BIZ/DEV
David Baxter has over fifteen years of experience in designing, building, and advising startups and businesses, drawing crucial insights from interactions with leaders across the greater Raleigh area. His deep passion, knowledge, and uncompromising honesty have been instrumental in launching numerous companies. In the podcast BIZ/DEV, David, along with Gary Voigt, an award-winning Creative Director, explore current tech trends and their influence on startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture, integrating perspectives gained from local business leaders to enrich their discussions.
BIZ/DEV
Value Add for 100 Alex w/ Laura Maiurano | Ep. 95
In this podcast episode, David and Gary speak with CRO and Co Founder of fivefoottwo Marketing, Laura Maiurano and get her take on adding value to your business, learning to trust and building your brand as a startup.
Marketing done right is her middle name and this episode is one of several the Biz/Dev Podcast will be featuring for new startups wondering how do I spend those marketing dollars effectively?
Links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauramaiurano/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/fivefoottwo-marketing/about/
http://www.fivefoottwomarketing.com
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The Podcast
David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.
In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.
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Hey everyone, welcome to the biz dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter and I am joined per usual by Gary voids, who is just coming back from a three day Bender of d&d. How was the DME man
Gary:caught me off guard with that one. I was like three day Bender, this is not gonna go right. And then DND it was like who? Actually Come on? Did this time, I have no idea what you're speaking. I know about like weird dice dragons and some pouches to carry that stuff around. And that's about it. I heard the movie was not as good as everybody hoped. But the movie was
David:wonderful. I will let you a little secret. Ready? Ready? Check this out. Right here my drawer. I got my dice right here baby in my custom dice tray.
Gary:This is a special. We can't afford to lose subscribers.
David:I got I got my dice back to Okay, all right. That's for the video people, all the video people who watch our stuff. They're gonna really enjoy that. That's the worst radio ever. More importantly, we are joined today by Laura Murano, the CRO and co founder of five foot two marketing. How are you? Thanks for joining us,
Laura:and be on your amazing podcast.
David:Oh, it is amazing. Yes, for sure. We started now like professionals right now, pulling out the dice and everything. So I wanted to dive straight in because I have been wanting to interview a marketing person. And ironically, we've had several in front of you and they've all cancelled. So it's been a bunch of buildup. So you're getting all of it right? I've been wanting to interview a marketing professional because I have a very heavy love hate relationship as a business owner with marketing. Gary and I have had very, we will call them spirited discussions about marketing, and its role in a start up. So I want to talk to a professional about what that is. So I'll tell you our story a little bit. To give you an idea of why I have not been traditionally not a huge fan of marketing and startups. And Gary and I'll tell you the punchline is Gary has convinced me that I was wrong. But how I got there,
Gary:I'm all about marketing, but specific types of marketing. So yeah, we'll get to it.
David:So when we started, you know when and this is my opinion, and this is really why I want your professional opinion. When you're a startup in your, I don't care what kind of startup when you are starting your business from scratch. Your job number one is to build a good product, whatever that product is, whether in my case, it was building software, or so or jeans, or whatever, you know, haircuts doesn't matter. You've got to become a real pro. And really craft a great product. Because if you don't have that you got nothing. So once you figure that out, it's time to say it tell other people that you do, in fact have a great product, right? There's a comes marketing. Now where I and I agree with that 100%. But where I got cranky for years, I mean, my company is 10 years old, and we started investing really heavily in marketing, maybe a year and a half ago. Okay, so you could tell how long my animosity towards marketing lasted. But the reason I did that was I thought for a long time that I could get someone to buy my service, we build custom software, through sales, right? So someone could go out there and do sales. And I would expect I throw money down a hole, and I get leads back. That was what I believed marketing should do. That sounds good. If I'm selling soap or a widget or do dead, that might actually work right? I do an Instagram ad, I might actually get direct sales from that. But in my world, it was absolutely not true. I would throw money down the hole. And I would look down the hole and nothing that ever, ever came back until we totally changed our marketing and became and we use marketing now as a Referral Engine, which we could talk about, but that's not important. I want to know what your thoughts are. Am I wrong in that, that I totally should have invested earlier or did I do it? Right, just the hard way? What do you think?
Gary:And just to preface, David a little bit more. This is related specifically to our little corner of the industry and the services we provide it doesn't blink it everybody else is marketing Correct? Yeah,
Laura:yeah. However your I don't want to say misconception but it is a misconception of marketing is you're not you're not the only one right so I mean we hear this sentiment from people all the time. And just for context I primarily we primarily apply for to marketing work with early stage companies, right? So typically, VC backed companies that have enough money and are getting enough pressure from their investors in terms of really generating ROI, that they need to spend money in marketing. And nine times out of 10, someone says to me exactly what you said, like, I need to put this money into something, and I need to see results, and I need to see them immediately. And when you are a new business, a young business, it doesn't work like that, right. And I think you know, what people feel is just that sense of urgency, and that they think that marketing is going to be like a quick fix, right? Like, I'm going to do this thing, and I'm going to get immediate results. And to your point, David, if you're an E commerce business, you know, selling $5 T shirts, that's a whole different ballgame than if you're a services business. Or if you're selling enterprise software. You know, those are, those are big sales, those are long sales cycles. And there has to be an element of trust. And really what marketing in the early stages does is really builds that presence builds that credibility and builds that trust for the future. Right. And if you don't start marketing, and marketing means a lot of things, right, like people don't, you know, people generalize what marketing is, I feel like people think it's advertising. I mean, I think that's sure, easiest route to go or to categorize it. But it's so much more, it's your brand. It's your online presence. It's how you're nurturing those, those potential prospects, and how you're retaining them, right? Marketing touches every part of your business, right. And the foundation of that is really built on good messaging, knowing your target audience and getting yourself out there as soon as possible. Right. So it's not necessarily like you can throw money into advertising. But if nobody knows who you are, and you haven't built that credibility, and you haven't built that, that online presence, like you're not going to get what you're looking for, and to think that you're going to launch something that it's going to yield results, especially when we're talking about what you're doing, right, like you're gonna launch somebody that's going to yield results, immediately you're gonna get all these customers is is totally wrong. And my co founder and I have been taking it. And the other thing I should say, that we hear a lot about is is growth hacking, right? And that's maybe where your mind your mindset was, when you did this. And again, like sometimes growth hacking works, if you're selling, you know, $2 whistles, I don't know, just
David:$2 Whistles very big.
Laura:You gotta see why you get what I'm saying. Right? It might work, right? You can generate a lot of sales. But we're trying to shift people's thinking. And we're trying to shift the narrative to more of what we're calling sustainable growth marketing, right. So what we're really building and what you should be building is a platform that's going to sustain your marketing growth and your marketing efforts over time. Right. So it's really a holistic approach to marketing strategy, and kind of goes against growth hacking, where you're just like, you know, I'm gonna double down on this effort and throw a lot of money into it and see what I can get. Instead, we're taking a really strategic long term approach to marketing, that's going to build a foundation for you, that's going to propel you into the future, right? And going to give you kind of like that framework to really as your business scales to really scale your marketing programs. Instead of like, trying to, like go backwards and implement these marketing programs, getting no results, getting frustrated, and then just calling it a day. Because we see that a lot.
David:You're saying like Gary, thank you. Shut up
Gary:such a dirty brand building what brand awareness, storytelling crafting the narrative? Yes, thank you.
David:I'm falling asleep. No, no, I think, okay, I want to get more practical. Because Gary can't be right very often because it hurts my soul. I want to be more practical. So I am. When did you start? Because, again, if to me, if I'm a brand new company, let's say less than a year, you're you're in that first year of hell, right? Where you'll wash someone's car for your bill rate, right? That's just a brutal time. The first year is always rough. So if you are in that first year, hang on, it will get better. But your goal there I think is to find out who you are. And I think that was it's funny. I mean, we're finding finally finally success in some marketing. And it's probably Gary will tell you because I listened to him, but that's totally not true at all. It's totally caught. It's a coincidence that we are fine. means success. It's totally, totally not true anyway. So I but I think even though it took me a long time to get here, I think I needed to go through every stage that I went through to understand why it's working. Now, I was joking with Gary and we had a marketing. So now let's just to say, let you know where we are, we finally hired our own internal marketing person, Christie, who is if you're on this podcast, you have met. She has a machine. I don't know when that woman sleeps. But she's been wonderful. But we had a marketing team beforehand, outsource to a form similar to yours, I think. But they were in Atlanta through a friend of a friend. And he was great. Don't get me wrong, he was great. And we worked with him for a year and a half year ish. But what we Gary and I joked about is that I paid him money, to to learn how to market my own company, like he would do things. And I'd be like, I think I would do this differently. I would say me, me and Gary would talk about it for hours, and that would yell and scream and say, Why am I throwing money into this hole, and he would tell me to shut up and keep throwing money. And but the point of that is, is it took I had to go through every one of these grueling steps. And so what I would like to say at the end of this podcast, or multiple, because I know I'm talking to other marketing people, they will reschedule at some point. But I want to continue this narrative of what they should have done, how could they have learned these lessons that I learned faster than 10 years? Right, like, and I think the first lesson is, if I'm brand new, you gotta figure out who you are first. Like, if, if you're not a brand. And what that means is not just Do you have a logo, right? It's who are you? Why are you doing what you do? Why is your soap better than that soap? What is special about this, in terms of your company, what your image is all that stuff? If you don't know who that is, then you have no business started marketing agree or disagree?
Laura:I agree. And I would add another component to that, which is knowing your audience who who actually are you selling to? Okay, perfect. Yeah, yeah. So I would definitely say it's a comp. And so a lot of the exercises that we do, and when we talk to early stage companies is really around brand messaging and positioning, not to your point, not not brand, identity, brand, identity, being logo, color palette, all of that stuff. That's not as nearly as important in my opinion as messaging and positioning, which is to your point, vision, mission values, competitive analysis, understanding your target audience and really digging into their demographic or firmographic profiles. And then for more complex products, is really understanding the messaging framework, and then being able to communicate that framework in a way to all of your stakeholders, whether it be internal teams, whether it be external agencies, so that everyone is speaking the same language about your company, right?
David:When When do you start that though, is where I'm trying how much? I mean, I'm bootstrapped. Right, I'm poor. How, how much of that can I do on my own? Right, it sounds like a lot of it, I could do on my own, because I know, like, we worked with the marketing from years and years ago, and they would do a what was it called an identity workshop for a company, it was like $35,000. And I was like, in there, I know, they're gonna do exactly what you just said. And maybe people need that hand holding to go through that process. But I would imagine most founders could figure out how to do how much of this could they do on their own before they bring you in,
Gary:my first reaction would be, and this is just a bad metaphor, but it's just what popped in my head. I said, I was thinking, when you're just starting out, kind of take the teen girl on social media approach, where you just start telling your story, to whoever wants to hear it, in whatever platform you have available to you. That's free, cheap and easy, you know, all the social media platforms, especially things like Instagram post, you know, stories or videos of just like, Hey, today, I'm building this or whatever. And then people will start to watch you grow. And already kind of connect before you even put the effort out there and that you're trying to garner a new audience, you already kind of have a little bit of an audience grown.
Laura:I want to answer your question, David about, you know, like, how can you get started with messaging positioning is something that you can do. But Gary, I want to address your point, because I agree with you. And that's, you know, sort of goes back to what I started talking about in the beginning is you can do you have to start doing that stuff immediately. Right? Even if, even if you don't have necessarily have product market fit even if you don't like really know what you're doing. If you start building our brand presence or or, you know, for your future company or for yourself, like, you're already going to be out there. Right. And so that is one simple way to do it is through social media. And then also I think through like blogging, right? You know, that content is, is sticky and will stay, and will help you in the future with your SEO. And if your name is, you know, if you become really well known, it's going to, it's just going to help you in the future. So that's so I agree with you, Gary. And it's easy to do that. I mean, it's a matter of, you know, setting 10 minutes every day on your calendar to go onto social media and do something and it doesn't have to be like you posting that new content, it could be finding something else to share, right? And, and, and giving your two cents on it. But it's it's more about consistency, right? So that people see you on a consistent basis. And you have a consistent thing to say, or a consistent theme and your your messaging and your approach, to answer your question about a true messaging and positioning exercise, right, where you really sit down and you take those components that I talked about before and and put them on paper, which I think is a great thing to do. You don't necessarily need to hire us to handhold you. We also have a masterclass that we do, which is basically the messaging and positioning exercise, our big messaging and positioning exercise, and a two hour course, right where my co founder, Melissa takes a group of people through the exercise and you have a workbook and you come out on the other side with all of these thoughts and ideas on paper, or we have a template for it, and you can try to do it yourself. I think the value in having somebody else help you is that a lot of time founders can't, can't step outside of themselves to look at things objectively, they just have a really hard time. And I also see a lot of friction when there's co founders or multiple founders, between ideas. And you really almost need like a mediator, you know, and sometimes Melissa and I say we're just therapists at the end of the day, right? Because we're helping, we're potentially helping solve some of these fundamental agreements that happen in business. And it's normal, right? Because, you know, especially well, this was my idea, and I want to do this, I think this is what we should do. And sometimes you just need someone to say, you know, from our experience, maybe this doesn't make sense, right? And maybe you could soukous consider this other option, or it like helps to spark new ideas, right. So it really depends on I feel like where you are in your in your journey, I wouldn't invest in a full messaging and positioning exercise until you have product market fit. But you can get started with it. Right? Like my general opinion about marketing is like, why not get started now? Right. And I think it's easy for founders and business owners to get overwhelmed at the prospect of marketing, because it is so broad, and there are so many things that you can do. But you can take it in those bite sized pieces, you can do a blog, once a month, you can send out a newsletter, you can do those social media posts, right? The stuff is not not super hard. And it's just practice, once you start to do it, and you get, like, I'm sure you guys feel this way about your podcast, right? I mean, you can probably do it so many times now. And you know, you're like, cool, right? We got it. This is this is easy, it just becomes habit. And that's really how I feel like at the early stage of a business, you need to approach marketing, start to form those habits around what you're going to do to really inform your future efforts.
David:One thing that I think is really unique about the age in which we live in is kind of what Gary was saying that it's you don't have to be all buttoned up anymore. People are want to see growth, they want to see you starting and changing and improving. But I always struggled. I'm old, right? So this is not meant for me specifically. But what I struggled with is I have no interest in being a celebrity, even a tiny one. Like the idea that I am not. Elon Musk is the extreme example of this. But he's the founder genius that he's put himself under, and then his companies are under him. Right? But I see this on smaller levels constantly, right? It's this celebrity founder. And there's dozens and dozens of these big and little and then so they become popular and even if it's in a small sphere. But look, there's Joe and Joe is all about x and I have YouTube followings and Instagram followers for Joe, rather than Joe's company. Right and that's a new thing, relatively new thing. I mean, there was always Rockefellers and stuff like that. But generally speaking, that's a relatively new phenomena. Do you like that approach? Do you think that's the right approach? Because if you're shy, that's hard. And I'm not even saying I'm shy, but I had zero interest to me. Everything I do is to push big So not David, I don't really, I know, it's ironic for me to say that, but I don't actually care about any spotlight on me. I want it all to be the company. And everybody thinks that the company does a great thing, not me. But you see that that's almost contrarian to what a lot of people suggest. So which side of that fence Do you agree with?
Laura:You're not gonna like my answer. But this is like, really my answer for everything. When it comes to marketing. It depends on what you're doing. Right? Like, for some, for some businesses, it makes sense. But for others, it doesn't. You know, and we have certainly, I've certainly been in the position where we have, you know, this, like, amazing CEO who's done a lot to to utilize their following and their presence to, you know, further boost the marketing of the company, right. And then in other scenarios, no. I do feel like, generally when it comes to tech, because I mean, that's, that's my thing, right? When it comes to tech, especially when it's complicated technology, or a complicated industry or a nuanced industry, it is important that you do get yourself out there, and it doesn't, but it doesn't have to be in this like, I don't think you need to approach it from I'm so I'm going to be a celebrity, I'm going to be a hero kind of thing mentality. It's more about trust building, right? Because especially when you're selling an enterprise software that has a long sales cycle is going to cost someone hundreds of 1000s of dollars, right? You need to really build that trust in that credibility. And nine times out of 10, we put marketing strategy together, we really recommend to our founders, is to speak at industry events, right? I mean, that it seems like a no brainer, right? But it's super important to establish yourself as an I hate to say the word thought leader, it feels so like, jaded and overused at this point. But I do. Yeah. Yeah, it's for sure. I don't know what else to like growth hacking. I don't, I don't know what else to call it. But you know what I'm saying like, and I think it's, it's more about for me, when we think about it in the context of what we do, it's more about trust and credibility, right, because like, someone's not going to buy a product from you, if they don't know you, or feel like they know what you're talking about, or what your what your business is about. And now, it's also more of a focus on how what your company is doing on like, the social social side of things, right, like, how are you giving back? But you know, I mean, that's just an example. I mean, it's, it's a much broader, broader topic than that. But like, again, it's really about knowing your audience, like, is this going to be important I used to sell I used to mark I used to market for a company that sold to law enforcement, right, which is crazy on the state, federal and local level. And it was, it was hardware and software. And that community was built solely on relationships, like these people would not buy from us, if they didn't know us, and they didn't trust us. I mean, you can obviously understand why. But a core component of that was being at every single industry event, speaking at having multiple speakers, I used to, I used to run the speaking for those events, all the topics, we'd have, like 20 sessions, at one event, right. But like, that was what that was what those people wanted to see. And they wanted accessibility, they wanted to be able to come up and talk to you afterwards, they wanted to be able to interact with the CEO of the company, like those types of things. And so for me, you know, to sort of answer your question in a roundabout way, it really goes back to what is best for your business, and what is going to get what is going to build that trust and credibility with your with your target audience.
Gary:So we've already covered what to do if you're a small business, starting to market yourself, we've already talked about trying to find your audience and hone in on them. We talked about some of that audience will be organic, just from you telling your story at the beginning. But I want to go a little bit further past that cycle. Say you're a small company, you've tried the other marketing, you've tried the whole, you know, lead generation route where someone promises you if you give them a bunch of money, they'll give you a bunch of leads, they won't guarantee that those leads are going to be you know, sales, but so they have tried that, like David has said in the past. Sometimes it does, we
David:totally did that. It does not work for us. So
Gary:I wanted to ask what your approach would be if you're meeting with a potential client who's done that kind of like David has, instead of the form of this podcast telling us what you would do from the beginning. How was that transition going from having a bad taste in your mouth and marketing to convincing them that there is a better way? Yeah. And then you have to build that trust with them. So what are things that they can look for? And what are things thing you would say, you know, maybe put it in the back of your mind that you want to look for a few key things in your marketing agency company or person that will kind of at least set the tone that you're probably on the right track.
Laura:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, obviously, I'm, I'm biased to our processes and how and how we do things, right. I know every everyone approaches approaches things differently. But
Gary:what we're asking about you specifically, go ahead and tell us, give us all your secrets.
David:Why you're better than everybody.
Laura:That's why I was like, it is really hard to overcome those objections, objections for people, I will be totally honest, I would say,
Gary:even when you want, and you're forcing the majority.
Laura:Jerk. Yeah, even though I mean, I would say the majority of our clients have been in that position to be, to be honest. I mean, we we just started working with a client who was exactly in that position and spent $25,000 on LinkedIn ads and got zero return from it. You know, it, whether they did it, right. I mean, they didn't do it. Right, obviously. Right. And that was like, part of the discovery that we did, and helping them kind of understand, like, Hey, this is why this didn't work. I hate the word agency. Even though we are an agency, I think it comes with such a stigma, especially marketing marketing agency, specifically, it comes with such a stigma, I think, I think people look at, like, they say, Well, this is how I used to feel about our marketing agencies. I'd be like, marketing agency, I roll my eyes, I blame them for everything. Like, you know, it was bad. That was bad. Don't do that. I'm not I'm not saying you should do that, which is like, how I how I used to think about agencies when I worked on the brand side. And so again, like, well, listen, I am building our business, we really kind of wanted to change that narrative, as well as like, Hey, we're, we're your partner in this, right? Like, we function as a part of your team, or most of the time, it's your entire team. Because we're working directly with the founders, they don't have any marketing people at all. And like, we're not here to lie to you. Like, we're very transparent about that. If we talk to somebody and they say, I want to do this thing, and I want to work with you. And this has happened, like, they're very adamant, like, I love you guys. You guys are great. We want to work with you. And it's not a good fit, we're honest. And we tell them, like your your expectations are unrealistic, like you're not going to be able to do this. So we're very, I mean, we're very upfront. And I think when you know, you're a business and you're looking for a marketing agency, I think that people who feel like they're BSC knew I was going to swear, but I'm not going to swear on your podcast, feel people that feel like therapy. SCBU are rbfcu, right? And I'm going to tell someone, if I don't think that we're a good fit, whether it be because they have unrealistic expectations, or it just doesn't make sense for our business. It's not, it's not what we do. And then what we try to do is refer them to someone that can help them, right, because sometimes they'll come to us and be like, I just need this one thing, and I only have $3,000, to write five blog posts, and we're like, then you don't want to hire us that doesn't make any sense. Let us connect you with a freelancer or a contractor that's in our network that we know that that's trusted, that can help you get this done. Right. So I think when you're looking for an agency, that's the first thing like they're, they get so eager to sell, and they make all these promises that they can't keep. And then in three months, when they spend all your money, and you don't have any return, you're gonna be pissed off, and you're gonna feel like you're burned, right? And then you come to us, and we have to, like re set the foundation for you. And so when we approach it, it's really holistic, right? And we really try to understand kind of where they are, where those pain points are, what their goals are. And then we set realistic expectations. Like, you're not going to generate 500 leads in two months, like you're not going to generate 500 qualified leads in two months, it doesn't work like that, right. And so part of what we do is we build them a long term strategy, we build them a sustainable growth marketing strategy that takes in to consideration every component of the marketing and sales funnel and process, right. And we I try to identify where the major gaps are, where the major our areas of opportunities are, and double down on those, right. So you may have worked with the previous agency, you did like an EBA, drove like 100 leads, and you're like, I got nothing from this. But you have those available to you. They're sitting in your database. What are you doing to communicate with them on a regular basis? Well, nothing. Okay, well, like you're losing that opportunity. You paid for that stuff, you're doing nothing. And so we kind of come in, we build that year long strategy for them, and then we help them budget. And before we go into an agreement with them, we agree on the budget, and how that really aligns to their company goals. Right. And so I think that's a really important step to build then that, that credibility and setting that realistic expectation. And so I think that's when you're looking for an agency or like when you're taking that next step, right, those are kind of like the key, the key things that you should be aware of, or that you should be you should be looking for, right? No one should ever force you into doing something that maybe doesn't make sense, or that you're unsure about, right? Like, it just it has to be a partnership. And you also have to be open to things not working, and that you have to give your agency the time to make those changes for you and pivot toward things that are going to make sense. I'll stop talking sorry.
David:No, no, it's fine. So I've got I want to put you on the spot. Okay, so I am a soap manufacturer selling to business and go with it. Yeah, just you know, it's so
Gary:your doctor is really trying to get into Target.
David:That's right. I'm doing b2b sales with my soap. My question to you is, I come to you guys, and you guys being generic, not necessarily your company, I come to my marketing agency, and they sell me something very similar, right? It's funny, because a lot of what you say we say, about development, because there's a lot of bad devs out there, but I come to you. And I'm maybe I'm jaded, maybe I'm not, but I come to you, and you give me your sales pitch. And you say, Hey, you can't be in a hurry. Okay, how about that? Alright, I'm not gonna be in a hurry. But at what point? Did you fail your job? And I should fire you? Six months a year, right? Do you think you should be able to? And again, not necessarily your company, but it should I be able to hold my marketing firm to the fire at some point, because where I get cranky, and where me and Gary have argued politely, many, many times is I need at some point, some sort of metric that says that you are worth the money, I'm throwing down this hole. So when can I hold your feet to the fire? How much time should I give you? And what should I expect? I'm not, you know, not 500 sales or whatever, but maybe whatever, you set realistic expectations. And you set that period of time, if you don't hit those, do I fire you? Or are you going to tell me? Well, there were extenuating circumstances, you're not sure. Because that's you don't want to get fired?
Laura:Listen, I have a completely different perspective on this now than I did when I worked on the brand side, I wouldn't be like, I was brutal. And I'm not. It was not, maybe not right, maybe not the right approach. But mostly when I when I worked with and I had, we had like, like a $7 million marketing budget, like 2 million of that I managed it on the on the advertising side. Right. So it was like a lot of money. And I had goals that I had to hit, right. Like as the as the director of demand of global demand. Gen. I had these like, insane goals. And part of that, you know, part of advertising be attributed to those goals. And I had an agency that was running my advertising, and I would be like, What the hell? Like, you know, I and I would convince myself that this, like, one thing was gonna work. See, I'm like, I'm just as bad as these people that, like, you know, I now,
Gary:there is no magic campaign. Yeah,
Laura:and there isn't? And that is the answer. And it's a really hard question to answer in terms of when you should, when you should fire someone. I think when you should fire someone is when they don't recognize that something isn't working and continue to do it. Like, I think if you I think a reasonable expectation is an agency that's proactive, and this is what we this is what we aspire to do, right? Or that we do do is we'll come to you and say, look, we've tried this, it's not working, we recommend that you do something else. I think that that is what the relationship and the trust is really built off of is is being able to proactively go to your client and say, This isn't working, like can we do something else? Right, getting in front of it? On the flip side of that, if they're just continuing to waste your money and LinkedIn ads, and are like, No, you just gotta hang on, you gotta hang on, you got to hike in six months, you've spent$100,000. And nothing has happened. Like, they should have changed that strategy five months ago, for three to two months ago. And every marketing channel is different in terms of the length it takes to do something, right, like a two month nurture series is going to take a lot longer to produce results than a really targeted LinkedIn advertising campaign. Right?
Gary:So basically, if if they're selling you on the same product that they sold you at the beginning and not willing to adapt or make changes and you got, you know, obviously you're not seeing any results, then at that point, you're just like, this is totally not worth it. But if they are pivoting and then it's going downhill even faster than you could tell they're not thinking about it strategically. So the metrics are more of but it's not so much a time and money spend versus a return. But more of it's an experience and strategy kind of like assessment, I guess that you would?
Laura:It is? Yeah. It's both honestly. I mean, because at the end of the day, you are responsible for a number, right? And like working towards that number, but I also think it is partially that kind of relationship. And is this the right? Is this the right fit? And it's really hard to assess that. But for me, it's a gut feeling. And we have we've, there's a flip side to this, too, is like, We've had clients that were like, we can't continue to work with them. Like, this is just not this is like a toxic relationship, and they don't want to let go. They're like, No, but we need you. And we're like, No, we're not the right partner for you. And so it's really important that on both sides of the the relationship, you know, it's like a breakup. Right? Oh, yeah. We've
David:had to fire clients before. It's never.
Laura:And I'm sorry. I mean, I don't want to speak for you all. But I've maybe you've experienced this in your business as well, like, you know, when to walk away.
David:And you've been and you feel really good about it when you do.
Laura:Yeah, and you do, and it's hard and you feel good. But we've also been in scenarios where we tried to hang on, for whatever reason, because the client came from a relationship that we have with someone else, or you know, all these, like other factors that you have taken into consideration. And it was detrimental. And we are like, we have to learn from that. Like, we can't do that. If we get to this point where we feel like this is not going to work, then you need to just cut it and move on. Right. I think that's, that's important.
David:Oh, for sure. Yeah, I mean, that's really hard to do, especially when you're starting is to sit because you're just trying to make ends meet, but you need every dollar you can get, but this person is taking 10 times more time than you have available, or you're not making any profit. And we built a massive website for a very well known company, I'll say, entity and entity is an entity. It was 10 month long project. And we did the math after it was done. 10 months of work, hard work, we made $6,000. And we're like, dude, that we're never doing that again. Even though it's a big prestigious client, it was really good to have their name on our stuff. But dude, I mean, like, people were panting they were so tired. And then we did the math. And after we paid everybody and all of that the company made $6,000 in 10 months, never anyone Yeah,
Laura:I feel that in my soul, because I have we have been in that position as well. What I what I wanted to add to that I was just I was just thinking is that if you're in a position where you're a business that has used an agency, and you feel like you've been burned, it's really good to in that moment, write down those notes about why the relationship didn't work, right. And whether it's, you know, like the the feelings part of it, or the actual metrics part of it, or something else, like, write those notes down. Because when you engage with somebody else, like it's really helpful for us, when you say, I say, will tell me a little bit about why it you know why it didn't work, right. And it just gives us more contracts and will help it and it helps with the relationship, right? Because if there's fundamentally something they did that was, like terrible and made you feel a certain way, like I want to know, because if we're planning to do that, like, I don't want to do that. Or if that's like core to our business, I want to be like lead look, we're gonna do the same thing like this isn't isn't going to work. So I would just say, like, do a post mortem, write those notes down. And then that way you can, you can also help set the expectation from your side, as well as like, what you're what you're looking for, because I think people just come into these things. And I'm like, well, well, and I always ask prospects, how do you? How do you want our relationship, our working relationship to be like, What are your expectations from us as a partner, not as a producer of a thing? Right? And a lot of people I don't think can think about that, or articulate it. So I think those are important things to think about, what's your what's your, what's your unspoken expectation, make it a spoken expectation, so that we all know, and we're all super clear when we start,
Gary:like so. We have one more question for you. And then this can be about your business or other businesses you've worked with and just what you've learned, but we ask everybody, what are the top three pieces of advice that you have for any entrepreneur or new business or startup?
Laura:Yeah, that's great. And I was thinking I was thinking more about this from a from a from a marketing perspective, but I can talk about it Got it from a business perspective you want? Yeah, well, let me let me let let me let me do a little bit of both. So on the marketing side, if you're thinking about, you know, starting starting marketing and doing marketing, right, I think the, the two things that will really the three things that I think you need to do, and we sort of touched on all of these in this conversation, but just to sum up, one, understand your audience do that analysis, like, you know, gather as much information about them as you can. Not just like I said, for demographic and demographic, but also like, where they are, where they consume information, talk to those types of people, you are not that person, even if you build a product that is for people like you because you are a problem. You are not that individual, you were maybe in a past life, you're not that person, how you're different. And you need to get out there and talk to those people and really understand their stand their pain points, put a marketing strategy together, like an ad, write down your goals for marketing, like, you know, what I really want to get out of what's what do I really want to get out of my marketing program? And how do I think about it holistically. And then, budget accordingly, like budget for a year's worth of marketing activity on for a stuff everything all into, you know, a few months and be be open and be flexible to rearranging that budget as things work and don't work and a shameless plug for my business. Obviously, I'm, I'm happy to, you know, provide our services to help do this. But I'm also happy to provide templates for free that can help you kind of think about all of these things in a strategic way. So you're not starting from scratch. So and then just on the business side, I mean, when the list is,
Gary:those actually work good for business to just the the ability to write down your, your goals, and then be flexible. And then budget for it. And those are strong pieces.
Laura:I mean, it applies. It applies across the board, right. But what else say on the on the business side is like, and maybe this is for people who are thinking about starting something new or, you know, just do it, like, well, listen, I didn't. And I don't know if you guys felt this way or not when you started, you know, David to when you started big pixel, but listen, I didn't know what the heck we were doing. We were like, we think people need this service. Let's just Let's just go for it. I mean, we threw together a website, we I mean, we are marketers, right? So we threw together a website, we threw together a logo, we started just tapping into our network, and there was a need for it. And now we have a business. And it's five years later, and you don't have to realize you don't have to know anything. I don't need to go back to school now for for an MBA, because I got like a real life idea. Right. And my husband's always like, we should go back to school and like now I like I know all this stuff now that I never thought that I would learn but I mean, I think there's something to be said for just like, overwhelmed. Just take that take the chance and do it and like, if it doesn't work, like try something else. Like I don't know. I mean, people are always like, Oh my gosh, like, look at what you build, like, I want to do that. I'm like, you can you can totally do it. Right. Like we didn't know either. And that's what I say. I'm like we didn't, you know, this wasn't some like, polished buttoned up thing that we started, like, we were just like, let's see what happens.
Gary:Yeah, no, no one. No one has an actual path with success written in certain stages, that they just hit those marks and everything's gonna be fine. Yeah, it's always a chance. But so if anybody wants to learn more about you, or your business five to marketing, cool name, by the way, how can they reach out and how could they get in touch with you?
Laura:Yeah, I'm definitely you can connect with me. On LinkedIn. It's just Bara, my Urano am AI ura? No, you can follow us on social media. Or you can visit our website, which is five, but to marketing.com. You can also email me too. I don't know. Like I am always checking my email. And it's just Laura at five foot two marketing.com.
Gary:We'll put all those links in the show notes too. So if anybody wants to check it out, I think you just click below. David, any last words?
David:This has been wonderful. I hopefully. It's like I wish we could I need chat GPT to come in here and summarize everything and make some bullet points because I think if we really laid this out, I think there's some really good advice for people in my shoes, but also in just getting started with all this. So I appreciate your time very much. It's been really great.
Laura:No, it's I am so happy to do it. I love to talk about any. So if you just want to talk just reach out to my guilty pleasure is reality TV so
David:we could talk bachelor, me and my wife have been fans of The Bachelor for 20 years. So we could just do or we could
Gary:just back on the show occasionally just they'll let you know that she agrees with me. And then I'm right. Because that was my fun hour.
David:No. All right. Well, you gotta get validation where you can man.
Gary:If you guys want to get in touch with us have any questions or comments for us, you can reach out to Hello at the big pixel dotnet. Or you can leave a question or comment below this video on YouTube, or connect with us on any one of our social media platforms.
David:Awesome with that, thank you so much again, and we will see everyone next time.
Gary:Thank you Laura.
Laura:Thanks
