The Revenue-Focused Marketer

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Transcript

0:11:
Hello and welcome to another episode of the revenue-focused marketer where we discuss anything and everything related to marketing as well as data.

0:19:
I’m your usual host, Hershey, and today we’re diving into a topic that’s a game changer for small and medium sized businesses.

0:27:
We’re kind of gonna discuss how to move beyond referrals and random marketing tactics to build a scalable strategic marketing engine.

0:35:
, so now if you’re a business owner, you’re probably wearing multiple different hats, you’re the CEO, salesperson, customer service rep, and you’re somehow in charge of, you know, marketing also.

0:47:
, if this kind of sounds familiar to you, you’re not alone.

0:50:
Many SMBs kind of struggle with marketing.

0:53:
And this is why we’re kind of having this episode.

0:56:
Today, we have a very special guest with us, and his name is Ross.

1:00:
Ross, thank you so much for joining us today.

1:03:
Thank you so much for having me, Hershey.

1:05:
I appreciate it.

1:06:
I love this topic.

1:07:
It’s very important.

1:09:
Yeah, so a little bit about Ross, he is the owner and fractional CMO of Thunder Stock Marketing.

1:17:
And in today’s episode, I think we’re gonna use his expertise in kind of helping SMB service businesses scale substantially without wasting their time or money on ineffective marketing.

1:31:
So I guess let’s just dive deep into this topic.

1:35:
, let’s start with the biggest roadblocks.

1:37:
What do you think, Ross, are the top challenges you see SMBs facing when it comes to their marketing?

1:43:
It’s a great question.

1:46:
I’ve worked with Dozens, probably 100s.

1:51:
Of SMB owners pretty directly to their marketing.

1:53:
And one thing at a certain growth stage, when you have a company that’s 40, 50 million below, you have the founder or the CEO or the president, very hands-on in marketing oftentimes for these small businesses, but they’re also in charge of running the whole company.

2:13:
They’re in charge of managing all these departments, but For whatever reason, they may have a an operations manager, and they have a finance accounting manager, they may have a sales manager, but they don’t typically hire for marketing manager, and then they wonder why they’re not getting leads coming through the door.

2:29:
And I think the number one recurring issue.

2:33:
is that there’s not a dedicated person for leadership and strategy.

2:37:
In other words, the CEO.

2:39:
It puts the this marketing hat on because they have to, and not because that’s their usually their lane of genius.

2:47:
Mhm.

2:49:
That’s a big one.

2:51:
And I, I, I personally kind of interacted with many owners that, you know, kind of have their small and medium sized businesses, and they shared the same struggle, , and a lot of them also kind of cling on to word of mouth referrals.

3:07:
I hear this all the time, we don’t need marketing, we got all our business from referrals and while that’s amazing, it’s, I think it’s also very risky.

3:16:
So, you know, Yeah, I couldn’t agree more.

3:19:
I mean, that’s just like sitting around and, and waiting for, for rain.

3:25:
I like the analogy of gardening.

3:28:
, it doesn’t help that we just, my wife and I just went to Lowe’s yesterday and started for our seasonal gardening, but, , I love the analogy, pray for rain, but dig a well.

3:37:
Referrals can be great if and when they come, but you have no direct output from a marketing perspective of when or if they do come.

3:45:
, on the other hand, I’m a strong proponent for having a referral or affiliate partnership.

3:51:
Which is a, which is a strategic marketing play.

3:53:
So are they intentional with the referrals?

3:55:
Can they predict and can they do a 12 month look back and say, how many referrals do we get?

4:00:
You know, was it 31 month, 0 for 2, 12 the next month?

4:04:
OK, why?

4:05:
It’s part of the marketing strategy.

4:07:
If you don’t look back on what what previously worked because most businesses.

4:11:
You know, have some sort of runway that, that if you’re over 7 figures and you’re over 5 years, then you’re like the top 20% of businesses ever, I think, because most businesses fold underneath 5 years.

4:26:
So let’s just say if historicals.

4:28:
My first step would be, OK, well, if you’re, if you want more referrals then measure how, how you got them from who, what quality.

4:37:
That’s a strategic insight there.

4:39:
But to your point, Yeah, I don’t think hope is a is a plan.

4:45:
Yeah, we often hear, you know, failing to plan is planning to fail, and strategic marketing, like, you know, having a plan for this is definitely an important step.

4:55:
Let’s gonna talk about ROI here because I know a lot of business owners feel like they’re throwing money at marketing.

5:01:
How do we kind of shift their mindset from marketing being an expense to actually an investment?

5:09:
I love that question as well.

5:11:
So, and they’re gonna have a recurring theme when you talk to me.

5:14:
It’s like what you don’t measure, you can’t expect.

5:18:
So it’s, first off, it’s measuring, OK, what are you putting into marketing?

5:23:
And when I think about strategy, I think of it in three ways as far as resources.

5:28:
Mhm.

5:31:
The first resource, which is the most common, is how much money are you putting into something.

5:35:
Everyone.

5:37:
Most people should think that way.

5:38:
I think it’s a good thing to think like.

5:40:
But then the other two are how much time are you putting into it, right?

5:43:
Because you might not be, you might be trying to save money, but if the owner is doing SEO for their product page, probably not the best use of that person’s time.

5:53:
And then the last one’s energy, and it’s like, are you doing marketing and does it just drain the soul, drain drain the, the passion out of your team, then it’s probably not authentic marketing that really reflects your brand.

6:06:
So But how to track it tactically?

6:11:
Baseline look back.

6:12:
I think marketers and finance accounting people should be best friends in organizations, that’s where I’ve had some of my best success.

6:19:
It’s getting a baseline from your P&L, your balance statement.

6:23:
You know, getting your books in order and saying, OK, how much money are we really putting out?

6:27:
And then there’s a couple of metrics that I think are foundational for all small business owners to check, which is your marketing efficiency ratio.

6:34:
, people call it the ROI.

6:35:
I call it marketing efficiency ratio because it’s just it’s just easy.

6:39:
It’s like for every $1 you put in, how much in sales just does that come back, .

6:45:
And then it’s a bit more complicated, but probably more important for marketing is what’s the lifetime value of a customer and how much does it cost to get one, and then how long do they stay?

6:57:
So average churn.

6:59:
When you can calculate for those things, now you can start to build a budget and you can start to build one that’s proactive, not reactive.

7:06:
Mhm.

7:07:
That’s huge.

7:08:
I think that’s also like, you know, sort of the core of what we do here at the growth.

7:13:
So a lot of people kind of, you know, refuse to focus on the ROI and kind of looking at the analytics.

7:18:
A lot of the times the data that is also being used to get the analytics is kind of wrong, so that’s where we kind of go in, fix that first step first, and then kind of.

7:27:
Move forward into giving you the right analytics that you need in order to be able to move forward and make the most because nowadays there are like so many different channels that you can use, so it kind of gets really confusing and for people that, you know, kind of are juggling with managing multiple platforms, what advice would you have for them?

7:50:
Man that’s such a good question, I think.

7:53:
I’ve been using Google Analytics for so long, and the GA4, I think is a bit more helpful for the, the average user.

8:01:
Mhm.

8:03:
But You can’t use it as your one source of truth, I don’t think.

8:09:
, for example, if I were to pull up my, my Google analogs4 account, it would say 90% of my traffic comes from direct.

8:16:
That’s probably because I didn’t personally go through and set up the the account the right way.

8:21:
So to your point, unless, unless your analytics are fully optimized and configured the right way, take it, take it all with, with a grain of salt as like an approximation, like, an estimate, a pretty fair estimate.

8:33:
But in terms of like tracking.

8:36:
, analytics, I think the most important.

8:40:
Place to do tracking is your CRM.

8:43:
When you’re ROI focused and you’re, and you’re looking to prove your return, you have to have marketing sales as much as I think marketing and accounting and finance needs to be closed, marketing sales really does too.

8:55:
They cannot be a conflict.

8:56:
So when you can.

9:00:
Identify like who did become customers, who did become booked calls, who did become leads.

9:05:
Then you start with the N and you can sort of, you know, through configuration and and and all that track, track backwards, and there’s other platforms and and softwares to use GA4 being just one example.

9:21:
But if there was only one, as I was on a desert island, I would use my CRM.

9:26:
Yeah, I think that’s definitely a good source to start with.

9:30:
, let’s kind of move our focus here to kind of the future.

9:34:
So let’s fast forward maybe 3 to 5 years.

9:38:
Where do you think the biggest shift is gonna be when it comes to SMD marketing?

9:44:
Yeah, it’s like I love that question.

9:45:
I think the cost of a lot of deliverables is going to go way down.

9:49:
, there’s this, there’s this movement.

9:53:
And it’s been happening for a couple of years now, but it’s definitely becoming more mature and people are aware of it with.

10:01:
You know, everyone loves the term AI.

10:04:
It’s hot.

10:04:
It’s the buzzword.

10:06:
But what that means for a lot of people is, I’ll use a great example, quick.

10:11:
, I used to do outreach where it would be sending personalized emails.

10:18:
The goal was to make 40 calls and email follow-ups a day to try and get UGC content back links, right?

10:25:
I, for people that don’t know, like today I could do that exact same task.

10:31:
With a higher efficiency rate using AI agents for like a small fraction.

10:37:
So I think in the future of marketing, SMB owners are going to have a competitive advantage against some of these big box because the the cost of entry is lower and it’s just going to be coming down to, you know, how much do you, how much do you stand out from.

10:53:
You, you know, your unique sales proposition.

10:55:
How much are your core values different than your competitors?

10:58:
Do you do what you say you’re going to do?

10:59:
Do you pick up the phone and the lead calls?

11:01:
Like, you’re gonna have to be better at business because people can also now Do marketing to a scale and efficacy that they normally couldn’t afford to or weren’t savvy enough to do 3 to 5 years prior because they’ll have help that it’ll be open to the public.

11:19:
And then I think there’ll be a strong place for marketing strategists and analytics and people that are have to make that those crucial human decisions as opposed to like hiring a staff of You know, cold callers or, or blog writers, you know, I think that stuff will be more refined and you can have fewer people that are better at the work, but ultimately, , if you’re a local service business, I mean, it’s a great time for you.

11:51:
Yeah, no, definitely, , I, it’s funny you mentioned how AI has kind of become the buzzword.

11:57:
It kind of went from blockchain being the buzzword last year to now everybody talking about Gen AI to now gente AI, so, you know, having these AI agents for you.

12:07:
But what are your thoughts on like, you know, still kind of getting that personalization through the use of AI?

12:14:
Are there like, you know, steps people can take and for those business owners that haven’t really kind of played with AI yet, how do they kind of get in the process of really using it to kind of make sure that they’re making the most of the technology?

12:30:
And so.

12:33:
Shameless, if I, if I may make a shameless plug, , one of my clients is AI for the C-suite and he has a community teaching mid-market executives.

12:43:
How to navigate through the exponential age of AI.

12:45:
So if I may make a shameless plug, you know, check that out.

12:48:
But that is one example of many communities such as the advent of school, these online learning platforms where you can get coaching and courses and community and just all kinds of people that are trying to learn the same thing, these virtual classrooms, and you can literally ask a question and someone across the world might have the answer for you right then and there and.

13:10:
The other thing that’s been a trick is the more you prompt with these gen generative AIs like Claude and Chat CBT and you know, name any of them, you can then have conversations between Chat CBT and Claude, and if they say one thing the other and be the go-between between.

13:27:
So I mean, I, I’ll tell you, I’ve learned more about coding in the last 3 weeks and I have my whole life just by AI.

13:36:
So, I think between communities and continuing education and just the advancement of these generative things and learning how to prompt and getting practice, , it’s great places, but I hope that answers your question.

13:48:
There’s another part to it I want to touch on.

13:51:
No, I, I think that’s huge.

13:53:
I think, especially when we’re kind of dealing with something that is as recent and as getting popular like AI right now, it is kind of easy to like, you know, feel overwhelmed, feeling like Yeah, we want to do something with AI, but they really don’t know how to go about it.

14:10:
So I think having, like, you know, communities where you feel like you’re all in this together, you’re not, cause you’re definitely not alone when you’re facing the challenges of kind of overcoming, you know, with the new technology.

14:23:
But I guess let’s talk a little bit about like, you know.

14:27:
People that kind of have no marketing budgets, like, you know, or no marketing budgets.

14:35:
Where do they kind of focus their energy on if you could just give an advice to them?

14:40:
Yeah, so I love that question.

14:41:
So, I recently went to a conference in February and I talked to a guy who did, he went from 0 to 5000 in revenue in one year, and he spent no money on marketing.

14:53:
Now, he did marketing.

14:55:
But he didn’t spend any money on marketing and the way that his business worked as he found he tried other things.

15:01:
Because he was bootstrapped that were free and he found one tactic that really worked and that tactic was joining specific niche Facebook groups and contributing and answering questions and posting content and asking questions and just being members of these Facebook groups where his target audience lived, and it cost his time.

15:24:
But when you’re not making revenue, you can’t think that you’re above.

15:28:
You know, answering questions on forums, you gotta, you gotta be where your customers are at.

15:32:
So I mean, is it scalable if he wants to get to 500 million?

15:37:
Probably not.

15:38:
But if you’re a small S&B owner and you’re trying to make your first, you know, several hundredk, I think your cost of acquisition is like zero unless you.

15:49:
Factor in your time.

15:52:
So with that as an example.

15:55:
It’s crucial to have people to think about marketing strategy because Not to say anything negative against marketing agencies.

16:02:
I think they’re great.

16:02:
They have their place, they have their expertise, but if I am in a room talking to somebody that sells newspaper ads, they’re gonna say, oh, you got to spend X on newspaper ads, obviously.

16:12:
Or if I’m talking to someone who’s an email marketing like, oh, this email marketing campaign is the thing to do.

16:18:
But when you talk to somebody that doesn’t have a horse in the race, so to speak.

16:22:
And they’re just trying to make you money, then you can have people think about like, OK, well, based on your budget, which is below cost, no cost marketing, let’s really identify who your target audience is, how they think, how they feel, where they might be, and how to contact them for as little time, energy, and money as possible.

16:41:
And I think this example I use of someone taking his his business to market through Facebook groups, which anyone can create a Facebook profile and participate in.

16:50:
, was really a genius example to answer that question like what do you do with low budget and then.

16:56:
You, you know, it’s, it’s much different going to market and it’s going from zero to something, but if you’ve got See a million dollars in revenue, and let’s just hope that you’re, you know, you’re, you’re doing a 20-30% margin.

17:10:
I still implore you to consider, depending on your growth goals, to take 10%.

17:15:
Just put it towards marketing.

17:16:
Like, everyone should have some marketing budget.

17:19:
If you’re doing $100,000 a year, you’re a really small business, carve out $500 to $6000 and do something with marketing because then at least you’ll be further ahead than next year because you’ll have tried something and you’ll have some frame of reference because like you said in the beginning of the show, if all you ever do is just do your job and you hope for referrals, unless you have a plan in place to incentivize referrals or referral program.

17:45:
Like, you’re not gonna, not only will you probably not grow to the degree that you want, or at least predictably, but you won’t learn.

17:55:
Mhm.

17:56:
That’s really true.

17:57:
, I think earlier you kind of talked about SEO and, you know, kind of want to dive into that topic more specifically now.

18:06:
How do you think with AI kind of being the focus now, how do you think search is really changing and should, like, you know, SMB owners still focus on SEO or is that something that shouldn’t be of any focus anymore?

18:21:
I look at SEO as.

18:25:
If I had to make an analogy to like health and fitness, I think if SEO is like figuring out a diet.

18:34:
So like, all right, you have a plan that you’re gonna, you know, eat X Y Z and Is that if you have a diet plan, it doesn’t guarantee that you’re gonna hit your health and fitness goals, but it sure increases the likelihood that you will.

18:50:
, I think everyone should be conscious of SEO, but if it’s your only strategy, it’s just not what it was 1015, 20 years ago, because I think , If you don’t have any SEO at all, it can hurt you, but to a certain point.

19:10:
You know, You can’t rely on it only.

19:15:
So that’s my, that’s my thought on SEO.

19:16:
It’s, it’s less effective.

19:20:
It can still be incredibly effective, but it shouldn’t be thought of as a silver bullet, but it should be a component of a greater, greater strategy, and the basics aren’t that tough.

19:32:
So Yeah.

19:35:
No, definitely.

19:36:
I think it’s, I, I love the analogy where you kind of compare it to having that diet.

19:41:
I think it’s a basic component that you should at least cater for and definitely not be the only thing that you rely on.

19:49:
, you’ve kind of dealt with a lot of businesses and, you know, been a helping hand.

19:54:
What’s maybe a lesson that you’ve learned from helping businesses go from struggling stage to thriving and, you know, something that people can kind of take away from this conversation?

20:07:
There’s two things that come to mind.

20:10:
And potentially controversial.

20:14:
So the first one is.

20:17:
You could try 99 things and the 100th thing, you could have a grand slam home run that changes the course of your business forever.

20:26:
And I think people are so afraid to try a multiple multitude of things that they never learn enough or test enough to get to that level.

20:36:
For example, , I worked at a retail store once and they were in business for 20 years and they were like, we did Facebook ads, they don’t work, they don’t work, they don’t work.

20:47:
And I said, let me see that.

20:49:
And I looked at the budget, looked at the targeting, looked at the offer.

20:52:
I was like, OK, let’s change the offer to to this.

20:55:
Let’s change the budget.

20:56:
You were spending $50 and we could do $500.

21:00:
Like, you’re gonna 10x the budget?

21:02:
I said, just trust me.

21:04:
So that, that retail store had pretty abysmal sales.

21:07:
They were doing like 250K a year in top line revenue for the last like 1015 years flat.

21:15:
We did 110K in two weeks.

21:19:
By just doing a $500 Facebook ad.

21:23:
So like, to me, you know, everyone doubted me and was like, oh, we’ve tried it before, it doesn’t work.

21:31:
And then You try something different, you don’t just do the same thing every time, and you do half your year sales in 2 weeks.

21:39:
So then that’s one concept.

21:40:
People have this like fixed mindsets that’s I could go on a whole different podcast all about that.

21:45:
And the second, and the second thing that’s incredibly important.

21:50:
I if your business operations and your product and your service isn’t.

21:56:
Like, at least pretty good or you don’t do at least what you say you’re gonna do.

22:00:
You can’t outmarket bad business.

22:04:
So I had a client where, you know, we, we reduced the, the cost for conversion by 90%.

22:11:
I increased their, their email leads by like 20% in a quarter.

22:15:
Like we were getting tons and tons and tons of new leads and new buyers, but they’re churn on the back, back, like we were getting more people in, but they were leaving one star reviews and they were complaining and all these like refunds.

22:31:
Yeah.

22:32:
So you can’t outmarket bad business.

22:35:
So as much as you want referrals, like if you have the best business in the world, I truly believe your customers will market for you, but like, not everyone’s the best at business in the world, and that’s OK.

22:48:
Just don’t be the worst business in the world and think you can solve all the marketing.

22:52:
Yeah, no, definitely.

22:53:
Focusing on what you really do is a huge aspect and, you know, you can only go so much with marketing unless you don’t have that base correctly done.

23:03:
wow, this has been such an insightful conversation.

23:07:
I know we’re coming kind of to the end of our episode here today, so I just want to thank you again so much for, you know, sharing your insights, sharing what really works and giving examples.

23:17:
That means a lot to us, , for our listeners who kind of want to, you know, learn more about you, more from you, where can they really find you, and yeah, so a good place to start is my website thunderstockmarketing.com.

23:30:
I’m also active on LinkedIn.

23:32:
It’s Jay Ross Stockdale.

23:35:
, I do have a podcast as well, the Thunder Stock Show, check that out, and we would be happy to talk.

23:41:
Thanks so much.

23:42:
Hershey has really great conversation.

23:44:
Amazing.

23:46:
Thank you so much for your time here and for our listeners today.

23:49:
Thank you so much for joining.

23:50:
Let us know your thoughts on this episode and we will catch you again on our next episode.

23:54:
Thank you so much.

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