Podcast With Andrew Molz

The Truth About Scaling a Marketing Agency in 2025 🚀 with Andrew Molz

Show Notes

Discover how Andrew Molz scaled his digital marketing agency from 3 to 40 people in just 4 years! In this eye-opening interview, Andrew shares his journey, revealing the strategies that propelled Monster Agency's explosive growth. Learn about innovative marketing techniques, client success stories, and the power of data-driven decision making in digital advertising.

Andrew dives deep into:

• Overcoming entrepreneurial challenges
• Developing successful marketing campaigns across platforms
• Leveraging analytics to refine strategies
• Building strong client relationships
• Adapting to market changes and emerging technologies

Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, digital marketer, or business owner looking to scale, this interview is packed with actionable insights. Andrew's candid approach to discussing both successes and setbacks provides a realistic view of what it takes to thrive in the competitive world of digital marketing.

Don't miss Andrew's thoughts on the future of influencer marketing, the role of AI in advertising, and his advice for maintaining a growth mindset. This conversation is a masterclass in agency growth and digital marketing excellence.

Tune in now to learn from Andrew Molz's experience and gain valuable insights to fuel your own success in the digital marketing landscape!

Chapters:

00:00 - Intro

00:32 - Entrepreneurial Journey Inspiration

01:51 - Scaling Strategies

04:02 - Long Game Philosophy in Business

05:31 - Inspiration Behind Moner Agency

08:03 - Monster Agency Launch and Growth

09:43 - Challenges in Starting an Agency

11:36 - Surprising Aspects of Running an Agency

12:49 - Successful Campaign Creation Process

14:19 - Common Digital Campaign Mistakes

19:24 - Budget Allocation for Startups

20:25 - Role of Data in Decision Making

22:40 - B2B vs B2C Marketing Strategies

26:12 - Proud Successful Campaigns

29:12 - Influencer Marketing Insights

31:33 - Building Client Relationships

33:00 - Managing Client Expectations

39:02 - AI's Impact on Marketing

42:21 - Overcoming Adversity in Business

45:04 - Staying Motivated During Challenges

46:40 - Mentorship in Entrepreneurship

48:20 - Advice to Your Younger Self

49:10 - Rapid Fire Round

50:34 - Finding You Online

Transcript

Intro

0:00 welcome to the agency Insider show where we dive deep into the world of digital marketing and Entrepreneurship I'm your

0:06 host nav kosel and today we have a very special guest joining us Andrew Mo the

0:12 founder of monster agency and the digital marketing

0:18 [Applause]

0:23 [Music] expert Andrew welcome to the show how's

0:30 it going good good good Andrew let's start from the beginning what is part

Entrepreneurial Journey Inspiration

0:35 your initial interest in entrepreneurship and what was your first Venture

0:40 like um I've kind of done entrepreneurial things my whole life and um you know I've done I've done the

0:46 corporate world thing and that's okay that pays the bills but there's always been a ceiling on that to what you can

0:53 earn and um you know it's like when you have a corporate job and you're you're making a salary you're just kind of

0:59 think thinking during the day um okay like I'm making maybe like I don't know at at the time like you're making $100

1:06 for that day of work and you kind of think like man I could make like $200 if

1:12 I just XYZ or I could be making $500 a day if I XYZ um so the wheels are always

1:18 kind of turning on what you could be earning and um I think that's that's

1:23 always kind of uh what has sparked my entrepreneurial journey and just like coming up with ideas and then being like

1:29 I bet you could make XYZ doing that um you know whether it's like a lawn service you know as you're younger or

1:36 landscaping or pulling weeds or um things like that I just I don't know

1:41 it's always just fun seeing figuring out ways to make money from the skills that you

1:48 develop okay so I mean and you have rapidly scaled businesses as well like I

Scaling Strategies

1:54 saw your street wear brand to a multi a multi-million dollar Revenue can you break down your approach to scaling and

2:01 what do you believe are non-negotiable elements for growth um yeah so whenever I'm going to

2:09 start something out um since you know i' I've run traffic to a lot of different

2:14 websites and I've done that for for some time usually I like to start off with um

2:20 kind of like coming up with like an MVP like the most viable product and getting

2:26 something that's that's kind of working that you feel like it's something that you could earn charge money for and then

2:31 once you figure that out and you've come up with uh like a product that you can Market you put together your marketing

2:38 material maybe it's a deck or maybe it's just a website if you're trying to feature something that you're going to sell then just trying to buy traffic and

2:47 seeing what happens when traffic is actually relevant traffic is going to that product or service once I start to

2:52 see signals that you know our our clickthrough rates are great people are adding a cart or people are scheduling

2:59 calls or reaching out then I start to to better understand that okay it's something that you can actually market

3:05 and and scale up so by then what you are doing do you

3:10 even have a actual product or a service or it just testing if it's an actual product um yeah I got to have something

3:17 because you know you got to ship it but if it's a service then yeah I mean it's got to be it's got to be ready to go and

3:23 you know you you'll charge something for it and maybe you're charging the right amount maybe you're charging too little

3:29 but you know that's that's capitalism and that the Market's going to dictate what the product or service should be if

3:35 you've got nobody buying it it's too expensive or it doesn't have any customer demand usually I pick things

3:40 that have customer demand um because because I like to consider myself in that group of whomever would purchase so

3:48 I I would already pretty much have an idea if somebody's gonna buy it or not it's just you know are are we pricing it

3:55 right and are we listing it and setting it up correctly

4:00 okay okay I mean uh you have you have stressed focusing on Long games in

Long Game Philosophy in Business

4:06 several of your uh interviews online of course now can you elaborate on how that

4:12 philosophy has influenced your static decisions even when the short-term results are

4:17 uncertain um I didn't understand the first part you said you said long games

4:22 yeah so you you you you say that you you like to focus on the long games oh yeah

4:28 yeah yeah um I mean if if I'm building anything it's going to be something that's going to be built that will

4:34 generate Revenue monthly be something that that can get to good Revenue but um

4:40 you know building to sell as well if you just build to work and work and work and work um I guess it's okay if that's what

4:46 you're looking to do you know I'd rather sell something and in terms of like an exit build something that that's scalable that you can exit is better to

4:53 me just in case you ever get bored with it because you know you want to solve these problems that you start off with

4:58 and then um as you as you're solving these problems now you're you're seeing other things and you're you're having to

5:04 solve other problems and maybe it grows out to something that's so big that you're like okay like I like the problem

5:10 at first because you gotta you have to start with passion and interest or else you if you don't have that it's going to

5:15 be really difficult to stick with it but it's like I had a passion for doing this you know with maybe 10 customers per

5:21 month but I no longer have a passion for doing this with 10,000 customers per month it's getting too crazy and you

5:27 know you'll want to exit okay okay uh can you tell us about your

Inspiration Behind Moner Agency

5:33 journey into digital marketing and what inspired you to start uh moner agency yeah um I I've done marketing for

5:42 about two decades I used to sell things out of my dorm at uh Texas Tech University entered some like new

5:48 business contests when I had transferred to University of North Texas and got to like a final round of businesses

5:55 whenever I was there and doing that I've just honestly I've always liked the idea of just like being Your Own Boss running

6:00 your own business calling the shots you know you eat what you you eat what you keep that that idea is has just been

6:06 more fun to me it's just like building your own business and and so that's that's the journey I've always kind of

6:12 Taken and as the internet has evolved and also wanting to Be Your Own Boss and

6:18 wanting to have your own business combined with the allore of the internet and you know you want to better your

6:24 outcome in life to to better your situation better your your family situation everything but you read

6:30 story after I feel like it ramps up more and more the last five years but you read story and story and story of people

6:36 who have made you know incredible wealth because they were just selling a pet

6:41 rock or like just the most ridiculous things I mean I remember a story about the um I think it was the uh graffiti

6:48 artist at meta way back in the day who instead of getting paid I think it was

6:54 like maybe three 30,000 or something like that instead of getting paid he decided and opted to get uh stock in

7:01 Facebook early on and that guy who did all the graffiti and artwork at Facebook is you know now a multi

7:07 multi-millionaire whenever Facebook went public I mean just random stories like that have always been there of like the

7:14 the allore that like you can do this this and that uh that's that's kind of you know what's also always fascinated

7:19 me to grow businesses out and so with the Advent of the internet and and intervent internet um you know

7:26 graduating along and progressing and things getting uh easier to kind of advertise and enter self-service

7:32 advertising um you know that's what I've that's what I've done for for quite some time and if you know how to fish which

7:39 is you know getting customers which is can be the hardest part sometimes for people some people do it with like organic ranking and you know search

7:46 engine uh optimization and then you can do paid traffic with it it's just another Channel but I like the paid

7:52 Channel because it's just that it's that shot in the arm of instant traffic acquired from you know the interest that

7:59 people interested in or lookalike audience or whatever it might be so it's always been a really fun thing to

Monster Agency Launch and Growth

8:05 do and how big is your agency now uh we're a 40 person agency okay and when did you started

8:13 monster agency in which year uh in 2019 so I had exited my my um my company via

8:19 in acquisition I had some software that I played around with um that I was trying to get developed for the real estate industry for some time and that

8:27 was around the same time Cambridge analytica happened and so Facebook was suspending and ending a lot of apis and

8:34 some of the data and information that we were getting from Facebook to do our posting that stuff

8:40 was getting suspended or the connections killed so the writing was kind of on the wall not to scale that out and so um I

8:47 scaled that company that I was kind of grown out a little bit it's it's kind of it was kind of was kind of like a hobby

8:52 but I scaled that one down went into the agency side of things because it's like what I was doing to you know grow my

8:58 businesses is using using ads so I figured I might as well do it for other people and I had done it for a few friends at the time that knew what I was

9:05 doing and knew that I was you know scaling out like an apparel brand and so I came in I helped some of them I was

9:11 like this is like pretty straightforward I can do this for a lot of people why don't I just started an agency and so I

9:17 did that in 2019 and brought a couple people with me from my prior Venture um

9:22 we were like a three or four person team you know I was doing a lot of the stuff client Communications reporting not

9:28 really necessary building out the graphics and and videos and stuff like that I had a team doing that but just

9:34 handling a lot and and doing a lot of the stuff early on until it grew to a point to where I could start to hire

9:39 people to fill positions okay and uh I mean so what

Challenges in Starting an Agency

9:45 were some of the biggest challenges you faced when you started your agency and how did you overcome it yeah the biggest

9:52 challenges is just getting from like these like incremental points of of like and I tell clients this all the time

9:57 that if you're coming on with us and you're going to be spending like $3 to $5,000 a month which a lot of times a

10:02 lot of a lot of Brands whether they're a a newer brand or a more established brand you know they want to kind of

10:08 start with about maybe three to5 thousand that's that seems to always kind of be like the the point of what

10:14 they want to be spending online um you you you start kind of at that

10:19 range and you'll uh you'll you you'll go up higher and higher but it's it's the it's the hardest thing getting people

10:26 from like if they're spending three to $5,000 per month to get them to a point where they're spending 8,000 to 10,000

10:31 per month and going like basically doubling their ad spend because a lot more problems and deficiencies get

10:36 exposed when you scale your traffic up that much um and it can sometimes get more difficult to be able to stabilize

10:42 your costs and your return on ad spend the more that you spend with Facebook for some reason the more that you the higher that you spend a lot of times it

10:49 will start to enter auctions that are just not going to work and um aren't profitable and so it will spend your

10:55 money on a daily basis yeah so so that means uh that when people

11:02 increase their spent it's not necessarily it will increase the or the

11:08 business yeah I mean if you give Facebook a budget of like $50 a day it's going to be more prudent and efficient

11:15 entering auctions in that it feels like it can win for whatever you're optimizing for whether that be an add to cart or a purchase but if you give it

11:22 $100 per day it might start like getting a little bit more wild and entering

11:27 auctions that maybe it shouldn't and then you know 150 day $200 per day so

11:33 yeah it gets definitely gets a little bit more difficult the more that you scale and uh what's been the most surprising aspect of running your in

Surprising Aspects of Running an Agency

11:40 your own agency probably the amount of time that that things take um you know you try and be everywhere to everybody

11:48 and help out but uh it's just it can be kind of timec consuming it's better than than for me it's better than like

11:54 selling products the reason I didn't enjoy selling products a lot like with my my other Adventure is because you

12:02 have to be shipping you have to be fulfilling you have to be doing like operationally you have to be making

12:07 orders and packages arriving and my family and I you know during that time um you know we we like to travel some

12:14 and like we went over overseas to Germany uh and and Paris for a little bit back in like

12:21 2017 and while we were gone you know we're having like packages showing up and we're having like just like how how

12:27 are you fulfilling order because it was my wife and myself like how are we fulfilling orders what we're going so it

12:32 felt almost kind of like you're a slave to your business and it's like you can't go anywhere you can't do anything because you have to be doing all that

12:38 stuff all the time that's that's definitely the appeal of like the Ad Agency stuff because I can literally work from a

12:45 laptop right okay let's talk let's shift gear to digital marketing I mean you are

Successful Campaign Creation Process

12:52 recognized for creating successful campaigns AC on plate across platforms like Facebook and Tik Tok what's your

12:58 process for developing a campaign from scratch so we'll have a client fill out their um their client briefing document

13:04 we'll get the information from them regarding their budget their demographic who their competitors are what's some

13:11 offers and promotions that they would like for us to promote um and you know based on that and based on their

13:17 feedback that we get from them we'll work up some graphics and some some ad

13:22 copy some light videos on Facebook for Tik Tok we'll go off and we'll get creators to be able to do uh Creator

13:30 videos around some of some hooks that we feel like address or kind of like

13:36 agitate the problem you know the old like problem agitate solution you that agitate the problem so that we can speak

13:42 to it and talk to it and get people hooked in but that's kind of how we start and dependent upon if a brand has

13:47 actually run campaigns or if they're currently running campaigns then we'll of course go inside their account we'll

13:53 do a historical analysis to see what's worked and what hasn't if we don't have any information on what what's worked

13:59 what hasn't then um you know we'll launch the campaigns with our normal kind of structure that we would normally

14:05 do between prospecting and we're targeting campaigns and then once those

14:11 goes live we'll see how they start performing and then start making changes in real time on the fly to start

14:16 improving it okay and I mean what are some common mistakes you see businesses make when

Common Digital Campaign Mistakes

14:23 they launch digital campaigns like this sometimes it's not spending enough and not giving enough budget to the platform

14:29 to be able to do it not being as persistent enough know you can't you can't just flip on ads live for like

14:34 four weeks or or eight weeks or something like that and everything just be working perfectly especially if you've never run ads because like I

14:41 mentioned earlier you're going to have problems you're going to have deficiencies exposed and you have to

14:46 address those deficiencies in real time the ads and graphics and videos that you make those could just be flat out bad

14:52 and they just don't work you don't you don't know any of that stuff until you actually run the ads and go live and

14:58 start buying traffic once you start buying traffic then you can start flushing out your hypothesis of I feel

15:03 like this is a problem that other people have and I'm going to address it this way and I'm going to Showcase it like this in a graphic or video so yeah I

15:10 mean that that that's probably one of the biggest things of of people that are just starting out you know they don't

15:16 have enough persistence with it and they're not trying enough angles to it there's usually like I think like five

15:22 variables when people are running ads there's the ad creative there's the ad copy there's the audience targeting

15:29 there's the website itself is a converting so the cro on the website and then there's the actual customer demand

15:35 so those five things those are big five variables for especially new brands if they're not buying traffic there's like

15:41 five big things that could be the root cause of what your problems are from not getting customers if your creative is

15:47 bad then that's going to affect everything else if your copy is bad you know same thing as creative that's going to affect everything else there's ways

15:54 that you can look and find out which of those problems it is that you're having

15:59 that is the one based on the kpis in your ad account such as if your clickd

16:04 rate is really bad then that means that either your audience targeting is off or

16:09 your um your actual ad creative and the copy is kind of off and it needs to be improved some especially if you're

16:15 buying the right kind of traffic like if I sell footballs and I'm targeting an interest based group that's that has an

16:21 interest in football um you know that should be the right kind of traffic so that's you know one example if you're

16:29 cost to buy traffic like your click the rate is really high and the landing page view cost is really high and the view

16:36 content on a product page is really high and then you know the add to cart rate is spiking then that indicates that you

16:43 probably maybe have like an issue on your website maybe your button is too low it's not above the fold maybe people

16:49 are seeing that product and how you're marketing it and it's not congruent with the actual product itself like if you're

16:55 showing like this hat and the hat looks like way different on the end they go through they click on it and they're

17:01 like what the heck that looks like you know a crappy hat and then they they just not interested in it then that would be a high ad to cart and then you

17:07 know of course if your add to cart is good and your view content cost is good and the click view rate is good your

17:13 cpms are all good then you probably have something of like a a product demand

17:18 issue is your product actually in demand we get that a lot like you know a lot of a lot of Brands sometimes will be new

17:25 we're a little bit leery with like new brands that come on board because of this but because we don't really care to

17:31 have the conversation we just run the ads it's solely it and we'll report back and and get active feedback on what our

17:37 speculation is if you have um a brand and like if this is a flashlight right here and then right here I've got

17:44 something that pulls out and it's a tape measure like is there really demand for a hat with a flashlight and a tape

17:49 measure in it when you buy traffic again when you're buying that traffic that will expose whether or not you have

17:55 deficiencies and that could be a deficiency of your product is just not that much in demand but you know these

18:01 are people's babies that we're working with and and dealing with and you don't want to be the one to say that you know

18:06 you have an ugly baby right so do you end up working with

18:11 them or you can't tell them so what happens next if you know this this is problem really candid on the feedback

18:19 hey this is going to be a difficult project we've done some research and and we're not finding any other competitors

18:25 that could be that yeah you have no competitors because this is a good project and because it's it's also going

18:31 to be a product that's really in demand or you have no competitors because nobody else is is stupid enough to go

18:37 down that road but obviously spoken a bit more eloquently

18:43 but yeah I mean it can be tricky sometimes and that some people have really gone down like a a road where you

18:52 would have hoped that somebody close to them be like hey maybe you shouldn't spend all this time on building out a

18:58 hat prototype with a tape measure because I don't think people are going to like but you know you don't want to

19:03 crush people's dreams and um anyways those people will go down the route they'll build out a brand they'll get

19:09 logos done they'll get branding done they'll get their website done they'll order product and it's like here they

19:14 are and they've got 2,000 products to try and move um and they you know they want to go for it they will be

19:20 incredibly candid and transparent with you but this is probably how it's going to go okay now

Budget Allocation for Startups

19:26 uh when it comes to budgeting for marketing I mean how should startups

19:31 approach budget allocation between paid ads content creation and other marketing activities I mean I think content

19:38 creation should be something like the brand is just doing all the time like you can hire an ad agency and like us

19:44 and we can come in and we can do stuff and build out campaigns and give you ideas and strategy and whatnot like as

19:51 the brand owner you have a vision for your brand and you should have an eye

19:57 for for uh for you know I say it but like sometimes people don't but like you you I feel like you should have an eye

20:04 for what's really good or what's really cool with marketing and advertising for your brand you I mean you've got to be a

20:10 student and you have to constantly be learning and consuming things in your in

20:16 your continue to level up and see hey that competitor is doing that really well that's a really good idea or man I

20:22 I be better be sure not to do stuff like that yeah okay and uh you offer emphasize the

Role of Data in Decision Making

20:29 role of data in decision making how do you leverage analytics to refine marketing strategies and what matrics do

20:36 you actually prioritize I mean analytics drivve really everything everything's developed based on um experience and and

20:43 strategy in the beginning but the the analytics are definitely going to be able to guide us because if we're

20:49 getting a a zero return on ad spend that's not going to be acceptable so that that is definitely a really really

20:54 big part what was the second part of that question the second part was which matrics do you prioritize for the

21:02 analytics which uh say that word again which what Matrix do you um yeah yeah so

21:10 normally like if it's e-commerce direct consumer return on ad spend is going to be probably one of the biggest ones of

21:15 course cost per acquisition can determine things as well if you're in lead gen it's going to be um cost per

21:22 lead cost per complete registration things like that will be measured and judge based on the lead cost um

21:28 yeah I mean those are pretty much the main ones all the other ones that we would use are just kind of supportive of

21:35 if we feel like we're in the right direction such as cpms do we feel like the CPM the cost per thousand Impressions is is really high like we're

21:42 paying a really high rate or do we feel like it's really low sometimes if it's really low that means that the quality

21:47 of the the audience is just not that great if the cost is really high it could indicate that you're going on a

21:53 very small audience like maybe a thousand users or something you know you say you're you're expense to advertise

21:59 that might be more expensive those cpms um the C the uh The Click through rate itself and then sometimes looking at

22:06 frequency how many times people are seeing your ads which can also be tied to how costly your cpms are and then you

22:13 know whatever funnel somebody has if it's just like if it's lead gen then you know it'll be like landing page view

22:19 lead conversion event complete registration conversion event we'll look at we'll look at the events sequentially from top to bottom um and we we look at

22:26 some of that stuff to be able to determine if we're on the right track and for e-commerce it's going to be landing page view view content add to

22:33 card add of payment info or initiate checkout and then uh purchase okay and uh of course there is

B2B vs B2C Marketing Strategies

22:40 a difference in marketing for B2B versus b2c how do you tailor strategies differently for each and what are the

22:48 biggest challenges for each segment I think the biggest challenges are probably around like uh lead generation

22:54 and the costs there because the reason I like e-commerce a lot is because when we generate a sale a purchase we can see

23:01 what the revenue is that was brought in from that we can see the RAS it's all in the it's all in the platform like it's

23:06 black and white we either we either own the win or own the loss with lead generation like if we're generating

23:13 leads for an attorney or or a company that the biggest issues I find is that it's not a clear Line in the Sand such

23:20 as we generated the lead here it is you know our job on that that is done I don't like uh having to get

23:27 pulled into to auditing someone's website or their follow-up processes or

23:32 their automations because that's just I'm not here to run your business I'm here to run your ads and if I'm having to get into your CRM or walk you through

23:39 that stuff I definitely don't mind giving pointers and help and feedback um I like being a really good partner and

23:45 consultative in that approach but like if if our job is is doing is being done

23:51 really poorly as a result of how you're working those leads that's never fun because then

23:57 eventually you know you're getting conversations of hey the quality is bad the leads suck they're they're not good they're not working and then you

24:04 inevitably get pulled into the part of like okay well what happens when the leag gets generated and they'll say well

24:10 we put it in a Google sheet and then somebody here will give them a call and you know you have some archaic processes

24:16 like that where people just don't have a good streamlined type of system versus

24:22 um you know some people who have the CRM and once they get in the CRM they get an automatic text they get an automatic

24:27 email somebody contacts them immediately there was a study done by MIT that that I I keep that document and I'd like to

24:35 share it with business owners who we're doing lead generation for just in the event that we do go down that road so I

24:41 can share with them how impactful it is if you contact your lead within the first 5 to 10 minutes compared to like

24:47 30 minutes later it's astonishing of the drop off and the quality and how people will get amnesia if you call them uh 45

24:55 minutes later and like I never filled out a form yes yes it happens with us at times I can

25:02 relate with that right and are there any specific platforms you believe are more advantageous for B2B compared to b2c

25:10 yeah I mean I think that uh like b2c uh I mean Shopify is like the gold

25:16 standard when it comes to e-commerce um I mean that that's you know everything just works on there and um you know if

25:22 we've got a client that's on WordPress with woocommerce or or uh big Commerce or Magento it seems to always be kind of

25:30 like a little bit of an issue for B to for B2B really I've seen some really ugly websites convert so I'm I'm kind of

25:37 agnostic when it comes to how websites look when it comes to B2B because you could have like a form a widget embedded

25:43 and that form is automatically pulled in Via API to some sort of CRM really just

25:48 if they've got a process that's convertible a website that looks up toate um you know a sticky a sticky

25:54 button that sticks on the page at all times no matter where somebody's scrolling so that it it prompts them to enter name

26:01 phone email and um and they've got a a systemized process like that I'm I'm

26:06 fine with anything somebody has all right and uh uh of course

Proud Successful Campaigns

26:13 monster agency is known for Innovative marketing techniqus can you share a campaign or a strategy that you are

26:19 particularly proud of and what made it successful yeah um I think we've done a lot of campaigns

26:28 without naming you know specific Brands and names and stuff like that you know there there's there's one campaign that

26:33 we had done let me think of how to describe that one we used a lot of gifs in it the account was really sticky and

26:41 not budging and it just wasn't moving we had tried a lot of different things we had scaled it up they had started with us spending about like I think maybe

26:47 three or $5,000 a month and then we scaled them all the way up to like uh about 250,000 per month and they they

26:53 were selling products of course but we got into this world where things were just not moving and sometimes that

27:00 happens in these accounts like you you've got competitors that you're going up against you've got market conditions

27:05 that you're going up against and I I like to have clients that will be willing to try things sometimes trying

27:10 things is expensive but being able to try different things to have a paradigm

27:16 shift and to get a paradigm shift in your account and have things really move and and be different you've got to do

27:22 some different stuff and you've got to try some different things so we had used gifs after a while we were using noral

27:28 Graphics normal videos but when we started running these gift campaigns this is actually during a little bit

27:33 during a little bit after covid but when we started using the gifts they did a

27:39 really good job in explaining something that's maybe a little bit complex to people and making it really simplified

27:46 and really just dumbed down and then which we were kind of astonished by because it was like it didn't really fit

27:52 brand breath practices to be running a gif as like an ad you know people were like they have clean graphics and

27:59 branding and stuff like that and then you run like this just like rough and dirty kind of GIF and then it gets the

28:05 job done and it starts working and then you try another gift and it does a good job too like now the account it feels

28:13 like a meme account or something because it's just like nothing but like gifts but it's done a really good job in being

28:18 able to quickly explain something that's a little bit complex to people in a

28:23 really fast manner at speed and their and their news fee because you know sometimes times when you're scrolling

28:28 your feed and you're going and you see you know ads you've got a really short amount of time to be able to get people

28:35 engaged and looking and the gifts are really good at being pattern breaking and they're like because if you see a

28:41 gift and you're scrolling you're like okay what is that you're kind of looking at it you're giving it at least a second

28:46 a little bit of a consideration and then just that little amount of consideration

28:51 and then clicking with the right people who see it that was a game changer in the account and then we were running

28:57 Dynamic uh Dynamic creative with um a handful of gifts and we were able to

29:02 scale that campaign up a ton wow that's something I've not heard

29:08 before but sounds like a very interesting approach yeah it works right so what are your thoughts on influencer

Influencer Marketing Insights

29:15 marketing in uh 2024 is it still as

29:20 powerful as it was before and how can Brands makes the most of it without

29:25 falling into the Trap of vary metrics yeah I think um that's a

29:32 good point with like the Ving metrics and stuff like that like um I've never been a massive fan of

29:38 influencer marketing because it's like you know you pay somebody a th000 or500 or two 205 I've heard of a lot of crazy

29:44 numbers too um you paid them that they post and then it's kind of like okay

29:50 like that's what it is and if you don't get any sales or any business from it it's like man that's painful I just

29:56 wasted so much money and I could have used like for me at least if I run ads I can I can point to something tangible

30:02 and say okay well that's what I got out of it but you know with influencer marketing depending on how you structure it with influencers too if um they have

30:09 it on their page and it lives on their page if you've got any kind of like photos or videos out of it or anything

30:14 like that with the influencer talking about the product that you can then use and remarket and add on your website and things like that you can really ring

30:21 your towel dry of it but I I always like kind of just building out assets that

30:27 you can do duplicate and that's a big that that's a key word with influencer marketing like is is uh duplicity like

30:34 is it duplicable can you can you recreate this with a good influencer if I got like I don't know Steve Harvey to

30:42 make a post for me and about my my book that I have coming out and he does that and we crush it okay well can I get like

30:49 Cedric the Entertainer can I get like DL huy or can I get other people that are kind of similar to this person to then

30:56 post it and recreate create that magic and usually the answer is no so what

31:01 makes it difficult with the influencer marketing side of things is that you know you can pay a good amount and you can get it out of it what you want the

31:08 money the revenue but you can also get absolutely nothing and then the other part of that is that it's not really

31:14 duplicable with ads you can break them down as to what makes an ad successful and what what doesn't make it successful

31:20 and you can kind of recreate Those ads and redo them over and over at no cost to you but the influential marketing is

31:27 is definitely something that's a bit more tricky Okay now what's your approach to

Building Client Relationships

31:34 building and maintaining strong client relationships communication staying staying in the loop and our team members

31:40 that's that's part of their their their duties and job is to maintain client relationships and be be communicative

31:46 with them I stress that you know you need to like at the very beginning when everybody meets with their teams like

31:53 when when our you know our marketing strategists who interface with clients when they meet with their team on

31:58 Mondays they should then be letting their clients know what happened the last seven days what are we planning to

32:04 do for this seven days to you know either stabilize the good results or to improve results that were um that were

32:11 not great we're laying that over to clients and keeping them in the loop ahead of time we have reporting that

32:17 comes out on Tuesdays letting them know that and keeping them up to date with their their account what things are

32:22 being done and uh if if results aren't great what we're doing to improve them I think that is a big thing but then also

32:29 just kind of meeting meeting people where they are in their business and if

32:35 we feel like things can be improved based on what we're seeing on the website or something that can be shifted

32:41 or changed to get better results relaying that over to them and just trying to be a good partner so that they can get in the best position possible to

32:47 get converting ads so it's it's more not seeing client

32:53 relationship as just uh transactional but rather than looking it as a partnership

32:59 yeah very much so now how do you handle situations where client expectations don't align

Managing Client Expectations

33:06 with marketing realities I mean you gave one example of course but for other

33:12 situations yeah like basically if someone's not getting the results that they need you

33:18 know we'll have a call and and discuss what's going on with things and see

33:24 where we can improve them I me it's just like it's I think it's just having canid communic and not being you know worried

33:29 or nervous to dance around the fact that like the results are coming in we can only do what we do and and um you know

33:35 what we've promised upon with uh you know when we're sharing over a deck in the end term in the beginning uh before

33:41 somebody comes on board it's like hey this is what we'll do this is our process um but you know do we have a

33:48 100% hitting rate and everything works no absolutely not every there's no Ad Agency that every single brand they come

33:54 on with works there's brands that come on and we feel like we can get the move moving because we've solved similar

33:59 problems in the past for other people that are similar um but sometimes it just does it either really what it comes

34:06 down to is just like Financial Runway and you know you've only got a certain amount of time to be able to get something working proven and a light at

34:13 the end of the tunnel before someone's like hey this just isn't working um you know we need we need to kind of stop but there are some some scenarios where we

34:20 have literally tried like everything possible this this happened with uh with a brand that sells um uh like the these

34:28 dog cargo kind of hammocks and cargo liners so that your dog could be in

34:34 their car you know we thought it was going to be a really good job on on Tik Tok and there's a lot of like dog people

34:41 on Tik Tok we that we would be able to move it and sell it with Tik Tok shop the brand thought the same thing as well

34:46 you so we were all pretty bullish and excited to get it going but when we started actually running the ads and buying the traffic people just weren't

34:53 coming through and buying it and I think that uh you still with me

34:58 yeah I just had the power switch right yeah so you started buying the

35:04 traffic and then yeah so we started uh buying the traffic and getting it come in and um you know not as many

35:09 conversions as we would like and hope for and this is a brand that sells a lot on Amazon and on uh does kind of decent

35:17 on Google and and not too bad on Facebook but I think with them the the the problem was because we literally

35:23 tried everything that we could try between audience targeting between different ads different creat

35:28 between sending the traffic to their website sending a traffic to the Tik Tok shop I think it's one of those things where uh and you you you can only figure

35:35 this out by spending money against ads and running campaigns like Tik Tok is just not a good platform for them for

35:41 some reason when it comes to consideration and purchase when it comes to Discovery and awareness I think it

35:47 could be a great platform for them but they would need to adjust their kpis and how we're measured because when people

35:53 are looking for something specific as a dog cargo liner um I think we did a really good job in being able to promote

35:59 it and sell it to the point where you're like oh wow that's a good idea I should buy this I click I think it's just too

36:04 difficult for people to be able to make that kind of a purchase in that manner if they don't already have a need and

36:10 demand behind it like you're not going to show somebody something really cool and just have them be like wow I've got to have it and I purchase whereas when

36:16 they're on Amazon and they're typing in dog caller or dog leash or same thing on

36:22 Google when they're doing relevant searches around keyword phrases that are relevant to that brand it's easy to buy

36:28 people and meet them where they are um and and sell them a product that's going to be

36:33 useful right right so so did you end up then having this brand sell get more

36:39 business through Facebook or Amazon ads or no so they had already run they already do stuff on Facebook and they do

36:45 stuff on Google and Amazon already our job was to come in and run the campaigns get everything get all the Creator

36:50 videos and try to prove this thing out on Tik Tok but after like two months it

36:56 was just not working and and um I let them know that in our Communications that we've literally tried everything

37:01 but we can continue trying stuff but I feel like it's just going to be burning money at this point um and it's best to

37:07 just uh just fold it and you spend that money better allocated towards platforms that are actually generating Revenue it

37:13 happens sometimes like that it's it's just the nature of the business but I think it's how we handle those

37:18 Communications and interact and work with clients which uh determines a lot of the relationship and and the the

37:24 character of our agency you know I think agencies can get like a reputation for being slimy and bad agencies for a

37:30 reason because there are a lot of agencies out there that will you know just do things that they shouldn't when it comes to a client wanting to leave or

37:38 offboard or things like that but you know we try to handle the communications and the relationships with empathy so

37:44 that you know we're putting oursel in their shoes as well and if it's just not working it's just not working there's no sense in trying to um you know bleed

37:51 someone dry for for money or or payments and it's just not right

37:57 okay that's that's a very honest and different approach and I know agencies

38:03 would rather keep on making money rather than being honest right it's so the

38:09 thing is like you know not only do you have to look out for your agency and your brand when it comes like online

38:14 reputation management but because things will you know things people will scream things from a Mountaintop the the second

38:21 things go wrong um I I I I learned that back when I was selling products online

38:26 for like you know a and stuff like that right but they will they'll they'll they'll scream it from a mountain and

38:32 you don't want that and they don't want to do that stuff either so just like do the right thing so that they can they can move on but like you know whoever my

38:40 team has to interface with these people and they have to communicate with them and if somebody's Mega pissed off

38:45 because of how you're billing how you're running things I mean that's incredibly stressful for somebody to be you know

38:50 working at monster agency and having to like deal with somebody who's an absolute wild card and it's about to

38:56 just blow up at them and any minute so I don't want to put our team members through that kind of stuff

AI's Impact on Marketing

39:02 either okay let's talk a little bit about AI as well I mean none of my podcast recently goes without talking

39:09 about AI now uh AI is becoming of course a ma major player in digital marketing

39:14 how do you first of all do you incorporate AI in your campaigns designing or execution or

39:22 optimizing yeah um you know I think that I think that AI should be used by by

39:27 anybody nowadays because it's developing at the speed of light and there I I think most people who aren't using AI

39:33 it's not that they're just like oh I don't believe in Ai and they just thumb their nose up at it and don't believe I

39:38 think it's because they don't have the right kind of use cases or they haven't had somebody maybe show them what to do with it so that they could have that aha

39:45 moment where the light bulb goes off they like oh well and being entrepreneurs like you and I are when

39:51 you see something that's being done by AI you know first you'll you'll you'll Marvel at the novelty of it and it's

39:57 kind like a bar trick and it's it's kind of neat what it can do but after after the novelty of it goes away and and

40:04 you're you're kind of just left looking at it and what it is then you start to kind of think about like huh I wonder

40:10 how I could use this to make more money from it and and how it could help me in my business and then you start using it in that capacity we use it a lot

40:19 for sometimes with copy I I'm not a huge fan of of the kind of AD copy that AI

40:25 generates it sounds like over the top and just a little bit like kind of fake but for coming up with different ideas I

40:32 think it's it's a great tool to give you a perspective in a view that maybe you just didn't see before and then also

40:39 being able to break down and analyze large amounts of data and then uh having

40:46 it be able to like you know spit you out answers based on the data um I think that's really helpful when we've got

40:52 like you know a customer CSV file of all their reviews from uh Amazon or or

40:58 Google or wherever they might be house so they got like thousands of reviews you know you feed that CSV into um into

41:03 your AI and then ask it to analyze it and you know extrapolate what are the 10

41:09 best value props that uh it seems like fuel our brand based on the reviews that

41:14 people are talking about what are the 10 biggest pain points that people have from our so that way we can create ads

41:20 to address the pain points or ads to highlight the value propositions of the

41:25 brand okay are there any AI tools or platforms that you have found particularly useful in your marketing

41:31 efforts I like Claude I don't know if you've used that one yes we do yeah so I

41:37 like Claud because you can develop out a project and it can be specifically for that client which we do a lot of times

41:43 we'll have like a client like client a and then we'll make that project in Claude and then we'll feed it a CSV file

41:49 and that's where we'll we'll go and we'll just educate it on the brand and feed it information that way if you want

41:55 to come up with ad copy really quick like hey share me like 10 different ad ideas based on this brand and your your

42:00 understandings of this brand give me 10 ideas for Black Friday sales that we could run and then you can you know pass that over to the client for information

42:08 we always look through it though we don't just want to like provide information that's just solely AI info

42:13 um you want to kind of like go through it and you know make it your

42:18 own okay and uh so let's talk a little bit about your uh

Overcoming Adversity in Business

42:25 personal Insight so of course entrepreneurship is known for its high and lows can you share a moment in your

42:31 career where you face significant adversity and how you overcame

42:36 it yeah um I think you know entrepreneurs probably go through stuff

42:41 I mean there's there's there's Seasons when it comes to your business and um you know sometimes when there's seasons

42:48 of prosperity and sometimes there's seasons of famine and you know just being able to properly weather those

42:55 storms um I don't have any specific scenar I feel like I've been through so many damn things but I like just being

43:01 able to weather through storms and and constantly be pressing forward whether or not you know you you've got your

43:07 business is in trouble or whether or not your business is being really prosperous making sure that you're making the

43:13 capital allocations and investments in your business to where you're not a onetick pony and I think that that's a

43:19 big component of ads and PID traffic because if you can run PID traffic and you can run ads

43:25 then and you can do it in a profitable way for your business you're never going to really go through a season where it's

43:31 like a dry season if you're if you're based on referral business only like that's not a business that's kind of a

43:36 hobby until you can start buying traffic in my opinion and getting a monthly

43:42 volume of visitors to your website that you can depend on based on some sort of cost and you know that you can get a

43:48 customer out for whatever that cost is until you can do that you're you're

43:53 going to be kind of just like doing things and it's it's it's a I don't know

43:58 that that that doesn't sound safe and secure to me but you know there are different seasons where we'll have a

44:04 large influx of um clients that are wanting to work with us and then Seasons where it's just you know like sometimes

44:10 in Q4 it gets quiet because everybody's just like head down focused in their brands did I lose you you still there

44:16 yeah uh you there I think uh they okay I'm here yeah I think the

44:22 connection got lost you were talking about the I mean um so there is a large number of traffic coming to your website

44:30 then yeah you need to have a uh if you got a large number of traffic to your website you need to have some sort of

44:36 Dependable volume of visitors to your website so that know you can be able to generate some sort of business from it

44:44 because you can't scale a business based on hopes or referrals or maybe people will reach out and things like that the

44:51 only way you can scale your business is if you've got a Dependable source of traffic that you can depend on to build

44:56 up up your um you know your monthly Revenue to a certain rate so that you can make certain hiring decisions and other advertising

45:03 decisions okay now what keeps you motivated during challenging times and

Staying Motivated During Challenges

45:08 how do you maintain a growth mindset say that first part again what keeps you motivated during challenging times I

45:15 mean just my family and um you know we've got people to take care of here in our organization as well but yeah I mean

45:23 just that and I've been doing this for so long that you know there's going to be point like uh there's going to be Peaks and valleys and just understanding

45:30 that it's just it's just a cycle and you go through it and then you come on the other side hopefully better and you've

45:36 learned some more stuff and continue to develop on but yeah I mean if anything really just family and people depending

45:41 on you okay what books podcast or resources have had biggest impact on

45:47 your entrepreneur journey I don't I honestly self admittedly I'd love to read more but I just don't I don't know

45:53 if that's a component of people that are in this the space that work online all day because I feel like I'm reading and

45:58 reading and reading all day by the time it's the end of the day I'm not wanting to really like crack open a book or

46:04 anything and just kind of read I don't mind the audio books I think those are helpful and I I I I do enjoy when I get

46:10 a chance to actually listen and read Around topics that are of interest to me

46:15 but it seems like at by the end of the day you're just like so burned out between reading emails and slack

46:20 Communications and work and then you know just your normal day-to-day self-education with remaining a student

46:26 of your craft I just feel like there's not a lot of time for people to be able to crack open a book and read I guess I could read 10

46:32 pages a night or something but you know when I'm done working I'd rather just kind of like relax right right right now uh did you

Mentorship in Entrepreneurship

46:42 had uh when you started out or did you had any mentors not really um I think just like

46:49 uh how long have you been uh doing SEO for 22 years okay so like in the

46:54 beginning early days a lot of times um mentors were just like you know random

47:00 person like Cat in the Hat 22 on black hat Forum like you know right that's

47:06 that's the community that you're in and um a lot of digging and investigating and reading you know my journey to $100

47:12 a day or or something like that from other people seeing what they've done looking at what they've done thinking

47:17 about maybe what idea do you want to jump into do I go into affiliate marketing do I go into Facebook ads do I

47:23 do Drop Shipping do I do um local SEO no shortage of ideas on there and I think

47:29 that when you're starting out in the beginning getting on some of those forums and like reading through people's Journeys and and their methods and what

47:35 they're doing and then trying to do it yourself all most people need is just a little bit of a spark and to get a

47:41 couple wins I think once you see like whoa I can actually generate money doing this online that wasn't too hard what if

47:49 I did it for 10 people what if I did it for a thousand people what if I did it for 10,000 people and then most that's

47:55 usually how a lot of people's entrepreneu Journeys have started I think the the the Drop Shipping thing is

48:01 something that had pulled in a lot of people they could just buy a store list some products from Alibaba and then uh

48:07 be Off to the Races and get infinite riches but that method and and and doing all that stuff is is really kind of dead

48:13 it's more about brand building nowadays right right if you could give

48:18 one piece of advice to your younger self what would it be I don't know I think maybe like

Advice to Your Younger Self

48:24 persistence because when you're when you're young you just want things to happen and and and to go and to move

48:30 move move but if you're persistent with something and you persevere like I don't know anyone I don't know anyone in

48:35 internet marketing who I've known for a bit who just hasn't made a decent amount of money everybody I know has um and and

48:41 everybody I know for the most part is persistent and they persevere if one thing doesn't work they go onto the next

48:47 thing onto the next thing and eventually they have a hit in something that works you don't know about their 10 failures because they don't talk about that but

48:53 you know about their the one that kind of blew up for them but if you don't have perseverance you're you're never

48:58 going to be able to to make it in the internet marketing or trying to do anything with uh building a business online okay right so now we are in the

49:06 final segment of our uh podcast and uh they're going to be a rapid fire round I'll ask you some light-hearted

Rapid Fire Round

49:12 questions and you need to respond with the first thing that comes to your mind and are you ready yeah let's go favorite

49:19 marketing tool or app right now um I say Claude okay uh best piece of advice you

49:25 have ever received always tell the truth and don't do anything that you wouldn't do with your parents there all right

49:32 what's your biggest pet peeve in digital marketing probably get-rich quick stuff and you know people that people that lie

49:38 about like what it is that they're doing okay if you weren't in uh marketing what carer would you be

49:44 pursuing if it wasn't marketing what what would I be in what carrier would you be pursuing you said what carrier

49:51 right so if you were not doing marketing what else would you be doing probably marketing

49:57 well I guess like something in sales something around the lines of that okay and who's your entrepreneural

50:05 role model the anti what your entrepreneur

50:11 role model oh Elon Musk okay okay with that uh uh we come to the

50:18 end of this podcast Andrew this has been an enlightening conversation of course your insights into entrepreneurship

50:24 digital marketing and how you value clients are of course Very invaluable and I hope our readers our listeners

50:31 learned a lot of it thank you for sharing your journey and expertise with us before we wrap up where can our

Finding You Online

50:36 listeners find you online and what's the best way to stay updated to your latest projects just on anything you know if

50:42 you Google my name Andrew maltz you'll find all my socials and stuff like that uh what was your second question my

50:48 second question was and what's the best way to stay updated on your latest projects or latest work you are doing

50:54 probably on like uh just our website monster agency.com okay and Which social media channel are

51:02 you most active on probably Instagram or uh Tik Tok okay okay okay okay thanks

51:08 again for joining us Andrew and to our listeners if you enjoyed today's episode don't forget to subscribe rate and

51:14 review the podcast see you in the next episode