In The Thick of It

Unlock the power of strategic marketing for your startup or small business.

In this insightful episode, Laura Neathery, founder of LJ Consulting & Marketing, shares her expertise on the invaluable role of partnering with a marketing agency. Discover the ideal timing to engage an agency and the key qualities to prioritize for a successful collaboration.

In today's fast-paced digital landscape, effective marketing demands consistency, quality, and accountability–a long-term game that requires expertise across multiple fronts, from social media channel management to digital advertising, SEO, email marketing, and beyond.

If you're an entrepreneurial business owner seeking to amplify your brand's reach, this episode offers invaluable insights into finding the marketing support you need to thrive.

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About Laura:
A lifelong Texan, Laura Neathery began her journey with a focus on photography. Her creativity and passion for stories led her to journalism emphasizing PR, Advertising, and Marketing. This foundation in visual storytelling and communication naturally led her to the marketing field, where she applied her skills in brand development, digital strategy, and demand generation across various roles. This journey involved agency and client-side marketing enabling her to see and understand both sides of marketing.

Laura spent years amid brilliant creatives and digital experts and knew she could bring her own spin of partnership to small to medium-sized businesses seeking scalable marketing solutions. This realization prompted her to establish LJ Consulting & Marketing, L.L.C. in 2018. Laura’s agency democratizes digital marketing, offering end-to-end digital services including SEO, social media management, web design, SMS marketing, and more while ensuring transparency through a client portal for real-time updates. This approach allows businesses to enhance their marketing efforts effectively and efficiently.

About LJ Consulting & Marketing:
LJ Consulting & Marketing, L.L.C. is a digital marketing agency dedicated to helping small to medium businesses grow their online presence. They offer a range of services, including SEO, social media marketing, web design and development, PPC management, content writing, online reputation management, and more. Their approach involves a detailed consultation, thorough audit, and strategic execution to deliver measurable results and a high return on investment. They emphasize innovation, data-driven strategies, transparency, and a client-centric approach to ensure their clients' success in the digital landscape.

To learn more, visit ljcandm.com

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If you or a founder you know would like to be a guest on In The Thick of It, email us at intro@founderstory.us

Creators & Guests

Host
Scott Hollrah
Founder & CEO of Venn Technology
Guest
Laura Neathery
Founder of LJ Consulting & Marketing

What is In The Thick of It?

Join Scott Hollrah, founder of Venn Technology, as he takes you "In the Thick of It" with the real stories of founders who are actively navigating the challenges and triumphs of running their businesses. This podcast goes beyond the typical entrepreneurial success stories and delves into the messy, gritty, and sometimes chaotic world of building and growing a company. Get inspired, learn from the experiences of others, and gain insights into what it truly means to be in the thick of the entrepreneurial journey.

If I'm working with a client,

I want to be able to give them a snapshot of what the outside world sees.

So that's going to include your reputation online.

So do you have any reviews and do you respond to those reviews?

Your website, when is the last time it was updated?

Because that's a big part of your SEO too.

It's not just, I guess, say speed, you know, the page optimization.

It's a constant addition of content.

Welcome to In The Thick of It Toolbox,

the special series where inspiration meets implementation.

Here we don't just share success stories, we equip you with proven tools and strategies

from seasoned founders, turning entrepreneurial dreams into actionable plans.

Prepare to be enabled and empowered on your journey.

You're not just listening to a podcast,

you're gaining access to an essential toolbox for your business success.

Let's dive in this in the thick of it toolbox episode dives into the role and value

of working with a marketing agency, especially for startups and small businesses.

Today's guest is Laura Neathery, founder of LJ Consulting & Marketing,

an agency specializing in digital marketing strategies.

Laura explains the timing when businesses should engage with a marketing agency

and best qualities to look for in a partnership.

In today's world, marketing is all about consistency, quality and accountability.

It's a long run game that takes expertise in multiple areas including management

of social media channels, digital advertising, SEO, email and so much more.

If you're a business owner looking to expand your brand's reach,

this episode is packed with great insights into finding the help you need.

Welcome to another In The Thick of It Toolbox edition.

So excited to have Laura here.

Laura, thank you for making the drive over in the rain and joining us.

Thank you.

I appreciate the opportunity to join you.

So our Toolbox series is all about educating and equipping entrepreneurs,

helping them find and bring things into their business that will help them

run things more successfully, run things better, and really excited to dive

into a topic that is very near and dear to my heart and that is the world of

marketing.

My degree was in marketing, my dream job was to go

into advertising and it didnt work out that way.

But marketing is something thats near and dear to my heart and its one of the things

in the business and running the business that I just get so much joy and satisfaction out of.

Excited to talk to you about that today so lets do this.

What led you into this career path?

I think way back when in college I recognized that I have a little bit

of a creative streak but im just not really great at it.

So I wanted to channel that somewhere.

I started out in photography and I went to one of the top schools

in the nation for photography at the time, and I just

knew I wasn't going to be able to make a living doing that.

So I wanted to look and see what other opportunities kind of required that background,

that creativity could use the photography honestly, that could use the photography

credits as a class and not an elective because those were hard won grades.

So I found marketing and I just loved it.

I loved the advertising classes.

I'm just someone who likes to sit and brainstorm and think of

things that go together and things that make sense and processes.

So that's how I started with marketing, and I've just been in marketing ever since.

So I've spent a lot of time in corporate companies

that are software based and that's kind of where my comfort zone is.

I've had startup experience,

which is where you and I met at one of the Sager Acumatica events.

And I was working for a VaR and an HCM software at the time.

I left there and went to another software company.

And the software company I went to after the VAR recognized

the value that they could get by outsourcing their marketing.

And this was while you were working?

That was me, yes.

So at that time, I handled their new website build.

It was a huge undertaking.

We did a lot of SEO work on it, new copy,

and just really made it great for the user and very informational.

And I was also in charge of their SEM, which is search engine marketing,

you might know it as PPC, pay per click and display ads.

I set it all up.

I remember they had a huge budget for ads and I was able to cut that in half and still

maintain the same level and quality of leads that they were getting from that.

I went in there and just dug into the campaigns.

And so with that I set it all up and I had all these great returns on the investment,

which I'm the investment too.

And the SEO was great.

So as soon as we launched the website, I was told they were going to outsource

because the website was done and the campaigns were running great.

And so all they needed was someone to come and take a peek at it every once in a while.

Just maintain.

Yeah.

And I can't say that I blame them.

It was a wise move.

So after that, I had maintained this relationship with the VAR and the HCM company,

and I had been doing a little freelance work on the side at the same time.

And when I left the software company when I got laid off, the HCM software company.

My contact there, she said, I think you should just do this full time.

And I thought, I would really like that.

I would like that a lot.

So shout out to Maria.

Thank you.

Which led me here.

So I started freelancing, and then I just started looking at opportunities.

Just, why am I freelancing and doing this all myself when I have a network?

So I started an agency and I have so many brilliant people working

for me on my projects, and it's wonderful.

So I started the agency and I've just been building it since then

from referrals, and it's been a wonderful experience.

That's fantastic.

And you talked about Maria.

I know Maria as well.

Wonderful, wonderful person.

It's amazing how sometimes we just need that nudge from somebody that sees that thing,

that sees that spark,

that ambition that we have and just gives us that little nudge that we need to go.

Absolutely go make that jump.

Yeah.

I felt like our relationship had been a partnership,

which I think a marketing agency should be.

So I took that learning over to the agency side to kind of grow that.

Trey.

Well, I want to drill in on that for a second term partnership.

I think you're absolutely right.

It needs to be a partnership.

And maybe this will be a good segue here in just a second, but in order for somebody

to really be able to generate that return that you talked about, theyve got to be invested,

maybe too strong of a word, but theyve got to have a genuine interest in your success.

And theyve also got to have a really good understanding of who you are and what you do as

a company in order to be able to drive the value that marketing is supposed to drive.

And so, yeah, youre absolutely right.

Its got to be a partnership.

It cant just be a vendor kind of a relationship.

So you talk about an agency and talking about just the whole topic of marketing in general.

Marketing is incredibly broad and there are so many disciplines within marketing.

Can you maybe just kind of help our,

for people that think of marketing as just this fluffy, you know?

Yeah, whatever.

Help break down for the audience the different facets of marketing and help people

to understand, you know, it's not just this fluffy, right.

There's so many, it's very broad.

When you consider, I think let's focus on startups and small businesses.

When you start, you've got to really think about your brand,

how you want the world to perceive you.

And when I say that perception, do you want them?

It's almost like a personality.

What personality do you want your company to have?

Do you want it to be buttoned up and professional or bubbly and fun but educational?

So there's that brand, but then once you start building that brand,

how do you reach your customer?

Who is your customer?

So there's Personas.

We talk about Personas and who is your ideal client?

Where is your ideal client?

So there's all the facets that would lead you to new customers.

So when you talk about lead generation, you're focusing on that ideal customer.

And that might be something with social media,

it might be a lead magnet on an ad, it might be just your SEO.

For someone who's searching.

And search engine optimization is so deep, people don't understand.

It's not just having keywords on a page, you know, it's backlinks,

it's speed load, it's page size, it's website size.

And there is a long list of things that you need to check off for SEO.

There's a long list of things that you need to check off for your SEO.

And then other things of marketing could be your events.

Where are the events and when are the events that your customers are going to go to?

And if you go to that event, what are you going to tell them?

What is your story and what do you look like when you go to that event?

So those are just some of the high level pieces of marketing that you have to consider.

And it's a great, it's a huge undertaking

to have a small team or even just yourself doing all of that.

And even when I started my agency and I started to do my outreach,

I hired someone to do that lead Gen for me because I was still working

on social media and my website and things like that.

So even my agency, I needed to hire someone to do my lead Gen.

It's interesting.

I mean, each of these different areas are, you know, disciplines in and of themselves,

and you can go pretty deep in any one of them.

And SEO, for example, I mean, that's one that, oh my gosh, it is.

You're right, it is not just, oh, let's make sure we've got a few keywords on a page.

There's so much that goes into it.

And I mean, that could be a full time job easily, if not multiple

people's full time job to keep on that because the landscape is always changing,

the search algorithms and the rankings are always changing.

Competitors are coming in.

And so thats something you have to stay on top of.

And you bring up such a good point about even you need people

to help with certain disciplines of you developing your business.

You talk about lead Gen.

We had a guest on a while back who was in the real estate business and commercial real estate,

which is obviously very different than residential, but hes focused exclusively on

industrial, which is very different from Class A office space and from retail and so forth.

And so when you really start thinking about it, like, yeah, you really need people

to help you with each of these individual disciplines within marketing.

Right.

And you could also consider determining your verticals and pricing part of marketing.

Without a doubt.

Yeah.

And I think sometimes, especially the singular startups,

they could do with some business coaching as well.

Yep.

And there's a lot of people that have great ideas, but they don't know how to run a business.

They know how to bring that idea to life.

But to get into people's hands, to get in people's hands in a way that, you know,

they want to tell other people about it, that's a very different thing in and of itself.

So you said you started your early career having worked both in house and on the agency side,

and you've now gone to get your own agency started.

What does an agency do?

Like walk us through kind of the, the full gamut of that.

An agency is someone who first and foremost is going to learn.

You learn about what you're doing, what's working, what's not working, what are your goals?

And they should be able to do they, the agency should be able to do some online investigating

and learn about what your offering is, who your competitors are, what your competitors

are doing, good and bad, and see what is the best course of action for your company.

I feel like if I'm working with a client,

I want to be able to give them a snapshot of what the outside world sees.

So that's going to include your reputation online.

So do you have any reviews?

And do you respond to those reviews?

Your website, when is the last time it was updated?

Because that's a big part of your SEO too.

It's not just, I guess, say speed, you know, the page optimization,

it's a constant addition of content.

And I'm going to look at any ads that you've been running, your social media presence,

how often do you post, when was your last post?

And are they all on brand?

And an agency should be able to walk you through a lot of these things.

And when I'm speaking about agency, I'm speaking from a digital marketing agency's

perspective, not necessarily someone who's running television ads and things like that.

But additional marketing agencies should be able to step in and tell you where you need

improvement and be able to provide those tools and they should also be able to understand

your customer, where your customer is, who your customer is, gender, age, geography.

You know, there's a big difference.

I know we keep talking about SEO, but it's just so easy and it's near and dear to my heart.

But you know, a regional or localized SEO campaign is very different from a national campaign.

So you want to find an agency that can handle

what you're looking for and they would provide a roadmap for you.

I've always suggested I like to do a blueprint and that's something

that's going to break down your business so that you understand.

Even so, on a blueprint you would define your customer Persona, your goals, your KPI's.

There's just so many steps that are going to really define

your business so that you all get on the same page.

And I think it's very eye opening to a small business to see that breakdown

and understand the percentage of time and money that should be spent

on your website, your SEO, your ads, your social.

So it should be a really clear understanding of what they're going to do,

how they're going to do it, how long it's going to take.

So transparency is very important.

Here I was speaking to one gentleman, a prospect

about his website hadn't been updated since 21.

It is 2024 now.

And I said, who's handling your website?

And he gives me a name.

I said, how often do you talk to him?

I don't know.

I just know he's got it running.

If I'm doing something with your website for SEO or content or anything,

I'm going to meet with you every month and give you a rundown of what we've done.

I'm going to show you the analytics.

I'm going to give you some numbers.

If you're a number person, I'm going to give you charts.

If you're a chart person.

Like I said, transparency is key.

I want to drill down on a few things you mentioned in there.

So you talked about KPI's and this is something that I struggle with in my own business,

not just in marketing, but across the board.

And I feel like I'm not the only one.

When you sit down and you do that blueprint, how often do your clients come to you and say,

these are the KPI's that I want us to work toward and measure and how much of that is you

going to them and saying, hey, here's where I think we need to be targeting.

I would say 75% of the KPI's come from us.

A client usually has.

When you ask a client what their goal is, they'll say,

well, I want to generate more quality leads.

That's what we all want to do, but we're going to break that down further.

What does that actually mean to you?

Yes, and how we're going to do it.

And you can go so far as to say this percentage should come from this avenue, this percentage

would come from this avenue, and this should cost this much and let's spend this much here.

So it's really something that I think most people can understand and appreciate.

One of the other things you talked about was kind

of how you allocate your spend across marketing.

Are there kind of universal measures that you go off of and x percent should be ads,

x percent should be SEO, spread the rest out across events and whatnot?

Or is that something that really has to be tailored per industry or maybe even per company?

You're exactly right.

There are industry standards, averages that you can start with.

And then a good idea is to start with industry averages per your business size.

And then you start working on your campaigns and you keep checking in.

You do have to give campaigns time.

You can't change a campaign into every two weeks.

You'll need to let it run a month or two.

You know, these search engines, because we are talking about digital,

these search engines do take time to adjust and read your new pages

and get all of that information into their algorithm.

So it is a constant check in and pivot as needed.

I'm not a very patient person, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs are also not patient people.

And this is an area where I know I have to be patient.

When we invest in marketing, long tail kinds of stuff like SEO,

you don't just turn it on and you, you know, next week,

all of a sudden your site is just going crazy with leads and traffic.

And, and so I think that for my encouragement to anybody listening is, as you guys do take

these things on, you need to plan for this to be months and in some cases maybe even years of

investment before you really start to see the tide turn in those kinds of things.

And on that note, you know, tell me if I'm wrong here, but you talk about it takes

the search engines potentially weeks to months for them to even start to notice you.

I think some of that is certainly just the indexing

and the crawling of the web that they're doing.

But I think too, you need to be pumping content out regularly

to help the search engines know that you really are an authority on this thing.

It wasn't just, well, I wrote this one thing this one time and all

of a sudden the world should think I'm an expert.

You got it.

That is exactly right.

The more you can do on your website and socials, the more it's going to help.

You can look at search engines as, for example,

if you were going to refer one of your friends who was a high school football coach,

you would not refer him to one of your software design related jobs, right?

He's not an authority.

He hasn't done it over and over again.

And it's the same with search engines.

Search engines want to know not only that you're an authority, but that you're active.

So I press upon people all the time.

Something simple as, have you checked your Google business profile?

It shows it hasn't been claimed.

Why is that?

You can post your posts to your Google business profile and Google says,

oh my gosh, they are really jamming here.

They know what they're talking about.

They talk about it often.

They respond to the reviews they're getting.

They're really engaged with their customer.

We like them.

I'm going to put them up.

So just like you don't want to work with a CPA who let their CPA license lapse ten years ago.

Yes.

You want to make sure that CPA is still up.

They know what the current tax code is.

It's the same thing for authority when it comes to, you know, what you're talking about.

You're my ideal client.

All right, so if I'm a founder, what are the things that I should be thinking

about that would make me go, you know what, now is time for me to bring in an agency?

Or what are those signs?

That should be just the obvious, you know, hey, you need to pick up the phone.

You need to find an agency.

If you're spending time doing something.

Let's use email campaigns, for example.

If you're spending a lot of time writing email campaigns or blogs for that matter,

and you're not getting a lot of engagement, I think you're spinning your wheels.

It's time to look at someone else who does that regularly

and can get you results and can scale that whole operation.

And I know there's a lot of people who don't want to relinquish control,

but you should be able to count on your agency

to know your business enough to write it you can also work with them.

Just give them a bullet point list and let them build something from that.

A good agency is going to look at your history, what you want your brand to be,

what you want it to look like, and they're going to use that same voice.

Unless your voices say off putting, they would coach you and encourage a different voice.

But I think when you're not getting your leads in, when you're focusing on tasks

rather than the overall picture of your business, I think it's time to bring someone in.

I think there's a lot of wisdom in that.

And frankly, that could apply to a lot of other areas

of the business, too, not just the marketing.

And I know for me, I think back to the early days of the business,

I did not want to delegate things.

I wanted to really tightly control them.

You know, nobody can do this as well as I can.

So I'm not going to let anybody else.

And I think just generally speaking, entrepreneurs have to be willing to let things go.

There was something else in there that you said that was like, oh, yeah, that's really good.

And I'm going to paraphrase, but I think you have to be

prepared for somebody to tell you that your baby is ugly.

And you have to be willing to change your message, to change your brand,

to change how you present yourself when you embark on something like this.

Is that a fair statement?

That is more than fair, yes.

How often do you find yourself having to have that conversation?

Every once in a while, not too often,

because most of the people that are coming to me have been referrals.

They know they need help and are willing to listen.

I have had a couple of people who probably feel they've been burned in the past.

Oh, I hired someone to do my SEO in the past and they did some things, but it didn't work.

Did you give it long enough?

That's what I have to ask.

Why did you stop?

How long did you go for?

And did you compare those numbers to any other previous period?

So that's what I want to know.

And I think sometimes things like that are so scary because you can't see it,

what they're doing.

But like I said, I'm going to give you a long, long checklist

of things that are going to be worked on every month.

And there's a separate list for the startup and the ongoing.

And that's what people don't understand.

The point you made earlier was that it is something that could take years.

And the thing is, is that you can get your process started and say you're ranking in that top,

the sweet three, you know, on that Google search and then you say, I'm here,

I don't need to do it anymore, I'm going to save some money, I don't need you anymore.

What's going to happen?

You're going to fall.

You got it.

Because someone else is right behind you and they're keeping fresh and you're not.

Random curious question, does anybody matter other than Google?

It is a big powerhouse.

I would focus on Bing as well.

But one thing people don't understand is there are almost 100, maybe more of listing sites.

And when I say listing sites, I do mean Google, like your business profile,

your social media, even things like Nextdoor and auto trader, better business bureau.

Do you remember yellow Pages?

Yeah.

It's still a listing online.

So all of these listing services, they may or may not have your presence on there.

They may pick it up from someone else, but they need to be consistent.

So you need to look at all your listings.

Even so, when you say is Google important?

All these little listings are important too because they're feeding into

three main aggregators and I kind of liken them to a credit report.

You know, your Nordstrom card is talking to Experian.

So if you're going to go get a loan, they're going to search those,

I don't know how many they're going to search too.

Maybe all of them of credit reporting agencies.

Well, it's kind of like Google.

All those listing, hundreds of listing surfaces going to feed

into the aggregators and Google and Bing are going to search those three.

So you want all of those guys to tell the big three the same message.

So if I'm applying for a new home loan and experience says that I've paid my Nordstrom bill

on time, but Equifax says that I haven't, that's going to be a problem.

Exactly, exactly.

And so when I look at those things I can see that Google has you

on texan trail trail and then Yahoo has you on texan TRl.

So it's just little things like that.

Little things like that can make a difference.

You want consistency.

Wow, that's, I would have never thought about that.

Yeah.

So all of those little guys are going to tell the big guys being in Google and Yahoo,

I didn't know they were still around.

I don't know.

That's what I was going to say.

I don't know if anybody is using that, but they're going to tell them.

And it does seem like there are more people coming into the search space.

Obviously Google is biggest by far and then I would assume Bing is behind them.

But Duckduckgo is making a lot of traction and I feel

like I've come across a couple of others recently.

So it's an ever changing landscape and you can't rest on your laurels.

Going back to the when should somebody engage with an agency?

Im going to add something thats just kind of from my own personal experience

and its relevant to the things weve already talked about, but it is consistency.

And so one of the things I found in the early days was id get on LinkedIn, id

get really excited for like a week and id have several posts and then like a

month would go by and I wouldnt post anything and then id get fired up again

and you know, and so I'd go through these waves and the same was true with

blogging.

I'd get these great I'd come back from a conference and I'd write multiple posts

and I'd have them going out and then nothing would go out for months at a time.

In fact, not that long ago we launched a new website and I was actually reading back through

our early blog posts and I was looking at these dates and I was going wow,

a, I can't believe that I wrote that and put that out there myself.

And then b, I'm looking at these dates in between.

I'm like oh geez, yeah, that was not good.

Having an agency to either a hold you accountable to producing it yourself or

b, taking that off your plate so that it is consistent and it is staying out

there, I think is another thing that should be a red flag to you to say if you

can't do this consistently on your own, it's time to bring in somebody to

help.

And with an agency, they're going to plan so far ahead that you would be able to react

to whatever they're going to post if you need to add to that.

So maybe you are on a regular cadence of posting twice a month.

And if you have a special event coming up or you want to celebrate somebody's anniversary,

you should be able to have the agency add that in and they should be able

to provide you a monthly calendar for both your blog content and your social media.

One more question on the when is the right time?

Do you find that theres a particular size?

Like is there a revenue size?

Is there a headcount size?

Is there any kind of consistency that you see that says hey,

this is another marker as to when you should engage an agency.

From a company standpoint, I feel like its going to be an individual decision.

But if you can't let go of money yet,

it would be a very difficult decision for you to engage that agency.

For instance, if you sat with someone and you know you need help,

but you have an agency or a freelancer or whomever it is, say,

I can write you four emails a month and it's gonna cost you.

I'm going to just throw a number out there, $500.

If you can't let go of that $500,

there's something wrong with your business in the first place.

So if it's an affordability or if it's just a tight wallet,

but I would say revenue wise that's a hard decision.

Revenue wise it could be half a million a year and you need someone

to do small tasks to several million a year and you're really ready to go

and scale your marketing and have them do several tests.

So it just depends on what you're willing to let us work on.

We're going to make our recommendations,

we're going to give you the big picture and we hope that you're going to take it.

But at the same time, I hope the agency you employ will help you understand

what you're going to get if you work on the whole, not just a piece, because

I feel like if you're just focusing on one little piece, it's not going to help the whole.

If I only put fertilizer and pre emergent on one part of my yard, it's not going

to help the whole yard look great and win that yard of the month that my hoa puts out.

You're so much more eloquent than I am on the spot,

so why wouldn't I just hire full time people internally to come in and do this one?

It's a big undertaking to onboard someone, pay someone a full salary and benefits and PTo.

It would be next to impossible to find that unicorn that can work in all of these areas.

Keep the education about all of these areas and everything that's trending consistently.

I've been on teams where I was the only marketing person,

but I had resources outside of the company.

And the more exposure you have to other people, the more you learn.

And an agency has a lot of exposure to a lot of great experts.

And another thing an agency is going to do for you is they

are constantly going to try to keep proving themselves.

They are always going to share what the accomplishment for your company was that month.

So there's never going to be a question and it's going to be done on time.

So you wouldn't have an issue of, well, if you had one person or two people

even working at your company on marketing, you wouldn't be in a position of

them saying, well, you assigned me this, but then this became a bigger

priority and agency is going to have someone else to take that priority piece

for you.

So those are just some of the benefits.

I think scalability is one.

And like I said, just the hiring and the cost and the brainpower of an agency versus

an in house small team, everything you said there resonates for me big time.

And in our early days, we did work with an agency, and we've grown to the

point now that we've got not just a marketing person, but a team of

marketing people, and we've got the ability to spread the workload and

have people that are probably a little bit more focused in one area than

the other.

But in the early days in particular, and for what I could afford to spend

going the agency route where I paid them less than what a full time person would cost,

and I got people that could write really good copy way back.

I wish theyd rewritten those blogs from early on.

They could write copy, they could do graphic design, they could manage the social media.

They had audio video expertise.

They did all kinds of photography for us.

They conducted interviews and did case studies

with our customers and put out this great content.

And so you're right, like an individual person can only go so deep in one given discipline.

And with the agency model and this approach, oftentimes, especially

in the early stages, you can get a lot of bang for your buck

by going this route and spreading that brainpower across multiple people.

You're right, because in general, if you had an agency working on your blogs,

your SEO, your social media videos, case studies,

all of that rolled in together is less than a one full time employee.

So we're not talking an arm and a leg.

I think it's very beneficial.

And there's probably a lot of employed marketers out

there that don't want to hear me say that, but it's true.

And I think it comes down to leadership, personality,

and what you can and can't let go of and how much trust you have in your agency

versus how much trust you would have if you had someone there in your office with you.

Yep.

Well, so we've talked about kind of the breadth, what areas does your agency really focus on?

We are digital primarily.

We work on videos.

I love to do videos whether it's a brand video or case study, I like to do those.

Those are just fun to work on.

It is important to have a video on your homepage.

That's good SEO.

So SEO is another thing, front end and back end.

And another important area is the social.

I love social media.

I've seen some really great accounts and some very

things that I thought were smart that we've adopted.

And I like anything that really pushes your presence out there.

So those would probably be the three main, but then for more local businesses,

we do a lot of local SEO and reputation management because you're looking

at people who are more customer facing and people are more willing to do reviews.

And when you are doing the reviews, you do need to manage those reviews,

good or bad, they need to be responded to

because that's something that search engines are going to look at as well.

So you call it reputation management, but it also bleeds into your SEO.

So for somebody who does decide to engage with an agency, what should they expect?

What does the cadence look like, what does the interaction look like?

What outputs should they expect and what kind of results should they expect to get?

I think it would be, it may be different for each agency,

but I think first a discovery call, 1015 minutes.

Not everyone clicks, not everyone works well together.

You may have to say, I don't think this is going to work

for us and be willing to let them go from both sides.

You know, we're both interviewing each other.

And then after that go into a meeting to learn more about their business.

Go and do your research about their business, what you find online,

because like I said, you can do all kinds of searches and find out about their

advertising presence, their SEO, their website updates, all their listings.

Do that research and then go over it with the customer.

And so be prepared to really spend some time, like an hour, hour and a half.

Have a good meeting with them so that you understand each other

and help them understand where they're lacking and where you can help them.

And then I'd say a third meeting would be your proposal and go over your proposal.

And then I like to break them down into your must haves

and nice to haves so that it's not too overwhelming.

I'm not trying to push anything at anyone.

So from there, once you start working together, after that proposal is accepted,

I would expect within three to five days to have a clear roadmap.

And that means every section that we are going to work on, I'm going to give you all of the

pieces that we're going to work on the timing of it and some of it is even broken down to,

as I mentioned earlier, if you're working on SEO, here's my list of everything we're going

to do this first month because these are the pieces that are important require an expert to

do.

And we'll get you online the fastest and then ongoing.

We have a separate list so that you clearly understand what we're working on.

And then with social media, we're going to give you a monthly calendar.

We're going to set a date that we get together every month and strategize and go over results.

And I think that's kind of initially what you can expect

from the beginning and then a beautiful relationship develops.

Trey, something you said there kind of kicking that off was you'll know

pretty quickly in the first ten or 15 minutes if the, I'm going to

paraphrase, but if the chemistry is right, like sometimes it really is just

a, it's not so much about skill, but it's about how good of a personality

match is this?

And the same could be said for hiring an employee.

So timeliness is something thats really, really big for me.

And the first agency we engaged with, funny enough,

the person was a few minutes late to our first meeting and I thought no big deal.

And then they were like 30 minutes late to our second meeting.

And im like, yeah, this is not starting off so great.

And then we were supposed to have an in person meeting in our office,

and an hour and 15 minutes after they were supposed to be there in person,

they call and like, hey, is now still a good time to meet?

And I'm like, no, not only is now not a good time to meet, but we're done.

Like, this is not going to work.

So, you know, finding people who,

well, hey, if you can't show up on time, that's probably a bad sign to begin with.

But people who match your work style, I think is really important.

Right.

And communication style, are they going to give you the information?

I had someone approach me wanting me to.

This was just the craziest thing.

Wanted to hire me to oversee the agency that does their PPC.

And I said, well, what are they?

Do you know where they're working, where they're going?

Like, what are they, what are they reporting to you?

And he said, I don't know.

I haven't spoken to them about ten months, but I'm not ready to change anything.

Okay.

So I could see clearly that that wasn't something I was interested in doing.

You need just to hire someone or assign that to someone in your office,

I'm sure you have someone that can check in with them every month.

So that wasn't a match for me.

Yeah.

It's got to be a match on both sides.

Right.

And we approach our business that way.

Sometimes we get into a sales cycle with somebody and it's clear that we're just,

we're not gonna work well together.

And I'd rather say no to the business than take it on and it not go well.

And, yeah, it goes both ways.

Right.

I want a referral, and I don't wanna do bad work.

Right.

And for me, I wanna sleep well at night.

Yes.

And if I've got that customer who's just very difficult and not just for myself,

but for my team members, like, if they dread going to work the next day because they've

gotta take that call with that person, I don't, I don't want them as a customer.

Cause it's not gonna be good for my team.

So we've kind of talked about this in different ways, but from the time you get started

with an agency to the time that you start to see some results,

how long should an owner expect that to take?

It would be different for each channel.

I feel like on social media, if you start getting into a regular cadence,

the social media channels will accept that and start serving you up a little more,

especially as engagement goes up.

And there's things that I suggest to do for some people.

Here's a little tip for LinkedIn.

If you're posting regularly on LinkedIn, create a little pod, you know, in the messages,

create a pod of all your friends and coworkers and people of like minds

to support each other and post your post in that message and say, here's my post today.

Can you go like it?

That's going to increase your engagement.

I know that's not what you asked, but I like to give free tips.

But those social media channels are going to see that,

and it's going to start probably in a month or two.

And I remember way back when I first started and I started looking at those

engagement numbers, it was a consistent, it might be just one or two people extra per post,

but it was growing and it was almost immediate.

So if you're looking at SEO, it's going to take a little bit longer.

Well, if somebody is listening to this, they're like, okay, yeah, I think this is me.

I think I'm at that point.

How would they go about finding the right agency for them?

I think a good one is referrals, or if you see something that you like, find out who did it.

If you like someone's website, who did it.

However, I will say a lot of times people will build a website.

I will say a lot of times an agency will build a website for someone,

and then there is no more relationship.

So you have to find the ones that are continually ranking.

And like I said, I think referrals go a long way when I'm looking at someone

and I'm looking at case studies, which is another good way to find someone.

I actually contact the people from the case study and that's how I found my lead gen guy.

You know, I reached out and they all got back to me almost immediately.

So it was a nice surprise that they actually took the time to,

yeah, give him the thumbs up, but that's really interesting.

So you didn't actually ask them for some references, you actually found them on your own.

Obviously, he made it easy for you to find them,

but you actually reached out without him introducing you in.

I reached out on LinkedIn.

No one responded.

And then I contacted him again and I said,

I reached out on LinkedIn to this person, this person, this person.

And he gave me their emails and the emails.

So then I did sleuthing online.

Sleuthing like, who is this person?

Yes, this person does work at this.

They're a real person.

It's not a.

Yes, the email matches up to the company, matches up to the, you know, the name of the person.

And that's how we had that dialogue.

Interesting, interesting man.

As you were.

Gosh, this is bringing back so many flashbacks from the early days.

The first website and maybe even the second one I built on my own.

And again, there's a reason why people do this for a living.

And when we brought in our agency, they very quickly said,

hey, Scott, I think we need to redo your website.

And again, got to be ready for somebody to call your baby ugly.

Can I ask you what platform it was on?

It was on WordPress.

Okay.

It was on WordPress from the beginning.

At least you had that.

Yeah, we started on WordPress.

We've since moved everything into HubSpot.

We started with their marketing automation suite

and then we added their CMS a little while later.

And we're using some of their sales tools for top of funnel, early stage deals.

But yeah, having a good CMS is really important.

So, calling my baby ugly, the agency said, hey,

Scott, we think it's time to read your website.

We'd like to do this and I'm like, okay.

And I said, all right, I've got one rule, one thing you cannot change.

You cannot change my logo.

And when they came back a couple weeks later and said, hey, here's the big reveal,

here's the new design, the first thing I see is the one thing I said, you cannot change.

And they had changed my logo.

And I was like, all right, everything is great.

You did the one thing I told you not to do.

It's actually really good.

Change these colors and we'll move ahead.

So anyway, you got to be willing to change and you got to be willing

to hear things that you may not, may not want to hear.

That's right.

And they could be big changes, too, like your logo.

And the reason why I asked you what platform it was is because people

don't realize that WordPress is really made for search engines.

And they, they went and built their own on Wix or square or something like that,

which isn't as friendly.

So it could be big changes.

Yeah.

Well, I think another kind of hallmark of a good agency is somebody

that's going to push back on you and they're going to tell you things

that you may not want to hear and that means you have to do them.

But for somebody that's going to hold back and not push on you,

I don't think that's a good partnership either.

Right.

You don't want someone just saying, oh, the great idea, great idea.

Yeah.

Yes.

I'm trying to think of a horrible example of two things that don't go together

and you think it's spectacular, but no one else does.

Yeah.

Our marketing people do a good job of saying, you know, Scott,

maybe we'll do that a little differently or maybe we'll save that one for down the road.

So you need people, whether in marketing or other aspects of your business, to push backs.

Yeah.

Sometimes you have to let your ego go.

Right?

Indeed.

Indeed.

What are the things that are on the horizon that

business owners need to be thinking about as it relates to marketing?

Are there things related to AI?

Are there things that you're seeing with the social platforms or

with the search engines that business owners need to be mindful of?

I think I've had a lot of people, when I've suggested content development or anything,

really search engine optimization, they said, well, I'm going to use AI and work on that.

I'm just going to go to chat.

GPT.

Yep.

And they're going to write a blog.

Okay.

But you still need human intervention, so AI needs you

so you're a software company that builds an automated feeding system for zoo animals.

Well, so if you go in there and type in,

give me ten keywords for this business, it's going to spit out ten keywords.

But are they high volume keywords?

Are they pertinent to your business?

Do you have them on your website?

Do you want to have those on your website?

So AI is always going to be big here, coming out, right?

But I can't stress enough human intervention, you will still need tools to vet that.

And which comes to another part of what you were saying

in your CMs and CRMs and things like that.

Agencies have licenses already.

You don't have to go and invest

in all of these search engine tools and social media posting platforms.

They have that.

They can do it for you.

That's a really good point.

And kind of a hidden cost of trying to do it all on your own, especially when you're smaller.

Yeah, I know I segued into something else and I knew I would, but sometimes it happens.

That's all right.

Well, you've given us a lot of great things to think about.

Laura, thank you so much for being a guest on in the thick of it.

I enjoyed it.

Thank you so much.

That was Laura Neathery, founder of LJ Consulting & Marketing.

To learn more, visit ljcandm.com.

if you or a founder you know would like to be a guest on

In The Thick of It, email us at intro@founderstory.us