7 Steps To Build a Digital Marketing Agency While Traveling

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Summary:

Jeff: We don’t really have a set office area, so everyone on the team is remote. We can kind of work from wherever. I’m here with a couple people in Cancun. I don’t know if you can tell by the cool background. But yeah, we have a couple people here and everyone on the team is able to move around. There’s not really a lot of operating costs in regards to, we have a bunch of stuff that doesn’t necessarily make money, but we need to do it anyways, as in we kind of need to buy supplies for everyone.

We need to have a monthly expense, because we are paying this much for rent to rent out an office. We just get to work in places which are much more affordable, and then we also have kind of set processes in the business that like, we need to hit certain milestones, and we can’t really go back and make changes, and we don’t have a bunch of, we’re just able to cut costs by just focusing on the process, like, making sure that everything’s unique, everything’s cool, and is going to be custom built for the client, but we do have a set kind of process and system that we go through when we create videos for people. It helps to keep our cost down in that sense.

Aleks: Yeah, so basically, you keep the clients happy, and they get exactly what they want, and they get custom work. It’s not some cheap template stuff. And at the same time, you don’t have those huge overheads, because everything is done in a very cost-efficient way. There’s no offices. There’s coworking. There’s the delivery process that’s kind of a process, not just, let’s just keep going back and forth forever and have 7,000 revisions are completely not necessary. So, I guess the reduction in the 17,000 revisions is also a process. So what type of process do you have for that, so that the clients don’t need to ask you to change stuff all the time? Like, how do you do that?

Jeff: Yeah, a big part is just setting things up ahead of time. So before we even start on doing any script writing, before we start on game planning for the animations and what the video’s going to look like, we really want to figure out the strategy, like how is this video going to be used? Who’s going to see it? What’s the awareness level of these people?

You want to have a built-in strategy so that when you start coming up with a script, it’s built to something that you guys both agreed on, and it’s just like your communication is right. You’re front-loading it right at the beginning of the working relationship, where you know, here’s who we’re making this video for, here’s the purpose of the video, here’s where it’s going to be used in different parts of our client’s funnel, or maybe it’s just for training videos as well. So we know exactly what the goal is with the video, so we don’t have people going, hey, we actually made a change in sort of what we were doing with the company, and we want this video to reflect that, midway through the process, right?

There’s certain milestones so that you make changes until you hit that milestone, but then, then, once we’ve passed that, it’s like we can’t just keep going back and making revisions and restarting from scratch over and over again. So having that conversation at the very beginning is very important.

Aleks: Yeah, that makes sense. And I guess, you’re also not charging cheap, right? So I don’t want to make it seem like you guys are doing some kind of cheap work, obviously, because you are charging at premium. You are doing high-ticket sales, as we mentioned before as well. So, how come you don’t build a business that’s just, here’s a bunch of $500 videos? Like, buy $500 videos from us, as many as you want, and get thousands of sales? Why don’t you do that?

Jeff:  That’s a big headache. You have to make a lot more transactions with people, and you have to balance a lot more stuff. It’s not that we want to make a bunch of videos, you know? We don’t really care to make just a bunch of cheap stuff that’s going to be template-based, that they provide the script.

We want to make stuff where it’s not so much a cost to them, like it’s not like you’re spending $500. It’s like you’re investing into something that’s going to bring more return than the investment that you put in. We also don’t want to make stuff that’s boring, you know? I want to make something that we’re proud of and the team’s all proud of, so we get excited by being able to make new stuff every time. Like, I don’t want to just do the same thing over and over again on repeat, because I get bored pretty easily.

Aleks:  So you’re also working with bigger clients than before, if I’m not mistaken? Did you make that decision last year, or when did you decide to also focus on these big projects, like the 50k one, or how did you make that decision?

Jeff:  Yeah, that one was just sort of, it came about. We had the capacity to do it. We have a team in place to make stuff like that. But then yeah, some of our bigger clients, a lot of our biggest clients that we’ve worked with, they have kind of came out. They reached out to us through referrals. They’ve reached out to other companies and said like, hey, who’d you get to do your video, and then they just suggest us, and then we go from there. They just reach out, like hey, you were recommended to us. Let’s talk about what we’re looking to have done, and then we can talk from there.

Aleks:  Right. And you mentioned before you were traveling. You said this is Cancun? That looks quite nice, actually.

Jeff:  Yeah, this is Mexico. This is where I live most of the time.

Aleks:  So how come you’re able to travel while doing all this? I guess most people want to meet up for sales meetings or something, I don’t know. How come you don’t do that, or you don’t prefer to do it?

Jeff:  I wouldn’t be against it, like, even just flying out, shaking hands, meeting people. I’d be open to doing that, but people are busy, man! We’re sitting here talking through Zoom right now, and most of my communication with people is through Zoom. There’s not too much benefit to kind of staying in one spot to make sure that you can sit down and have a lunch with someone. When I’m back in Canada, where I’m from, I’ll meet up with people every once in a while, but it’s not as much as you’d think.

So there’s not really any benefit to even living in sort of where you’re doing business. We have a bunch of clients in Canada, and I very rarely see them.

Aleks:  And what’s the process for sales? So, people will think, this is not possible. You can’t close big deals if you don’t meet people. You need to sign there with a lawyer present or I don’t know, all kinds of weird stuff people think about sales. So, what are some ways that you use to actually close people on a call, even with bigger deals? Like, how come you’re able to do that? What is the process, more or less?

Jeff:  Hmm, I feel it’s just trust. When people speak to me, they can hear my voice. I’ve been doing this for a while. I think another big thing is we have a lot of clients. We have a lot of social proof, so people know we’re been in this industry for a while. If they send me money over the internet, there’s a pretty good chance that it’s not going to disappear. They know that, because we have a proven track record. We’ve worked with a lot of people before. We have a lot of good publicity, and we’ve kind of developed that over the last couple years we’ve been in business.

So, I think it would just come down to trust. People know we’ve been in business. They know we make what we say we make, and if they work with us, they’re going to get pretty much exactly what we discuss over the phone when we’re talking.

Aleks: Yeah, and what is the consultative selling process? Like, in what used to be Businessmen Insiders, we used a process where we kind of instruct people on how to make a decision. So, do you do this, or do you use just proof, or what do you do exactly?

Jeff:  Yeah, well, you just get on the phone with people, and you just talk to them. Like, what is it that they’re involved with? What is it that their goals are? What is it that their strategy is, and then you just figure it out.

Here’s what I think you guys could start implementing in your business, and then, you’re pretty much just there to help out. I wouldn’t even say it’s closing the deals. You’re just kind of having a conversation, and people want to work with you, and then if you can help them, then you guys work together.

Aleks:  Right, so what if they say they need to talk to their boss?

Jeff:  Then you reschedule, and you talk to the boss with them, or you kind of send them a message after the call, like hey, it was great to speak with you. Looking forward to it, let me know what your boss says. Here’s a quick summary of what we discussed, and then they show that to their boss as well.

Aleks:  Right, and what if they say that this project, that they’re in the discovery phase? It’s not really a project yet; they’re just discovering. So what would you tell them early in the call if you find out about this?

Jeff:  Yeah, early in the call, I would just kind of see what their game plan is. They’re probably not ready to work with us just yet. I would just give them some advice and speak with them about what they’re looking to have done and what they’re looking to do, and then just help out the way I can, and down the line, they would, sometimes they’ll come back if they realize, hey, it’s time to need this, and then you just kind of keep the relationship going. Just keep talking to them every month, every two months, something like that, and just speak with them.

Aleks: Yeah, interesting. I guess we call this the deposit funnel. We just get a deposit from them, and we set a date for later on so that we know they’ll show up, because they paid the deposit to hold the spot to work with us. That’s the standard process. Your variation is, well, it’s almost the same, but just follow up, follow up, follow up, basically. It definitely, definitely works.

I guess we’ve also noticed that 75% of sales comes from this and not from sales on the first call, because not everyone’s ready to buy immediately. Some companies are just not ready yet. They’re figuring out what they’re going to do in three months, or sometimes even six months, and sometimes even two years, but if they end up buying, it’s worth following up for a couple of hours over a period of a few months or even a year or something like that, for a big enough sale. And people don’t realize this.

People just throw away leads for no reason whatsoever instead of just developing relationships, getting referrals. From your current sales that you’re getting on a monthly basis, how many of those are referrals, as a percentage? Like 50%, 40, 12%, or what are we talking about here?

Jeff:  Yeah, I would say like 50 to 60% are just referrals right now. Just people we worked with before, they just kind of either need more stuff that we make, or they have people that they’re communicating with that kind of come out and say, hey, we heard you worked with these people. Can we talk? And then that’s usually, yeah, it’s a big part of the business.