How to Fix Marketing That Isn’t Working

Although many B2B companies invest heavily in marketing campaigns, their efforts don’t always translate into actual sales or marketing engagement. Where are these companies falling flat in their marketing efforts? How can B2B marketers fix this and start generating results?

That’s why we’re talking to Marketing Max (Founder, Marty Capital) about how B2B marketers can identify what’s not working and effectively fix their marketing initiatives. During our conversation, Max talked about the pitfalls that B2B marketers should avoid and what they should be doing instead. He also highlighted how having clear messaging, consistent touchpoints, and an understanding of customer needs enables B2B marketers to implement campaigns that are effective, impactful, and deliver the right outcomes.

https://youtu.be/dD1TWzok5kU

Topics discussed in episode

Why your marketing is not working [1:38]
- The marketing message is more product-focused and not benefit-focused
- Maximizing investment: The target audience needs to see and hear your brand at least 5 times
- The lack of social proof
Focusing on only a few vs many marketing channels [9:35]
The importance of clear messaging, consistent touch points and understanding customer needs [15:19]
How often companies should review messaging and ICP [20:34]
Marketing is much more difficult than people think [23:09]
Marketing Max’s response to those who hesitate to invest in marketing [27:43]
The importance of analyzing your website data and continuous A|B testing [32:29]

Companies and links mentioned

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Marketing Max, Christian Klepp

Christian Klepp 00:03

Welcome to B2B Marketers on a Mission, a podcast for change makers, where we question the conventional, debunk marketing myths, provide actionable tips, think differently, disrupt industries and take your marketing to a new level, from improving your campaigns to making you a better marketer. These are the inspirational stories that will help us change the way we think and approach B2B marketing one conversation at a time. This podcast is brought to you by Einblick Consulting, helping you to stand up in the market and drive revenue to your B2B business. And now your host, Christian Klepp. Welcome everyone to this episode of B2B Marketers on a Mission. This is the show where we help you to question the conventional, think differently, disrupt your industry and take your marketing to new heights. This is your host, Christian Klepp, and today I’m joined by someone on a mission to help B2B companies to fix their marketing and grow sustainably. So Mr. Marketing Max, welcome to the show, sir.

Marketing Max 01:04

Thanks for having me, Christian, good to be here.

Christian Klepp 01:07

Really looking forward to this conversation, Max, so let’s dive in, because we are going to touch on a subject today, which you and I will both agree, a lot of marketers are ashamed to admit. All right, and what is that? It’s the real reason why your marketing isn’t working, and how to fix it, right? So why don’t we kick off the conversation with this question, despite investing heavily in marketing campaigns, a lot of B2B companies find that their efforts are not translating into sales or marketing engagement. Why do you think that is?

Marketing Max 01:38

I think it boils down to really two things. Number one is having a marketing message that people actually want to hear or learn more about. I talk a lot about finding the right marketing message is much like finding like the juiciest carrot that you could possibly dangle in front of your target audience. And I think most companies in general, but especially B2B companies, I find there’s a lot more B2B companies than I work with, than B to C companies. They simply just tell people what their product is and their entire marketing strategy, whether they’re trying to get their message across in an ad or on their website or in a cold email, is simply just telling people what their product does, and they don’t actually dangle what whatever the juiciest carrot would potentially be for their target customer. And normally, nine times out of 10, the juiciest carrot is the outcome of actually working with you or buying your product or signing up for your service. So I think number one is the marketing message that most companies spend lots of money on, or even little bit of money, but it tends to be the big chunk of what they have. You’re spending your precious dollars on marketing, and you’re putting that marketing spend behind messaging that’s just falling short, and that’s not actually compelling or intriguing at all. So that’s the first thing. And I think the second thing is people really don’t understand the rule of fifths. I talk about this a lot too. I think a lot of companies just run a Facebook ad or send a cold email or post on Instagram or send a LinkedIn message or jump on a podcast, and they expect that a bunch of people to see that ad, see that LinkedIn post, see that cold email and immediately book a demo call or immediately sign up for the product or give the SaaS tool a free trial, or whatever it is. And the truth is, there was a study done a number of years ago by Harvard that said someone needs to see or hear your brand at least five times if they are going to even decide if they’re going to purchase your product or not. Now, that number, oftentimes people say, is much higher these days, because that study was done a long time ago. And so, you know, today, given the amount of content we see as humans and the amount of content we digest, scrolling through Instagram, scrolling through Facebook, driving around more billboards, more logos, we just see so many more things, and there’s a lot more competition in the market now. As the barrier to entry to build a business, a product, a service, whatever has gotten much lower that a lot of people say that number is actually closer to 15, but I still like to call it the rule of fifths, and just call that out as you know.

The second reason why a lot of people don’t maximize their investment into marketing, whatever that may be, in whatever marketing channel that is, is you need to be everywhere in front of your target customers every time they hop on LinkedIn. You should be pumping out enough content so that you know, one of every three times they hop on LinkedIn, they’re seeing your face, you should be running so many retargeting ads that you just feel like or that the customer just feels like you are everywhere. And if you can do that with a really good message to kind of go back to the first point, with a really good carrot, as I like to call it, then you’re going to start to really see success with your marketing. And you know, you’re going to get on demo calls, people say, oh my god, I’m. You everywhere, or wow, like, I really love this message, or Wow, you you have exactly what I’m looking for. And oftentimes, what people are looking for is not your product or service. They’re looking for the outcome. It’s very, very, very different. People aren’t looking for Facebook ads as a service, right? What people are looking for is a 2x return on ad spend these days, or a 4x return on ad spend, you know, a long time ago. So a lot of marketing agencies, just to use an example, a lot of marketing agencies will say, you know, we help you grow with Facebook ads. It’s like, okay, great, I’m not looking just for a Facebook ads agency. What I’m really looking for is someone that is going to generate a 2x ROI or help me lower my CAC 30% and so by leading with that messaging, you know, we lower ecommerce brands cost to acquire customer by 30% and plastering that everywhere, you’re going to start to see a lot more success, especially if you have… then the third thing. And forgive me if I’m rambling, but I guess, like the honorable mention, the third thing is social proof. So if you have testimonials, case studies, social proof to back up that carrot, whatever that outcome is, you know you’re hitting the trifecta of marketing, and you’re going to start to see a lot more bang for your buck with your time, energy and money investment into marketing.

Christian Klepp 06:18

Absolutely, absolutely. And yes, I have seen that Harvard study, and it’s interesting how many companies are missing out on that, but I have two follow up questions based on what you’ve talked to us about in past couple of minutes. So the first one is regarding messaging, and I agree it’s so important to get that right. But from your experience, why do you feel that so many B to B companies… I feel that like they’re always the repeat offenders, right? Why do they always default to the features instead of actually thinking about the outcome or the benefits to the target audience, the customers?

Marketing Max 06:53

Because, and I don’t mean this in a negative way towards anyone listening or towards anyone that does this, but it’s the easiest, it’s the easiest, most lazy way to do marketing. It’s, you know, we spend tons of time and energy and money building out features. Right? If you’re a SaaS business, you’re spending all your time building out features. You’re building, you’re spending a ton of time on sales calls with people who are saying, Hey, can you add this feature? Hey, does your tool do this? And your conversations oftentimes are about, especially in the early days, they’re about features. And again, you’re just spending a lot of your internal time in meetings and everything, saying, When is this feature going to launch? When is this feature going to launch? When in reality, people don’t care about the feature. They care about the outcome of the feature, right? So if in Canva, let’s just use Canvas as an example. If in Canva, you know, people are saying, hey, I really want to be able to remove the background right? They want a background remover, which they have, but let’s just say, right, people are requesting that, and everyone requested the background remover. Well, you could certainly run an ad the moment you drop the background remover. You can send an email to all of you, the people who have ever signed up for a free trial but maybe didn’t convert. You can send an email that says, hey, we now have a background remover, but it’s so much more powerful to say you can now remove these specific backgrounds for your podcast interview clips, right? Like talking about, like the outcome of it, right? So figure out who the core ICP is and what are they using the feature to accomplish. That is what you want to put in your messaging, because at the end of the day, people don’t care about the feature, even though the conversations are about it, what they really care is the outcome of using the feature. And I think people just spend too much time, energy and money on the feature itself. And so it’s one dimensional thinking. Maybe lazy isn’t the best, most PC word for it, but it’s one dimensional thinking. It’s what you’re spending most of your time, energy and money doing is building out the features and selling the features, when, in reality, no one cares about the features. You know, people don’t care that the Lamborghini’s seat, you know, was made with a particular kind of leather. What they care about is, you know, feeling comfortable when they drive. What they feel about it. What they want to know is, you know, is it going to help me look cool in front of my friends when they get into the seat, right? They want the outcome of the product of the feature, not the product of the feature itself.

Christian Klepp 09:12

Absolutely, absolutely fantastic. So that was follow up question number one. Follow up question number two is, you said you were talking about the need to be everywhere. And what do you say… And I’m sure there’s a camp out there that says, well, we feel that it’s better to just focus on a couple of channels and be great at them, rather than be in multiple channels and be mediocre at all of them. So what are your thoughts on that?

Marketing Max 09:35

I think it’s a fine line. My response would be twofold. One, if you’re going to be on two platforms or two channels, be everywhere on those two channels, right? If you’re going to really focus on LinkedIn, don’t post once a day. Post two to three times a day, you know, like, comment on 100 comments a day. Just like, if you’re especially if you’re going to niche down to just two. Man, like, go hard. So, like, you could always be doing more. And I just see so many companies, they’re like, Oh, we get all of our clients from LinkedIn. Okay, well, how from LinkedIn? Well, we post our CEO posts once a day, and we send out 50 cold messages from their account a day. Well, why isn’t the rest of the team posting? Why isn’t the CEO posting twice a day? Has the CEO done an audit, or hired someone to do an audit of what kind of their content drives the most amount of inbound leads, or the most amount of book calls from their profile? Like, let’s figure out how to quadruple down. Not just double down, but quadruple down on it if you’re going to focus on one or two channels.

The other comment is, there are ways to, quote, unquote, be everywhere without actually needing to spend a whole lot of time, energy and money on other platforms. So what I recommend clients do is they spend $5 a day on a retargeting campaign on Facebook ads. And I can’t tell you how many clients I have recommended this to, where I say, put a pixel on your website, a Facebook pixels on your website if you don’t have one already, and create a simple $5 a day retargeting ad that says, anytime someone visits the website, show them one of these three ads. And in a perfect world, those three things are social proof, right? They’re testimonials, because once someone’s already visited the website, ideally, the landing page that they visited makes that outcome claim, right? Decrease, you know, your time spent managing projects by 30% or whatever. And then the next time they open up Instagram, the next time they open up Facebook, in some cases now, the next time they open up WhatsApp, they they will see an ad proving that you can do what you said you’re going to do. And so you don’t need a whole lot of discipline. You don’t need to hire a $5,000 a month agency. You can hire a person literally on Fiverr, or on freelancer.com or Upwork for 500 bucks to set up the campaign if you’re really nervous about it. If you’re not, you can go on YouTube and learn how to set up a $5 a day retargeting campaign with social proof. And I can’t tell you how many people, like I do a lot of speaking at conferences, and everyone raises their hands when I say this, and says, Max, how do we track ROI? How do we track you know that this is gonna work. And my simple answer to everyone is, you don’t, you simply don’t track ROI, because not everything in marketing is meant to be tracked, right? There’s this huge article that went viral this week on LinkedIn about how Nike is royally, royally messing up because their new CEO shifted their entire marketing strategy from brand awareness to performance, and they are getting eaten alive by competitors for the first time In Nike’s history. Right? Why is that? Well, number one, they’re a consumer brand, and brand is super, super, super important. But number two, no company should be 100% performance or 100% brand. You need to find the equilibrium point for you. And so, you know, spending $5 a day, which is what $150 a month on the concept that you are going to get in front of people who already know you exist, who, in some way, shape or form, are interested in what you have to sell them. You’re going to get in front of them multiple times with a message that is very compelling, because it’s someone else vouching for you. If you use testimonials, videos or quotes or whatever. Like you’d be an idiot not to spend $150 on that every single month. Like, no offense to anyone. I don’t mean to keep offending your audience, but you’d be an idiot not to do that because people need to see or hear your brand at least five times before they decide if they’re going to purchase or not. So I get on the phone with a lot of clients. I’m like, What are your five touch and everyone says, Yeah, we do that. I’m like, What are your five touch points? Well, they’re emails. Okay, let’s take a look at your emails. And every single email is asking for a call or offering a free trial or giving a, you know, 20% off coupon. It’s your sales, sales, sales, sales, sales, right? By having a simple brand awareness $5 a day retargeting campaign, yes, you are quote, unquote, selling them. But by not having a button there, or by making the button something very informal, you are significantly increasing your conversion rate because you’re getting Top of Mind with people all the time. It’s why GEICO spends billions of dollars a year to be in every single commercial break, in every single TV commercial because they know that someone needs to see or hear GEICO a bunch of times before they decide when they recognize they need insurance. I’m going to go with Geico, right? You might have a worse product, you might be more expensive, you might have a bunch of headwinds, but if you are top of mind when it comes time for someone to say, You know what? I’m finally ready to buy this thing. We’re finally ready to hire a podcasting agency. We’re finally ready to, you know, get a project management tool. The person is going to choose the one that’s super top of mind and that is more educated on more than just based on one feature, or more than based on just one price.

Christian Klepp 15:04

Absolutely, I’m going to move us on to the next question, which is about the importance of having the following to fix marketing efforts, and top level, I’m happy to repeat, clear messaging, consistent touch points, and understanding customer needs.

Marketing Max 15:19

All three of those things that you just mentioned are table stakes. You know, if you’re an entrepreneur and you have never learned marketing, you won’t know what those three things are, or you haven’t given much thought to them, that’s totally fine, but spending 30 minutes or an hour with a old fashioned pen and paper notepad and writing down really clearly who your target customer is, what podcast they listen to, what influencers they follow on any platform, even if it’s B2B influencer on LinkedIn or whatever, right? What’s their age, what’s their name, What city do they live in? What car do they drive? Getting really clear on who your ideal customer profile is helps you with all three of those things, and then it’ll start to unlock opportunities for you, because you’ll be, oh, maybe we should sponsor this podcast, or, Oh, maybe we should reach out to this influencer for our partnership, or, Oh, maybe if we can’t afford that, we should at least look at what kind of content is in that podcast, or what kind of content that influencer creates, that we can create that content for our social channels. So that’s the first thing is, it’s table stakes, and doing a simple exercise like that will unlock so many doors for you. The second thing is, you are not going to hit the nail on the head the first go around, like if you did that exercise and you said, Okay, our target customer is, you know, Zoe, 32 year old, head of social media, lives in New York City, doesn’t drive a car because she lives in New York City, you know, makes $250,000 a year, works for a company that does over $100 million a year. She follows these influencers on Instagram, these influencers on LinkedIn. She listens to this podcast, right? If that’s who you think it is, and you don’t, and you haven’t been in business for a long time, you don’t have a ton of data, that person might change. Maybe it’s actually the person below them, like, not the social media manager that’s in charge of social media for that huge company. But maybe it’s, you know, the the smaller person underneath them, maybe it’s the CEO, right? That person is going to change. And so I think just having the awareness to know that you need to stick with one of those for three months or six months, but then having the awareness to know that that might change in three months or six months, and then eventually, as you grow, you might have multiple ICPs, right, depending on your features, as we talked about earlier, all of those things are really, really, really important. And I think a lot of people just realize, okay, we can talk about our features, slap it together on a LinkedIn post or on a Facebook ad, or on a LinkedIn ad or whatever, we’ll try to update our G2 bio, right? If you’re a SaaS business and you want to get listed on G2 we try to, you know, update G2 and, you know, we’ll go from there. But no one actually takes the time. Very few people actually take the time to really think through who is our ICP, what is the message that we can put in front of them that gets them to say, what is the message we can put in front of them that get gets them to say, I need to book a call with these guys right now, or I need to start a free trial right now. And it’s not going to be a feature. You don’t win on features. You win on outcomes, no matter what you sell, no matter what you sell, right? It’s why, like a weight loss pill. I don’t want to say like weight loss pill, but like, it’s why it’s called a weight loss pill. Their ads don’t say we have a really good flavor, people like our the taste of our weight loss pill, or a weight loss like smoothie, more than other people, they say, we’ll help you lose weight. The same thing applies in B2B, the same thing. What are you going to help these people do? What is your software going to help these people do? What is your team, if you’re a service, going to help these people do? What is the outcome? We’ll help you grow. That’s but it’s you’re going to help me grow. Great. So is every other agency. So is every other SaaS platform. But like, what do I want to grow with? What kind of growth do I want? Do I want affordable growth? Do I want fast growth? Like, does your ICP typically take five years to accomplish their goals, and you’re going to help them do it in a year. Amazing is that what they really want? They’re really concerned about speed. Are they really concerned about budget? We’ll help you grow faster on a smaller budget. Okay, that’s interesting. What do these people really want? They don’t just want growth. They don’t just want to save 20 minutes a day answering emails like superhuman or whatever that tool is, you know, they don’t want to take back their time. That’s cute, but you know, come up with three or four. Run them as Facebook ads, or run them a social posts and see which one does best. AB test the living crap out of it.

Christian Klepp 20:09

Yeah, no, absolutely. So we’ve talked about messaging and having that right and relevant messaging. We’ve talked about thinking through your ICP. From your professional experience, what would you say… How often should companies go back and review this messaging, this ICP, to see if it’s, you know, to your point, still relevant or not, or has that changed? Has it expanded? Etc.

Marketing Max 20:34

Yeah, that’s a really good question. I don’t think people think about this. I think first and foremost, you need to come up with like, four and A|B test them over the course of a month. If you don’t have budget for Facebook ads, you know, install this tool called Crazyegg.com. it’s like 30 or 40 bucks a month, and you can AB test it on your website. And you could literally change the headline on your homepage or on any page, to three or four different things, and then see, you can track a button click, and you can see, depending on the headline shown to the people who visit that page, which headline gets the most amount of people to click book a call or book a demo or sign up for a free trial, or whatever it is, right, whatever your main CTA call to action button is. You should do that over the course of, you know, 30 days, depending on how many people visit your website, or depending on how big your Facebook ad budget is to test. Once you have that message, I would say every three to six months, I would even calendar block or set an email like on snooze for three to six months, because the last thing you want to do is not reintroduce some new variations of that to test before it starts to not work anymore. Either that audience is going to get tapped out, or the language, like the lingo of the space, is going to change, or people’s needs change, right? Your target ICPs needs, what they really, really, really want, will change, depending on the economy, depending on the time of year, even sometimes, right, like slower months. Like, what do you really want in the summertime, if you run kind of a seasonal business, or if things are way slower for you, if your target ICP is way slower in the summer, like, you know, changing the tagline to, we can help you do accomplish this ideal outcome in the slow months is really compelling, right? So you want to proactively do it. You don’t just want to do this when things stop working like anything else in business.

Christian Klepp 22:30

Absolutely, absolutely. Max. I’m going to throw this wild card out there, because you brought it up a couple of times now, so I’m seeing a bit of a pattern, right? And it’s on the question of technology, right? You’ve mentioned a couple of platforms or software that people can use. And I think where I’m going with this question is, do you feel sometimes that there are B2B marketers and B2B companies out there that get so either inundated or seduced by that technology that they let the technology take over instead of actually doing good marketing, right. So what are your thoughts on that? Like, what’s the fine line between good marketing and actually using the technology to support that marketing?

Marketing Max 23:09

I don’t think people, you know, to use the word lazy again. I don’t think people get lazy because they rely on technology too much. I don’t think that’s it at all. I think people think marketing is easier than it is regardless of the technology they use, regardless of their industry, their product, their service. There’s this very famous quote, and I forget who said it, and I don’t even remember the exact words of it, but it was basically like first time entrepreneurs spend 80% of their budget on product and 20% of their budget on marketing. Second time, entrepreneurs spend 80% of their budget on marketing and 20% of their budget on product. Marketing is just way more difficult than people think. Whether you’re a marketer or you’re an entrepreneur who came up with the idea and is running the company, you think that everyone wants what you have to sell, because either A. you wanted it, so you went out and created it, or they sold you, that people want this product in the job interview, and the 50,000 people that use it, or the 500 people that use it, or the five clients, or whatever it is, indicates to you that people want this. So you just think, Oh, we just have to go tell more people that it exists. And they’ll, they’ll show up. That’s not how it works. That’s not how it works at all. If you build it, and they will come the famous line from Field of Dreams, that great movie, really, really, really great movie is the epitome of the trap that entrepreneurs and marketers fall into. They think just by introducing the product or service to people, they’re gonna go, Oh my God, I need this. I want this. Because either, again, either A they had it, they had that need and they found it, or the proof that other people are buying this, more people want it. But once you escape that first cohort, that first kind of early adopter group of customers who truly do want it just because it exists, which is very small and very rare, marketing is a huge uphill battle. It’s a huge challenge. And how do you make it easier? You go back to those three things that I said. You figure out the carrot, aka the outcome that they want most, and you never stop jamming that carrot down people’s throats. I know it sounds a little aggressive, but that’s just what it is. Every, every, every huge company, every successful company does this. You might not see it, but Salesforces at every single important conference, they’re running ads on LinkedIn all the time. They’re spending jillions of dollars on Google. They might not show up in your world, but they show up multiple times to the people that they know will make the decision to purchase Salesforce’s software. Geico on the consumer side, right? I use that example all the time, just because it’s the easiest, because everyone who has ever watched TV knows GEICO is all over TV, right? But it works in B2B too. It 100% works in B2B too I mean, I had a Facebook and Google Ads agency that I sold two years ago, built it up to, you know, seven figures in revenue, 15 full time people. And very small to a lot of people, big to some, but very, very small to a lot of people. But you know, the difference between the agencies that make a million dollars a year or millions of dollars a year versus the ones that don’t, are the ones that spend money on marketing. They’re the ones that spend on ads and that go to conferences, versus the agencies that got up to 50k a month in revenue, or 100k a month in revenue, and get it all in the back of referrals and say, well, I’ll just keep growing in the back of referrals, I’m too afraid to spend money on marketing, right? The ones that grow the most are everywhere to their target customers. They sponsor events, they run ads, they’re on podcasts. They host podcasts, they do cold email, not just once, but they follow up on LinkedIn, and then over text, and then, I mean, it’s, it’s just non stop on purpose, because that’s how it works. That’s how it works.

Christian Klepp 24:08

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. On that point, I had a follow up question for you, and you probably get this all the time, but I would imagine in SaaS and even in B2B Tech, Why do you think that there’s still this hesitation for people to invest in marketing like you probably still talk to people that are like, yeah, yeah, I know, but what if we don’t generate the right results, or the results that we’re expecting? So what do you say to those people that have those doubts?

Marketing Max 27:43

What’s your other choice? That’s my answer.

Christian Klepp 27:55

Right, right, growing on the back of referrals, to your earlier point, which is not sustainable in the long run.

Christian Klepp 28:02

Fair enough. Fair enough.

Marketing Max 28:02

Yeah, you have to take risks, but I can’t afford to, but I can’t afford to, then don’t, then get out of the game. You have to take risks. The analogy I’m using a lot these days is, you know, I’m a big sports guy. Love the NBA, the NFL I’m a golfer, so obviously I love golf, but in team sports, if you’re the owner of a basketball team, right, in order to get the best talent on your team, you need to not only pay them a ton of money, but you need to guarantee them that they will get that money even if they get injured. That’s a risk. That’s a huge risk. LeBron is making $55 million a year. If LeBron gets injured, you still have to pay him, but that’s just being in the league. That’s just being in the game. Marketing is the same way. Maybe you can’t spend $55 million okay, but let’s take smaller risks. Take smaller risks.

Marketing Max 28:12

You have to take risks to be in the game, or you’re never going to make the playoffs. People aren’t going to come to watch your team. You’re going to lose money. My grandfather was an entrepreneur. He’s the single reason why I’m an entrepreneur. He came to this country with a few dollars in his pocket and was a serial entrepreneur. Some successes, some major failures, some successes. And he had a hat in his office that I have now in my office. He passed away. He has a hat in his office that says, You got to spend money to make money.

Christian Klepp 29:49

Absolutely.

Marketing Max 29:50

I had to blow $30,000 of my own money on Facebook ads before I found the right ad, showing to the right audience, dropping off on the right landing page with the right offer for my ad agency before I was able to acquire clients for like two grand, all in. Two to three grand, all in. $2600 or whatever, fluctuate around there, but let’s say two to three grand. But once I cracked it, I was able to acquire a client, let’s say for $2500 bucks. And the value of that client for me was upwards of $50,000 so I spent $30,000. I got to a point where I can spend $25,000 and make $50,000. So all I needed was, like, literally, one or two clients to repay back the 30k that I had to spend. What I have kept going at 100k and just burning before I found the right ad and the right everything? No, of course not. There’s thresholds. But you got to spend money to make money. You got to waste money, truly. And my wife, super positive, will always say, it’s not a waste. You’re learning, but you got to light some money on fire to start the fire. You know, you know you need some. You need some, whether they call it Kim Tim, not timber, kindling, kindling. You need some kindling. No, yeah, you need, you need, you need it. And it’s got to be money. And if you don’t have any money, if you’re listening to this, you’re like, Max, I have $0, then it’s your time. Then you need to study how to create viral LinkedIn posts. You need to study, excuse me, how to write the best cold email on planet earth. Because you’re either buying people’s attention with money or with your time. And the only way to grow your business and to market your business is getting in front of people, getting people’s attention. You’re either doing that with money or time. Money, aka ads, influencer partnerships, whatever. Time meaning, creating content, networking, events, relationship building, writing the best Twitter post you can possibly Imagine, and then networking with people so that they retweet you. You buy people’s attention with time and money. Yeah, that’s marketing.

Christian Klepp 31:35

There’s many ways to do it. There’s many ways to do it. So marketing Max, you’ve been, I think you’ve been on your soapbox all this time, but I’d like to politely ask you to stay up there a while longer.

Marketing Max 32:22

I don’t like being on the soapbox, but okay,

Christian Klepp 32:25

A status quo that you passionately disagree with and why?

Marketing Max 32:29

I think we kind of touched on it. I think it’s like, if you build it, they will come. I think you really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really need to buy people’s attention with time or with money. You know, you can’t just get in front of people and hope that they purchase your product. You have to get in front of them and give them something compelling that makes them intrigued enough to double click, to zoom in, to get in contact. So many people, so many people, so many people I meet. It’s like, man, you know, word of mouth, we’re growing like wildfire. It’s like, that’s going to stop at some point unless you have a viral product, there’s, you know, viral nature in it, yeah, yeah. The other thing, totally unrelated, is less of like a marketing not true. What was the term, again? Status quo? Yeah. Status quo, another thing I talk about a lot, and that I believe very aggressively, and I don’t even think people like believe this, but I think it’s just the status quo. Your website is a living, breathing thing. The status quo, to use that term, is you spend 2 to 20 grand on someone to build your website, and then you never touch it or you update it with some features, you need to be constantly analyzing the data of where traffic is coming from, where people are clicking, what pages people are clicking to. When you really start to analyze the data of how people are interacting with your website, you’ll start to see some insane patterns. Sometimes I’ve found with clients like all of the people that convert check out one particular like breakdown of the features pages, or of the about us page, or of the like case studies page, before they actually convert. So it’s like, man, people are dying for this content, and once we show them this content, they convert. So how can we bring this content on the homepage? How can we take this content and put it in our retargeting ads? Like there’s a treasure trove of data inside of the data for your website’s user behavior. Your website’s a living, breathing thing. You need to be constantly updating it, analyzing it, checking it, testing call to actions, testing button, colors, testing headlines, testing pictures, text, testing backgrounds. It’s the easiest and best way by far to move the needle for your company. It’s to AB test your landing page or AB test your homepage, understand the data, see what’s converting, and then iterate from there. That is, by far and away, the number one thing that will have the biggest impact on revenue that you could do today. It’s not running Facebook ads. It’s not the $5 day retargeting ad. It’s thinking about your website as a living, breathing thing. If more brands spent as much time energy and money on AB testing their website as they do AB testing their their ad creative like on Facebook ads, we’d all be a lot richer.

Christian Klepp 32:34

Absolutely, absolutely. All right, two more questions for you and I will you go. Here comes the bonus question, if you had a superpower, what would you choose and why?

Marketing Max 35:54

I’ve always really wanted to fly. That’s always been my my superpower. I think also, like, under the business context, if I really had to choose, and I got time to think about it, I’d probably choose reading people’s minds. I would love to get on a service call and just know that this person is just, like, not paying attention to me at all. Yeah. But my favorite superhero is Iron Man, just because he’s…, because Robert Downey Jr is awesome, and because he’s rich and super cool and fights off bad guys with technology and not like bats, right? And spiders.

Christian Klepp 36:34

Spiders, yeah, fair enough.

Marketing Max 36:37

I choose Robert Downey Jr and Gwyneth Paltrow over Toby McGuire and spiders any day.

Christian Klepp 36:50

Hey, fair enough, man, fair enough.

Marketing Max 36:51

I don’t love spiders or bats. Honestly, I’ve seen them up close, and they’re very weird.

Christian Klepp 36:55

Yeah, yeah. I hear you. I hear you. Wow. Marketing Max. This has been an awesome conversation. So thank you so much for coming on the show and for sharing your experience and expertise with the listeners. Please, quick introduction to yourself and how folks out there can get in touch with you.

Marketing Max 37:13

Yeah, intro for me. My name is Marketing Max. I spend most of my time on Twitter. So if you have any questions or anything that I spoke about today, or want help with your marketing, feel free to DM me on Twitter @marketingmax, or check out marketingmax.io. You can get in touch with me there. Yeah, I run a portfolio of marketing businesses. I run a couple different agencies, a couple different software businesses, media company. So I’m just a full stack marketer trying to help companies grow and scale with less stress and less headache and less budget. So thanks for having me on the show.

Christian Klepp 37:47

Fantastic. Fantastic. A marketing renaissance man of sorts, if you will.

Marketing Max 37:54

I like that better than the soapbox thing you said I was on earlier. But yeah, I guess I always think of renaissance man like sitting in a dark room smoking cigars, like, oh, hanging out being mysterious. I’ll take that. I’ll take all right.

Christian Klepp 38:13

Marketing Max, thanks so much for your time. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon.

Marketing Max 38:17

Thanks for having me see you guys on Twitter.

Christian Klepp 38:19

Bye for now.

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