you how many billboards I see out there where it's like injured, you know, call today and there's no website, there's no number. I see it all the time. It just baffles me. There's no call to action.

What about the QR codes on a billboard on, on the turn of a.

Freeway now I was actually about to speak to that QR code on a billboard is crazy to me. QR code on a TV set, like an over the top connected TV advertising streaming devices, which we also do. You can actually, you know, couple geofencing with OT advertising. Over the top smart TV advertising like Hulu's of the world, Amazon Fire, Roku's of the world, essentially having.

A QR code there is very powerful because now you are not just helping with brand recognition, but you're giving someone an opportunity to like take their phone. And I've done it myself. I'll take my phone, you know, pull out my camera, boom, takes me to a link. And now I can attribute the folks that saw my QR code came to our site after the fact. And then I'm actually driving more attribution from that way because you know, the watch rates on streaming, on streaming apps and streaming platforms are at least 95%. So you know, to your point, it has to make sense. QR codes on billboards is kind of crazy to me. Instead I'd rather have a website and a phone number and then that's it.

Yeah, at least a phone call you can track because even the website. Yeah, cool. They might go to it, but they're not doing it while they're driving or they shouldn't be. And if they are, well, maybe that's how you're getting your clients injured. Call us. Well, at least they'll have the site bookmarked.

Yeah, there you go. There you go.

I don't agree with how you generate clients, but God bless people, you know.

Right, yeah, God bless. Right, Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.

So in addition to the geofencing in the retargeting, is there something else that you add in your synergistic approach to. You know, we're talking about, they're on the billboard, they're on the geo target, we're talking about the website. Maybe you mentioned SEO. Why is that important?

Well, we, you know, SEO I think is always going to be important because number one, Google is a beast and your ability to show up, you know, number one. Number two, first page, you know of the search engine ranking pages, whether it be local search or just traditional organic search region folks who are doing an actual search for your products or services is incredibly valuable. And when you're showing up number one and you don't have to pay for that traffic, that's even more valuable. Google Ads.

Is kind of similar. I mean it's using the same platform but say you're paying for ad space at the very top and also at the bottom. And Google, you know, reaching those who are in market is incredibly powerful if you want to get in front of people who you know are looking for what you have to provide as a brand. And a lot of times we, we tell a lot of folks don't like if you're doing Google Ads right now and it's working like don't cut that budget to do geofencing. You know, maybe, maybe you just add to geofencing or you maybe take a sliver over into geofencing. But to that end, areas like SEO, areas like Google Ads where you know there are people in market at that juncture, you got to keep those traffic channels rocking and rolling. You got to.

What about YouTube and Amazon? Because I know there's YouTube second and third for largest searches.

If you're, if you're an E commerce brand, you absolutely need to be on Amazon. Without a doubt we have access to what's called their demand side platform. They have a DSP is what they call it. So we're able to leverage a lot of their purchase data of consumers. Like I use a great example if someone's like looking to buy a test prep software, for example, or if someone is looking to, or someone's looking to buy a test prep book, right. In that juncture you can reach people who are looking to buy test prep, you know, test prep materials. If I'm a college or university, right. So that's the DSP side. But if you're an E commerce brand, you absolutely need to be on Amazon for sure. I'm trying to think what was the other platform? It was Amazon, YouTube. YouTube is the second largest search engine now. Yeah, if I'm not mistaken, incredibly powerful. Which is of course owned by Google. And we always recommend it. Sometimes you have to deal with some poor quality of traffic, but I always recommend it. Always, always recommend it. If you do have in fact video that's like 15, 30 seconds long, it's not too long, it's punchy, it helps serve the purpose because the cost per views are Relatively inexpensive and you know, you can still get in front of a great audience while helping feed all the other channels that you're leveraging, you know, as a brand.

Yeah, I've, I've always loved video and I've began to love the SEO in a traditional sense even more. Like I was telling you for the show here, because you're putting stuff on the Internet and it always baffles me like years ago when people are like, oh, websites are dead. Facebook is where it's at. And it's like, dude, you realize Facebook is a website, right? It's all code, it's all pictures, it's all text, it's all video. Like this is the essence of the Internet.

Yeah, so true, so true.

Well, I appreciate everything you're sharing. Why don't you share with us your biggest success story?

Personal or, or business?

Let's do both. We got a minute.

Got it. Business success story is my wife and my little guy, six and a half years old, going on seven. He's a ton of fun.

What a fun age.

Yeah, he's just, just an amazing kid. And this is biggest success story probably is propellant media. We've grown to an eight figure agency. We've used a lot of inbound tactics for ourselves. We're pretty astute when it comes to like things like HubSpot services, which, you know, HubSpot advertising and advertising. But HubSpot is really our biggest tool that we've used quite a bit for our own inbound and we built an engine that kind of works. And you know, we've had great success in a very short stint and we've done that by, you know, leading with geofencing marketing. I mean we do a lot of the other paid media services but we really truly lead with programmatic and geofencing advertising and, and I'd say that's probably the biggest, biggest business success story that I can share within one minute.

What about one of your clients? I know you mentioned the car dealerships, you talked about the universities. Is there anyone, any vertical that really stands? Not just the vertical, but I want to know the biggest client success story. But do you, is there any verticals you just can tell Rocket, like car dealerships more so than something else?

Yeah, I would say, I mean, I'll speak the, just kind of on the spot here. You know, anyone that has like a brick and mortar location.

Anyone is, is prime for geofencing? For sure. If you're a B2B and you're looking to do event targeting, geofencing is A great opportunity for sure. A lot of those are areas where I think we can, you know, do some serious damage. You know, most, most importantly, because this is like just top of mind because I'm, you know, you know, our team is working on this one with this one client that we just onboarded recently. They're a SaaS company. We're doing programmatic, not really a lot of geofencing, but some Google Ads, Facebook and LinkedIn advertising. And I think I'd say probably within a two, two and a half month time frame, I think we've been able to get them to about a 7-8x return on ad spend just by doing a lot of optimizing of their campaign. I can't really share who the client is because it's, you know, it's kind of their secret sauce.

But have you noticed the mrr, it's pretty safe to say.

Oh yeah, for sure, for sure. With one 100%. And the reason why I know it is because we tie in all their advertising channels directly into HubSpot. And then HubSpot, they have a sales team that's able to close deals and what have you. So we can see the ROI and the attribution directly from like we log into HubSpot and can see the deal value that's attributed directly to the ad campaigns that we're running for that particular client. So it's kind of given us a lot of good data in real time. That's also what we've leveraged to optimize some of our campaigns and know which ones are, are not making a difference for that particular client. So that's just one that just came to mind. They're a B2B SaaS company nationally based on. Yeah, yeah.

For anyone who doesn't know, it's monthly recurring revenue and it's how sasses are based. When you, when you increase that, it's, you know, it's recurring revenue. So it's a huge metric, if not the top one. It is the top one, right?

I would say so. Yes. Yes, it is. Yeah. Yeah.

That's exciting. So I gotta ask you about HubSpot. I keep hearing more and more about it and some of my friends just joined the podcast network.

How would you describe HubSpot compared to the other stuff out there? It sounds like it's more robust and you said you use it for your own inbound.

Yeah. So I know there are some platforms like Marketo, ActiveCampaign, Salesforce and whatnot. We've tried a few, but, and I say this to everyone that I talk to. We've made invest in a number of different tools. HubSpot is by far like the, I get a hundred X ROI from it. It probably does the job of like six or seven people all in one. We use it for pop up forms, we use it have, we have it for it as a chatbot we have for our own CRM we're able to attribute deals within our sales team back to the ROI across all of our different campaigns. We have an automated email sequence for from a sales perspective so when someone wants to book a demo with us, they can do that. But if they don't want to book a demo, if they just want to, you know, get more information from us but they're not ready to book a demo, we can have follow up emails sent to them. All of it's done in automated fashion. Don't even need to touch it half the time. I probably spend maybe 15 minutes at that. And we're getting close to you know, 30, 40, 50 leads, you know, a day in many cases.

And so to be able to have a tool that does all those different things for you, you can tie all your social media channels to, to HubSpot and then like since it's kind of similar to so like hootsuite, you can send stuff out across all of them, which is nice. I mean there's just so many different use cases. Hence the reason they call it HubSpot. We're a HubSpot Gold Certified Partner. We do implementations for a number of clients as well, but we use it for ourselves and it's been fan, fan freaking tastic. And to be honest with you, there was a time in my life where I said oh, I hate HubSpot because I just didn't know. Now that I know I'm an evangelist, I tell everybody about it. It's just a no brainer.

Yeah, and that's the thing with software is I think people see or hear someone saying it. And that's why I wanted you to expand on it because honestly I've heard nothing but good stuff from it. I know a lot of people that use it, I've played around with it. But when you just like with the geofencing, just like with ads, publishing, whatever, if you don't know what you're doing, you're not going to be having too much fun with it. When you're not getting a return on the investment, you're not going to be falling in love with it. So I just didn't know from a technical standpoint I know there's other modules and stuff like that, but.

I think it's great from what I've seen. I just know that stuff changes and grows and you're like the third or fourth person in as many weeks that it's been talking about it. I'm like, I feel like they're changing something and it's just picking up even more steam.

Yeah, it's a great platform. I recommend it to everyone.

Yeah, I appreciate the breakdown. Is there anything else? If someone wants to get into the geofencing that you feel they should really know and take into consideration even before they call you, like, here's what, what's the prep work they should be doing to go to get the most bang for their buck?

Well, you know.

It really depends on the use case. I mean it really just changed across the board. But you just have to know your audience, know your audience, get a sense of where your budget's at. You know, I don't personally look at geofencing as like generating leads, quote unquote. I think there are some other better channels for like I need a lead like right now, like yesterday. And I say that in certain instances, like if you are a car dealership, that's different. I don't mean to lead in that context. Like those are like walk in customers almost. But you know, no, you know, I like for folks who have marketing is already part of their budget. They were part of our psyche and there's part of what they're already doing and they want to use geofencing to complement some of the other things that they're doing. I tell people that there's not one digital channel that's going to be the penicillin to solve all your marketing problems. And I feel the same way about geofencing as well, quite honestly. So look at it from that for perspective. Know who your audiences have a sense of the people that are could be in market looking, you know, you know, looking for your products or your services. And then when you feel like you have a respectable budget, 2,000, 3,000amonth, that's where I believe, you know, you can have a conversation with, you know, from like ours or I'm sure there's some other firms out there that do this. I will say that there's some people that try to do it for like 500. It's not going to make a difference for you. I'm just telling you right now. You know, it's the kind of space where you need. It's kind of like Google Ads. You're not going to just spend 500amonth on Google Ads. The same thing goes in this space as well.

Yeah, I've had people, I've asked a lot of people on the show and whether it's their business or not, you know, most everyone has successful business. They all have successful businesses. Just depends what level. And I've had people flat out tell me on air and behind the scenes they're like we were spending 10 to 20 grand a month for months, like half a year to a year. And they're like we didn't do anything, we didn't get anything. And I think it's because they tried doing it on their own. So.

You know, it's unfortunate to hear but at the same time it's like I also, there's other people like you and many others. They're doing, yeah, we're doing seven, eight figures in revenue. We spend, spend 10, 20, 30, 50, 100 grand a month on this and we're doubling. You said you get a hundred percent roi. Who wouldn't want that?

Yeah, yeah. And I think the other thing that's important for people to have some context on is like, you know, try not to make decisions based on one data point. You know. So like a lot of people will say I ran a geoencing campaign or I did Facebook, right. I did it like for like you know, a month and a half and it didn't work like okay, got it.

Probably didn't even have enough data to run a campaign at that point.

You know, a lot of times people don't have enough data, you know, run it long enough. They're not doing multiple things. That's feeding the beast. People, you know, they, they say oh I got the sexiest website. And your website is just like a resume that just tells people you exist rather than giving me value and incentive. And so I challenge everybody. I mean it's not be promotional here. I mean you can go to any website. But you know, I feel like on our website we do a really, really good job of trying to bring value to people before they become a customer. Like we have ebooks, we have webinars, we have calculators, we have pop ups for more ebooks. Try to be educational, more thought leadership type stuff. And that's the kind of mantra that you need to be on if you are a B2B brand or even a B2C brand. How am I going to bring value to this customer before they actually become a customer customer? A lot of times people don't think about that. They just Want to draw people to their site and think that they are going to just call you or reach out to you and you know, relationships and business relationships, they don't work that way. You have to bring value. If you don't do that, individuals are going to be less inclined, particularly in relative to the rest of the competition that's out there. They're going to be less inclined to give you their contact details, call you. You have to come from the perspective of how can I make this person's life better, easier or get them an answer or quicker than all the rest of my competition. If you can do that, you're going to get more customers, more leads, more opportunities to close, more business.

I love that. Thank you for sharing that because I think so many people just think they'll run an ad, whether it's billboard, Facebook, whatever. And you know, I'm hiring you to fix my problems, but I don't have five minutes to think about my customer or see how we're going to add value.

Right, right, right, right. It's not so true. It's not going to work.

Yeah, I love that you shared that.

Yeah, absolutely.

We have to thank the sponsor in a second. But before we do that, yellow or black?

I do yellow, man.

Everyone's picking yellow.

All right, this, you see I got the hat too, so it worked out well.

I got both too. You said yellow. So this is the wheel or whatever. And I got a question for you and it has to do with traveling with your family where somewhere you haven't been that you would love to take them.

I'd probably say New Zealand. Definitely see the northern lights. You know, that would be an incredible experience.

And also South Africa, but I actually have that on the docket this year.

When are you going?

May. Okay, very nice.

Well, we are going to thank our sponsor and come back for the imperfect action round. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours. And it's true. And that's why I'm launching my new book@eapublishingmethodbook.com so you can learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what, don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori, I went from having.

An idea and a possibility to actually getting my book published.

Or Catherine, thank you for making my mom number one best selling author. Or Mary Alice, what he got done.

For me in three days regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable.

John Cody, I'VE worked with Mario over the phone and online, and he's been.

Very helpful in getting me where I needed to go with promoting my books. Rocio, there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past. It didn't serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. Adele, if you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficini or Bill Benner. I can't make a higher recommendation for than to work with Mario Ficini. He has been great for me, and right now I won't work with anybody else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get your copy and I look forward to hearing your transformation as our next video success story. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com and we are back with the imperfect action round. Justin, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Let's do it.

Three questions for you. 60 second or less answers. What is the fastest path to the cash?

The fastest path to the cash? Oh, that's tough.

The fastest path to the cash is persistence.

And when I say persistence, I mean sticking to it. A lot of people, you know, want sort of the. The fast route to get to the cash. So, you know, some people, you know, you know, they want to start a business, they want us to scale within just one year, and then they give up and they go on to the next idea and the next idea. Those people that kind of stick to it and try new things are the ones that usually get to the fast to the cash the fastest. Stick with it. The persistence is what really makes the difference. A little counterintuitive. Counterintuitive, but it really makes a difference.

That was a great answer. Why? Why'd you think that was going to be difficult?

I don't know. I just thought it was.

Yeah. These are all simple questions. Okay. Number two. What is the first movie that came out in black and white before there was color?

I'm teasing. What's the biggest problem your prospects are making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

The biggest problem is their sights. That's the biggest problem. Without a doubt, it's the fastest way to fit. Yeah, it's that simple. And it was not that simple, but it really is that simple. Like, you're not bringing value to people. You're just saying, I exist. Come have a conversation.

Sound like Everyone else.

Yeah, exactly. You know, you're not trying to elevate someone when they come to your site. And so the fastest way to fix it is to think about how you can all the problems that you can solve for someone before they become a customer and try to solve some of those problems before they become a customer or at least answer a crap ton of questions for them before they become a customer. The other way to solve it is implementing some of those, you know, legion tactics like, you know, implementing HubSpot. You know, for sure making those changes to your website. Again, I think our site is great. It's going to be always get better. But that's what I would say to folks.

Yeah, I'm hearing a lot of be of value.

Value.

All right. Do you want to actually try and answer that movie question? Whatever I just asked.

I literally just made that up. Because when I don't think I've ever had anyone say to the fastest path, they're like, oh, that's a tough one. So I was like, what can I really throw him?

What was the first movie? What can I really stump Justin on? I was going to say like a Mickey Mouse like movie. But you, I don't know.

21. Steamboat Willie.

Okay, gotcha. I didn't know about that one.

That was a tough one. You really got me on that one though.

I just was teasing. But I appreciate you playing along the third one. And this is a legit question I do ask. It's actually my favorite and I've said I'm never going to get rid of it because everyone goes, wow, that's such a great question. What is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

The best way to maximize customer lifetime value is to.

Build a sincere relationship with your customers.

And I'll be honest, like, there will be times when you are doing a bad job with delivering results. It's not that great. You know, you're not really fulfilling on the promise sometimes when it comes to actual results, it happens. You know, I get it. But if you as a brand or you as a person has a super, super tight relationship with that customer that handles at least 50, 60% of the battle, quite frankly. And you will then in turn cultivate, you know, a much higher lifetime value with that customer because they just like, they like you. They like your sincerity. They like, you know, how you approach business. They like how you approach and have a sincere interest in their growth. That's the way you do that.

It's one of the best answers I've had in a while. I I agree. 100. And I'm thinking of some times when it's come in handy, let's say.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I, I think people think you have to do everything perfect and no wonder they're stressed, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, you know, there's times when, even for us, where I'm like, oh man, I don't, you know, I, I, I, I've struggled with it. You know, we're not all perfect. But I'm always reminded that when you're able to just be yourself and be with people and know, kind of similar to the website conversation in lead generation, people do business with people. You know, you have to sort of unveil, you know, pull down the corporate, corporate veil and know that, you know, at the end of the day there is going to be someone doing business with another human being eventually. And you know that that relationship happens at the point which they buy all the way to the purchase funnel, when they retain and they keep paying you month over month or even if they want to buy your product again and again. All that really matters.

Yeah, that's great insight and I think it's a lost start. I think people have become transactional lately and they need to stop if they want to be around long term. So thank you for elaborating on that. Being a business book publisher, you know, I got to ask you about books. What books have helped you the most in business and life?

Yeah, there was a really great book. There's two that comes to mind. There's one that's called $100 million offers by Alex Hormozi. Really sharp guy. He's really done his thing. Really have an appreciation for just how he thinks about, you know, problem solving and just his, his experience over the years. There's another book called Atomic. Ha. Atomic Habits. I'm sure there's been some folks that have read that book as well. Great book. It's, it's more about both habit building but you know, the power of 1% getting better by 1% every day effectively. You start to sort of reach that tipping stone, that tipping point of like all those, everything that you've done. It's kind of like you're, you're hitting a rock, you know, and all thousand times that you hit the rock. It wasn't the thousand times, it was the thousand and one time. It wasn't 1001 time that you had the rock. It was all the times that you hit the rock beforehand. The same concept. It makes a difference over time. Those two books have Been great. There's plenty of others, but those are the ones that come to mind.

For me, that's a great analogy and I, I could even spin it right back onto the marketing and the ads and everything. It's not any single one ad that's gonna revolutionize, but you do this one, learn from that, Add to this one, try something new. Add to that. You know, like you said, the omnipresent approach.

Exactly.

Love the rock analogy though. That's. That's a good one. Where would you like people to learn more?

I appreciate that. I mean, I've told a lot of folks that, you know, I feel like our site is a good model if you're trying to build like, you know, think of, you know, lead generation and just, you know, how to bring value. But www.propellant.media, that's our website. Use that as a place where, okay, this is how these guys are doing it. They're a marketing agency. There are some things that you can take from that can. You can pull into your own websites, your own business, your own brands, all the things that you do and then that's it. Propellant media. Use Google. Search us. You'll find us as well. You'll find us. Promise you that.

Excellent. Well, thank you for all the insight you've shared. I've enjoyed it and I know Expert Authority World has. Thanks for everything you've done.

Yeah, appreciate that, Mario.

All right, Expert Authority World. We have another great episode here today. I'll see you on the next one. Have a great day and God bless.

You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 247 and if so, how well are you promoting it? With my new book, the Expert Authority Effect publishing method, I take you through my process step by step. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book. Book in eight weeks. Visit eapublishingmethod book.com to get started. Now, once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com thanks for listening to today's episode. I would love to know what you enjoyed most from it if you haven't done so already. I invite you to connect with me on my new LinkedIn. You can go to it directly@eainterviews.com LinkedIn once again, that's eainterviews.com link. Lastly, check out the full eainterviews.com site for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you on the next one.