7: Daniel Johnson, Founding Partner of We Scale Startups, sold his first business at 17 yrs old & went on to work with Google, Neil Patel, ConsenSys, and others.

paris_vega: welcome to episode seven of the first customers podcast i'm here with daniel johnson from we scale startups he's a founding partner there and before that he worked it or he's worked with google neil patel and consensus among other companies and now he's focused on helping startups grow daniel welcome to the show daniel: i excited to be here paris_vega: thank you for making time for us today let's get into your background introduce yourself to the audience a little bit start by telling us where you grew up daniel: sure so i grew up in south africa in a place called johannesburg paris_vega: oh wow daniel: yeah and then i moved to the when i was quite young and i've been living here ever since i actually think that growing up in a different location or like having that immigrant mentality as definitely assisted in where i am today and i love to talk about that actually paris_vega: yeah talk about that immigrant mentality hat do you mean by that daniel: sweet so i think it's quite a new anster and culturally depending on who hears this will have their own interpretation of what that means but for me paris_vega: right daniel: it was kind of like not being afraid of change because you're used to it because as a young person you sort of embrace it and i think i don't necessarily have that experience of what it's like not not to have that change so i think certain as a kid you're introduced to change innovation and i mean i know it sounds like a buzz word but actually it is to an extent you know it's changing your location for a better life its innovation paris_vega: right daniel: and that definitely contributed to me being inspired to working with startups and actually probably is related to sort of how i did what i do and what i got involved in as a young person paris_vega: yeah when you were younger did you sell anything or did you have any kind of early business experience or like doortadoor daniel: yeah paris_vega: fund raisers that kind of thing daniel: i was that annoying kid i was paris_vega: oh daniel: i was selling anything he could get his hands on to everyone at school and it was great fun and i loved it so gum o sweets so eventually had a couple vending machines in my school paris_vega: oh wow daniel: at the same time sold us b drives called funky flash drives back in the day paris_vega: yeah daniel: had a affiliate blog truly random met paris_vega: did you own the daniel: so paris_vega: vending machines daniel: i release them paris_vega: really daniel: from company that owned them and then paris_vega: and that was daniel: yeah paris_vega: while daniel: we paris_vega: you were in school daniel: they were at school there were some annoying requirements but i negotiated with the principle to like try paris_vega: what daniel: and organize that paris_vega: yeah daniel: man kids are paris_vega: yeah daniel: awful customers because they were just shove like bits and pieces the coin rack and complain at me paris_vega: right daniel: every single day because the prices were always too high regardless of how high the prices were but i mean it was a really good way to sort of learn about like financial management and planning and actually resource avocation and customer service and all that kind of stuff paris_vega: sure daniel: and at the same time i worked in customers i worked in retail and i never want to do it again but it was one of the best jobs i've ever had and it's one of the most paris_vega: m daniel: valuable jobs i had so basically i did all of this during school i always wanted to be an inventor paris_vega: oh daniel: at the time so for me like it was just coming up with new things i love this idea that you could come up with something then sort of turned into a business and no one stopping you you sort of what's legal all just about that pretty much you can do mostly what you wanted and i love that idea so i was just started with sweets and then it kind of evolved my first business was good image to painting which was a platform that allowed people to upload images to our website get them professionally painted and posted to your house and it was a really fun story paris_vega: m daniel: it initially started when i was living few houses ago and i overheard my my mom speaking to paris_vega: yeah daniel: a family friend of ours o sorry family friend speaking to my mom about getting paris_vega: yeah daniel: a painting of her daughter paris_vega: yeah daniel: um who's getting married although my mom works in finance most of her life she know she's quite artistic and has a lot of connections so we're trying to connect that and i kind of butted in and i said i have a friend of the local university who is doing fine art how about i introduce you guys and i get a little commission and at the time i didn't realize what this was called but it was probably market fit i was living with my parents in the middle of nowhere no one know had that time before but that worked really well the artist did really well i got a nice commission and i said if this works well for you do you know anyone else that might be relevant for this and eventually it started growing you know the time i was also and i really like computers are like how they worked like building them like breaking them and break them i did paris_vega: uh uh daniel: so this kind of naturally inclined me to sort of create website because i was like oh like how stuff works and i was slightly i'm not by any means a developer absolute wish i was it's kind of amazing how much time i spent coding and as developer but paris_vega: m daniel: anyway credit my first website got all that sort of started learning o because i didn't have paris_vega: okay daniel: any budget for anything else paris_vega: yeah daniel: and essentially my business was growing and i didn't really know how or why it was it was almost by accident so i paris_vega: at that daniel: started paris_vega: point daniel: bringing paris_vega: was it an affiliate blog or was it an agency service daniel: i know paris_vega: or daniel: is paris_vega: what daniel: a platform that was ietentinthat was paris_vega: oh daniel: the paris_vega: that was okay that was daniel: so paris_vega: still that okay daniel: i've been growing that over time because basically it started with that one person and scaled organically from there really well so i developed paris_vega: wow daniel: a website started doing m realized that wasn't enough so i did doorgdoor literally when paris_vega: a daniel: some some cheeky little kid gay doors being like my name is daniel i found this and then you know we had materials paris_vega: wow daniel: and stuff but that was a great experience and fortunate i was too young to have any shame or embarrassment so i didn't care you paris_vega: right daniel: know if someone was rude to me i was like oh how dare they be rude who do they think they are paris_vega: oh daniel: s opposed to like i'm being paris_vega: a daniel: this annoying little kid like trying to sell my platform but it worked well very quickly learned sort of had to do that and actually that became quite probable long story short that ended up scaling um and i exited that actually to texas based p who actually paris_vega: wow daniel: owned one of our competitors at the time but we did not know that we had a really fun relationship we had a we abisonsamake a good goss on paris_vega: yeah daniel: the podcast paris_vega: uh daniel: we had a paris_vega: uh daniel: very paris_vega: oh daniel: senior member of dahl who paris_vega: no daniel: was an investor and individual in our business and as such we got very very preferential rates and when we ended up getting sold paris_vega: ah daniel: i later found out that we paris_vega: oh daniel: they brought us predominantly for our supply chain and our transport contracts paris_vega: wow daniel: i just got absorbed by paris_vega: was daniel: someone paris_vega: it like daniel: else paris_vega: a strategic acquisition for them daniel: like paris_vega: okay daniel: i was i don't know i was like seventeen eighteen at the time so i paris_vega: really daniel: i didn't know like i didn't push hard enough i didn't negotiate hard enough like paris_vega: m daniel: as a fat number on a check and then after lawyer more fees and h m r c the us s you know it was not nearly as exciting but paris_vega: yeah daniel: it was paris_vega: that's daniel: it paris_vega: incredible daniel: was de paris_vega: though being that young daniel: well paris_vega: to have daniel: yes paris_vega: when did you start that versus how long did it take to exit daniel: talk about a year paris_vega: sell it daniel: um paris_vega: really daniel: and i was very fortunate and i think what really helped me is that i found people along the way they were more generous than they ever needed to be and i just wanted to help and because of their help like if it wasn't for that i absolutely would not have done that like paris_vega: yeah daniel: i don't want to just sound humble i want to ensure that anyone who does listen to this de stands i fell into that fell upwards and i'm very fortunate for that because it gave me a lot of experiences that i've now used from other companies essentially once i so that i was like paris_vega: m daniel: what do i do with myself because i have no qualifications to my name didn't get into university anything exciting like that so paris_vega: you didn't get daniel: i paris_vega: into university daniel: much the paris_vega: really daniel: dismay by indian you can imagine that paris_vega: oh daniel: yeah my grades are awful although i kind of hold them like a badge of on an our because i am in my community now there's a lot of pressure not to go to university but also to study stem and not even it like has to be oxbridge paris_vega: right daniel: kind of thing paris_vega: but did all the work you were doing on the business i mean surely that was recognized by daniel: yes paris_vega: family daniel: or no paris_vega: or no okay daniel: i think that the two different things i think particularly from an asian background like the education paris_vega: m daniel: culture aspect is a is an emotional thing it's a safety security feeling as opposed as opposed to a logical is based on a lot and but yeah i think now now that they're kind of fine with that but it definitely was a difficult decision paris_vega: right daniel: um but you know for me i learned a lot and in fact to get slightly of topic it's actually quite interesting university has been a choice of decision that i've been thinking about a lot back in the day and i think there's two sides to university education that you get one is the academic side and the other is the paris_vega: right daniel: social development side and i think when you paris_vega: okay daniel: are young and you're you're discovering yourself you've left home your exploring your boundaries and provides a nice safe environment to explore that in now after i sold my company what do i do with myself um i ended up moving out and just sort of consulting doing bits and pieces starting other projects but man there was a lot of time i was like i kind of wish i you know i didn't have anyone my age there was not a single person that as my all my friends are like paris_vega: wow daniel: middle aged couples paris_vega: yeah daniel: and i was thinking to myself what am i doing and you know this was like four years ago so a while ago paris_vega: wow daniel: and but it was you know it was jolly good fun after it was fainting with that idea yeah i was kind of like oh this is fun i want to do more of this so i basically started a whole bunch of other ideas most of which failed miserably because i didn't think about product market fit um and but for me it wasn't the marketing you know never woke up and said i want to be a market or what i wanted to learn the most difficult skill which was how do i get people at scale to use my product profitably paris_vega: yeah daniel: because coming up with idea is only like ten percent paris_vega: yeah daniel: of it so paris_vega: ah daniel: essentially what i did there was like i wanted to brood force my learning so i tried to find how can i do this for other people and just find a way and as such i worked in a whole bunch of different pani's i in marketing roles from from like tiny small awful companies in no probiymarket fit up to sort of seriously fast growing well funded startups and it was at that point i was kind of like what do i do myself now and at the time i had a lot of people who were sort of message to me asked me for work and my ultimate goal was learning like how can i learn faster how can i develop that understanding and i want to see like the patterns between the successful companies and the non successful companies um and over time i was starting to see that but it was difficult to see when you're working in one company so i became a free lancer and i started to see the same patterns and successful companies regardless of the industry and that that as paris_vega: m daniel: what i was looking for and that i was like paris_vega: okay daniel: oh this is super cool this is paris_vega: oh daniel: this is cool paris_vega: ah daniel: and then basically what i've been doing since then is i mean i start my agency we skill startups but it developing and understanding their theory and understanding how businesses work and what makes people tick and i love it now now it makes sense to me it's so clear like i've got a model in my head and it never fails and it's really interesting once you've seen that and it's simple but hard that's how i kind of see it kind of paris_vega: okay daniel: see i'm kind of going on my own like monologue here paris_vega: that's daniel: so paris_vega: okay daniel: i feel it's paris_vega: you're daniel: time paris_vega: good daniel: shut up but paris_vega: yeah daniel: it's interesting what i realized is that regardless of the industry or even be versus b c there are certain fundamental things that remain true so the first is marketing is simply a relationship between a brand and a customer or the process of building a relationship between a brand and customer paris_vega: okay daniel: and i think when i got into this like after selling my company you know i started learning i'm an avid avid reader i will read and do every course i can get my hands on and it was really weird because the theory that i was learning didn't necessarily connect with my experience and i was really confused by this paris_vega: oh daniel: but essentially yeah what i learned was like you've got you've always got to build the foundation before you build the chimney and that sounds so simple but every first time found gets a wrong and for me that foundation was who is my customer what is the problem i'm solving how do i articulate that problem in a way that makes sense to my customer so messaging um and one other aspect but it's just escaped me paris_vega: oh daniel: and like no matter how many sorry it's been a long long day paris_vega: no problem at all daniel: i am but yeah and just blows my mind amount of like super clever interesting people who i've explained this to you they're ike yeah totally get until you get it let's just find a way to growth hack it let's just just do paris_vega: oh daniel: it paris_vega: yeah daniel: and it's paris_vega: looking daniel: like paris_vega: for a short cut daniel: i think until you get burnt you will never understand that but it's so emotionally scared in me like so many unsuccessful campaigns because we've tried to go forwards without that um m but and then that's kind of what i do so companies come to me and recal startups we used to be false to just marketing but what i realized is that actually people don't care about what we do they care about the results and actually what paris_vega: right daniel: i realized is that clients now come to me they say we're here want to get to her what does that process look like paris_vega: ye daniel: um and then i break that down and i reverse engineer it and i say okay well in order to get here we need to get aunt of users well how do we do that when channels are involved what does hat does that what does that process look like and then you paris_vega: right daniel: sort of construct it perform experience see which experiment work and see which one don't obviously underneath all of this is like some very advanced tats and and like lots of mats and technical stuff but paris_vega: sure daniel: actually i think keeping it simple is harder than than doing the technical stuff um and being able to understand like how did the technical things connect with the strategy and the big problems were solving um it's paris_vega: especially daniel: funny paris_vega: now when it's so complicated because there's so many options there's infinite platforms almost at least once you get on all the platform there's infinite options and ways you can optimize campaigns daniel: and it's funny because i came you know as used to be my bread and butter and i still love adds a big fan of them and i think when they use correctly that they're effective but what i realized this isn't like nineteen and like intellectually understood it but i realized that each channel is just a tool in your tool box and it's all about what is the appropriate tool for the situation paris_vega: yeah daniel: and when i kind of understood that it really helped me it also helped me with strategy a lot i realized i was trying to push certain channels were not appropriate but may not have been the best channel and i was like okay how do i use this tool to achieve this goal is opposed to what is the best tool to achieve this goal which actually just made life a paris_vega: m daniel: lot easier then i was actually using tools and channels more effectively and thinking about the user journey yet i don't really think about it too based anymore just think about one of the steps that a customer needs to go to go through to become an active and loyal engaged user of your brandell service from paris_vega: yeah daniel: where they are now which might be never heard of you paris_vega: could you give an example of maybe a kind of average customer journey daniel: sure so i mean i quite like using pirate metre which is just a variation of you know segmentation which goes awareness i qisition activation retention refer so but a lot of my clients may not necsarily know this process or what i say to them is kind of like unfortunately i wish most people would wake up and they would think you know the first thing they would do is i want to buy your product you know one of my clients products a piece of jewelry from rock and war for example unfortunately paris_vega: hm daniel: they don't wake up with that what they do is that they wake up with a problem or they want to get solved we all have just problems in our life which we want to get solved and what they do then is they think to themselves the first stage is actually figuring out do they have a problem and then it's defining the problem so it's actually understanding where that problem comes from and what that problem is in their life so the position it in how impactful is this problem once they've done that they start investigating how to solve the problem so this might sound like we're breaking down into microsegments but actually before we make any conscious decision there's a lot of micro decisions that were making and this problem might be how do i get fitter and might be how do i paris_vega: yeah daniel: improve my relationships paris_vega: yeah daniel: it might be what do i eat for dinna that night you paris_vega: right daniel: know that that always doesn't matter it's more about one of the steps that we take so defining the problem researching the problem identifying solutions to that problem so that might be if i'm hungry that might be breds that might be wagmamas which is a restaurant over here b making my own food um or smoothe you know so it's not just you and your competitors it everything that might solve customers problem that you do um and by understanding that that process and then use a journey we can understand the emotions and challenges that our customer faces and by understanding that we can more effectively solve their problem and talk to them and i think that makes when we think about it that way like i love doing what i do i think there's there's a lot of taboo on marketing but actually what i realized is that all i'm doing is helping people solve problems the more accurately paris_vega: right daniel: i can help you solve these problems the more money i make the more successful my clients the happier everyone is and paris_vega: right daniel: so when we see span like i mean obviously it does work otherwise people wouldn't spend millions on s paris_vega: sure daniel: ps that generate it but on the whole like the more efficiently i can understand my customer the better i can people don't hate adds they hate un targeted adds if we had some paris_vega: right daniel: sort of you must chip in our brain that was saying exactly every problem we had using all the information we had it would be fantastic would solve our problems before we figure it out kind of reminds me of that story about that lady who went to mart and based on our buying patterns congratulated or on new baby that neither paris_vega: m daniel: she nor her dad who was with her knew at paris_vega: oh daniel: the time m now perhaps that's a bit paris_vega: oh daniel: evasive but to a certain paris_vega: right daniel: extent if we had a robot that could answer all our questions and solve all our problems for us we would we would pay for that paris_vega: sure daniel: so the better you understand your customer that just the more efficient everything is um paris_vega: yeah daniel: yeah paris_vega: so it's like pam is just marketing or advertising you c for a problem you don't have daniel: yeah i like how you articulate to that i often think about it like news letters when talking to my clients in a big tin of email worked really well if done if done properly and i say to them you imagine it in a thousand emails a day how would you feel and immediately they're like no i don't want that that's that's not great and then i'm like okay imagine about a thousand dollars so every time you open that email you receive a thousand dollar into your bank on instant no catch no worries and they'd be like yeah open open a few mails you're like it's not it's not sparing any more as you know it's quite exciting to open paris_vega: right daniel: now unfortunately a bit bit expensive we send every one of our customers a thousand dollars every paris_vega: oh daniel: time we ever send them an email but what paris_vega: ah daniel: we can do is we can find a common ground we can and some form of value that adds to their life i mean that's a bit specific paris_vega: that's daniel: to paris_vega: good daniel: sort of email but i think in general you know it's all about solving problems and figuring out how to do that and actually when you think about it from that perspective it becomes a lot easier i think it's very easy to get lost in there the weeds and in the detail paris_vega: for sure i love that and i think that's a great perspective on marketing focusing it on solving problems and because that will help you at every step of the marketing funnel take us back to starting this current business that you have now your agency daniel: oh paris_vega: and those very first customers that you brought daniel: yeah paris_vega: in how did you find them daniel: m paris_vega: or daniel: m paris_vega: network with them go into a little bit about that of how you got those very first or the first customer daniel: ah so i would say ninety percent of our customers are farrels the beginning i didn't know anything and i was just constantly asking questions from everyone anyone who would listen anyone who would share some advice and as a result of that a lot of them were slack groups and what's up groups and paris_vega: okay daniel: i would say for like five years i asked a hell of a lot of questions until people would just get annoyed at me and paris_vega: and daniel: then paris_vega: what daniel: it paris_vega: kind daniel: starts paris_vega: of what kind of groups were they like there were slat groups daniel: start paris_vega: bowed like daniel: up marketing paris_vega: okay daniel: innovation so anywhere around those kind of areas and also paris_vega: okay daniel: some like you more specific product management fund raising stuff like that i think as i started learning more i switched to answering more than that i asked to try and you know so many people had gone out of their way to just give me paris_vega: yeah daniel: advice and they receive nothing from it and i was really appreciative and grateful for that so what i wanted to try and do is like how can i that back so i started answering a lot of questions and i became very active i liked the sound of my own voice even in text paris_vega: oh daniel: and i enjoyed that and it was just really fun and i became sort of we started tagging me in no uh expecting as the phrase i'm looking for was the domain expert unofficially on a bunch of different topics paris_vega: okay daniel: and then people started saying hey daniel do you know anyone that can do and i be like you know here i am paris_vega: yeah daniel: then and now it's basically just what's up from old clients to new clients like i get forward to these emails saying hey do you know anyone that can help with this and then they just enjoy me and i really like that paris_vega: wow daniel: i really like the fact that most of my clients are super warm leads from existing old customers that were really happy with me because it means that the closing the deal is just having a conversation more than anything else paris_vega: right daniel: but it's not predictable it's not scalable and it's not necessarily repeatable which is the biggest concern that we have as an agency because it's great having this and so far it's done pretty well even through ovid paris_vega: yeah daniel: but you know it's not it's not predictable at the end of the paris_vega: right daniel: day it's not feasible so we do also and increasing ly have been investing in a bunch of other things so we do use some platforms and we find some some mild engagement with those platforms markets are higher a t may pall like all these very sort of free lance platforms they can be quite useful i do just interact in a bunch of other slack groups and i find their general conversation either gets me a lot of brandy in it's funny i think like the fond establishing basics do fifty percent of it so having paris_vega: m daniel: a strong think about where do i position myself what what is the main problems that i solve and then developing brand asset so i have my website which is daniel johnson paris_vega: okay daniel: dot so i said agency website linked in and i i thought about where do i want to position myself and then i promoted myself on these different websites and i made paris_vega: okay daniel: sure that my linton and everything was ship hot and i get a lot of cold leads sort of normal leads through those platforms even just people on my linked in who message me saying i really love you linked in and not hard like now i think we're always trying to think strategically about like what's what's a cool technique we can use to have an asometricmassive impact but actually if you think paris_vega: right daniel: about it paris_vega: oh daniel: let's get the basins done first let's make sure they're sorted and and like having that sorted solved so many problems already and then once you've got that you can start thinking about at the next layer i also think that one of the biggest issues is being a general ist both as a free lancer as a marketing agency and all my customers the smaller that like most specific paris_vega: yeah daniel: grip your customers the more effective campaigns kind of like full stop it's pretty broad like that um paris_vega: so daniel: m paris_vega: what do you mean by the smaller like the target audience that you're daniel: yes paris_vega: going after okay daniel: so the smallest possible market start with the smallest possible market and then dominate them and expand from there and paris_vega: okay daniel: i think a lot of people intellectually understand this but they struggle to that no one wants to this out paris_vega: right and i know that in some ways the platforms have made it harder to focus on smaller groups like back in the day you could upload one email address to facebook and send an add to your friend and it worked daniel: m paris_vega: basically like it was super targeted but now you know you have to have at least what a thousand email address daniel: yeah paris_vega: is just so it's more anonymous daniel: oh paris_vega: you know daniel: and then also like email addresses you have and collate i mean you get to california law and g p r here but you know personal email verso work email so how do you target people with you to be paris_vega: right daniel: able to give you all that kind of stuff but also like this comes it's funny there was this i think it was google when you could target people down to the person there was a story i read about some engineer paris_vega: i daniel: targeting as housemate we're watching you on paris_vega: yeah daniel: like on all is paris_vega: oh daniel: adds like paris_vega: yeah daniel: a maximum frequency just targetonis one person later on someone used something similar to target an employer and say you should hire me as a digital market paris_vega: right daniel: and i thought that's a really clever idea paris_vega: yep daniel: yeah so a thousand is the minimum of the moment and for most of our customers that's not really an issue um m most people will provide the email if they feel it's justified if they feel they're going paris_vega: right daniel: to get something from it and they trust you so it's not too much of the issue kind of just depends on like yeah your customers and kind of what the problem is the re solving for them paris_vega: do you remember what the very first person like from the forms or the slat groups that you were involved with what the first job was that you agreed to do for daniel: yeah paris_vega: somebody like in like daniel: face book at i think paris_vega: okay daniel: it went terribly like paris_vega: yeah daniel: that went awfully um m i think i had a lot to learn then when you're working in a company adding value that's a very very different compared to a consultant or a freelance adding value compared to an agency so when you're working in a company it's mostly about the val that you provide and it's quite quantifiable when you become a consultant it's halfway between them so it's not just about the value provide but it's about the value that your clients perceive have provided so i'll go into that in a bit paris_vega: right daniel: more detail and then paris_vega: yeah daniel: as an agency people hire you not just produce the results for a sense of safety and trust hire you so that when they sign that check don't have to worry about their marketing any more there's a s a nice warm comfortable marketing blanket over their shoulders paris_vega: yeah daniel: and that was probably the biggest challenge that i had so paris_vega: yeah daniel: going back to the first customer i won't name names but i keep coming paris_vega: yeah daniel: across the brand occasionally and long story short they wanted the world for nothing now as every successful co of any starts up one because you know i think to be a successful start you need to be hungry and you need to be impatient i think there are certain limits the anyway so we're working with this person we're trying to develop some ad and the whole thing just became a bit of a mess and what i realized is that there's a few areas one is the clients expectations based compared to their compensation were just completely irrational and i didn't have enough experience to understand that the clients expectations in general just irrational excluding the compensation which was just i can't believe i took that now thinking paris_vega: yah daniel: about it but save paris_vega: h daniel: and most of it came from the basics like just me poorly communicating with the client me umnotstructuring the client the client is hiring me to do the job so i should have told them what i was going to do as a poster just asked them as much um yeah but i learned a lot from that but man i remember how stress i was in this my friend's living room asking for advice and i was like what am i going to do like paris_vega: yeah daniel: why is this client so frustrated man if only i knew paris_vega: yeah but that was before you'd really built out an agency or processes or anything that was like it was almost more like daniel: any paris_vega: a daniel: sort of paris_vega: freelance daniel: infrastructure yeah paris_vega: job daniel: it paris_vega: almost daniel: was it was but like you know even even nowadays like i was talking to my team earlier and i get frustrate amount of meeting notes we have to take in and legistical admondstuff we do but actually paris_vega: yeah daniel: we got to do that stuff in order to produce the results and you're always paris_vega: right daniel: spinning lots of plates and like when you're working for a big company when you're when you're a marketing agency for a big company there's very little emotion involved you don't really care about the success or failure of the company partially of it a p c or something but when you're a start up it's a vehicle for someone's passion or mission or some problem that they want to solve in the world and paris_vega: yeah daniel: i take that quite seriously because i think that you know it's it's often a person's personal money or like it's it's very important to that person and i respect that i do also think most people don't say to their account in i don't like how you've modeled this they don't say paris_vega: m daniel: to the developers paris_vega: m yeah daniel: you can clean this coat up a little bit but they always go to the market and say i don't click on at paris_vega: right daniel: or i don't like that paris_vega: yeah daniel: shade of blue something paris_vega: yep daniel: along those lines and i always encourage people to share fee back because actually some of the best ideas come from the weirdest places but it's also there is process and structure behind everything we do it has to be because i'm not a creative genius as much as i wish i was paris_vega: right daniel: years ago paris_vega: it's daniel: my paris_vega: hard daniel: sister paris_vega: to daniel: came paris_vega: be a daniel: out paris_vega: genius at scale anyway daniel: yeah yeah paris_vega: a daniel: organized genius is a lot easier it's funny because paris_vega: right daniel: you know what when i told people i run a marketing agency and call it a growth agency there's there's image of like madmen you know with a fat cigar in one paris_vega: yeah daniel: one hand and glass of paris_vega: yeah daniel: scotch and the other and just coming up with the genius ideas and like i wish that was the case it spread sheets paris_vega: i was daniel: my paris_vega: about to say daniel: my paris_vega: the same daniel: mass paris_vega: thing daniel: understanding paris_vega: yeah daniel: has as really improved it's just paris_vega: yep daniel: looking at data coming up with ideas testing it out seeing what works and scaling that um i'm good with the systems i'm not necessarily good with ladies coming up with ideas but it's interesting paris_vega: ye daniel: i recently found out after an ordered today that my most successful creative across industry is names his paris_vega: really daniel: really interesting that paris_vega: and daniel: was paris_vega: these daniel: across paris_vega: are way more casual lower production value whereas traditionally you think hey we spent you know ten to a hundred thousand dollars on this video production you know high e produced commercial but you throw that on social media and everybody scrolls past it daniel: there's three types of creative we always recommend with like when you're getting started particularly if you you know just just new one is like thirty second tiktok style face to camera from found perspective of of the mission so here they are why they created the company what's important to them really energetic fairly nice lighting make it organic that kind of thing another is testimony video testimony is perform really well paris_vega: m daniel: um and the other one is actually animated that is second graphic they perform pretty well cross industry particularly for more complicated products but but i love the fact that this organic content works really well paris_vega: yeah daniel: the mems were a random idea for a game i was working for pretty successful horror game i'm not going to mention the branding paris_vega: okay that's fine daniel: das man startups and india paris_vega: yeah daniel: they paris_vega: yeah daniel: love they love the indias paris_vega: yeah daniel: i hate it i hate them but anyway we had some great creative like super fancy video produced a like super higher agencies and it it was doing pretty well we had an k c pa was competitive industry and i was i was literally on the tube i was living in type at the time and i was on the underground public onsortandi realized they used three collocialisms to describe the train paris_vega: yah daniel: line underground and i was like wait americans might not get that i was literally paris_vega: h daniel: just playing with s editor on my new phone and i create to the silly little name and i was like let me just give it a go let me just try two percent of the total daily budget see see what kind of engagement this gay and then if it's i it's absolutely awful i'll ignore it if it mildly works then i will produce thing better and we doubled that i can't remember the number but paris_vega: oh daniel: i remember that the c t r of that was it was more than double any other creative we had ever performed for that paris_vega: wow daniel: and and then i started looking at all our other campaigns and trying to figure out what was going on there and regardless of a b c or b to b we found means improve eformance and then what really improves performance is actually identifying because men well even the definition of a man is a method communicate cultural knowledge so mems are subjective because the means are humorous and like what makes me laugh is very different from what makes you laugh paris_vega: right daniel: but culturally in experience so i was nervous that you were going to roduce something hat ould just fell flat on its face paris_vega: oh daniel: and feel very like down with the kids paris_vega: uh daniel: i don't know if you've seen that paris_vega: uh daniel: scene with paris_vega: ah daniel: steve bisham out of some film where he's pretending to be a high school student paris_vega: yeah he said hello kids something like that daniel: hello fellow kids listening paris_vega: yeah yeah daniel: so yeah that's that worked really well paris_vega: wow daniel: and and that was literally just me like being being bored and trying to come on with crated stuff paris_vega: it's a daniel: but paris_vega: pure daniel: i think paris_vega: experiment daniel: i think it really goes from like paris_vega: okay daniel: i tried with a lot of my clients i tried to have some of between ten to twenty percent of the budget on experimentation based campaigns at any time just to try and figure that one out paris_vega: oh daniel: m paris_vega: awesome yeah that's that's funny how many similarities um just through the years of experience working at the agency i work with and um we found the same thing it's always good to have little percentage to experiment with try things out because you never know no matter how many times you think al right we got it figured out we know exactly what we're doing and what works and then you try something that works better than anything you've ever done and it's like okay well maybe we don't know what we're doing because you can't predict it at least you can't predict which creative gonna form the best it seems daniel: and i still i don't know like i look at adds and i look at you know stuff and i'm like this is this is a terrible idea why would they do that performs really well great c b a and paris_vega: right daniel: just like well idiot paris_vega: yep daniel: i went on a website recently and i was looking and i was like this this isn't going to convert well it's not not a great lay out doesn't follow best practice um and i found out that it was a an a filial blog comparing household goods and it's like one of the top three paris_vega: m daniel: in europe just paris_vega: wow daniel: like i don't know paris_vega: yeah daniel: i don't know anything like paris_vega: yeah daniel: my mind even paris_vega: could you daniel: some paris_vega: talk daniel: of the ads to paris_vega: no no go aha and finish up daniel: even a lot of the ads that i expected to perform differently or well like i've seen literally tens of thousands probably hundreds of thousands of ads now that i've paid attention to so to a certain degree i'm pretty good at judging whether or not it's going to work but paris_vega: oh daniel: i do have my personal preferences and what what this is really defined is how personal those preferences are and how it does not represent other people and paris_vega: right daniel: just because i believe this to be true i expected other people to as well because you know we we assume the world has the same paris_vega: yep daniel: everyone approaches the world the same way that we do unless we challenged in that and that was kind of like a really sort of interesting learning paris_vega: yeah i think you can experience daniel: okay paris_vega: that and think that's one of the most fascinating parts of the internet is you go down some random silo on some trending topic on twitter or something like that and you realize there's a whole group of people passionate about something that you had no idea even existed daniel: m paris_vega: they have totally opposite opinion of you on something you thought was just common sense and it's daniel: yeah oh paris_vega: there's a whole debate about the issue could you talk more about what you said earlier about there's one thing it's one thing to get results for a client daniel: oh paris_vega: but then the perception of value from the results or that perception of results is a different issue and i've seen the same thing with clients daniel: m paris_vega: i'd love to daniel: m paris_vega: hear your thoughts on daniel: yeah paris_vega: how do you daniel: sure oh paris_vega: display the value or communicate that value to the clients daniel: so ye when i was working in companies i had to do presentations and stuff but i never really thought about it in too much i love your mug there but paris_vega: yeah daniel: motivated bins like nine thirty in the paris_vega: yeah daniel: evening and i'm like a i want to work now paris_vega: yeah oh daniel: um m but you know on the whole it's like here how many customers we have or lead or whatever anyone client and then when you become a free lancer and you're starting to consult with clients what happens is and i didn't know this and it's not just the numbers you can't just send them numbers and expect them to be happy you have to then sort of put yourself in their shoes and think to yourself from like first principles why are they hiring you and it took paris_vega: right daniel: me long time to figure this one out but what i realized is that a very practical level they want to create campaigns to generate results for the business so that they can get customers and make more money paris_vega: right daniel: but how we do that you know paris_vega: yes daniel: there's there's so many layers of it it's not just about actually being able to be technical proficient and good at your work that's just one aspect of it one small aspect of it i would say and i paris_vega: okay daniel: was speaking to a new higher recently and i was saying i was probably communication and critical thinking of the two most important things so communication is so much more than what i expected it to be it's not just me being able to communicate with you it's how how effectively do you understand what i'm trying to say like how well do you understand the words that i am saying compared to the message that i'm trying to communicate from within my head so it's been a long day words failing me paris_vega: not daniel: but paris_vega: at all daniel: but essentially what i realized is that so for example what we do a lot is we don't just produce the campaigns and show them results paris_vega: m daniel: we handhold them paris_vega: oh daniel: we make them feel comfortable we develop a relationship with them we understand what is the mission of the company what paris_vega: yeah daniel: is the simoncinic why of the way they created their business um m what's important to them all of these kind of things because although they're there sort of minute when someone hires you and i don't think a lot of the customers know this even they're really hiring you to take that stress off their shoulders that fear of the unknown they're hiring you for the process that you have and all of that just the result is important so you know we have weekly meetings with our clients we create lots of pretty decks we over communicate we solve problems paris_vega: yeah daniel: we talk in narratives all of those those things paris_vega: interesting daniel: combined helped you build that relationship and to not only produce the results but produce that safety blanket and this is something that i didn't realize until i started working with an american guy called mat who i really fact to know i've always admired and he was a free lancer but what he did really well is he consulted he was an excellent consultant and paris_vega: m daniel: i saw how he did that and how he thought about the questions and the challenges that his customers are going to have before they ask him and he produced decks and information and he solved this problem s i was like oh this is so cool it's not just here's the results thank you it what is the problems that our customers have how do we solve that because it's not just about like how many leads we get how many customers our customers get more than that it's about the growth of the business it's about the mission into the feeling of trust and safety and understanding the future and all of this almost a bit like a cross between therapist an agony aunt and paris_vega: yeah daniel: a consultant um paris_vega: uh daniel: i think that's particularly important paris_vega: yeah daniel: because we're working with founders who paris_vega: yeah daniel: these founders are often don't care about the fact that it's a company they care about the mission they're trying to achieve an it's their baby and you've been intrusted with their baby so you've got to act like it d be respectful and all those kind of things so paris_vega: what do yo mean by speaking in narratives daniel: so this is something that i learned it's really interesting i've learned so much stuff just by talking to my team and sort of explaining the why behind it paris_vega: hm daniel: making myself think about that so narratives help to provide context one of the issues i had before i started probably thinking about consulting aspects of it was giving clients information without enough context or giving people information without enough context our job is to make our clients feel completely comfortable so ideally they don't ask any questions of us paris_vega: m daniel: i mean that on a practical level because we answer all of them so when we started conversation with them say a weekly up date we start at the beginning here's what we wanted to achieve or here's the goal that we want to achieve and we walk them through that process so whether that's the slides of having a beginning a middle and the end thinking about all the bit tal obstacles before they become a problem and just making sure that we we always have that flow um m as we're speaking to people i didn't feel like i articulated myself very well there paris_vega: yeah okay so you're kind of thinking ahead making sure you're solving any potential problems that could come up and i guess i was trying to see how that connected to the word narrative that daniel: so paris_vega: because that that makes me feel you you're telling some kind of story or you're daniel: yeah paris_vega: you're kind of piecing together what you're doing on the project into some kind of store overall story daniel: yes i like the way that you said that actually i'm paris_vega: okay daniel: impressed you managed to get that from what i was trying to say paris_vega: yeah daniel: but essentially it's it's that we've got lots of different pieces of information and actually our clients don't care about the specific some information you care about a goal being achieved and what we do is we piece those different bits of information and we put them together in a specific order and we try and figure out how does this informate where does this information fit in in the problem we're trying to solve what do we need to know first what do we need to know second like one of the blockers that are going to stop us from doing this paris_vega: m daniel: i think it's it's kind of like a mind set of communicating in a way of thinking that helps to sure whenever we're speaking to a customer everything its cantexturalized and makes sense and is not siloed in terms of context yea i feel like a broken record now just sort of repeat paris_vega: oh daniel: to myself let me let me come on to that i'm gonna have a think paris_vega: yeah yeah so it sounds like you know a lot of times you're asking for like access to a facebook business manager account or some really technical thing and maybe you're emphasizing like how does that relate that one request or that one task you guys need to do how does it relate to the bigger picture of what you're trying to accomplish for them and always looping back to the overall goal of a project and instead of just having a bunch of random asks for the client daniel: i mean that's a very good example of what i'm what i'm trying to communicate um paris_vega: okay daniel: m and if this is a normal media d be like let me have a think about it let me like email you something later but paris_vega: oh daniel: as we're recording it's difficult paris_vega: right daniel: i wish i could find the words because actually like you know i became quite sort of yeah a lot of our clients on really care about like how we do it and they didn't care about sort of approach and sometimes i'm like oh that's how dare they like you know paris_vega: oh daniel: work so hard with this but i realize like they don't work they're not hiring you for your approach they're hiring you for the results and paris_vega: right daniel: for a lot of them like they didn't choose to go into marketing you know they're not there for a reason so like it shouldn't take it personally in any respect about that paris_vega: right because they'd love it if you just handled it for them completely they didn't have to think about how it's made or how it's done they just want to daniel: honestly paris_vega: wake up daniel: that paris_vega: to sales daniel: like if paris_vega: or leads daniel: depending on our clients you know we do have some people like that where as long as our numbers are consistent and good they don't care i think when when clients start micro managing you they do it out of fear they do it out of i don't know what's going on there's not enough communication paris_vega: oh daniel: i'm scared about the future so i feel the need to have to take control and as soon as that happens it's because we're not communicating ourselves effectively enough and i think that's that's really important just taking extreme ownership always massively over communicating making sure you understand like actually this goes through both managing clients and also all marketing campaigns people are not logical they do not buy based on logic including myself and i thought i was people buy based on an emotion and then justify using logic and i did not realize this um m until well i mean like i knew it but i didn't really know it and it's fascinating whenever we look at like emotion based campaigns whether it's means and you know i think reams work really well because in insight and emotion that isn't usually connected to advertising which is humor particularly if that resonates really well from a brand then that has a strong personalization and high chance converting um m but on the other side of that we worked with a very boring because i'm going to call them or i'm not going to mention them paris_vega: oh daniel: the car platform one of the big ones kind of design for like corporate and it was it was really boring creating creative for them because very strict guide lines very like now this is what they did and we and ere's a creating a campaign to figure out how vague we can be without being personally identifiable but we essentially created this campaign that focused on getting home see your kids sooner paris_vega: m daniel: so essentially the logic was the serum will improve your day and prove the efficiency make you not stressed and help you live like a better family man that was essentially paris_vega: right daniel: the goal and that worked really well we didn't talk about the sir we didn't talk about anything integrations ap is nothing paris_vega: just how it would change their life in a daniel: yeah paris_vega: meaningful emotional daniel: i would paris_vega: way daniel: yeah and you know ninety nine percent of the time the things that have that impact are but the changing state people buy because of that perceived changing state um yeah it's funny because marketing is really like i know it talks about it being the process of developing paris_vega: yeah daniel: a relationship between brand and customer but it's also prices of getting people to take an action because every everyone who reads one of our adds we want them to see any of want them to do something that something small like licking on to the next page visiting a website or buying products whatever it might need to be and in the same way our clients come to us and they say you were here we want to get to hear i think to make self okay from our customers perspective where are they now and where do we want them to be what do we need that to happen so the nothing i'm doing is like i've been conniving or like going behind my customers back all i'm trying to do is actually paris_vega: yeah daniel: define the more effectively to them tugttheso paris_vega: yeah daniel: convoluted you know the terminology nowadays paris_vega: yeah daniel: but yeah and i think like if more people sort of approach from that strategy first it's like oh it's not actually that come it is complicated but you know the basis of it the foundations are actually quite simple it solved problems that people want to be solved figure out who they are how they talk about these problems one of the most common issues that i see and i've been monologing the tone so my apologies paris_vega: not at all daniel: free to interrupt is paris_vega: ah daniel: messaging so i'm super dislictic i'm really dispracticg actually now i'm good at writing copy because i forced myself to like white stuff i hate it but but actually message market fit is probably the most common issue that i see because ages ago was working for a case platform and i would go for patent my customers as regularly as i could because i found that seeing my customers face to face allowed for a certain level of like communication and learning about my customer the and necessarily achievable varsuvepom call so i'd go for beers with them and i would chat to them and i'd ask them a series of questions like six questions i always ask them and then i would ask them more depending on it was an actually getting them to have a beer really help them loosen up not exactly the most scientific thing when you're at a pub but you know it works pretty well and i remember i asked paris_vega: m daniel: one guy after like three times how would you describe this our product to your friend who worked in the same industry and and he said something out a long time ago paris_vega: yeah daniel: he said you come in the line of code i was hoping a line of code what was really interesting is the the time i was working in a company and everyone there was developed apart from me so everyone's like you know fast is jarviscript super clean super clear super sexy code and i was like cool you know assuming that that was our customer and i was chatting to this guy realized he didn't care about how fast the code was what he liked about it is that he could copy and piece the product into his block was the thing that adds value im and i stumbled back to my work and i dated my my experimentation campaign just trying to see if i would work out and came back to the office the next day with significally improved results and when i realized paris_vega: oh daniel: is that again we were focusing on the wrong things and actually like paris_vega: right daniel: being able to use the words that your customers used to solve to talk about the problem that they have paris_vega: yeah daniel: like it affects everything everything so it's just so important paris_vega: have you used any tools like vox verba and full disclosure invested in this company called vox verba but it literally does what you're saying about it takes customer feedback and customer reviews and then out puts like brandmessaging and different a brand daniel: i paris_vega: persona and that kind of thing or to use any other tools like that daniel: so it's interesting to say that my voice broke paris_vega: oh daniel: we we do it mostly manually paris_vega: ah ah daniel: i mean we have frameworks and systems that we use i i have been using chat g p t paris_vega: hm daniel: to not just for content generation because like i mean is really interesting i think it's fantastic i don't think it's very clever but i think if you think about promise really well so one thing that we're exploring with a comic brand that we're working with is using it to animal is dat now i have no idea i need to analyze the results of what we're doing to try and see how effective it is if it works one tenth as effectively as i think it is it's amazing one of the most interesting aspects that it's working on is paris_vega: it daniel: data processing in an analysis so we have some form of data we give it to it we get it to pro as the data and then we ask questions about it and its insights are really fascinating like for example today we survey data come to us and we stuck it into the system and we asked it give us demographics and psychographic of people i mean it was a bit more advanced to that but it's really intereting and it spat out like a bunch of different personas that were really paris_vega: wow daniel: valuable paris_vega: oh daniel: now i need to actually see do those persons general results like do they paris_vega: right daniel: like would it make us more money or is it just a language model sort of saying i think this is what you want to hear i don't know vox verba sounds really cool i'm like genuinely hashtanoonsor going to check that out because if paris_vega: yeah daniel: anything that can help me actually i think everything is going to move that way like in the same that we wrote google paris_vega: yeah daniel: god i run these ads literally every day where google performance max campaigns and then you've got paris_vega: yeah daniel: meta advantage plus campaigns where you're getting increasingly less paris_vega: it daniel: like ability to make changes um and all of it's being automated in a i based in a v tested multivarya tested and that's how i see the future because i think one day like there's so much data out there if we think about like full hub spot set up with i don't know some b to b company like they've got carm data they've got email data they've got website interactions they've got like the level of understanding that we can see how people view websites for example like the average person i can follow that cast t would be pretty paris_vega: right daniel: creepy but you put all of their data because what we do and here's probably getting a bit too technical but for a lot of our customers we when we start working with them we standardized all the data we stick it into big query and then we create data you do dash boards or something and we like that because we've generally got multiple sources of data and the standardize it but i was thinking about like we've got all these data let's tick it into one thing and why can't we use no why can't we use an a i to some how say looking at all of this we see that this creative responds really well this messaging responds really like iden doing doing what i'm doing and manually paris_vega: right daniel: automatically identifying the patterns paris_vega: yeah it seems inevitable that because all the parts are there it just has to be put into a package to where all of it gets processed and output in a way that marketers can use it and i'm guessing that's a lot of what the a is like the daniel: oh paris_vega: performance max daniel: oh paris_vega: advantage plus campaigns but that's what they're doing in the black box you know that they don't really reveal is you know you can upload lots of different images and headlines to test and it will just turn through ton impressions and figure out what the best performer is but yeah there's more data available that could be utilized especially now with these language learning models that can help you just produce the content and he run its own experiments eventually you know daniel: m paris_vega: by testing its own headlines if it has a certain set of daniel: m paris_vega: maybe brand persona plus product plus whatever your goals are and it could kind of daniel: m paris_vega: automatically go through its own experiments eventually which is kind of crazy daniel: yeah paris_vega: um daniel: i paris_vega: do daniel: know paris_vega: you think daniel: right paris_vega: that it will replace the marketers eventually daniel: yeah um paris_vega: really daniel: it's kind of funny i think you replace marketers and move them into other positions paris_vega: okay daniel: i think there's a certain level of paris_vega: oh daniel: you know like i mentioned earlier our job is to get people to take action and i think that's very difficult to quantify just yet i think at the end of the day we are like bio mechanical machines and we are paris_vega: m daniel: calculable paris_vega: m daniel: by powerful enough computer but not not yet i think there's a lot of slow boring data analysis that i humans do naturally because of how our brain works and multi essentially have like tens of thousands of processes i think a lot of yeah data work will disappear but i still think the strategy and a certain insight will be difficult to ascertain from numbers alone i think sudden elements of creativity but i think it'll be augmented it'll be supported by i think it's difficult to predict the future because we don't know what we don't know when when paris_vega: right daniel: looms like super super old school looms that would weave clothes paris_vega: hm daniel: came about there was like anger and weavers were like excuse me what do you call this machinery paris_vega: yeah daniel: like how you gonna get your loads if we don't do it and obviously they did other things and paris_vega: right daniel: yeah usually i'm i mean my personal opinions probably a bit too extreme for this this conversation paris_vega: oh daniel: but you know usually i'm like power to the paris_vega: ah daniel: people what can we do but i do paris_vega: right daniel: think that this tooling and this technology are again just tools to help do it and it's about how we use it that's going to make it successful or not and if we don't use it well then then we're gonna mess up and if we use it fantastically then the excellent but it all goes down to how well do i understand my customer and the problems that they're facing paris_vega: yeah daniel: like that's that's the fundamentals paris_vega: uh so going back to what you said at the beginning the concepts are simple but the execution is hard if you tactically try to do everything it takes to get results for clients or you know evolve as an agency in this modern world that's changing every day with all these different things like that's the hard part even though the basic principles are simple because you're just dealing with people and convincing them to buy something submit information or whatever the basic interaction is the same and it's just really different day to day how we go about accomplishing that as marketers daniel: m m think paris_vega: would daniel: on paris_vega: you launch daniel: it paris_vega: differently if you had to launch today launching your agency would you what would you do differently daniel: well we never officially launched we just kind of paris_vega: okay daniel: like slowly paris_vega: yeah daniel: grew kind of i don't know like mentally pitching like a bag in the ocean just sort of floating along i don't think i would do anything differently at the beginning i know one of the big issues we currently have is focus we focus on absacomncrypto which is a very broad range too much um and if we look at our customers we've had you know massive massive enterprise companies p n g with a google s had times of startups all sorts of ranges from com two adults toys to fintechto like how do you how paris_vega: yeah daniel: do you identify what that is and like the fundamentals are all the same it's like who is my customer what are the problem solving for them it's funny for image to painting our passes growing market segment at the end was we parted with franchise in the k they did family photos um paris_vega: okay daniel: but what they also did was like erotic photography so basically paris_vega: oh wow daniel: if you if you fancy a gift for your partner or your partner wants me paris_vega: okay yeah daniel: but it was mostly just like middle age parents paris_vega: yeah daniel: who you and a bit of fire back in their relationship paris_vega: some things up a little bit daniel: and then long story short they could get a painting of that and we would take a commission through our agency and paris_vega: oh daniel: i remember being sat with a pad and my job was to focus on the ah there enough contrast in color so the painters can can do this here i have sat with my parents at you know paris_vega: yeah daniel: it's just like it does the contrast paris_vega: oh daniel: of the skin work paris_vega: yeah daniel: looks mean it's like daniel if you want to do that you can do that in your own time paris_vega: they're like daniel: so paris_vega: what kind of business are you running now daniel: it's my client my client paris_vega: yeah daniel: yeah paris_vega: that's crazy daniel: i think yeah it what i am thinking is is the um m focus on on like who is your customer what is the smallest possible market you can dominate because i think that the biggest issue i see is people doing you know trying to boil the ocean kind of thing paris_vega: yeah yep daniel: including myself paris_vega: yeah definitely been there um all right you got time for a few rapid daniel: it paris_vega: fire questions daniel: sure paris_vega: all right so let's start off by going through some traditional marketing tactics so we're just going to go over basically different marketing funnel sales funnel tactics and just see if you use any of those or have used any of those for your current business daniel: sure paris_vega: all right so traditional marketing first um are using direct marketing tactics like face to face meetings daniel: uh increasingly less so paris_vega: okay uh tell marketing or cold calls daniel: i'm a huge fan when work correctly in fact i had a hour long call i'm doing a session tomorrow about cold calling i think particularly in the u k we really struggle with it because of our cultural fear of speaking to other people paris_vega: m daniel: um but actually like it's one of the best performing and most underrated channels that i believe and i think paris_vega: really daniel: if you're polite paris_vega: oh daniel: like amount of times where heard someone is like hi my name is daniel this is a sales cool and i completely appreci if you don't want to chat right now you give me thirty seconds of your time and i can explain myself you can then you know paris_vega: wow daniel: you're more than welcome to say go away and i think maybe british culture dictates that after you started a converse it's rude to stop it so maybe that's part of it paris_vega: oh daniel: but like you know very few people are rude or not nice and again if you're solving a real problem then people don't generally mind it's also quite a fun challenge to get through the gate keeper paris_vega: yeah and that's that's a nice polite intro you had there and that example daniel: makin paris_vega: what about daniel: does paris_vega: yeah for real what about direct mail snail mail like sending literal daniel: so paris_vega: technical mail daniel: before paris_vega: to people daniel: covid this worked really really well that we particularly with the companies we found that you know it was really impossible to actually outbid some of some of the brands competitors i was working with a company that was competing against copifi you know they can't spend twenty dollars a click for for you know have a cbsthousen dollars so what we did there is actually we started i started handwriting letters like paris_vega: wow daniel: notes five notes my handwriting awful is absolutely awful and i wrote a hundred of these and i sent them out to customers to see what kind of engagement we got and either people chose them paris_vega: oh daniel: took a picture of them and set them on social worked really really well and very long story short we ended up developing this whole system where we would scrape some data and then identify their industry and then send it out there was a service where they would send postcards hand written postcards by di if we gave them the data and paris_vega: yeah daniel: that combined with a fomirly channel ocus worked really really well for that client so that work really well after ovid in finding that a lot of people are working remotely and not at their office and is just not as effective paris_vega: okay so you would send it to the business before and now you don't have the personal address or that daniel: and it paris_vega: those daniel: goes paris_vega: aren't daniel: against paris_vega: easy leagues daniel: bar to contact them paris_vega: got ya i see okay daniel: unless the business addresses the home address paris_vega: gosh i didn't know that to stop fanning people i'm not doing that okay different forms of print media like newspaper ads daniel: i've done them a bunch of times i've yet to see any good results with them paris_vega: okay daniel: i want to be wrong but yeah paris_vega: what about magazine ads okay daniel: i've tried that a lot as well paris_vega: yeah uh this is a little old really old school but like using a bulletin board pin board notice board to put up a flyer or business card or anything like that in some kind of community daniel: i mean most of paris_vega: i daniel: our clients are like you know big start ups with paris_vega: right daniel: fancy channels but i do love those pin boards because if you get something that's funny it works really well i used to have a business card that was very obscure picture of a moose paris_vega: yeah daniel: with a circle around it it's a running joke in my family but it was really paris_vega: ah daniel: fun because i would i would had paris_vega: oh daniel: pictured the moose circle around it which was like some weird logo and then i wrote growth marketing and i would stick this to the community board of a cafe that everyone worked in startups paris_vega: m daniel: and people would go be like you sure okay paris_vega: yeah daniel: take a look at it that initial curiosity allowed them to sort of tend it over and start so unfortunately not not superscaleable but paris_vega: yeah daniel: fun paris_vega: what about t v or radio adds daniel: i've done them both struggled get good ros paris_vega: physical que pons or loyalty cards anything like that daniel: um so i haven't really done that but one of our clients used to be a loyalty a actually one of the fastest growing in europe in fact i think that might be the fastest one way of finding is that actually having an effect i mean this is slightly different and i'm kind of like pitching my fine but paris_vega: uh daniel: having an effective paris_vega: h daniel: loyalty program has paris_vega: right daniel: brought back some places from the day it's kind of paris_vega: m daniel: wild it's been particularly effective for independent places after covid paris_vega: but like that's the digital version of it daniel: m paris_vega: what you're saying yeah the digital little two programs all right all right speaking of digital let's move into the digital marketing side of things so the up dated version leaving all those old school traditional marketing tactics behind oh i didn't mention one of the big ones in the u s at least uh bill boards daniel: hm paris_vega: on the side daniel: um paris_vega: of the road daniel: yeah paris_vega: did daniel: we've paris_vega: they call daniel: done paris_vega: him bill boards or okay daniel: so we did some bill boards next to our road and we've paris_vega: m daniel: also done train booth in train stations in london there's this massive paris_vega: okay daniel: big screen and we brought out a bunch for one of my clients and you know the classic red phone boots we have in the uk like paris_vega: yeah daniel: very distinctive we bought all of in like east london wants paris_vega: because they still add space on the side of them right daniel: exactly so i was paris_vega: okay daniel: really excited about this well it was a massive campaign we we've done all sorts of crazy stuff launched it like five downloads and paris_vega: oh daniel: i was so annoyed i even told the not to do it paris_vega: yeah daniel: before this we did it because you wanted to and it's great you know you walk along and every time you see your logo take a picter take a bitter take a pitcher paris_vega: yeah daniel: because it's like i did that the problem was that we didn't get results people liked it people engaged in it but people weren't even visiting the l we had q code we tried everything paris_vega: okay yeah that's daniel: you know paris_vega: yeah daniel: just because it doesn't work with us doesn't mean it won't work for you for you whoever is listening paris_vega: hm daniel: it just depends on is this an appropriate channel for for my customer paris_vega: right all right moving on to purely digital tactics you already mentioned you ave your own website do you blog put out content regularly on the website daniel: um yeah not as regularly as they should we mainly i'm just playing around either i have an opinion that i want to share or we're trying to rank for a specific term paris_vega: cool and you have a contact form to collect leads on the side daniel: yep paris_vega: all right social media marketing for yourself are you using facebook adds daniel: uh yeah we run we only recently just started some outbid marketing for the agency as well paris_vega: oh daniel: yeah and facebook is doing okay paris_vega: yeah daniel: yeah paris_vega: okay youtube daniel: um so what works really well there we had a thirty second nd and then we had one hour like webinar that we would then promote we beat everything else the web paris_vega: really daniel: was growth series that i actually created it was just free weber paris_vega: m daniel: and i was like what pen if we use that as the creative and i mean you're encouraging people to watch really it's a good web in paris_vega: yeah daniel: even if i do say so myself paris_vega: oh daniel: and you're using that paris_vega: ah daniel: as a creative like yeah it works paris_vega: okay so in that case so you ran a shorter video as like an ad and then took them to the webinar and in the webinar was there like a call to action to contact daniel: now we paris_vega: you daniel: be tested the thirty second video like a short video and then we also be tested the webnot paris_vega: oh daniel: as the creator paris_vega: oh okay daniel: m paris_vega: that's right because you can have really long ads on youtube right daniel: yeah paris_vega: okay daniel: it was it was just one of those like h i wonder if that would work and yeah paris_vega: m daniel: it did paris_vega: and so daniel: oh paris_vega: there was some kind of call to action in there that would generate a lead for you from the daniel: yeah paris_vega: webanarokay daniel: yeah paris_vega: cool what's up daniel: um we paris_vega: oh daniel: yeah actually middle eastern africa does really well so really interestingly we worked with a couple of games in africa some really interesting pinte and we use what's up n s m s s both cold email cold message approach and also relationship development paris_vega: okay uminstagram oh daniel: pay to organic paris_vega: either daniel: we a lot of paid and it works well for beds you know the usual stuff paris_vega: right daniel: just creative is the most important part no matter what anyone says fight me paris_vega: yeah daniel: organic like we do organic social but it's mainly just in case customers are curious about what the brand is doing we don't do it for customer acquisition we do it for like brand maintenance and paris_vega: m daniel: image paris_vega: okay tik tok daniel: i love it doing lots of stuff a lot of come to b is doing really well great c p s would have thought paris_vega: really daniel: it yeah paris_vega: that's daniel: obvious paris_vega: awesome daniel: the marketers paris_vega: okay daniel: oh paris_vega: that makes sense facebook messenger daniel: um we were working with a leggin we were working with a a pinte company and we were actually using face book messenger conversations like the functionality and many chaps and that worked really well so i really like that and i like because it's a conversation and i think that's like more natural that's how people communicate paris_vega: okay snap chat daniel: um worked really well in the middle east from a modeling agency we're working with paris_vega: real daniel: i found they got hit the hardest by idea tracking from apple so harder then um like facebook and instagram for example but their paris_vega: yeah daniel: data quality definitely like out of everyone we were spending enough that we had enough data on most of the major platforms to be able to accurately say there's a snap chat messed up there i don't paris_vega: okay daniel: know how they were doing attribution from a technical side but they paris_vega: right daniel: got it bad paris_vega: you're the first person i've talked to that's actually been using snap chat daniel: really paris_vega: that's interesting daniel: interesting paris_vega: to hear some data from somebody daniel: so we have we had like three companies over the past year that focused on products that re pertinent and relevant uses on snapshot so we had the latest one was a modeling agency and it's actually just my previous call from this which is why paris_vega: okay daniel: i'm so excited about it paris_vega: uh daniel: but they're expanding to paris_vega: ah daniel: deb and getting some really good results on sumcapwicis cool but i mean low paris_vega: yeah daniel: c p ms paris_vega: oh daniel: i can't believe people are so happy to like dive head paris_vega: yeah daniel: first in tiktok never because it's cool it set and the new thing paris_vega: yeah daniel: and i've never even tried to experiment with snapshot or other platforms like paris_vega: yeah daniel: missing out paris_vega: i'm gonna have to take another look at it telegram daniel: for a lot of oucupsastuff we do paris_vega: okay daniel: of community development messaging paris_vega: p interest daniel: um paris_vega: oh daniel: m used it on a bunch of different things achieved mediocre results i paris_vega: m daniel: feel like there is i think that's more just our clients than it is anything because i feel like there's some real opportunity that i paris_vega: yeah daniel: love everything they pull up push out they have a great growth blog and like great growth material in fact a lot of senior growth marketing people are like they produce a lot of content themselves i know this kind of goes off you direct how effective is the channel but the people behind paris_vega: yeah daniel: the growth really understand it and it's great to see that i think with the right product because i have friends who worked with it well it can be incredibly successful but it's just about having the right product paris_vega: that makes sense twitter daniel: um so twitter adds have notoriously performed pretty poorly for me but i do depending on paris_vega: same daniel: the business i do encourage generally the co to actually start just engaging in conversation to develop to brandawenas thought leadership things like that or i'd give it to an intern and pretend to be the co or something paris_vega: just joining conversations with organic content daniel: yeah but it's paris_vega: yep daniel: very time consuming and it's it's not very like line so i have to be like paris_vega: yeah daniel: so is and there's a lot of cos you just don't want to paris_vega: right like daniel: the paris_vega: we're daniel: beginning paris_vega: paying daniel: in paris_vega: you to do that stuff daniel: yeah paris_vega: right read it daniel: typical eighty percent fails twenty percent works really well paris_vega: oh daniel: we do a lot of like community relationship development so we work with a lot of brands on read it we have a lot of relationships with sub redit mode his um m and you know we have a lot of a lot of accounts shall we say paris_vega: yeah daniel: a lot so depending on paris_vega: oh daniel: the client and the demand we yeah there's like white hat and ethical ways and there's less ethical ways so paris_vega: gotcha okay daniel: less ticul from the platform i believe is like rapidly improving we paris_vega: okay daniel: recently did a crypto campaign the end of last year on red and that worked really well paris_vega: what about linked in daniel: man i have yet to see linked on adds are the most expensive platform out there paris_vega: yep daniel: i always struggle to get any good results of them in terms of c p a unless you are enterprise i would probably discourage it if you're going to use linked on there's two three main ways two main ways it is content they have the best organic content reach out of pretty much every platform and paris_vega: oh daniel: people engage a lot on it so highly recommend that paris_vega: yeah daniel: the other side of it is don't waste your money spending five hundred pounds on one click for and add spend it on getting linked in premium get well axe or an equivalent plug in and like the effectiveness from a b to b perspective of good scale able cold messaging on linton is amazing like i'm paris_vega: cha daniel: always surprised about it but it's just about how you approach people how you do that introduction messaging which sounds so bad i but it's taken me years to get to the point where i am now and i'm like we have on average forty percent acceptance rate to new profiles paris_vega: who daniel: and like on average twenty four in something percent response rate paris_vega: wow daniel: from messages paris_vega: yeah daniel: fun paris_vega: cora daniel: fact that like paris_vega: go daniel: in paris_vega: ahead daniel: general i just become less less formal and like the more informal i become the more they enjoyed cora i really very addicted to produce hundreds of thousands of words i have yet to see any good responses any good engagement paris_vega: wow because i've eard some people say there's like an so benefit of cora specifically i daniel: back in the day i wrote this article i'll try to find it at some point and it was very clickbatiand was like a hundred things you can do to grow your start up or like paris_vega: uh daniel: hundred things to grow paris_vega: h daniel: you start up and it hit the front page and it did really well and received tons of traffic but like none of it converted um paris_vega: got you daniel: m there's also a lot of ways to manipulate cora they have like no safeguards or like so easy like back in the day paris_vega: okay daniel: i don't think this works any more and i'm sure some paris_vega: yeah daniel: someone at corses here gonna ave a go at me but paris_vega: oh daniel: you you create a piece of content you promote paris_vega: yeah daniel: you make it good like that's the most important bit you then get a bunch of people like real human beings to promote it then you use amazon m turk and you get them to up vote it at different times um and and you can hit from page we fortunate head front paris_vega: now daniel: page several times before that same with medium paris_vega: m so daniel: m paris_vega: you an kind of hack the system really easy okay discord daniel: just cold we use a lot crypts and communities and a lot of texas stuff paris_vega: oh daniel: community is the holy grail of all marketing but it is also the most paris_vega: m daniel: difficult to develop no one is as passionate about you about about your business no one is as passionate about your business as you are paris_vega: right so you got to find that audience connects with whatever you whatever problem you're trying to solve like you do in a way or as close as possible to how you connect with it okay uh twitch daniel: um no we haven't we tried for a few things but they didn't do crypto so paris_vega: m daniel: all of our clients were paris_vega: m daniel: crypted paris_vega: wow daniel: the time that wants paris_vega: ah daniel: to work with witch paris_vega: stack exchange daniel: i use it paris_vega: all right m what about any of the it's kind of like t v adds but like hole i know has been pushing their add platform a lot and daniel: having used it yeah i'm very curious paris_vega: okay daniel: ohamaznads paris_vega: amazon okay really daniel: for work really really well big big fan i mean the main for platforms we used and we actively tried to use it to try new platforms matter it's really boring google tik tok i can't remember the fourth one and we spent must have spent over twenty million pounds now paris_vega: wow daniel: i have like personally in the past paris_vega: yeah daniel: eight years paris_vega: wow daniel: so quite quite a while paris_vega: i m daniel: but yeah it's always the main platforms have the most data and at the end of the day they generally the best long term big results sometimes you get lucky do you think to builders secret underdog thing if you got the right paris_vega: oh oh daniel: right product and right audience it works really well but it's difficult to use and difficult to get the right turn and messaging paris_vega: and are you actively working on so for your agency like technical daniel: yeah paris_vega: on page off page link building daniel: so earlier i talked about paid acquisition and that that was our bread and butter and i was a big fan of that and paris_vega: oh daniel: particularly in the past few years b cs have have just encouraged that and a lot of our start ups have just raised a of money they come to us and they say hey we just told our v c we're going to grow like be you know what do we do now paris_vega: yeah daniel: and because of that they have a lot of money in their account and they want to burn it as quickly as possible and get results paid is the natural result paris_vega: right daniel: now i always believe am a huge pit of paid because it gives you great data and it's very customizable as soon as you switch that button off you have no more value you know there is nothing with it is an investment and not only that but when someone looks at content from an co perspective they there's so much more trust and credibility built in and that i think is really undervalued and under appreciated so i love as i also really love the technical bit of ages ago i mentioned that that was my first marketing channel you know just just paris_vega: yeah daniel: learning how to where meta key words were paris_vega: oh daniel: what you ranked for you know super easy paris_vega: right daniel: um m but yeah i did the technical cos i learned that i still do that myself i don't do a lot of the technical stuff we have dead now things but i i don't know homage to my beginning of my career but what i really like about is that you can do so much with it it's very flexible i think it's a lot easier than people it needs to be we don't actually do link building at all we just do content paris_vega: really daniel: generation we do a lot of fun stuff lot of like programmatic so um m that's really fun where we're playing around with a bunch of traialwebsites where were also generating content and paris_vega: m daniel: also making it sound natural trying to rank them paris_vega: okay daniel: you've got a few projects on the day and i'm quite excited we've got one of the m as is grating pilot license websites paris_vega: m m daniel: and some paris_vega: well daniel: other like nice things paris_vega: so you're not afraid of the threats or the warnings from google about hey this daniel: yeah paris_vega: is daniel: we've paris_vega: spinning daniel: never paris_vega: content daniel: eaten oh you know it's funny we've never ever been hit by an up date there's never one update that's ever hit one of our clients as a result of the work we've done and paris_vega: m daniel: my logic i mean touch wood being are paris_vega: oh daniel: very fortunate paris_vega: oh daniel: saying that eric will see me and he will be like coming paris_vega: yeah daniel: after you but at the end of the day what google wants is the same thing that we want we want people to land paris_vega: yeah daniel: on our customers website for them to really valuable and ideally to take action al purchase from the website and google is worried that people are going to use a g b and equivalent tools and i'm sure google have a lot more sophisticated tools behind them and there they're going to worry that people are going to use this replicate content and the quality of the internet is just going to drop um now i think that is definitely the case but at the end of the day if your people are coming to your webs and the problems are being solved they're not bouncing that they've got a high engagement interact paris_vega: right daniel: with the website it's all good you know it's all of other people it's just paris_vega: yep daniel: these tools just help us do that i do think one of the big issues with google and search in general is the quality of search results because like in the same way that when we're creating content brief one of the things we do is we search the key word that we're looking for and we see what's ranking that now that's a very manual approach but there's tools and systems that do there's hundreds thousand times a day people there's people who do what i do but a massive massive scale like there's like one guy in nevada who sends eighty percent of all fan i know he helps me when i get like paris_vega: whoa daniel: issues by u s p paris_vega: yeah daniel: really lovely guy but if you go check paris_vega: that's daniel: your junk paris_vega: crazy daniel: right now most of that junk will be his stuff and he makes paris_vega: oh daniel: he makes so much money man so so much money and the tin he's a nice guy like you chat paris_vega: oh daniel: with me he's so happy to jump paris_vega: ah daniel: on paris_vega: oh daniel: to cool with you as well i mean i paris_vega: that's daniel: won't paris_vega: hilarious daniel: not going to share more but paris_vega: yah daniel: like you know every time you paris_vega: h daniel: think you're doing something well you then discover there's like an absolutely don in it somewhere else but yeah as you work really well just just focus on the human being like paris_vega: yeah daniel: people think how do i optimise my webs of it as you i think to myself how are you optimising a website for the for your customer do that and then people like how do i do that and i'm like exclude marketing think about it as a human being like hen paris_vega: right daniel: you're visiting this website what do you want to find what are the questions if it was a person you would ask what question what order are those questions how comprehensive are these questions think about it like human paris_vega: yeah well that seems to be the running theme solve human problems and you'll get good results this has been awesome and you've shared a ton of gold with us a lot of insights won't we wrap up by you be speaking directly to your target audience describing your service and kind of giving a little one paragraph pitch to as though that target audience was listening right now daniel: sure well first of all i also want to say thank you for this opportunity i've enjoyed i love talking about growth and marketing and i hope i don't come across is too cynical but i am quite paris_vega: not daniel: passionate paris_vega: at all daniel: about it i love very fortunate to do what i do i'm very bad at pitching myself i guess because you don't really paris_vega: yeah daniel: pitch that much but what i would say is if you're unsure if you know where you want to go but you're unsure of how you want to get there and you're like a series a series be absessecom a company then paris_vega: oh daniel: have a chat with me and let's see if i can paris_vega: okay daniel: help if not paris_vega: my daniel: i would probably be able to give you some advice either way i'm not gonna had tell anyone so if that sounds interesting then feel free to get in touch and we start ups i love chatting growth so always always happy to help and i hope this podcast is helpful to your our listeners i think i was a bit too open with some things but it's paris_vega: oh daniel: ye brought back a lot of cool memories of like experiments paris_vega: ah daniel: and experiences paris_vega: it's been great man i appreciate your sharing everything you shared with us yeah i think that's it that's that's a great show we'll se everybody next time daniel: sounds good cheese paris_vega: stop recording here