Episode 9: Prioritizing Channels

Also Listen To Us Here!

• Amazon
• Spotify

---

Quote of the Episode

“The Mike Tyson rule is always in effect. Like everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the teeth”.

Robbie Fitzwater

---

Tim (00:00):
So, Robbie, you’re changing up your marketing budget. Can you tell me a bit about it?

Robbie (00:06):
Okay. I’ve got one word, two syllables, everything on TikTok.

Tim (00:14):
Boom

Robbie (00:15):
Boom.

Tim (00:16):
You’re gonna win. I, I feel it already.

Robbie (00:18):
Totally everything. One basket. We’re gonna be good.

[Intro]

Robbie (00:30):
Everybody, this is Tim and Robbie with the Content Community Commerce podcast. We talk about topics at the convergence of content, community, and commerce. And today we are gonna be talking about how and where to invest your marketing dollars and how to do that in the way you prioritize channels, And prioritizing the right channels over the bright channels, and finding what’s gonna be the best for your business at different stages. Because Tim, like we talk about all the time, a new business versus an older business, they’re gonna need completely different things.

Tim (01:02):
That’s true, but I’m still caught up on your advice from the intro and I’m thinking like, we, we closed this. Like TikTok is

Robbie (01:09):
Tiktok, is it. Everything…

Tim (01:11):
Where it’s at.

Robbie (01:11):
Everything only on TikTok. It’s like, it’s provocative.

Tim (01:13):
It is B2B, TikTok,

Robbie (01:16):
B2b, TikTok.

Tim (01:16):
B2C TikTok.

Robbie (01:17):
Everything.

Tim (01:17):
B2B to B2C

Tim (01:19):
Everything with, with like the My Hump song playing in the background. It’s gonna be great . But, but for real though, where if I’m a, if I’m a business, and like, let’s start, we talked about where to think about new businesses, where to think about like a little bit like, kind of like adolescent businesses and where to think about mature businesses and kind of like those different stages are gonna need completely different things. So

Tim (01:43):
A hundred percent.

Robbie (01:44):
What if I’m a new business entering a space? Like what am I thinking about? Or what am I, what should I be looking for?

Tim (01:50):
Well, you’re, you’re essentially a ghost. Like you do not exist on Google, so you need to make yourself one visible there. And the same is across other channels. It’s like if you’re new and have zero engagement in anything, like, you’re invisible. So the first thing you gotta think about is pay to play. Like you’re, you’re going to have to put some money into making yourself visible while you’re growing all the elements of your business to create more of that organic and owned visibility. So paid is

Robbie (02:19):
Paid, okay. So paid. Even though I’m a ghost, I’ve gotta pay to pay for people to see me.

Tim (02:23):
You gotta pay to put some clothes on that ghost.

Robbie (02:24):
I, I feel like I’m like a flashback from like the sixth sense. It’s like the, the nineties flashback happening right now, . But basically if you’re a new business too, like you may, if you have a novel and new product, like you don’t have a natural demand for that product built in either. No. So like, you may be, you’re working on creating demand as opposed to capturing demand at that point. So even if you invested in like Google Ads, if nobody’s searching for it, like how’s that gonna help?

Tim (02:49):
Yeah. You like, you don’t have the, the ability to just go all in on brand name because nobody knows your brand name. So you need to find like, what are those things closest aligned to your, to your offering, the broader search things and starting to gain visibility there by paying for those, paying for those clicks to come in. And that’s, that’s a tricky thing to figure out at the start.

Robbie (03:14):
But, so, so at the start, if you don’t have any demander, nobody’s like searching for your x, y, Z product, like it, would social be a better place to start? Or do I, how am I looking at that?

Tim (03:25):
It’s, so we talked about like 70 30 or an 80 20 split, and I’m gonna say in that 70 or 80%, like you’re gonna be a mix of like Google paid and then also social where you’re, you’re trying to create just awareness, like making people aware that your product or solution even exists. And then hopefully from there you’re going to drive them to search. And at that stage as they search in Google, you’re gonna need ads to show up because organically you’re just not going to appear right there at the top. Because odds are somebody’s got a solution fairly similar to you or they’re just, you know, Google’s gonna show all their sites. Because that’s just the nature of the beast. It’s, it’s gonna pick what they think people want.

Robbie (04:10):
So, so early on I’m thinking I invest 80% of my budget on paid in terms of, in the, in the form of, again, search ads and social ads. Like again, what that mix is gonna be is depending on how much demand is likely available for that individual product.

Tim (04:28):
And audience too. I think there’s a little bit of audience thinking around as well, depending on who they are. Because if it’s, if it’s an older, more mature audience, then you know, do you gonna have to think about how you, you advertise in those channels? Because they may not respond as well to ads as perhaps somebody that’s younger or a more savvy user of the platform too.

Robbie (04:50):
Or, or I mean the younger audience has a really good BS filter and they just don’t, they’re not gonna buy anything. Yeah. They just don’t respond to ads in the same way. So in some ways, like you could even think in this case, like you may even work to invest in influencer at dollars too. So yeah, leveraging an influencer to help create demand for that product. So you’re not, you are not the one just like pedaling it through ads. You may be partnering with somebody who has a credibility and trust already built in to piggyback off their audience. Which is again, helpful helpful in expediting that process sometimes. Yeah.

Tim (05:20):
And all of that is, again, just pointing back to a lot of paying.

Robbie (05:24):
Yeah. , you’re paying, you’re paying a lot.

Tim (05:27):
You are paying to get yourself out there and visible. And I think of like last night, literally, I don’t even know why they targeted me, but it was a, it looked like sweatpants and a sweatshirt that are supposed to look like they’re separate, but it’s actually like a one piece onesie and like they were marketing this for people to be outside. I don’t know if they just felt like here in the south, like I need to be cozy in the winter. But it seemed like really bad targeting. But I was thinking to myself, I’m like, this is a company that is clearly paying because their ad showed up in several things. An influencer all of a sudden was wearing one of these like onesie things in, in the feed and then an ad showed up. Because I wanted to show my wife. So then like, you know, I do a, a Google search, I’m like, oh I gotta find this thing. And I put in like the broadest, like one piece tuxedo onesie, because I knew it was like tuxedo was in the name and they were there with ads, but everything was ad driven. I could not find an organic thing that that that ranked. It was all purely like ads to get visibility at that stage.

Robbie (06:28):
Tim, Tim, don’t go, don’t go off from joining your onesie cult please.

Tim (06:32):
I would be sweating so hard

Robbie (06:35):
That that is that. Okay. But that’s like a completely novel product. Like you never knew you may have wanted like a onesie like a, it a

Tim (06:42):
, I, I can’t describe.

Robbie (06:43):
Its like a fake, a fake onesie jumper.

Tim (06:45):
It’s like an athleisure suit that’s all connected. You lift a sweatshirt up and it’s like stitched the pants like up inside it. It’s just, I don’t understand.

Robbie (06:53):
They call, they call it a power romper.

Tim (06:54):
I think it was called Tuxi. If you wanna search them and if you need help with SEO Tuxi I can help. But

Robbie (07:00):
Anyhow, shameless plug Tuxi, reach out. We, we know a guy,

Tim (07:03):
If your business still exists a year from now, I can help you with too . But for real, like that’s one of those like novel products. It’s like, what the heck is it? So for them, nobody’s naturally searching for that type of thing, but they’re, they’re having to generate that demand and awareness. Like they’re in social, they’re paying perhaps brutally targeting who they’re paying to be exposed to, but they’re still paying to be there. If I then turn to Google search, they’re paying to be in a shopping feed with just a smattering of words that I thought could potentially, because I couldn’t remember the brand at that stage. So I was like, I feel like it had tuxedo in it and I feel like it was a onesie and I, you know, I between Halloween costumes and that it managed to appear in a shopping feed, but they paid to be there. And that’s where you really have to think about when you start out like, I, I need to appear. If if you’re something that’s novel or doesn’t exist and if you’re a product where other people have it, then you’re probably gonna have to double down even more so in that span because now you’re competing against a lot of other brands that are paying for those terms and those audiences.

Robbie (08:05):
So again, that’s where you’re, you’re starting off, you’re paying and investing 70 to 80% of your your marketing budget on those areas. Yeah. What about the other 20 to 30%? Are you like, how, how do we think about that? Because I know like, again, part of this is building a long-term structure and infrastructure for your business. So you’re start, we wanna start building a house on owned land early. Yeah. We can’t go all in on that because if we did, like we have a really great hou, we have a really great house in a neighborhood where no, nothing else is built.

Tim (08:38):
Nobody knows to look for it in that neighborhood.

Robbie (08:40):
Yeah. Google Maps, it’s not on Google Maps. Don’t

Tim (08:42):
Worry. Yeah. So like this is where that remaining 20 to 30%, you need to maximize that, you need to make it like that is 70%. So when it comes to like creating content on your own site and things that are, again building, building a home on your land, like you need to stretch those dollars as far as possible. Like how much content can you create, whether that is written content or video content that’s going to live on your site. You need to be building that and as much as possible as early as possible. Because you’re gonna have that time to rank, we’ve talked about this before, like you don’t just write a piece of content and then amazing. I am page one, position one for all these beautiful keywords that I wanna rank for right away. Like it could take you if you’re a new brand on a new domain with no authority, like you could be looking at six months at the earliest, most likely a year to get that kind of visibility that you would like a pulse on your site through organic. So it’s, you want to get that ramped up asap.

Robbie (09:44):
Yeah. So you, again, building that infrastructure, you can’t go all in on it early, but that’s something you really need to be thinking about because that’s gonna be that long-term foundation that you’re gonna be working to build. Because again, if your ad dollars slow down or something changes like volatility in the system throws that system off really fast. Yeah. And anytime like again, you’re moving from general Google shopping ads to PMax ads. Mm-Hmm. There’s some ugliness that can happen there. And.

Tim (10:10):
I feel the pain right now.

Robbie (10:12):
Everybody in the e-commerce space knows this world because like Facebook ads have, Facebook ads have been hurting the last few years and like now Google ads moving from a typical ad bidding strategy to like a PMax strategy really doesn’t translate as well. Or there’s some growing paints involved right now. So we see a lot of businesses like having some volatility in there. That’s where that longer term investment in, again foundational marketing strategy really helps to kind of cushion that. If something were to change again early on, it’s a little bit harder pill to swallow, but longer term that better foundation is a better place to be starting from.

Tim (10:49):
Oh yeah. And it’s like for the, the stakeholders, whoever it is in your company, like you have to present that well, like don’t get kind of the, you know, shiny lights in your eyes of like, oh, we must go all paid into all channels because you don’t wanna blow through all that budget. Because then you’re always gonna be reliant on that if you’re never building anything that is, that is native in your site. And eventually as you do start getting traction and traffic, then it kind of moves you to that stage where then some of that spending can be shifted to retargeting those people that have had an experience on your site. So now your, your spend is not just, you know, hunting cold. It’s like you, you can go out after somebody’s got a little bit of a pulse like being there. They know what we are, let’s let’s start to remarket them.

Robbie (11:33):
Yeah. And that, that conversion strategy is gonna be completely different because if you have content that supplements that that bright journey helps ’em feel confident making that decision that makes it easier for them to actually take, take an action. And also hopefully you’re capturing an email at that point too, so you can follow up with them in a really strategic way. Mm-Hmm. . So again, I, there’s so much there and thinking about again, how do I invest in how many channels? Like do I create a social account for everything or do I, do I start or where do I start?

Tim (12:01):
So social, like that’s your, that is your background. Like you were, you were social before email, but you want to go where your audience is. So like you joked about TikTok, don’t go to TikTok if your audience isn’t on TikTok, just because that’s the new trendy platform. Don’t go to Twitter just, just because who knows what’s gonna go there.

Robbie (12:23):
Twitter. Twitter, Twitter may not be the most, the most stable long term investment right now.

Tim (12:28):
. Yeah. Watch that one. Yeah. But I would say, you know, Facebook, if that’s, if that’s where your audience is, then go there. Or if it’s a, you know, a B2B solution, then maybe it’s, it’s LinkedIn is gonna be a better social channel or ad spend for, for you. So it’s thinking about like, where is your audience gonna be? What type of product is it you’re selling? And then test in that social channel or maybe a couple of them. But then whenever you see which one is really performing the best, then laser in and focus on that. But don’t just go where, you know, the new thing is, or like, well I’ve heard that Mastodons gonna replace Twitter, I’m going all it is like, not yet too early. It’s like, go where your audience are.

Robbie (13:08):
Yeah. And again, spreading yourself too thin early is gonna be really difficult because you see, we see have seen lots of groups and this is always a really bad, everybody wants to go claim all their Twitter, all their handles getting all those accounts created and like a social account, like it’s free. Yes. But it’s about, it’s free as a free puppy, like the puppy’s free, but the care and maintenance and everything else that cost a ton. So like, sorry, explicit content. , that’s where you, it’s not free. So understanding, hey, let’s invest in a few channels in terms of social, let’s get a few social channels up and running where we can be good. We may not be great at all of them, but let’s have a few places where we can find some wins before we spread ourselves thin. And then extend that knowledge and that learning into other, other channels and platforms if we want to. But if we can really own that, own that experience in some of those smaller plat in, in one or two channels early that’s gonna give our organic social a better chance of actually doing well eventually. And then we can extend that to our audience in different, in different categories. But early on, not getting too spread too thin. Yeah,

Tim (14:15):
That’s, that can happen very quickly.

Robbie (14:18):
So we’re, we’re going from, again, new businesses. Where are we, where are we going as we as a mature more so like if I’m, my business is growing up, like my, my, my little baby business is growing up into like a little bit more adolescent business. Like.

Tim (14:32):
I’m a real boy.

Robbie (14:33):
I’m a real boy. Oh my, my voice is cracking

Both (14:36):
.

Robbie (14:38):
My voice already cracked, so I already sound like a, like a middle school boy. But am I, where, where’s my, how’s my investment changing? Am I moving a little bit more into the again ad side or am I going into the more long term?

Tim (14:52):
So there, there’s two parts to the thinking here as well. Like, just as we’re talking about this, it’s like at this stage, your marketing budget should be increasing because you’re now making revenue and there’s dollars coming in the door. So even though you’re maybe gonna scale back your paid, you’re maybe paying equal or more, but it’s just a lesser percentage of that overall budget. So whenever we’re talking about like scaling the budget down, it’s not necessarily scaling your dollar spend, it’s your marketing budget as a whole that you’re, you’re gonna spread differently. But you might now at that stage be able to shift down to 60% of your effort or spend isn’t, you know, anything that’s paid related. So whether that’s paid Google paid social, like 60% is going there and 40% now is like really building your own property out. Like, we want to own this. We’re going to round up our content strategy and we’re also going email.

Robbie (15:47):
Yeah. We’re probably at like this stage or even earlier, we’re probably looking at building out even probably earlier, we’re probably looking at building out our foundational email automations and then working at finding a way that we can build a consistent cadence of our email. Again, basically communication with our audiences to understand which, which is most valuable, how do we drive and extend lifetime value of our customer? But also like, this is kind of still the kissing frog stage in some ways. Like be, we’re not gonna have an extremely large, large, large audience at this point. So we want to figure out how do we communicate, how do we add value, how do we really engage our audience in the early stages before we start to more communicate with a more broad audience. Because again, we can get that learning out of the way early. We’re gonna have a little bit more flexibility or a little bit more patience from customers as we’re a younger, newer business.

Robbie (16:38):
And that’s where really finding that, again, validating that product market fit is extremely important, but also validating your understanding of your audience is really important there too. So the better you know your audience, the better you’re gonna be able to drive the actions you wanna see. And that the learnings you have early on are gonna translate into your later stages too. But you’re never gonna have that learning and you’re never gonna be able to experiment and test unless you’re doing it. So that’s where, again, getting into a cadence of consistent email campaigns is gonna be really helpful there too, to understand which segments are gonna be most valuable, which you’re gonna have, which, which need what. And then starting to build out that, connecting that content with that communication and distribution so we know, hey, this is how we can use the content we’re already building for SEO to drive action on our email. Yeah.

Tim (17:27):
And the nice thing with email is, is like you, you build it and it’s your audience grows, your spend kind of grows with it. It’s like, it’s not like your email, you’re paying these flat fees. It’s like if you have a small list, then you’re paying a small amount until that list grows over time. But you’re learning and taking that feedback and just plugging that in. And I think that, you know, having that as early as possible, even if it is just collecting like one Zs and two Zs a week for that first three, six months and then all of a sudden it ramps up to the tens in the twenties, you’re collecting it. It’s like just building that from the outset and you’re gonna have some very basic flows until you have more content, more things, more learning to put into that. But having that as part of that own strategy, then you’re, you’re creating some more stability to, to your marketing at that stage. Because you’re not all eggs in the paid basket or the majority of your eggs in that paid basket. You’ve, you’ve got some things to fall back on. Yeah.

Robbie (18:26):
So you’re, you’re, you’re diversifying. And then this is where again, building an anti-fragile marketing ecosystem, we talk, again that sounds so like, like buzzwordy, but basically building, like I always, we always use the example of like a three-legged stool. Basically if something changes, like one of my stool legs knocks out if I have a one-legged stool, like I’m just completely, I’m off a cliff. Like I don’t have anything to stand on.

Tim (18:49):
Your your PMax falls to pieces. Yeah. And that’s all you had then your,

Robbie (18:54):
Your, your, your life is crumbling around you.

Tim (18:56):
November is a month that you’re crying rather than high fiving because your Black Friday Cyber Monday just got obliterated.

Robbie (19:02):
Yeah. So you’re changing your dynamics really quickly and you don’t want to let market be completely beholden to those market forces. Mm-Hmm. , if you’re, again, if one of those channels falls out and again, volatility in marketing, like that’s part of the game. So like an algorithm update on Google. Like I’ve,

Tim (19:20):
I’ve never seen any volatility in market.

Robbie (19:22):
Never, never, never.

Tim (19:24):
Just flat. I, I’ve worked smooth like a

Robbie (19:26):
Highway. I’ve worked in marketing for like 14 years and I think I’ve had like probably 10 career changes at this point. Yeah. Just because it changes/involves so fast. Yeah. But if you can understand, hey, how do I like build in for that volatility and make good long-term decisions. I need to be able to think about, hey, I’m place, I’m, I’m, I’m placing my bets so I’m not all in on one thing. And that diversification really helps me to, hey, I’ve got an owned email audience. I’ve got good traffic to my organic, to my site through or organic. And then I’ve got paid functioning at a high level. So I’ve got a three, at least a three-legged stool at from there. I may be incorporating more influencer marketing or yeah. Like X, Y, Z but those are three legs that are really gonna help me build a f strong foundation. And then again, if one of those changes I can adjust and accommodate, but I’m not losing all of my revenue base.

Tim (20:20):
Yeah. And, and those, and the three legged part of that as well is like they’re all audience at different stages of intent. Like you’re organic, you’ve got people that are early to mid in the process of figuring stuff out. Then your paid should be in that mid to bottom section. And then your email are people that are already loyal or have come to your site, they’ve had an experience and now you’re just trying to keep them there and continue to continue to resell to that audience over time and just build a more sticky relationship. So the three-legged part as well is like you’ve got three different legs of the business that you’re, you’re supporting. And when they’re all working together, it’s amazing. But if one does get rocky, at least you know you’ve got the other or two to support each other while that all the one gets back to where it needs to be.

Robbie (21:05):
And it, again, your stability’s not gonna be there as much as you want it to. Maybe you want a four-legged stool or like a sofa with like eight legs. I don’t know. But again, you, the, the bigger the business gets, the more you’re gonna have the latitude to try those things and experiment in different ways. But that’s where you really want to be starting to think about the stability of your marketing ecosystem early. And this is that maturity phase is like where you’re really getting serious about that, that process. Yeah. And really getting serious about making sure that you’re not completely crushed when something changes. Yeah. Because it will.

Tim (21:36):
It’s going to and it’s just gonna happen at the worst possible time too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just be aware

Robbie (21:41):
Of that. Yeah. Like marketing is like the Mike Tyson plan, the Mike Tyson rule is always in effect. Like everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the teeth

Tim (21:50):
. Yeah.

Robbie (21:52):
If, if this doesn’t seduce you into wanting to be a marketer, I don’t know what will

Tim (21:57):
. So saucy

Robbie (21:58):
So as we reach the maturity stage, like this is where I have like a pretty solid brand presence. I’ve established like credibility around like built a, a brand or basically like an an excuse for people to prefer, prefer my business over others as a confident safe choice. Like how am I thinking about these at that point? Is it, does my investment or proportion shift? Where do they go.

Tim (22:24):
Yeah, I think again there’s gonna be another proportion shift, but you’re working with a larger budget, like each stage the budget goes up and the proportion or the distribution of that budget gets different. So you’re gonna come down perhaps a little more on the paid side. You’re maybe at a 50 50 split now. And depending on the type of business you are, like that’s rule of thumb, you might need to be a little more or you could maybe go even a little bit less. It all depends on how some of that early legwork has, has went for you. Like if you’ve been building organic and it’s just working just heroically where that drives and converts and is is huge, well then you might be like, well we’re going to put a little extra more, you know, secret sauce into our organic because we can scale that up. But you’re still gonna want to keep a large share of, of paid there in that 40 50 window. And then the other range is yeah, email organic things that you own building out your property.

Robbie (23:20):
Yeah, you may, you may, this is a point where like even for owned media, you may be starting like a podcast mm-hmm. , you can start to possibly invest in like maybe more media outreach and like PR strategy and that’s, I mean those are all things you’re like, you’re doing with clients on the, on the, on the SEO side. Yeah. Which is like, again,

Tim (23:37):
You shift shift to the off page SEO strategy because even though it’s not on your site, it’s ultimately things that are going to make your site rank better. Like if we get you in the media on a podcast some other place where there’s a link back to your site. Yeah. There’s referral traffic potential. But the real golden nugget is, is like you’re getting a link from a trusted source, which Google looks at that and says, Hey, these guys are legit, let’s move their authority up just a little bit more. And the better your authority is, the easier it is for ranking, the more traffic you’re gonna drive. And you know, links have changed over the years, but when they’re done well and done right, Google sees us as trust signals more than anything.

Robbie (24:19):
Yeah. And that’s what’s really cool about this is like we get start to change the way we’re doing things so it makes each one of those channels stronger. Mm-Hmm. and like, again, like we think on the email side, like this is where we’re continuing to introduce new automations and as we, as we understand what our customer, what goal customer behaviors we want to drive, we can really pull different levers to drive those behaviors in the ways we want to see them. So it gives us a way of strategically getting better and better over time. And that’s what really makes us really strong because again, it kind of builds this flywheel after a certain window of time. Because we leverage our, a great content in our emails. Those emails may be performing really well on and through campaigns and then we’re automating it. So it’s like it’s working for us around the clock. Mm-Hmm. And that’s where like you’re starting to get into a little bit more holistic marketing strategy at that mature stage. Again, you’re still using the, your paid, but you’re just dividing that in a few different ways. Yeah.

Tim (25:17):
You, you don’t, like if you’re, if you’re creating a three-legged stool, once you get to that stage, you don’t want to just chop the paid leg off your stool. It’s like Google will do that for you. So just continue to be invested .

Robbie (25:29):
Yeah. Yeah. You need to, you need to be, you need to be generating demand at the top of the funnel. Yeah. Moving people down the, down their buyer journey from like problem aware to solution aware and then like again, your service, your solution being the one they’re gonna choose. But that’s, that’s where you’re really developing a really solid marketing funnel mm-hmm. and you have a clear idea of what’s gonna work because you’ve been experimenting through the course of this time too. Yeah. You know, it’s gonna drive action, you know what pain points you’re speaking to and you know why people want to invest at that point too.

Tim (25:59):
Yeah. And you talked about like the, the flywheel effect and if you haven’t listened to it yet, we talked about that in a previous podcast, but

Robbie (26:07):
Really is market marketing flywheel?

Tim (26:09):
Like it really is, that is a fun part to be in like that stage where everything is just working together and it’s just this continuous cycle around and it just keeps building and building and building and that’s ultimately where you want to get to. But on day one, that is not, not where you’re going to be. So you’re taking those incremental steps towards like, hey, when we hit a level of maturity or a level of revenue, we can now have all of these things where we have lots of good content, we have an audience in our email, we’re able to pay to boost, to, you know, push things along further to target them lower down in the funnel. And all of those things work together and that’s where you start to grow your business exponentially.

Robbie (26:48):
Yeah. So lots of different things that we’re looking at. So if we’re, but okay, so we’ve talked through a lot of different areas and we’ve talked even through like the transition from like one stage of business to a next, I know this is a lot guys, so hopefully everybody else there is not, not like, again, zoned out right now. So hopefully you’re, you’re paying close attention. But what are three things that I think like we could leave people with today that they could take and run with? Or just three words of wisdom around, like how to approach this?

Tim (27:16):
Yeah. Well I’m gonna, I’m gonna go with the first one because it leans really much into like SEO and organic, which is like, don’t wait too long to start owning some land. It’s like you want to start building on your property asap. So don’t make that be the thing that’s the afterthought three years down the road of just doing paid. It’s like start it early as much as you can do within whatever limited budget you have, but start it early and start having that.

Tim (27:45):
Yeah. You’re renting a house, you’re renting an apartment, you wanna be building your house while you’re living in that apartment. Yeah. But eventually you’re gonna want, you’re gonna wanna move into that house because it’s gonna be a lot more, it’s just gonna be a lot better for

Tim (27:55):
Everybody. Yeah. It’s got a little more room, it’s nicer. And then you’ll want to do an extension to that house and then add a second floor and you just keep building.

Robbie (28:02):
Yeah. It, it’s, it, it starts off with a trailer. Next, next step. It’s a double wide.

Tim (28:07):
Oh yeah. .

Robbie (28:08):
The, the next one I put think about stability. Like that’s where that ecosystem we talked about like anti-fragility, not being so dependent on one channel or one platform when things change and they will not being so beholden to one platform provider. I’ve personally seen this a million times over on social in where like again, social in 2008 was the wild, wild west Facebook, everything you shared got seen by a lot of people. And gradually that fire hose gets smaller and smaller and smaller until it’s just bar a small drip. But again, knowing that those platforms can and will change, gives me insights into saying like, okay, this is how I can’t, we can’t be completely beholden to one place. We need to diversify. That’s where understanding how I place my bets in different areas strategically, where I’m gonna get the most out of each of them.

Tim (29:01):
Yeah. The the final one, start experimenting early,

Robbie (29:05):
Kissing some frogs.

Tim (29:06):
Yeah. Yeah.

Robbie (29:07):
This is the, this is a fun place.

Tim (29:09):
Yeah. Don’t just come up with one thing and then just let that go. It’s like learn early, learn fast. Like if it’s not working, don’t be afraid to change it. Cut it off. Do something different. If it is working, try it somewhere else and see if it works there too. It’s like experimenting is…

Robbie (29:25):
Yeah. If you’re not embarrassed at your content the following year, you, you weren’t doing enough the last year because it’s like everything needs to keep evolving and you really should be embarrassed at some point in time because you need if you’re not evolving or you’re not getting better, then you’re either stuck where you’re at, you’re either letting perfect in the way of done or you’re just like not learning enough fast enough. Yeah.

Tim (29:49):
A hundred percent. I’ll probably not listen to this podcast because still experimenting these .

Robbie (29:53):
We will still be experimenting. These podcasts are an experiment. Notice how we added more human aspects to it. We talked about ourselves and I tried some self-deprecating humor.

Tim (30:03):
Yeah. Yeah. So we normally.

Robbie (30:04):
This is an experiment.

Tim (30:04):
We normally do three takeaways. I think there’s a fourth one that I want to throw in.

Robbie (30:09):
Oh, secret fourth takeaway.

Tim (30:13):
Don’t be put off by the phrase getting punched in the teeth. That is just a part of the process and it will happen. But that’s what mouth guards are for. Yeah. So.

Robbie (30:21):
Yeah. Yeah. This marketing is a full contact sport. You’ll get punched in the teeth, you’ll get kicked in places you don’t wanna get kicked .

Tim (30:28):
But that’s, that’s why you experiment. That’s why you learn, you grow and you get smarter from those moments of whereas like that, that, that hurt. Yeah. That sucked. Yeah. But, but you learn from that and you do something way better the next time around. And then that’s when you get the win. That’s when you’re punching a competitor in the teeth because all of a sudden you have figured something out and it works really good and you go with it.

Tim (30:51):
Yeah. Pain plus reflection equals growth. And that’s a good way to think about marketing.

Tim (30:57):
All right, Robbie.

Robbie (30:57):
Okay. Hey everybody, this has been Tim and Robbie. If you guys have any questions or want anything else, let me know. Let us know.

Tim (31:06):
Yeah. Drop, drop a comment.

Robbie (31:08):
We’re excited for comments and we are, we will shamelessly have a, we’ll shamelessly love a five star review. And also I wanted to give a shout out to some other people who make this podcast possible today Tim. Again, you, the lovely Tim Lowry, bring your, bringing your skills to this, but also Jim Mann for bringing these to life. Carese Brown and Edvina on my team, who also work to bring these to life too. We have an awesome team behind us. So these are not thank, thank you all. These are not, again, built in a vacuum. Good marketing never happens in a vacuum. So that’s where again, we’re very grateful for an awesome team behind us.

Tim (31:44):
Yes. So rock and roll.

Robbie (31:47):
We’ll see you soon. Rock and roll. Till next time.

[Outro]