How to Waste Money on Marketing

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Full Episode Transcript:

Loren Feldman:
Welcome, Shawn, Jaci, and William. It’s great to have you here. It’s almost June, and we somehow are nearing the halfway point of this year. I’d like to start just by checking in on how each of your businesses is doing: what’s working, what’s not. How about you, William? We haven’t spoken to you in a while. How have things been going?

William Vanderbloemen:
Man, we’ve just been really busy, and that’s good. And that’s part of why I’ve not been able to be on the show. I’ve missed being with you guys. Our COO asked me if she could set an aggressive goal this year of 30-percent growth. And she’s been with me two and a half years, and is yet to be wrong on projecting things. So I said, “Okay, fine.” And first quarter, we closed 31 percent over first quarter last year. So that’s awesome. Second quarter, we’re not even halfway through it yet, but it’s been a little slower. Now, last year, it was our record quarter ever. So maybe that’s the one we don’t hit.

I will say that the thing that’s different that we’re noticing is the way business is coming to us. The algorithm that Google uses is just changing all the time. And everybody I’ve talked to who has super successful blogs is seeing a drop in traffic. And everybody’s trying to figure out how to deal with it. And I don’t know that anybody knows the dark arts well enough to fix it yet. But we’re making some tweaks and changes and hoping that fixes things for what appears to be a problem for a whole lot of people who have an internet-driven business.

Loren Feldman:
It sounds like it hasn’t been a big problem for you.

William Vanderbloemen:
No, I think we would be well over our projections if we had better traffic. But I noticed a funny thing yesterday. It was a virtual day. I wasn’t at the office, and I got a text from a guy who I had interviewed for a search I was running 12 years ago. And he pulled himself out of the search, and that’s fine.

He texted me and said, “William, you probably don’t remember me. My name is ____, and we met here.” And of course, I remembered him. And he said, “Now, I need a good number two. I’m in a really growing thriving organization. Can you help me find them?” So it’s that kind of thing that has covered the loss in web traffic. You know, just the compound interest of having done this for a long time has provided some nice growth for us that has subsidized the traffic loss that we’ve had, which is not that bad. It’s like, we’re 8 or 9 percent down. But friends of mine are 20, 30, 40 percent down. So something’s going on. We’re trying to figure it out.

Loren Feldman:
Jaci, how about you? You were very open with us last year. You went through a difficult period where you had a long stretch where you didn’t attract new clients. I think you told us earlier this year that you were expecting a couple of big clients to come aboard. How have things worked out?

Jaci Russo:
Those were dark days, Loren. I don’t like talking about the dark days. It’s a little triggering. I’m gonna have some PTSD.

Loren Feldman:
It got better, though, right?

Jaci Russo:
It did, it did, it did, as it always does. It just was a longer stretch than I’m comfortable with. And we’ve gotten off to kind of a stop-start year. The two big ones are still hanging. They’re still waiting on some other piece of something to make it all happen. But in the meantime, we filled in with some really nice other new ones. And we’re heading in the right direction. We’ve also made some changes. Much like William, the things that got us here aren’t getting us there. And so we’ve had to change how we do some of our new business work. And I’m forever grateful for the clients that we have and the referrals that they give us, because that’s always our lifeblood. But you know—

Loren Feldman:
What kinds of things are you referring to, Jaci? What have you changed?

Jaci Russo:
I was just gonna tell you. We have a very robust thought-leadership program, whether it’s podcasts or speaking engagements. We’re still getting a lot of mileage from the book, and so that’s always been beneficial. We do have a pretty solid email database that we work really well, I think, and that’s been good.

And we’re starting to go back to some old-school things that we really enjoyed back in the day, and we just kind of got away from. We’re going back to our Hot 100—these are the companies that we really, really want to work for—and courting them, sending them things in the mail. Not letters. You know, some solid, fun promo items and some resources and some fun marketing-looking things. And we’ve done a pretty good job of connecting on LinkedIn, too, and that’s been helpful.

Loren Feldman:
Your Hot 100, that’s a list of 100 companies that you’ve identified that you would like to be clients?

Jaci Russo:
They would be so lucky. That’s how I think about it. [Laughter]

Shawn Busse:
I love your attitude, Jaci!

Loren Feldman:
And then you, you cold-call them? You reach out to them, or how does that work?

Jaci Russo:
We’re literally courting, what we used to do in the olden times, you know, the teens. Because I went back through the decades of: When did we grow the fastest? When did we grow the best? And it was really that kind of ‘08 to ‘14. That was a really good streak for us. And what were we doing then? And it was simple: We had this 100. And we added to it. Every month, we’d add a few to it. And it always had to be at least 100. We’re always adding to it. And we would mail them 3D-printer items, fun stuff.

For a while, we were kind of on a health care kick. And so—this is how dorky we are. We created this poster, and it was, I don’t know, like 11 by 17. It was very beautifully designed, black and white. And it said “legendary doctors.” It had the doctors from M*A*S*H, Dr. J, Dr. Dre, all the legendary doctors—and then whoever was the head of the health-care facility we were calling on, it had them. So we would get pictures where these guys would frame it and hang it on their wall. Like, they thought it was the greatest thing ever. And so, things like that, things that just kind of take the air out, to kind of make it fun. Marketing should be, at its core, something that gets people’s attention for the right reasons. And so we’re getting back to that.

Loren Feldman:
Shawn, you spoke earlier in the year about the big push that you made to get your folks out in the community and make connections, kind of an everyone-sells idea. And you were pretty enthusiastic about how it went. How was that carried through since then?

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, I’m really proud of the team and feel really grateful that they’re willing to basically take on a job that was not in their job descriptions. And I think that process is going well. You know, it’s not going to be an overnight success. The aspect of it that’s been working really well so far is, I was in a sales meeting the other day. This was our second sales meeting with a potential client. And I played almost no role in that meeting. And the team did a really great job. I texted with the prospect afterward and asked him how he felt, and he was super enthusiastic and excited to make it happen.

So, I feel really good about that phase of selling, that the team can handle it without me in the room. And that’s a big deal. I think the early stage of developing relationships and nurturing those relationships and getting referrals, that’s going well. But that’s a long game. You know, that doesn’t happen overnight. In many cases, and the type of work we do, it may take a year, two years, three years, five years before they actually buy from us. And so, the seeds you plant today, they turn into trees much, much further down the road.

I was talking about the other day. I mean, it arose from a dog park visit that I had two and a half years ago. And I met a business owner and started talking to him, and one thing leads to another, and I’m kind of coaching him on what to do, because he’s a new business owner. And then somebody on his team reaches out to me. He’s like, “Oh, remember me? We met, literally, eight years ago.” And I said, “Oh my gosh, I haven’t seen you in forever.”

And then fast forward to three months ago, the guy on his team calls me and says, “Hey, I mentioned you to this other person the other day, and I think you might be able to help them.” So all of those things play a part in that opportunity manifesting itself. I’ve been doing this for many, many years. So more opportunities fall on my lap than anybody. But now that the team is doing it, that’ll happen for them, too.

Loren Feldman:
Are you sending your team to dog parks all over Portland? [Laughter]

Shawn Busse:
I mean, that’s a funny thing. But I think the thing that’s important, that we’ve talked to the team about, is to find the thing that they care about, and invest time in it, and to build relationships in those spaces. So you’ve got folks investing time in sustainability and engineering and all kinds of different things where they’re interested in the thing. And I think that’s the most important thing, that you can’t push somebody into a space and say, “Hey, go get clients over here.” They actually have to kind of care about the space. And so that’s our strategy.

William Vanderbloemen:
Loren, this is why Shawn is a far more strategic business man than I am. When we started, I didn’t have enough to do. I mean, you cold-call everybody you can, and there’s just me, and a card table and the dog. And I got around to Friday, and I was trying to target churches, when we started, that needed a pastor. And church staffs are typically off on Friday, so Friday was a totally dead day.

So Adrienne sent me to Petco, not the dog park. And while I’m in Petco, I get a call from a pastor I hadn’t heard from: “Are you trying to start that thing still?” “Yes.” “I think we might need you for this.” —Okay. “How would it work?” I walk him through it. He’s like, “Well, I’m gonna have to check with people and run this through traps, and I’ll get back to you.” “Okay, fine.”

I’m at the checkout counter at Petco, and I get a call back from him. He’s like, “We’re good to go. Where do I sign?” “Oh, no, no, 30 more seconds, and I’ll be done.” I bought the wrong dog bowl with food. And Adrienne said, “You need to return that when you get a chance.” So the next Friday, I go back to Petco, I’m returning the thing, and I get another phone call from a different guy I hadn’t heard from in forever: “Are you trying to start this thing?” So like, when things got slow in that first year, I’d just go sit in the Petco parking lot and work. [Laughter]

Shawn Busse:
There you go. It’s the dogs. All about the dogs, man.

Loren Feldman:
Shawn, you talked a little bit about what you guys have been doing. The other thing you’ve mentioned is that you just went to a trade show. And I’m curious what your experience was like there.

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, so I have never been to a trade show of this scope and scale before. The convention hall—this is in Chicago. It’s a trade show for automation companies, and I think they said something like there were 800 vendors there. And you have these huge companies with massive booths, spending probably hundreds of thousands of dollars to be there. And I literally, at one point, got lost in the booths. I was like, “Where am I? I don’t know how to find where I’m going.” And so it was just a really eye-opening experience, having not really lived in that world before.

And yeah, I learned a lot of lessons. I think one of the really cool lessons was that all the time I’ve invested in LinkedIn, through the pandemic, before the pandemic, over the years, really paid off. I had people at the tradeshow come up to me and say, “Hey, I know you.” And I was like, “Oh, I know you too. But we’ve never met.” And so it really, for me, kind of solidified this idea of how you advance relationships, and that the digital space can be a place to start a relationship. And then the physical space, like a trade show, can be a place where you can develop it and nurture it and move it along.

And so, he hands me his card, and he’s like, “We should talk.” And then after that, I was like, “That would have never happened if I hadn’t gone to that trade show.” So that was a really good lesson. The other lesson was, I’ve never seen so many salespeople in my whole life. I mean, maybe you two have had more experience in this arena. But you literally cannot stop for a second when you’re walking around the booths because someone will come up to you. You feel like you’re a piece of meat, and there are sharks everywhere. Jaci, what’s your experience? You’re nodding your head here.

Jaci Russo:
So, Shawn, a couple of thoughts. First of all, welcome to being a girl. [Laughter] Because that’s how we feel a lot of times and a lot of places, not to get political about it. But you know, you kind of expressed the feminine experience in a lot of different venues. But no, I do think that in the past, pre-Covid trade shows and conferences felt more like a place where you would run into different decision makers. And the last few that I’ve been to, whether I was speaking at them or we had clients that were exhibiting, and I was kind of showing up to support, the overwhelming sensation was that the floor was filled with salespeople, but no buyers. And to be successful, you’ve got to have both.

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, I got a sense that if you went to that show, and you didn’t have a really good strategy to connect to people outside of the show—like, if you were just there to display or walk the aisles, I don’t know that it would be very valuable. I mean, I was a speaker. So that had some value to it, for sure. And the client I went with had a strategy for after the show. The magic was after the show. It wasn’t the show itself.

Jaci Russo:
Just to that point, we started implementing—and this is pre-Covid—a little bit of a before, during, and after kind of strategy. And I won’t go into the nitty-gritty details, but for us, the before is about setting up appointments, because you don’t want to just leave it to chance that somebody’s gonna find your booth. So there’s some cool tech and kind of wooing that can happen ahead of time to really make sure you’re on somebody’s calendar, and they’re not just going to find you.

During the show, you’ve got to have some strategies for getting people to the booth and getting their attention while they’re there, and making sure the right people are seeing the message. But then post? You’re right, that’s where the magic happens. Because it still takes eight touches. And at this point, you’ve had two. So what are you going to do to keep touching them in a legally and appropriate way after the show to make sure that you stay top of mind? And if, in fact, the person you met with at the show wasn’t the right decision maker, how do you leverage this newfound friend to get you in front of the right person?

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, I was really struck by, I would say, almost the wealth inequality of the show. So you would have these companies that were massive, and they would have these booths that were, I don’t know, probably 1,000 square feet. And then, you would have folks who had like an 8-by-10 booth shoved way in the back. And those 8-by-10-booth folks, I felt for them. Because it’s like, how are you ever going to be found by anybody unless you’ve got a strategy outside of that booth?

And it’s not like they’re getting off cheap. I think the square-foot price was like 40 bucks. So an 8-by-10 booth is $4,000, hotels in the neighborhood are $500 a night, you’re Ubering and food and taxi. That’s a big investment for a small business. And it really made me realize that if you don’t go with a really good game plan, it’s going to be really expensive and hard for me to see how you would get a return on that.

William Vanderbloemen:
Unless you do that—like, think through it long and hard for a strategy—it’s an absolute waste of time. We went to one conference without a strategy, and I think we paid $10,000 for the booth and nevermind all the other costs, and I’m like, “Next year, I’d rather you just give me 10,000 one dollar bills, and I’m gonna light them on fire consecutively. That would be more fun.” [Laughter]

Shawn Busse:
I’m curious, for the two of you, something that we’ve done two years now in a row [is] a small business conference. It’s a ton of work. It’s expensive. But boy, the effect of it has been really great for us. IYou know, I’m starting to see our clients do this, help our clients do this. I’m curious if you all have either thought of doing this yourself, or have clients who are sort of like, “Hey, we’re going to build our own community instead of renting a community from somebody else.”

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah, we’re experimenting. And maybe we should have our own conference and host it at Petco. [Laughter] I don’t know. This last year, we decided to take our very best clients—and we judge that by net promoter score—and we invited them to an exclusive, limited, very small gathering, very high dollar, that we did in sort of a white-glove thing. So it was a mini-conference. It went great. And everybody asked, “Can we come back? How do we do that again?” But it was more about experience than anything. We did golf and skeet shooting, and you know, things.

We’re also still seeing that if we take our time and drop back into a strategy for a conference, it works. Like for instance, maybe the most difficult search we ever do is someone who needs to run the children’s ministries at a large church. And that’s a long story why it’s difficult, but it’s really, really, really difficult. In fact, if Jesus didn’t love children, we wouldn’t do it. [Laughter] I’m serious.

We couldn’t get candidates for a children’s pastor. So the largest children’s pastor conference in probably the world asked us to come do a booth, and it was going to be $10,000. I’m like, “I don’t even know how to…” And this was 10 years ago. And one of our Millennials, in their twenties, said, “I was at a party the other night, and they had a thing called the Smile Booth.” It was photo booths, before they were a big thing.

And so we looked into it. We bought one. We took it. We made the photo booth our booth. And it was a brand new thing that nobody’d heard of. And we put out costumes, glasses. Take all the pictures you want, and just give us your email address, and we’ll send you the pictures. And it was genius. And we actually got kicked out of the conference the next year, because the line to get to the photo booth was so long, it went all the way around the Gwinnett Center. And nobody was going in for the main sessions. So that kind of guerrilla warfare was, like, “Let’s change the whole game.” Because what we needed was not revenue from that. We needed candidates. I think we came home with a thousand children’s pastors addresses. So that’s a weird story. But it’s like, the only way it’s worked for us is to think about conferences that charge a lot for booths in guerrilla warfare terms.

Loren Feldman:
Shawn, I’m curious, what prompted you to go to an automation conference? I know you have some clients in that area.

Shawn Busse:
Well, some of it was R&D. It’s like, “Okay, let’s go check this out.” I have several really great clients who work in automation, like really good clients. And one of them was going to go and have a pretty substantial presence and be a speaker. And he was kind enough to let us ride his coattails and even did a co-speaking event with me. So the two of us got on stage. We talked about a topic near and dear to our hearts, in terms of building professional services businesses and what that looks like through brand and marketing and culture. So there were just a lot of unique opportunities there, even just his own connections and being able to be introduced to people.

He went to dinner with somebody. He referred that person to me. We had a nice intro sales call. So there were just a lot of stars aligned. If I had gone there without that lined up, like, I didn’t know anybody, I didn’t have a client there, boy, it would have been a really different experience. So this was really kind of a special and unique thing. Will I go back next year? I don’t know. I mean, it just sort of lined up. It’s such a machine that you really don’t feel very unique in it. And even the speaking events churn you through, right? So we gotta get up on stage. You have 30 minutes. You’ve got to end right on time. They mispronounce your name. They mispronounce your company’s name. Literally, like, five minutes before I go on stage, she’s like, “Okay, so how do you say your name?” I’m like, “It’s Buss-ee.” And then I offer her, “And the company’s name is Kinesis.” Okay, great. So she introduces me as David Byoo-See from can-ISIS. Like, oh my God. [Laughter]

Loren Feldman:
Did you correct her?

Shawn Busse:
I mean, it’s the most awkward situation. They introduced me as David Bew-cee, and they introduced David Nichols, who’s also on the stage, properly. And I’m like, “Hi, I’m Shawn Busse from Kinesis.” It’s just so freaking awkward. But you just kind of realize, they’ve got to file 30 speakers through in a day. And it’s just a financial thing.

And so I contrast that with a different event that I went to that was more of a learning event a few weeks ago, where everybody in the room was looking to learn. So there were education sessions. There were CE credits. And in that environment, it was great, because I had 100 people in the room. I was talking about an idea that was really near and dear to their hearts about the changes in marketing and a lot of, actually, what William was talking about—the changes in digital. And so it’s just a different thing. In one environment, you have a ton of salespeople looking to sell products and stuff. And in the other environment, you have a bunch of people looking to learn things. And I think knowing the differences between these conferences and how they’re structured is really important.

Loren Feldman:
Did you have a booth?

Shawn Busse:
I did not. No.

Loren Feldman:
So when you were done speaking, did you just kind of wander around?

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, I mean, I would go to after events, which I think is really important, is to kind of figure out what people are doing outside of the conference. And you get to have more intimate conversations. So I think that was really advantageous. But having a booth would have been an absolute waste of money for us. It just would not have been worthwhile, because you’ve got a bunch of people there. If they are buyers, they’re engineers, and they’re looking at robots.

They’re not looking for brand communications. You know, they’re already skeptical of us marketing folks. So I think the unique way we approached it was great. And I think having a client on stage with me talking about, “This is what we did together, and it changed our automation practice,” that was a great opportunity. I got great results from that. But a booth? No, it would have been an absolute waste of money.

William Vanderbloemen:
Completely agree. From our side, Shawn, we didn’t do a booth forever and ever and ever. Because what, are you going to hand me a resume in front of everybody? [Laughter] So one thing we fell into—which, again, these are not necessarily repeatable examples—but I had to get my mind in a different place and think outside: What is the normal use of sponsorship money? And we got invited very early in the company. In fact, it’s one of the main reasons we broke out and started a whole lot of new endeavors.

A friend of mine who designs spaces—he worked for Disney for a long time, designed our office—said, “Hey, man, the green rooms in the major conferences are horrible. And they’re nothing like a really well done green room. I think I’ve got a way for us to host the green rooms. If you’ll put up $10,000 a conference, I’m getting three other partners…” We built out the green rooms, made it a totally different experience for the speakers.

Now, I had a head start, because in my prior life, I was on the same speaking circuit with a lot of the speakers at these conferences. But I was hosting the green room and giving them great food and a great time. And I can draw a direct line back to our biggest growth from when we were doing that. Because then, what does Seth Godin say? ‘Sneezers’ are who you want. People who will sneeze your idea everywhere they go. And we focused on that. I didn’t come up with it. Can’t claim credit. But it’s a different sort of—I call it guerilla marketing—to just sort of, I don’t know, zig when everyone else is zagging. Those are the times it’s worked for me, when I’ve been able to listen to people with an idea for doing it differently.

Shawn Busse:
I think that’s such a good point. I mean, to talk about Seth Godin, like the whole Purple Cow book. These conferences are structured to make everything the same so they can monetize it.

William Vanderbloemen:
That’s right.

Shawn Busse:
And you’ve got to find a way to be that Purple Cow in that herd of brown cows. If you’re not attacking it with a creative idea, you’re done. I just think you’re done, because you’re gonna lose out to people with way more money and way more presence, in that case.

Loren Feldman:
Jaci, in our emails this week, you talked about your concerns about standards in advertising in general. Can you tell us what’s going on with that? What triggered that as a topic in your mind?

Jaci Russo:
It’s a soapbox, Loren, that I get on anytime somebody acts like they want to listen or they’re waiting for a bus and they can’t leave, or they’re trapped in an elevator with me.

Loren Feldman:
Or trapped on a podcast with you.

Jaci Russo:
Welcome to being a captive audience. Pull up a chair. So I hear from companies all the time, this frustration that: Agency XYZ, we paid them all this money, and we got nothing for it. And now we don’t have money for you. And we think you’re gonna do, actually, a really good job. And now we’re sad that we wasted the money.

So sure, maybe part of it’s just a thing to get out of saying yes to us. But they could just say no. But as I dig into it, and I see what XYZ Agency did there, they’re right. They did get paid a ton of money. And very little was done. And then I looked a little deeper. And, you know, the client should have been smarter, there were some red flags. They should have maybe not hired XYZ. But here we are.

And so I think in so many situations—and Shawn, I’d love to know your thoughts on this—we do it to ourselves as an industry. Anybody can call themselves an ad agency, or creative agency, or communications firm, or PR company, or whatever you want to call it these days. Anybody can open their Mac laptop and have a Canva account, and now they’re a designer. We have not done any licensing, or certification, or educational requirements, or testing, or ongoing continuing education. And I look around, and literally, I can’t find another industry that treats themselves so badly. Electrician, CPA, Realtor, hairdresser, nail salon tech, everybody else has some semblance of something to say, “I am a legit entity.” Except our industry. And I don’t get it.

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