Follow The Brand Podcast with Host Grant McGaugh
Are you ready to take your personal brand and business development to the next level? Then you won't want to miss the exciting new podcast dedicated to helping you tell your story in the most compelling way possible. Join me as I guide you through the process of building a magnetic personal brand, creating valuable relationships, and mastering the art of networking. With my expert tips and practical strategies, you'll be well on your way to 5-star success in both your professional and personal life. Don't wait - start building your 5-STAR BRAND TODAY!
Follow The Brand Podcast with Host Grant McGaugh
Branding in the Digital Age with Brenton Thomas CEO of Twibi
Embark on a voyage into the heart of modern marketing with none other than Brenton Thomas, the mind behind Twibi, as he unveils the intricacies of digital marketing and personal branding. Together, we navigate the psychological currents that influence consumer behavior and the pivotal role of customer segmentation in charting a course towards heightened engagement and sales. Witness how Brenton's deep-seated knowledge illuminates the intersection of creativity and analytics, and the profound ways AI and machine learning are rewriting the playbook for marketing maestros. Furthermore, we investigate the art of website optimization and strategic advertising that's essential for broadcasting a brand's digital signal far and wide.
Prepare to traverse the shifting sands of marketing from the bygone era of traditional mailers to the digital dominion where precision targeting reigns supreme. This episode takes you through a landscape dotted with social media platforms, each a fertile ground for cultivating brand awareness. Discover how a single keyword can harvest a bounty of audience engagement and the ways virtual worlds promise an immersive brand experience. We don't just talk about the transformative power of AI in content creation but also dissect the allure of visual media—a siren song for audiences with ever-shortening attention spans, seeking infotainment that dazzles and informs in equal measure.
The strategic saga continues as we explore the delicate dance between organic reach and paid advertising—a balancing act for businesses of all sizes seeking to navigate the digital seas without sinking their budget. Gain insights into the coffee company from Charleston whose journey exemplifies the precision required to steer the 'machine' of digital marketing toward a horizon of impactful results. Closing the episode, we pull back the curtain on the expertise of digital marketing agencies, discussing the crafting of custom landing pages and the scientific advances that marry human intuition with algorithmic intelligence. For those with an ear for success in the digital realm, this conversation is an anchor in the ever-churning ocean of online marketing.
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest marketing trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates from us, be sure to follow us at 5starbdm.com. See you next time on Follow The Brand!
Welcome to another episode of Follow the Brand. I am your host, grant McGaughan, ceo of 5 Star BDM, a 5 Star personal branding and business development company. I want to take you on a journey that takes another deep dive into the world of personal branding and business development using compelling personal story, business conversations and tips. Development using compelling personal story, business conversations and tips to improve your personal brand. By listening to the Follow the Brand podcast series, you will be able to differentiate yourself from the competition and allow you to build trust with prospective clients and employers. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Make it one that will set you apart, build trust and reflect who you are. Developing your five-star personal brand is a great way to demonstrate your skills and knowledge. If you have any questions from me or my guests, please email me at grantmcgaw, spelled M-C-G-A-U-G-H at 5starbdm B for brand, d for development, m for masterscom. Now let's begin with our next five-star episode on Follow the Brand. Welcome to the Follow Brand Podcast, where we explore the intersections of leadership, brand innovation and social impact. I am your host, grant McGaugh, ceo of Five Star BDM, where we help you to build a five-star brand that people will follow. Today we have a special guest who has mastered the art of connecting brands with their audiences through innovative digital strategies. Joining us from the scenic landscapes of Oregon is Mr Brenton Thomas, who is not just a digital marketing expert. He's a visionary founder of Tweety, a dynamic digital marketing agency that has propelled businesses from billion-dollar enterprises to ambitious startups into the digital spotlight. Social, organic social media and SEO. Brenton's strategies are a blend of creativity and analytics. An alumnus of St Mary's College of California, brenton holds an MBA in international marketing, making him a perfect blend of an academic and a practitioner in the digital marketing realm. When he is not crafting game-changing marketing campaigns, you will find him cherishing moments, friends and family embracing the beauty of Oregon. Today, brenton will share his insight on thriving in the digital branding arena, from leveraging the power of personas for market targeting to the exciting interplay of AI and machine learning in advertising. We'll also explore the importance of website optimization and the role of strategic ad campaigns in elevating your brand's digital presence. So buckle up as we venture into the world of digital marketing with Brenton Thomas, where creativity meets analytics to create impactful brand stories. On the Follow Brand Podcast, where we are building a five-star brand that you can follow. Welcome everybody to the Follow Brand Podcast.
Speaker 1:You know I get it out and this is the first time. I think it's the first time I've gone all the way out to the West Coast in the Northwest, in the Oregon area. Now, if you've ever been out to that part of the country, it's beautiful. It really, really is. That's from the coastline. It's so green, it's got giant trees. It just looks like it's fresh air. When I go to the Northeast I think fresh air. Now I'm down in Miami, florida. We get some fresh air, but it's different because it's very flat. There. You've got a lot of hills, you've got mountains, you've got mount tops, you've got volcanoes. It's just a different experience and we're going to enjoy that experience early morning for Brenton. Brenton Thomas is out there. When he said no, grant, I see what you're doing. I want to come up on your pocket. We're going to talk about brand basket. We're going to talk about digital marketing in today's age, because AI has changed the game, and we want to talk to a game changer who's been doing this for a long time. So, brenton, introduce yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, thanks for having me today. Yeah, oregon's. It's a beautiful state and we've talked before this and I came from California originally, so it's golden hills compared to lush green forest, so it's a beautiful state. It's very beautiful. But, yeah, for myself, my name is Brenton and so I run a digital marketing agency. It's very beautiful, but, yeah, for myself, my name is Brenton and so I run a digital marketing agency. It's called Twibi and it's basically my first last name and middle initial all combined with some I's in there to basically form the name Twibi, and I've been in business for about three years and then before that in corporate for about six years, so about nine years of digital marketing, running Google ads, facebook ads, seo and email marketing for clients.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about Twiggy. At first, I like the name. That's catchy. It's got a good sound to it. When you hear it, you look at it. You're not really sure what it sounds like. That's catchy, I like that. So some creativity on your part. Talk to me about your career journey. I mean, you go, you're in California, you're doing your thing, you're doing this for three years, but what is attracting you to this kind of business?
Speaker 2:Oh, so I? I was always attracted to the psychology, you know, behind digital marketing and why do people do the things they do? But then it's quantifiable, right? So then you can, you can attach revenue to it, right. And you know, it's like well, if I can understand and get to the mind of different segmentations, then I can start to show them things that will get them to buy the product that I'm trying to show, and to me that's just fascinating, that is amazing that you can do that.
Speaker 1:You know you brought up something. I want our audience to truly understand that A lot of times you think of brand marketing. They think objectively, they're looking at the visuals, they're seeing all the creative creativity, but it's very subjective in the business. You've got to do some brand identity. You've got to do some self-awareness, some self-excelation. If it's a personal brand or business brand, you've really got to step back. It's almost like some soul searching. What is it that we're trying to accomplish? Why is this important to our clients? Because it's really all about solving the business of a client and what you're trying to do is try to make that happen. How do you feel, what's your philosophy around brand marketing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so working with clients, usually the client doesn't have their brand identity fully developed, at least some of the smaller clients that we tend to work with. We do work with some medium-sized companies and they also don't have the best graphs for their brand identity. So we'll actually create personas and these personas are very specific. So we usually choose about three different personas and we'll give them a name and what they do for work and their activities. We'll also assign like a picture of what that person looks like and then, once we have our three personas, we'll create campaigns that speak to that specific person and we'll refer to them as like Dave and Jessica, and like in our meetings or over all the weeks. So we'll say, well, this didn't really speak to Jessica, right, and Jessica is a mom that stays at home, she's into fitness and we're trying to promote your supplement product to her. So I think that really helped shape the conversation, not only for myself but for the client as well.
Speaker 1:And what you brought up again. That is, I want our audience to truly understand, especially if you're developing business and we have a lot of business owners that tune in to the Follow Brand Podcast. Entrepreneurs and people are looking to get into entrepreneurship. There's a lot of career development for people in their careers and they're understanding the digital aspects in branding yourself as well as branding your business and understanding your target audience. That is what I got.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't just say you must understand the audience first. A lot of people think about their business. They're like all right, what do I do? How do I get that message out there and how does that resonate? But, however, your business only exists because of the audience and understanding the audience and what you said. Hey, you know what that persona for Bill that resonated with Bill. Bill was on there. Now, if that is your major revenue target, maybe that's great. However, you've got to understand. You know Sally didn't get that. You know she's moving on and understanding that, where do you want to sit in the audience's mindset and their need analysis? Where does that all go? And those are some of those challenges and solutions.
Speaker 1:I want to skip to this question because it's so important what we're talking about now, really it's about how to hire a professional. Why you need to hire a professional? Because there's a lot of things you just don't know behind this either. What? Why do I need to involve twimmy as an agency? Not just to have me some great graphics to truly, you know, define my business.
Speaker 2:Help us understand that yeah, so, um, I think, uh, especially like we take paid ads right. So you're spending money inside of Facebook ads or you're spending money inside of Google ads, and if you're not sure what you're doing, you can spend a lot of money really quickly and by accident. And so I'll give you a story. This is early in my career, so this was maybe seven years ago, so I was about two years into digital marketing and I created all these campaigns and I put placeholder text in all the campaigns because I needed to speak to my manager this is backgrounds in corporate and so I put placeholders but test, test in all the headline of the ad and I put test in the description. And then I moved on to work on some other parts of the campaign, so more kind of like campaign settings in the, the budgets, right, et cetera, et cetera, right, and so, because I was newer in my career, I just didn't press the pause button on the campaign. So I went to bed that night and it spent some money it's like four hundred dollars and I will go the next morning. I was so disappointed, you know, but it's little things like that.
Speaker 2:If you're not used to being in the ad account, little mistakes can happen. They're very, very basic mistakes, but it can lead to very costly outcomes and I was lucky that I caught it the next day. If I had said that on a Friday and I went on a Monday I showed up that could have been thousands of dollars. So little mistakes like that. An expert will definitely catch that. It won't even be an issue. But you really got to know what you're doing in there.
Speaker 1:That's the whole thing. People. Again, you're thinking more of the brand assets, I would say, but it is the application, the processes, the methodology and the understanding of platform. There's all kinds of different platforms and then you have to start going back to what I said earlier about your target audience. Where does your audience hang out? You know, if you're developing hey, you know what I like Google Ads, I enjoy Google Ads Well, that's good for you and what you're doing and it's like you know, know you're engaging with that. However, your target audience you know what you're doing may be more on a different kind of platform. Maybe they're on pinterest, you didn't know. Maybe they're typical people, maybe they're linked and there's. It's just, it's not a complete change of your identity, but it is a change in how you actually present yourself. Would Would you agree with?
Speaker 2:that yeah, and it could be. So they could be on a number of different platforms. And then let's say, you've identified that they maybe they do search very specific keywords in Google, and then now you need to figure out within Google Now, what audiences do I choose, which keywords do I choose to get to that subsection of an audience, of a larger audience, within the platform that you know that they'll be in? So you can get so granular. You just keep going deeper and deeper and deeper.
Speaker 1:And this is important. This is the difference, like before. Let's just back up 20 years before mobile computing. You know, before social media, what was your methodology? The methodology was, you know what? I'm an open business, typically the thing about it I'm going to open an office, I'm going to get my brick and mortar out there, I'm going to do mailers. I'm sending out mailers. Maybe I'm getting the yellow pages. You get some kind of database of clients with addresses and you send it up. Then email came like no, I'm buying email addresses. Now I'm sending out.
Speaker 1:You're starting to get into what I call the digital journey. You're moving into that digital journey. Some people are still at that same digital journey of just email campaigns. There's nothing wrong with that. But, man, people are caught up in email. Sometimes your email is going to get caught up in spam. Your email is going to get caught up in all these other things. You're competing with all kinds of different messages. They didn't work in the social media. You know people.
Speaker 1:I remember when Facebook first came out, people weren't thinking about you know how are they going to make money? It's free, I'll use it, but I don't know how they're going to actually make money. Well, as more and more people adopt the platform. Then you have advertisers like hey, here's where my audience is, I know where they're at, so now I'm going to target them with my advertisement. Now people move into mobile computing. Where are they at? They're on their mobile. They're not just on desktop anymore. I've got enough craftiness Now. There's more than Facebook out there. There's all kinds of different things. Now we're on the verge of virtual world and how that's going to work. More immersive. How do I get more immersive? All these things are impacting marketing. How do you see the impact now with, as we all know, the big elephant in the room AI? Ai is a danger because it can create brand assets. I would say faster Not always better, but faster you can get some digital content out there. How do you see this big change going on in marketing? How is that affecting your business?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when you were referring to mailers and you moved on to email and people are getting into digital, now AI, I think of Gary Vee, right, and so you know, I listened to his videos and he's like he's saying that he's got like a 5 cent clicks and Facebook ads Right, and now that would be like a dollar 10. Right, so it's exponentially grown, but he's he's grown an empire because he was an early adopter into Facebook and so now leading into the future and going into AI, it's like you have to be an early adopter, you know. It's like you know the people who are adopting things like AI and really learning about it. I think truly it'll create the next set of billionaires. You just have to, you have to know how to leverage it. It's going to be really important and so for me and my team we're in there every day.
Speaker 2:You know we're trying to figure out how to leverage it and we do use it for our client work. We use it for ourselves as well, but it's just a really good starting point. It's not the final product by any means whatsoever. If we're using it for client work, it'll spit something out and usually we'll copy and paste the whole page that we're trying to reference and we'll say write something around this topic. The goal is X, y, z. Try to keep it under X amount of words because it likes to ramble. And then, once it spits something out, that's draft one, and then we edit it, and then the client edits it and it's nothing like the original when it first provided the text.
Speaker 1:That's it. It's an enablement tool I like edits it and it's nothing like the original when it first provided the text. That's it. It's an enablement tool. I like that analogy. You probably now are like you know what Prompt engineering is a thing. Now You've got to know how to speak to the LLM, the large language model, that's the big word, the AI engine, because what you put into it is what you're going to get out and to your point, you have to understand it's nuances. It's the ramble. Right now, text is not what you would call what it once was meaning king. You don't need a lot of text. People are more visual. You've got attention span. People are scrolling a lot faster, so you're not going to sit there and have a ton of text. Nobody's reading that. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, I think organic social media trains us to have an attention span of 15 seconds or less. You know, did you entertain me in 15 seconds? No, you didn't. Okay, time to move on.
Speaker 1:You said the entertainment factor. We think about marketing. You know it's infotainment, right, You've got to draw people in Some of a gamification type of atmosphere. So I think about. You know I'm going to put on my client. I'm a client. I always say to people you know what, I get marketing emails all the time. I get people always saying, hey, I got SEO for you, I can improve your YouTube feeds, I can do this, I can do that. Why would somebody want to hire me for their work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so so our focus for our agency it's all about return, ad spend, so ROAS, and so it's a ratio between what your revenue was divided by your costs, right?
Speaker 2:So it spits out a number. So basically, your return on ad spend could be something like for every two dollars you spend on ads, you got four dollars back, and so that'd be a 200 percent return, right. And so it's hard to if you, if you don't have any expertise within digital marketing, it's hard to get a good return out of your digital marketing campaigns, and so our agency is specifically focused on just revenue, because that tends to be what most of our clients are focused on. That's what a business is usually a for-profit business is built on is revenue, and so we put together the ad copy. We don't actually design the creative, but we'll give instruction on how that creative needs to look to fit the persona, budget allocations. There's just a lot that goes into it, and I would say we've been around other digital marketing agencies and my impression is that they tend to be less technical than our agency, like how to leverage the human with the machine learning in the platforms and how do those two work together to get the outcome of revenue.
Speaker 1:Help me understand through, like a case study or somebody that you work with. So I like the idea of the revenue aspect. I've heard so many stories like you know what Marketing is a black aspect. I've heard so many stories like you know what marketing is a black hole. I spent X amount of thousands of dollars. I did not get a return on my investment. I didn't get a direct return or indirect return. I didn't see more business leads. I didn't see more prospects. I didn't see that coming back in the door and want to say, hey, I need to do business with you. Take us through a story where you had some success.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have a good amount of food and beverage clients, specifically the wine, spirits industries, and so we have a client that's in the spirits industry, and so it always takes a minute to figure out the right formula, the right account build out that produces revenue, and so we start working with them. Produces revenue, and so we, um, start working with them. Uh, they're um, uh, it's um, uh I'm trying to think of the, the type of alcohol it is. It's like, uh, um, it's made out of cocoa leaves, uh, what you would use for cocaine, basically, but it doesn't give that same high right like coffee um, there's a lot of things made out of caffeine, so I did it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's already a pretty unique product. And then they had a partnership they currently still do with Resident Evil, and so we launched ads and we're getting around like a one ROAS, like a one-to-one return, which isn't the best. You're basically breaking even on your ads, but your cost of goods puts you on the negative. And then you have our agency fee Ready to elevate your brand with five-star impact.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the File Brand Podcast, your gateway to exceptional personal growth and innovative business strategies. Join me as I unveil the insider strategies of industry pioneers and branding experts. Discover how to supercharge your business development. Harness the power of AI for growth and sculpt a personal brand that stands out in the crowd. Transform ambition into achievement. Explore more at FirestarBDMcom for a wealth of resources.
Speaker 2:Ignite your journey with our brave brand blueprint and begin crafting your standout five-star feature today, and so typically what we do is we start with like a base campaign that's wide-reaching, it targets quite a few different people around the United States, but it's highly focused on the brand and the partnership, since they had a partnership to focus on. And so we let that run for a bit and we're making slight tweaks, adjustments to it and we can get like a like a three row ass, right. So we're starting to build up the performance, the client's starting to make a nice return on their budget and they're starting to make money. And then we'll look into that main campaign that's been running and we'll start to then segment it out, right. So we'll start to then segment it out right. So we'll start to say, well, who's really looking at these ads?
Speaker 2:Like, what states do these people live in? Um, you know what? Uh, is it male, female? Is it mostly? And if anyone's familiar on the on this uh podcast listening, like resident evil is a video game. It's very violent. Uh, it seems to be. Uh, I had to say more male focus, not stereotype or anything. And so then, off that main campaign, then we'll start to build these very unique segments off of that. So that will create males living in California right, because we see a lot of sales coming off that main campaign and we start to create all these little branches of these unique campaigns. And then the next campaign we're working on currently is for gamers right, male gamers so we can see all that data and then that allows us to really scale the ad account. We have all these unique campaigns running and we can start to spend more without diminishing return.
Speaker 1:Now. So that's important. I want people to understand this also that marketing is a lot of. It is around metrics and data. It's a data-driven industry. The data is so important, and not just the visuals and everything. That's all great, but you've got to target it to the right people. So you've got to be looking at these numbers all the time and understanding the trend. Where are the trends at? You know, where are people? Where is their herd moving? Where are they at?
Speaker 1:And then the why why is somebody tuning in to this particular act? As opposed to this? Because you might like, I see this all the time. You know what I create something, man, I love this, right, and you put it out there. But then you didn't do what they call A-B testing, right, or having something that you know that was green, and you might put something out of blue. You might not understand what blue. You know green or blue, which one people like the best if you're not doing testing. But that's what a scientist does. I'm almost thinking like brand marketing. You're almost a data scientist. Brenton, would you agree with my assessment?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I definitely would say so. And you know, what's amazing with digital marketing is you get the data back so quickly that you're you're telling the business like I'm telling my clients like, hey, I noticed that when I use this messaging for your brand with this creative, it's working really well, to the point that I think you should add to your website, right? And then they don't have that insight. They had no idea. And then we can see the conversion rate on on other pages on the website, because we're starting to emulate what's working in ads for a very specific audience that has money.
Speaker 1:So this is important Understanding the difference between organic works. A lot of companies, especially when you're starting out, they have low budget. Right, you're getting things going, you're a startup or maybe you're even four or five years into your business. Understanding the difference between DIY, doing it yourself in organic reach, as opposed to add roots, and understanding when you need to like, do organic. It's not like a either or or, one's bad, one's good. It's understanding when to do something more organic or have maybe, like you were saying earlier, lower budget, and then when to double down hey, budget. And then when to double down hey, we don't need to double down.
Speaker 2:Help us understand that philosophy. Yeah, yeah, and basically it depends on your goals, right? So I always like to quantify goals. We have to know where we want to go and where we want to head, and then we work backwards from that goal. And so once we've quantified that goal, and if we're starting to reach or be on track, we're getting incremental gains every week we see little increases that are leading us towards the goal then we know we can start to scale up.
Speaker 2:And you know, I organic, like let's take organic social media. You know, like our agency used to offer that service and it's just too unpredictable. It just wasn't something that we can see the incremental gains. We would post for a client the most basic video. It does really well, and then we put something more thought-provoking and put more time into some other creative and it just doesn't perform. And so that's the main reason why we we really focus on paid um, you know these platforms. You know facebook, uh, instagram. They want you to, they want you to pay to play, obviously, and uh, and so it's it's. It's just not worth fighting the the algorithm and trying to understand, understand what's going to go viral, because it's so unpredictable.
Speaker 1:If I understand what you said there, meaning, let's say, you do organic, you've got YouTube, you've got your Facebook, you've got LinkedIn, but you're just doing organic, just posting things out there for an audience. But the algorithm correct me if I'm wrong the algorithm is like it's coin operating. Is that what I'm hearing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it tends to be. Yeah, it's just yeah, when you try to post something on our social media, it's just. You can try to recreate your formula, try to get whatever worked last time and let's say, you got good engagement last post. Can try to recreate your formula. Try to, you know, get you know whatever worked last time and let's say you got good engagement last post. You try to duplicate it, at least from my experience. Um, the clients I've been working with, and even for our own business, um, it's just not repeatable. Uh, and that's not to say that. Um, you know, I'm sure there's, there's a lot of influences in this world and they built their brands organically. Um, but for us, you know, for our own agency, we just prefer to just pay to play, and I know everyone doesn't have the budget to run paid ads, but Give us a little bit of, because this is important.
Speaker 1:This is another big big thing. Like I hear what you're saying, I got it, but I don't have this unlimited war chest of dollars to figure this out and pay, because and I remember talking to some brand masters that have been on the program before you've got to first find out what's working and then invest in that Doubling down. This is working. Now we want to put our dollars where this creative is working. And platform, because all these platforms are a little bit different. How do you advise clients on how to actually allocate their budget?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so okay. So I always say to a client uh, we need to spend at least 1500 per month, which I know for a smaller business that can be a decent amount of money. And the reason I say $1,500. And that's spread over 2 campaigns at the most and the reason I say $1,500 is there's something called a learning mode and these platforms, they have a period where let's take Facebook, for example, facebook ads.
Speaker 2:There's a period where you launch a period where, like let's take Facebook, for example, facebook ads there's a period where you launch a new campaign and it needs to reference historical data to understand who to show ads to in the future, right. So it needs to build up, it needs to learn and the algorithm needs to collect data. But for that algorithm to collect that data has to spend budget, right, that's the only way you can get the data. It has to spend the money and then it learns as it spends money. And so in order to get out of learning mode, you need to spend a certain amount, and 1500. Sometimes you don't even exit learning mode, but it learned enough to reach the result that you want. So always tell clients at least 1500 per month.
Speaker 1:That's important. We need to understand how the machine works, just like anything else. If you don't put gas in your car, it's not going to go very far. And then you understand how much money do I need to put, how much gas do I need to put in my vehicle to get to where I want to go? And I don't think we really understood that on a whole understanding how this works. We're trying to fight the machine, but the machine is built for a certain way. I need premium gas to operate the vehicle but also to get to where you want to go. So if you spend $1,500, are we expecting a return? And a lot of this might be time-based. Like you know what, you spend $1,500 a month, you're expecting to get, within maybe three to six months, a return of X. Is that some of the pitch that you do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll give you a real example. So we just started working with a client. They're a coffee company in Charleston and so, uh, I told him 1500,. Um, cause, they're mostly focused on retail and this is kind of like a test for them and for our agency. We just want to prove, like, we don't do long contracts, we just want to prove based on performance. And it's a month to month contract. And uh, well, you typically give us at least two to three months, yeah, and then after that it's month to month and we can pretty much prove ourself, um, by the third month, definitely by the third month. And so, um, I told him, you know, 1500 is the minimum we we need to spend. And so in that first month we're the algorithm's doing so much learning that it's running really rough. That's pretty consistent. That first month is not a good return. So, off that first $1,500, we probably got it back about $1,000. So it's definitely a loss for the business.
Speaker 1:Now you said you got back $1,000. That's $1,000 in what? In new business, In new leads? Or how do you quantify that $1,000?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's e-commerce revenue. It's actual purchases on the website, actual sales, yeah, yeah, so that's. I think it was like a like around 0.7 row as, or something like 0.6 row, so it's. We at least want to be one-to-one right to at least break even from what we spent on ads. We want to get that back at the very least. Um, so it's a loss. And then going into the second month, um, we're still stuck in, uh, limited learning. This is in facebook ads. It's a loss. And then, going into the second month, we're still stuck in limited learning. This is in Facebook ads. It's called limited learning. So it didn't fully learn, but it learned enough to the point that, going into our second month, we've got a two point nine row. So for every dollar, or explain what is.
Speaker 1:What does that stand for?
Speaker 2:Yes, return, adsp spend, got it, yeah. So basically, in this example, for every $1 we spend on ads, we got $2.90 back. So at that, $1,500, that's I can't do the math in my head almost $4,400 off the $1,500, right? So now we're starting to make decent profit. It covers my costs as an agency. It covers your cogs, uh, your cost of goods, uh, covers the ad spin and the ad account and it's still learning, right, it's still still learning, it's still getting better. And then go into next month now to the 3.1 and went from a 2.9 row ass to 3.1. So for every $1 we spend, we're getting $3.10 back now, and so that's the pattern that you should expect if you're doing it the right way with Google ads and Facebook ads.
Speaker 1:And that's quantifiable. That's very quantifiable. It's such an easier conversation to have with a chief marketing officer or CEO whoever the business owner is Like OK, I'm going to start this way. This is, this is the playbook that we have and this is what we're going to start this way. This is the playbook that we have and this is what we're going to do. This is how we're going to measure success.
Speaker 1:I'm telling you right now we're going to run this place 1,500. We're not going to get this back immediately, but we're going to keep running it. But we're using now, machine learning. Now, all these are budgeted Machine learning, ml, ai, artificial machine learning, ml, ai, artificial intelligence. They always think of AI as a chatbot, but it's more than that. It's just this one application within an AI model. But how do you know Because this is the new business model, as we talked about before how we did business in the 80s, 90s, before digital how do we get return on investment?
Speaker 1:How do we get the machine to work for us? That's what we want it to do, but we can't do it. We can't just bang out a bunch of phone calls, right? Can't just bang out a bunch of emails and get that kind of ROI. People get scared because they haven't done it before. All right, $1,500. Wow, but we haven't talked about your cost and all the other stuff. It probably was more of that. What's your initial investment? How do you get all that back Now? You just told us the formula for success. Now here's another question how do you tell a client that their baby is ugly? You got this website. You got this e-commerce. You got this form. You want me to take this and make it into, you know, a beauty queen. How do you do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I yeah. That's a tough conversation, and so if the website is like, let's take the website specifically. For example, if the website looks really terrible, um, what I'll do? And then the website is really important, right, it doesn't matter. If you're doing email marketing, they got to go to the website. If you're doing, uh, organic social media, they got the most likely need to go to your website. So it's the hub of everything that you do. It's extremely crucial.
Speaker 2:If it's not looking right, I'll typically tell the client that I just don't think the conversion rate is going to be what we hope I'd love to, and I don't charge extra for this. I'll give a list of bullet points. It's constructive feedback. Before I tell them anything about the website, I already have a list of thoughts. It's more focused on solutions than knocking down. I'm sure they worked hard on it. I'm not trying to take away from that. It turns the conversation more into a positive, constructive criticism instead of I don't like this, I hate this. Over here they're like why did you do this? You know who are you speaking to. So instead it's you know. Here's what we need to do to get to a place where the website's good enough for us to launch digital marketing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got to have an evolution and there's different things. If you're trying to roll out a new service or you're doing it in a different way, or even if you're changing agencies because you've done it a certain way and maybe that worked for that period of time. But anytime you roll out anything different and I've done this and I've seen like, wow, I've got to now upgrade my digital assets and update the website. I just now updated my website. Just here in December, I just rolled out an e-commerce store on my website, just rolling it out. Now I'm getting to that point like, all right, now I've got it actionable. I've got to start looking at it.
Speaker 1:All right, what I did before, is it relevant to what I'm going to do going forward? And I see that as like I need a professional like Brenton to help me, because I don't know what I don't know. You know we say $15,000, that's just money. He's like no, if your goal is to make $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 a month, just to say, just throwing out numbers, this is what you're going to have to do to get to that level. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Yeah and let's say like. So, if you're going to work with someone like me and let's say your website is so bad that I can't, it doesn't matter how much feedback there's, just like functional errors. There's a lot of issues Working with someone like me. If it's to that point, we'll actually create a landing page Just for the things that we're trying to do, and we'll separate the landing page away from your brand and so there's no header or footer. We just want the person to be intrigued enough to just reach out to you and then you can then have an email conversation this is probably lead generation, right and then you can have a conversation with that person. So that might be tough for the average person to know. It's at that point where, actually, you switch over to a landing page and then what goes on the landing page. That's a whole thought process.
Speaker 1:So another side note on that, no, no, what you're talking about is so important. I've seen a lot in the last year of Trent I'm I've seen a lot in the last year of Trent talking about Trent now of they call them like for sale, of ClickFunnels. Right, they're sales funnels A lot of you know. I want you to help us understand what those are, because I had this conversation with somebody. You know you'd probably be better off landing page that's more directed to the servers, because you might have so much other stuff on your site that's talking about other things. You don't want to create confusion, but talk to us about click funnels and how that works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I I tend to uh not use click funnels. I've used it a couple of times, um, and I know it's like a. It's a really good. Um, I'm trying to think how to like say this. Uh, it kind of like boxes you in in a way, so they put the guardrails around you, which I prefer to be a little more free with my landing pages and have full control. And also, from a design perspective, I think it's also a little limiting. But to go inside WordPress and then be able to create the landing page from scratch is definitely what I prefer.
Speaker 2:But typically for a good landing page, when I'm working on landing pages for a client, we'll definitely take off the header and footer Right, so that there's no decision paralysis.
Speaker 2:That can happen. I think sometimes you'll have a prospect that lands on the website and you got all these different services. You got about us page, yeah, and then maybe contact us is somewhere hidden in the footer, depending on the website design, and so I think if someone is looking for something very specific and they can't find it and they have to search and they're most likely going to leave better than I, this is too much effort. I'm going to go to the next person on google and if I can find it easily, then I'm going to go to the next person on Google and if I can find it easily, then I'm going to work with them, whatever it is, whether it's pricing that they're looking you know, maybe how do I reach out to this, this company, whatever it is that they can't find it, but the landing page will streamline all that, so it's all very easy to see and it's all in the right spot. Interesting in the right spot. Interesting.
Speaker 1:Less clutter, yeah, and more creativity for what you're saying. Some people don't understand ClickFunnels. It's a guided process. It's more guided what you want it to do, but a lot of it just depends on what your goal is. What are you trying to accomplish and using it from a user experience layer? What is the user experience? What are they used to, how do they dive in and what is it that you're doing? I think that's so important.
Speaker 1:Last question, before I leave you this is more or less where I like, hey, I want to give you the mic. I want all the things we've talked about and understanding our audience out here, because we, I believe, right now, understanding digital marketing is changing. It's changing again, it's morphing, it's changing, it's become more scientific than it is artistic. I think we, our audience, needs to understand that. And then it's more financial than it's ever been and understanding how to to move that, and then it's more financial than it's ever been in understanding how to move that forward. So, with all that said, help us to tell us why do we need to come to Britain to get to our next level.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot of numbers to your point. It's extremely scientific and you really have to understand. There's a lot of numbers to your to your point is extremely scientific and you really have to understand how to take your like, what you know in the real world as a human and what you know about your business, and you need to marry that with the algorithm you like. You need to combine human with machine machine learning and so there there's just there's a lot to these algorithms to understand, like how to get the most out of them, and like a big piece of that is definitely your campaign optimization, right. So what are you optimizing towards? You can only choose one thing to optimize towards, and so in order to optimize towards, let's say, revenue, right, Because most businesses want revenue In order to optimize for that, you have to then declare on your website when is revenue being received, and that's a whole technical process.
Speaker 2:Now you have to tag things up on the website An average person cannot do that in order to teach the machine learning that this is the event that took place in the past, and I want more of this based on the tracking that you tagged up on your website. So little things like that, like if you have technical errors and you're not feeding the right data, you don't have the right data set that you're feeding into the machine learning, you're automatically doomed. So, working with an agency like us, we definitely take care of all that. That's like the first thing we do is we get the right data in there so we can trust the data. It helps the machine learning and then also on a human level, we can make good decisions, informed decisions. So I would say that's why you want to work with an agency and your expertise is your expertise for Google ads, facebook ads, more social media.
Speaker 1:What would you say?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we used to offer web development and organic social media and some other stuff, and we stopped offering that and we as an agency decided to get really good at just Google ads, facebook ads, linkedin ads, seo and email marketing and that's it. So we've gotten extremely good. You know we're not. You know our attention is not diverted into other things and we're just highly focused on paid SEO and email.
Speaker 1:I like that. I like that. So let the audience know how do we contact Gleady?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'll in the show notes I'll send you some links you can either. So in the show notes I'll send you some links. You can either. In the show notes I'll give you a Calendly link so people can reach out to me schedule 30 minutes. You can go to our website it's twivyagencycom. And you can find me on LinkedIn. Just search Brenton Thomas Pretty unique name, b-r-e-n-t-o-n and you can add me there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think that's how we were initially linked up. It's one of the ways that we did. Now, do you do any brand audits? Also, do you do a brand audit for somebody like that first initial consultation? Is that a brand audit or is that something different?
Speaker 2:We do. It's more of like a Google Ads audit. We'll go more into your ad account, which we will look at your demographics, but it's not as much. It's not specifically quite a brand audit, but it kind of like it starts to creep into that area a little bit, but it stays more in the realm of a specific channel. So like an audit of SEO or an audit of Google Ads, facebook Ads, linkedin Ads.
Speaker 1:Nice, nice. So you've got to get the precursor to understanding what you're going to need to move forward, to get the engine operating. Man, I love this, I love this conversation. I think you quantify the why you need to spend, the why of it. You're going to make an investment, You're going to be in business and in today's business, if your digital platform is not up to smug, you could be out of business very, very quickly without even understanding why. I think you definitely framed the story of why.
Speaker 1:I thank you for being here on the show, especially in the brand master suit. You have identified yourself as a brand master and I really, really appreciate that. If your audience wants to contact me, they can do so at 5starBDM. That's the number. 5starbdm, that's B for brand, D for development, and from masterscom. This has been wonderful. Thank you so much for being with us today on the Follow Brand Podcast. Thanks for having us. Thanks for joining us on the Follow Brand podcast. Big thanks to full effect productions for their incredible support on each and every episode. Now the journey continues on our YouTube channel follow brand TV series. Dive into exclusive interviews, extended content and bonus insights that will fuel your success. Subscribe now and be a part of our growing community, sharing and learning together. Explore, engage and elevate. At Follow Brand TV Series on YouTube. Stay connected, stay inspired. Till next time, we will continue building a five-star brand that you can follow.