Speaker (owner of a 25-year-old digital marketing agency) gives three core marketing lessons drawn from personal case studies: (1) Don’t rely solely on channels you don’t control — after building an ecommerce site (wherebridesgo.com) that reached #1 in Google and produced about $30,000/month, a 2009 Google algorithm change (Penguin) wiped out rankings and revenue due to perceived link spam from ~20 related sites; (2) Don’t ‘rent’ audiences on platforms — a client lost a Facebook account with ~25,000 followers and had no email/text list to contact, showing the risk of owning presence but not the audience data; (3) Nurture relationships and persist — converting high-value clients can take years (speaker cites a 2-year example) and requires ongoing value delivery post-sale.
Questions this video answers
1999
2001
$30,000 per month
Six years
2009
Chapters
Thank you. All right, so I'm here with the marketing hat on. Today I have a 25 year old marketing agency and I've got 10 minutes to share three really important lessons with you. First one, at the beginning of any marketing engagement, what's the very first thing most important?
Anyone?
I'll answer because I'm limited on time. Awareness. That is why we start marketing. People have to know you exist to be in your groups. Awareness. Now I'm going to tell you a story that didn't turn out so well. So my digital marketing agency is 25 years old. I prided myself early on on how great we were at SEO. So I started my company in 1999. In 2001, I launched an e commerce store called where bridesgo.com registered the trademark. Worked really hard because I want to prove the concept of our strategy so that I could say we don't just do it for clients and talk about it, we do it for ourselves. We practice our techniques before we bring them to our clients. We got wherewrightsgo.com to number one in Google. It stayed number one in Google for six years for terms like wedding supplies, wedding accessories. You can imagine it's a very highly competitive market. I was doing $30,000 in business per month from that store. And that was not my primary. It was insane. Then in 2009, Google, in its infinite wisdom, decided to change its algorithm, which it does many times per year, by the way. Literally overnight, our rankings disappeared. Gone. We weren't on page one, we weren't on page two, we weren't on page 10, we weren't on pages one through $130,000 a month in revenue. I employed two family members that ran business for me. So you can imagine how devastating that was financially for my company, an Internet marketing agency, even though that wasn't our primary business. The lesson that I want you to take away from that as a business owner trying to market your own companies, your own businesses, is do not put all of your eggs in one basket. And especially if it's a basket you don't control. We ultimately recovered those Google rankings. We found out from the Penguin algorithm what it didn't like about. We managed where brides go. There was nothing sinister or shady about what we were doing. We just happened to have 20 other sites that I owned pointing to where bridesgo.com because they service the wedding industry and my clients wanted to link to our store. Well, they saw it as spammy because we were an Internet marketing agency and they penalized our site Overnight affecting our bottom line. So that's story number one. Lesson number one, don't put all your eggs in one basket. I don't care what the basket is. If you don't control it, don't put it all there. Second, a client at Lake of the Ozarks who's a very well known business that spent five years before they worked with us building their social media following, specifically Facebook. Up to 25,000 followers, which is fantastic. That's what we strive to do when we're in the social media business. They did an amazing job of it.
Overnight Facebook in its infinite wisdom, decided that they violated Facebook terms and they shut down their account.
They appealed it. Nope. Then they called us. Can you please help?
Maybe according to Vern, that's a no. And it actually was a no. We tried, we tried to help them. And so my logical question was, well, you have these 25,000 followers, so you must have a list, right? You must have a mailing list, an email list.
What do you mean? We don't do email, we do social media.
Not good. When you are marketing your company, I don't care how you do it. And you're not just going to use one method. You're going to use a lot of methods. You're going to use social media, all the stuff, podcast, all the stuff. Drive your audience offline, take them and get them into your list. Build your list. Marcus said, the values in the list, the values in your audience. But if you haven't captured who that audience is and you are renting the audience from a platform that you don't control, it's meaningless as soon as that audience is turned off for whatever reason outside your control. So that's the third lesson. Own your list. Every single piece of marketing that you do, it's intent, it should be to drive them off the platform and get them into your list, whether it's email or text. It's a hard lesson to learn. If you don't do it, it could financially devastate your company. Third, Tina referenced, longevity.
Is not our nature as entrepreneurs because we like to move, we like to do things, like to.
But you have to nurture relationships. You capture people, you get them on your list, right? They find out about you, you get them on your list, and then they don't buy right away. Well, it's an overused analogy, but it's overused because it's true. It's like when you're d, right, Somebody first you walk in your bar, someone has to be aware you're there. They have to be curious about you. You don't come up and say, will you sleep with me tonight? I mean, maybe you do, but the answer's not going to work out for you. And so maybe you go out on a few dates, maybe they do sleep with you, and then it's done. But what if you want to marry someone, right? It takes longer. You want them to buy from you, want them to buy you for the rest of your life, the relationship, right? You want them to engage. It takes a long time and it takes you offering value. And value, by the way, is not a bunch of emails saying bye for me.
So don't do that. Offer value. You have so much to bring to the table, so much experience to bring to the table. Give, give, give. It took Tina, after I was aware of her in l over two years to close me. And I'm really your ideal clients. Two years. The master a ticker. Two years. How long are you guys trying.
Right? People who own businesses give up too soon. They give up too soon. Like people give up right around they're on the. I can't even say this precipice of success. And by the way, the higher dollar that you're asking for, the long it takes.
And I'll close with this. Let's say you get married.
Don't stop, guys.
Right? You know what happens? You courted, you've dated, you brought flowers, you did all the things to get her there, and then you get married and then.
Don'T stop. It's that way with your clients too. Thank you.
