Agency Ahead by Traject

Dave Gerhardt is an expert's expert.He's the author of Conversational Marketing: How the World's Fastest Growing Companies Use Chatbots to Generate Leads 24/7/365. He's the CMO at Privy, a leader in eCommerce marketing for small businesses and entrepreneurs. He's the former VP of Marketing at Drift, a Conversational Marketing platform that combines chat, email, video, and automation to make it easier for customers to buy by helping them start the conversations they want to start on their terms.Dave even has his own marketing community, DGMG, a place where you can "get the marketing education you never got in school," a podcast, and a community where B2B marketers join forces to learn from one another.He's the guy who genuinely loves everything marketing, and so has found multiple ways to have fun doing it.He's also focused on the metrics that matter most to CEOs, namely, the amount of revenue that a marketer can generate for a company. If you're ready for some down-to-earth, no-nonsense insights on how you can improve your performance, you won't want to miss this one. The highlights: [2:07] Dealing with imposter syndrome. [5:46] Getting it all done. [7:52] Evolutions in Dave's marketing philosophy. [13:08] Why you don't have to prove the ROI of every last marketing activity. [19:41] Branding strategies. [21:17] Branding an individual vs. branding the agency. [26:44] Dave's cause. The insights:Dealing with imposter syndromeIf there's one thing you learn while interviewing some of the smartest marketers in the world – very few of them are immune to imposter syndrome. Some only face it at the beginning of their journeys. Some continue to grapple with it even while they're standing in front of live audiences at some of the biggest events in the world. Dave's no exception. "It's exhausting, at times, worrying about or thinking about whether someone's going to react the wrong way or be mad about what you've posted. I don't like that headspace sometimes."Dave admits that imposter syndrome has plagued him from the beginning."I remember being at Constant Contact. I was 24 years old. It was when I really got into startups and being part of the startup community. I graduated college with no clue about real marketing, or what to do. I just got a degree because I needed to graduate. I got into internet marketing and social media. I saw a lot of people in that industry had blogs about: hey, here's what I'm doing. I wanted that. I wanted a public forum to share what I was doing."He scratched his initial itch with a podcast called Tech in Boston in 2014."I wasn't even working in marketing. I was an account manager at the time. I started this podcast where I interviewed local CEOs in Boston. That's where I started to build my brand." Dave stresses that he doesn't feel like he did anything special."I was literally the only person who had a podcast about startups in Boston. That got me meetings with top CEOs and top VCs, and you know, once you get in that loop a little bit you can say: wow, that was a great interview, who else do you know that I should talk to, and all the sudden you're connected to someone else." From there, he went on to Hubspot, where he created The Growth Show. He wasn't even a full-time marketing person until he went to Drift."When I got to Drift they said: we're going to see how this goes, Unknown Guy, go ahead and do your thing."No pressure, Dave."So I got to get our website out for the first time. Launch the blog. Launch the podcast, do paid advertising, do SEO, do AdWords, do events. I literally got to do all those things for the first time, myself. I think that was a great benefit to the company to have an earlier person, early in their career to grow, and that kind of built from there. At Drift, I got to do marketing to marketing people, as a result of that I didn't have a personal thing because I was sharing to the world through Drift."Bottom line? If you're grappling with imposter syndrome? Keep putting yourself out there. It will pay off. It's just a feeling! If Dave, of all people, still feels it, it's not going away, so you might as well get out there and rock the world. Getting it all doneLet's take a moment to marvel at Dave's prolific productivity. How does he get it all done?Dave successfully adjusted to the Covid-19 crisis."Right now I can use my time how I need. I can run down to my office on Saturday at 1:00 AM because I had an idea. I do not think this would have been at all possible before being unchained from the whole cubical life."He contrasts it by noting that he used to spend up to 10 hours a day at the office."You're just there. You gotta do whatever's there. You're asking me how I'm able to do DGMG now? Well, I'm also able to pick up and drop off my kids now. Not that I do that every day. Go for a walk every day outside. Work out every day. This is one of many benefits I'm seeing from being fortunate enough to be able to work from home." Evolutions in Dave's marketing philosophy Garrett asked Dave how his philosophy has evolved between working for Drift and working for Privy."Drift is more of a mid-market enterprise type of sales motion. That requires a different type of marketing and demand gen. Privy is really focused on small eCommerce businesses. It's more of a channel distribution strategy. We get over 10,000 trials every month from the Shopify app store. That is the #1 source for lead gen. We gotta do things on top of that but it's a little bit of a different strategy. It's almost like eCommerce in that sense where it's very high-volume. Sales reps at Privy are closing 20-50 deals in a good month because the price is much lower."He says there are things you have to figure out within each company. "Even a company similar to Privy doing a very similar thing might have a completely unique motion."He says nevertheless, his broader marketing philosophy has changed over the years.He compares his evolution to becoming a parent."When you're growing up you don't understand why your parents make you do certain things. Now that I have two kids, I wanna call my Mom and say: sorry. I totally get it."He says that he's now had to be responsible for managing teams. Hiring. Firing. "I've had to do challenging things at work. I've had no budget and everyone's burnt out on the team. You learn. You start to have some guardrails around marketing."His biggest guardrails?"Marketing exists to generate revenue, period."He says he often wants to go back and talk to himself 5 years ago. "When I was a holier-than-thou marketer saying just do the things customers love! That is bullshit. That is not how it works. You can do some of that. You've got to do things customers love. 100%. But talk to any CEO, any founder, any board, any shareholder. The number one goal of marketing is to drive revenue. You can do that in a way that also builds brand, builds your reputation, creates raving, loyal fans. That's the rub. That's why it's the fun job. I'm not saying go buy a list and blast everyone and that's how you're going to generate the revenue. I think you need to build a revenue function and a brand function at the same time." Do you have to prove the ROI of every last marketing step you take?ROI and proving the value of various marketing strategies is something marketers talk about a lot. Often, we get focused on proving the ROI of everything we do. Dave questions whether this is necessary."You have to be able to articulate the why, and the story. Why do we have...? Well, I believe your brand is your reputation and the way you build your reputation through brand is through content. That's how we figure out who's trustworthy. So we're going to invest in our blog for that reason. In a year from now, we have 50,000 visitors to our blog. That's going to mean X." Dave admits this isn't the "What's the direct ROI of the content marketer you just hired for $75,000."He says it's more about the goal."You have to be able to articulate: how is that time being used as a percentage of the overall time in marketing? If the only thing you're doing is blogging, and the goal of blogging is not generating revenue, and you're spending 100% of your time there, my question would be: how are we going to get to our revenue goal. The only other answer is we don't care about revenue. It's less about the ROI and more about the running. Get to the core. Why are we doing this? That's important." He offers an example in the form of: Ross, the Agency Owner."He should be creating content. But you'd also better believe he's on LinkedIn, reaching out to people. Hey, here's my business. We work with XYZ companies. We think we could be a really good fit for you. They're not competing channels. They work together. They compound. Now that Ross has a machine going, he's stepping his game up, he's stepping videos up, he's stepping production up, he's stepping output up. What's going to happen? He's going to generate more awareness and more inbound. Over time it's going to be easy for him to measure the volume of that." What would Dave's strategy for getting first customers, then?"Get a whiteboard. Write down the names of ten good-fit customers. Email them. What you're going to learn from that is which type of customer is going to be interested in you. What in your message resonates with them? What to actually say on a discovery call, on a sales call, that's all going to inform what you're going to do. You've got to be able to do both of those things." Branding strategiesDave says there are two ways to approach branding."It doesn't have to be bald-headed Dave with a camera in his face walking down the street. For me? That's what I'm comfortable doing. That's a preferred format. Therefore, I can do it."He says you can become just as successful if you become the curator brand."You position your brand to be the expert. They might not know the specific name of a person. They might know that's Dave from Privy. But they might say, oh, Privy, they are experts on eCommerce. That's why I listen to their podcast and follow their founder on Twitter."Dave says you have to think about who is going to publish from what channels."I think it's a little bit easier when you have the founder that wants to share some of the stuff that's in their head. I think regardless, it's more important to set a more intentional strategy. We're going to position ourselves as a marketing expert. Okay. When you set that as a key objective for your brand and your marketing team, that's basically a set of guardrails."The guardrails help you adjust as you refine your strategy."We're going to have a podcast with our founder. The founder doesn't wanna do it. What else do we want to do? Well, let's create the Modern SEO podcast. I think it's more important you get it set as the guardrail you can align around." When Dave joined Privy, his CEO gave him guardrails."We need to build this brand as the leader for small eCommerce businesses. There's nobody that really focuses on them. That was great. Once I had that nugget, before we talked about revenue goals, before we talked about trial goals, I now had a philosophy for: how do we need to go do marketing? I see so many marketers get in the weeds on the day-to-day when they haven't clearly articulated the strategy." And the best marketing strategy?"Be perceived as the expert in your niche. Let's go build a marketing strategy around that." What's your right now cause?Dave is concerned about bringing more equality and diversity to marketing teams."I have a hiring bias right now. I am trying to hire more Black people, period. If you really want to make a change you can hire people to work within your company, or you can fund investments. So I'm hiring Black people in marketing. I could probably be trying harder, 100%, but I think 1 in 20 guests in my podcast are Black marketing leaders. I think how can I use my platform and my network to build the marketing team of the future?" He also likes an initiative he's seen to move money to Black-owned banks."I'm running the whole business in a black Bank, One United. Who knows what that can do in the future?" Connect with Dave Gerhardt Check out all of the great communities and social networks that Dave has started or participates in. Dave on LinkedIn Privy Dave on Twitter DGMG DGMG on Twitter

Sales, sales prospecting, and outreach. They’re always tricky. Agencies and consultancies rely on them, especially in the early stages of their business, but trying to figure out how to make these activities effective is a constant uphill battle. In addition, it's difficult to get it right without coming across as too salesy, and in a way that gets the right value in front of the right people at the right time.Meet Brooklin Nash, the Head of Content at Sales Hacker.  Sales Hacker is a website that offers discussions, articles, podcasts, videos, and sales training. It's a community that is "100% geared to helping salespeople gain new skills or improve their game." If you're running an agency, are a freelancer, or are part of an agency sales team, that means you. So don't miss today's podcast. Sales are integral to agency success and Brooklin has some great insights from his experience and community.The highlights: [1:35] The importance of researching your prospects, and what you're looking for. [4:46] The right amount of time to spend on research. [8:20] Where a cold email strategy starts to go off the rails.  [10:30] Good strategy for cold emails. [12:06] How Sales Hacker approaches content. [14:01] The most successful pieces at Sales Hacker. [15:28] Traffic sources. [17:56] Favorite sales outreach tools. [21:07] Brooklin's causes. The insights:The importance of researching prospects, and how to do itBrooklin stresses that anyone engaging in the sales process should spend a lot more time on research than they probably would otherwise think to."Don't just do a light search on LinkedIn Sales Navigator, pull up a list, and then reach out to blast the whole list. Taking time to really qualify who you're reaching out to and why will be time well-spent before you ever send your first email." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIf3xD0mlQQAs for what you're looking for when you do all this research?"One, you're looking for a company matching your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). If most of your clients are of a certain size and in a specific niche, start there."The other thing you're looking for is a signal that they might be ready for help with their marketing."They have a new Director of Marketing or a VP, and the new executive came from a place where they ran a strong content marketing presence the new company doesn't have, for example." Brooklin says hiring can be another signal."If they're hiring for their marketing team, there's a good chance they're going to be looking for external help too. They might not just be hiring those content marketing managers. They may be looking for contractors and agencies to actually execute on the work. You can look for those signals pretty easily with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and build your list from there."Finally, Brooklin says you're looking for information that can help you with your outreach efforts."A podcast they just did. An article they just published. A question they asked. Something that puts the value first and the content first. Instead of: hey, you're in marketing. We're a marketing agency. Can we help you out? Start with where they're at, first."The right amount of time to spend on researchWhen we already have so many demands on our time, all this research can feel like a lot of wasted effort. So how much time is optimum for making the process work?Brooklin admits it’s hard to quantify."It's going to depend on how much you're reaching out. But unless you're a giant agency, you're going to be better served reaching out to ten dream clients than even a few hundred clients that maybe don't fit your ICP or who might be harder to work with or might be past your niche a little bit. So take the time to focus on the right prospective clients and I think you're going to have better conversations down the line."Brooklin has spent up to 30 minutes on an email in the past. "Quite a bit of time from a cold outreach perspective, but it paid off. We were only looking for a handful of new clients, so it didn't matter that it didn't scale well." He has also tried other strategies where he sent out hundreds of emails and tried to automate the process."I spent a couple of hours and only used intent data. When I sent hundreds I got a 15% reply rate. Only one of them became a client."Where a cold email strategy starts to go off the rails"The number one place a cold email strategy goes off the rails is when you make it about you vs. them. And that's something you can scale. Not as well as those hyper-personalized emails that take 20-30 minutes. You can take the time to make it about what their problem is, and then as the footnote what your potential solution is."Brooklin stresses that you really can't make it about what an amazing agency you are."It's: hey. I noticed you were working on this. Or you started this campaign. Or you just started this new job. How's that going? Make it about them first. This is essentially Sales 101, but I think content marketers often forget that, whether they're reaching out for new clients as a freelancer or as a small agency, or even reaching out for backlinks and earned media spots."Good strategy for cold emails"I think mentioning a specific piece of content will always work well. Saying: I checked out this article and really loved this piece of it. Or: I heard your podcast interview on this. Or even from a brand perspective: I saw your LinkedIn ads for your brand and they look great, I like this about them. Anything that makes it legit I think will at least get you an open and probably a response."And if you do send cold emails like this to thirty people?"I think you will at least get an open and probably a response, vs. a generic: ‘I checked out your blog and I loved the quality of your articles’ line to 300 people. You might not even get 30 replies. It's not the number of people you reach out to. It's taking the time to engage with what they're putting out and taking the time to ask how you can help them."How Sales Hacker approaches contentSales Hacker is a content-heavy site. Here's how they approach building out their content."We run almost entirely off contributors. Our webinars are from panelists. Most of our articles are from contributing authors. We have our podcast guests. We have a lot of opportunities to work with partners. Sometimes paid partners. Most of the time, just organic, relationship-based partnerships."He says there's a lot in common with accepting content for his site and the kind of cold outreach salespeople might need to do."If you're taking the time to really look through what our guidelines are and you have a specific question or a specific point or a specific topic that meets those guidelines, then you're going to get a reply. I'm never not going to reply to you, even if the specific topic isn't a great fit. If you're putting in the thought that shows me we can go back and forth and land on something, great. If you're reaching out, it's very obviously cut and pasted, that's not personalization. That hurts your case. You're not getting a reply because I know they're going to 300 other people. I'm not going to put in the work to reply to you if you're not going to put in the work to start this partnership off on the right foot." The most successful pieces at Sales HackerBrooklin says the most successful pieces of content on his site are detailed, action-oriented, and offer either a template or a visual framework, things people can apply directly and right away.Here's a list of the most successful pieces on his site. How to Become a VP of Sales by the Time You’re 30 A Guide to Building Better Sales Decks Why You Should Throw Your Sales Playbook in the Trash (And What to Use Instead) The Scientific Approach To Setting Sales Goals For Your SDR Team How to Stay Motivated in Sales  What Not to Do in B2B Sales — 7 Signs You’re About to Kill the Deal 8 Critical Questions to Ask Yourself as You Build a Sales Incentives Program for 2019 As a result of pieces like these, a large percentage of Sales Hacker's traffic is purely organic. They also see a lot of engaged traffic from social. Brooklin's Favorite Outreach Tools"You can spend less than a couple of hundred bucks a month on cold outreach and see a really big return. You don't have to use best-in-class tools meant for a large sales team. You can use self-service, less expensive ones."His recommendations: LinkedIn Site Navigator Outreach - If you're a larger agency/have a sales team in place, you're going to want something advanced like Outreach to support your team and improve over time. Phantom Buster - Automate data scraping from LinkedIn. Wiza - Quickly create lists from hundreds of leads.  MailShake - A tool to help you send personalized cold emails at scale. Lavender - Grades your sales emails. A Gmail add-on. What's your right now cause?"It's actually a tool instead of a specific cause."The tool is Let's Go Give, a B2B platform for charitable giving.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMzS8DsfLMMInstead of sending mousepads, pens, t-shirts, bottles of wine, and Starbucks gift cards, you can offer your prospects the ability to make a donation to a charity that they care about. The donation is paid for. They just choose the charity.It's proven to be a lot more effective and valued by prospects than all that other stuff, and allows you to change the world a little bit at a time, while you're at it!Connect with Brooklin NashWant to learn more about Brooklin and find him online?  Sales Hacker Brooklin's email: brooklin@saleshacker.com  Brooklin on Twitter Brooklin on LinkedIn

Ever wondered how your agency can start working with franchises? For many agencies, they're practically a "holy grail" client. Want the insider take on what it would require to impress someone who runs one?Well, listen to today's podcast and you'll get your wish. Today we're talking with Neel Parekh, Founder and CEO of MaidThis, a residential and Airbnb cleaning franchise that is rapidly expanding across the U.S.MaidThis is a tech-savvy up-and-comer that leverages every available digital technique to win and to help their franchisees win. That means Neel is also well-versed in the digital marketing world and has plenty of insights for agency owners and consultants. Check it out now:The highlights: [1:02] The business model. [2:15] Why franchise? [3:52] How MaidThis approaches digital marketing. [6:11] Educating franchisees. [10:46] The best way to get your foot in the door. [16:20] The best franchises to target. [19:05] Growing a remote culture. [20:46] Neel's cause. The insights:The MaidThis business modelThe MaidThis business model is fairly straightforward. It's a cleaning company that allows customers to schedule weekly, biweekly, or monthly cleanings through their website. Everything is automated.The other niche is Airbnb cleaning for vacation rentals, which brings its own unique challenges."One guest checks in at 11, the next guest checks in at 3. There's a bunch of stuff which has to happen between them, like checking for damages, replacing supplies, things like that. So we just link up with the host's calendar and automatically schedule cleaning after the turn-around."Neel says he really likes approaching this business in what he calls a "new age way.""As opposed to the old-school cleaning model where you get an estimate, you don't really know if they're going to show up or not, and you have no phone notifications." Why franchise?Neel says franchising was a really big decision for his company.He offers some background."I started the company in 2013. I did a couple of years part-time when I was working in finance. Eventually, I wanted to travel. So I left for five years before Covid, just traveling the world. That's why I made the business remote. Because I had to."At MaidThis, the only people who don't work remotely are the cleaners."In 2020, we decided we wanted to expand. The question was: how do we do that? Do we do it ourselves, or do we do it with a franchise model? A franchise model can expand more rapidly because you can multiply your efforts. We had the system set up in such a way because I was working remotely. We had to be highly, highly systemized to make it work. So it was very conducive to the franchise model."He says this approach is giving him a huge boost over other cleaning companies."I love that a lot of other cleaning companies in the franchise space are from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, so their digital marketing is not the best. The way they're targeting customer interaction with the crowd they're targeting is not the best. That was the reason we decided franchising was the way to expand. And so we launched in late 2020, at the height of the pandemic. We awarded our first franchise in Denver in late 2020 and are just going to keep  going from there." How MaidThis approaches digital marketingNeel says he really loves local marketing, and that love is helping him dominate the competition. "I think cleaning companies are two years behind the curve in terms of marketing and digital marketing. They're late with everything. As long as you're on pace with the way digital marketing is going, you're already ahead of the competition. It's not that hard in my opinion to beat most of the competition just by doing base, foundational stuff. A lot of local companies don't know what they're doing. If you're a marketer and you know what you're doing, you're ahead of the competition." Neel says it's critical for the success of his franchisees."Having an optimized website. Doing email capture. Actually doing email marketing. You'd be surprised. Most local companies don't do it. 45% of local companies don't even have a website."This is one area where Neel offers his franchisees a great deal of support."We provide the actual playbook of what can work. Here's how you set up a profile. Here's the ad copy you can use for your AdWords. It would be on the franchisee and maybe an approved vendor of ours to actually get that done. A lot of stuff is proven out."He says that there are a lot of changes from market to market that are good to be aware of."For example in Los Angeles, Yelp is huge. Yelp is huge in California. In the midwest, it's not that big. They like Angi. We don't want to force what's happening in their local market." Educating FranchiseesNeel educates each of his franchisees from day one and focuses on two key areas of digital marketing.The first is filling the funnel through SEO and email marketing."Afterwards, the number one key for us is Google reviews. I don't care where in the country you are, Google is key. We have a lot of tools to help the franchisee get reviews, and we provide them like, hey, here's the copy you can use, here's the system you can use to follow up with customers." Neel's franchisees do manage themselves in terms of replying to reviews, but they've systemized them in a way that automatically gets them notified to leave a review on Google."I don't think a lot of local companies realize how important Google reviews are. It's a highly competitive market. Local companies don't know what they're doing though, so if you have good Google reviews you're just going to dominate." Neel says he does a ton of handholding."We marry our success with how well franchisees are doing. So digital marketing evolves rapidly. There's stuff we do for them. There's stuff we're in charge of doing. The cool part is I still run our corporate locations in California. So we're testing new marketing tactics always. We want to be the most high-tech new-age marketing tactic company in the cleaning industry. Because we're able to test that out we can then roll it out to the franchisees. And the cool part is, after a while, when you have enough franchisees, one location where it's working really well, we can say: here's the playbook, and we can distribute that to everyone. It's a hivemind."Neel offers an example from the Denver location."They started using Bark, a quoting engine. For them, it's working very well. They figured out how to systemize it. So now, I can say great. I can bring that to Los Angeles. At the same time, we just rolled out a new reputation management system. Now we're going to roll that out to Denver. We know that works and how to systemize it. You don't have to spend two budgets on tweaking. One company could just test things out and then just share the knowledge and the resources with other companies. That hivemind mentality is going to allow us to leapfrog our competition, because it's unfair, right? You just have 50 cleaning companies in theory in the future, working on marketing. They can all test out different tactics and roll it out instantly to anyone else." The best way to get your foot in the doorAfter giving this background, Neel and Garrett pivoted to talking about how agencies who are seeking to do business with franchises can win."Think about it this way. I am like the Mama Bear for our franchisees. I'm not going to give them something which is not proven out because that makes me look bad. If you said: hey, I'd be willing to test this out on your operations, and then if you like it you can add me as a preferred vendor so your franchisees can use them? I'd say: great, as long as I'm not forcing my franchisees to use you because I'm not sure how you're going to be doing. We can test this out. If you're trying to approach a franchise, you go to the corporation and say: let me prove myself first. If you like it, just add me as a preferred vendor."Franchisors can dictate who their franchisees are allowed to work with."So if they say hey, I want to do Facebook ads, I'd say okay you have to go to one of our approved vendors because they know brand standards already. I would not let them just go with any Facebook ads vendor. Franchisees are not allowed to do that for most brands because it might ruin the brand." Thus, the goal for most agencies is going to be to get listed on the approved vendor list.If you want to try, though, you're going to need to come in with some proof that you're the right company for that franchise to work with."I want to see you've done it for someone in my industry. Realize we get pitched by people all the time. Unless you've done it for a cleaning company and you can tell me what your ROI stats are, I'm not going to listen. It's too much time to invest if you do not know how this is going to work out. I don't want to educate myself on what you're doing before you do it." Neel has an example, a company that offers marketing through NextDoor.Their pitch?"Hey, we've done this for other cleaning companies. I'm going to charge you a small amount on a per-lead basis."There was no commitment, no set-up, and no need to "hop on a call."It was a no-brainer. "Cool. Set this up. You look reputable. Let me test it up."Six months later, they're still working together, and he's given franchisees permission to work with this vendor."The only reason I signed on with them is they didn't take up too much of my time. I'm not going to hop on a call with anyone who says: hey, can I have a minute of your time? I don't know what you're doing. The easier you can make it, the less I need to think about it, the higher the chances I'm going to say less." He says the specific technique may not be charging per lead, but a low-ask to get started."Once you're in the door, I honestly just want to make things easy for my franchisees. If I know you're good, if I've tested it out, it would be so easy to say: go talk to my Denver franchisee, go talk to the Kansas franchisee, let's get them going." He admits some industries might have a harder time proving their worth upfront."SEO is a tough one."Not just because SEO is a long game, but because in his company's case they already have an SEO vendor. You'd be displacing someone and that's a tougher sale.Yet if Neel didn't already have an SEO vendor?"I'd say great. That's awesome. Prove it out to me first, and I would absolutely sign up with you." The best franchises to target Do you think you have that low-ask offer ready to go? Here's who you target."Emerging franchises."Neel explains the lay of the land."There's lots of franchisors which are coming up. New brands. Maybe they're not great at digital marketing. They just have a great local service. They know they need to provide their franchisees with SEO at some point. That's what everyone does."You might win though because there are many large agencies that won't target smaller franchisees. Instead, they're going after companies that have a minimum of 20 units."At the lower end, there are people who say, yeah we work with one franchise here and there. But there's not really anyone in the middle, I would say. I would say if you're going for emerging franchisors, you would be able to find people who don't have an existing vendor if they're not too marketing-forward."Neel stresses that this is an ideal time to target these companies."You're getting them while they're growing. They're willing to talk to you. They might not have someone already. You can pitch them: hey, we work with franchisors to proof it out and then with their franchisees. We specifically work with emerging brands to help you grow. We want to grow as you grow. Those are words an emerging franchisor would love to hear." Growing a remote cultureSince so many teams are remote and are unlikely to return to in-office work, Garrett asked Neel about processes and communications for remote teams. "Slack is huge for us. We try to make as much of a Slack culture as we can."He says he works hard to build a corporate culture. "We do something called DJ a Day every month. Everyone has a Spotify. We link it into a room and everyone shares their Spotify playlists."They also systemize everything."We run a system called the Entrepreneur Operating System from the book Traction." "Think about an operating system for your meetings and your organization where you have a set agenda. Work off that. Every department has set meetings and set agendas. You set quarterly rocks, which are goals, at annual meetings. That kind of keeps things on pace and allows people who work in remote places to just be aligned on the same goal. Having some sort of operating and meeting system has been huge for us." What's your right now cause?Neel would like to call the listener’s attention to the Covid situation in India."I think they had over 300,000 people get infected in one day."By contrast, California is seeing 10,000 infections a day.Neel is Indian-American, born and raised here by parents who are from India. "They can't social distance. It's not a privilege they have. Some people can't get access to masks. Some things we take for granted over here are just not possible over there." He says that he loves the fact that Covid is getting better here, but that it's in danger of desensitizing us to the fact that most of the world doesn't have access to the vaccine. He says that donating to any charity that offers Covid relief in India would be huge.Right now, WorldVision is working on that very cause. You can donate here.Learn More About Neel MaidThisFranchise.com - To learn more about starting your own MaidThis franchise. Neel does mention that people with a digital marketing background do very well with their franchises. NeelParekh.co - Neel's personal website. He invites listeners to send him a message, saying, "I see everything and answer everything."  Neel on LinkedIn

On Episode 96, Dani Owens shares her passion for being a Local SEO educator, building a community, and providing a unique white label local SEO service for other agencies. Learn how she has used a white label local SEO service offering to scale her business.

On Episode 95, Levi Williams-Clucas dishes on her approach to Local SEO, Google My Business, and Online Reviews. She shares her insights on when to expect results for local marketing efforts and how you can communicate that with clients.

On Episode 94, Amanda Milligan shared how she approaches putting together her strategy for content marketing agency Fractl. She highlights her commitment to working with the sales team, evaluating lead quality, and how she prioritizes her marketing efforts.

On Episode 93, Suganthan Mohanadasan and Andy Chadwick detail their journey to building and releasing software that will allow SEOs to measure user intent based on context at scale. The tool Keyword Insights can be a powerful tool for content strategy and SEO efficacy.

On Episode 92, Bill Slawski, Director of SEO Research at Go Fish Digital, explains Semantic SEO and how Google has been steadily moving to an entity based focus on mapping digital and real-life 'things' in order to enhance the intelligence of surfacing the correct content for any type of query.

On Episode 91, Kristina Azarenko shares her love for teaching SEO, Javascript SEO challenges for custom-built websites, and her honest opinion on the importance of Core Web Vitals as Google continues to highlight its value..

On Episode 90, Raul Galera reveals the opportunities for digital marketing agencies to offer referral marketing as part of their eCommerce services. He explains the nuances of the offering and how clients value it because of the bottom-line revenue it generates.

On Episode 89, Alexa Heinrich, an advocate for digital accessibility on social media, explains the responsibilities and opportunities for organizations to make their social media more accessible with conscious content decisions that include everyone that might be sight or hearing impaired.

On Episode 88, Emily Brady reveals the importance of understanding the ways that your clients communicate and how that can shape the way you can report on wins and strategies. Using communication styles, Emily explains how she identifies clients' "SEO love language".

On Episode 87, Claire Carlile discusses those tough questions around starting a business as a Local SEO consultant and the importance of tracking your goals for on Google with UTM parameters.

On Episode 86, Rejoice Ojiaku and Wilhemina Gilbertson share their initiative to increase the inclusion of more Black people in the marketing industry. They share their personal experiences and insights into how to handle common workplace interactions to promote safety and authenticity.

On Episode 85, Saffron Shergill of Impression shares her experience building thought leadership campaigns for her clients, driving the Corporate Social Responsibility program at her agency, and always developing her own digital PR strategies.

On Episode 84, Duane Brown discusses how he communicates with clients, proposes outside-the-box marketing and advertising strategies, and has hard conversations with clients about the fundamental pivot opportunities for their businesses.

On Episode 83, Abby Reimer Senior, SEO Strategist at Uproer, shares how she taps into her clients' communities to unearth great user-generated content that elevates the content that her team creates and still ranks well on search engines, 'despite' being more human.

On Episode 82, Surena Chande touches on her past work in journalism and how it prepared her for a career in freelance content creation. She details a variety of experiences that prepared her to work effectively with clients across a range of industries and topics.

On Episode 81, Jess Girardi articulates her approach to rapid content generation. She explains how she uses People Also Ask to generate a variety of short-form, long-tail keyword content for her clients. She also shares her passion for SEO for Non-Profit businesses.

On Episode 80, Carrie Hill of Sterling Sky discusses how she follows the changes of Google for Local SEO. She details her methodology for creating, executing, and analyzing search-related experiments. She also highlights some of the biggest Local SEO disasters she's seen.

On Episode 79, Chima Mmeje explains her approach to topic clusters for content creation, how she includes topic clusters as an actual service in her offerings, and the lack of inclusivity in the content industry.

On Episode 78, Ayat Shukairy, the Queen of CRO and co-founder of Invesp, explains the scientific and individualized practice of conversion rate optimization for her agency's clients. Ayat talks about her contagious obsession with CRO experimentation.

On Episode 77, Brandy Whalen, co-founder of Kitcaster, provides insight into why a marketing agency might consider starting a podcast of their own, the work that goes into producing it, and why being a guest on other podcasts is an effective marketing strategy with the current dearth of live events.

On Episode 76, Darren Shaw shares his analysis of Whitespark's Local Search Rankings Factors Survey, busts some myths perpetuated about local SEO, and comes up with some creative local business names that would definitely rank in the local pack.

On Episode 75, Orit Mutznik, Head of SEO for SilkFred, discusses her relationships with her developer team and how she includes them in her technical SEO projects to drive action, growth, and performance for her eCommerce focused website. She also bakes them cookies.

On Episode 74, Brendan Hufford shares how he thinks about the complexity of search intent. How does your average person search Google and what are they looking for? Brendan also shares his insights on building a truly unique angle for your agency.

On Episode 73, Miracle Inameti-Archibong of Erudite Agency discussed the agency's approach to auditing the E-A-T of a client's content, the challenges of SEO forecasting with 2020 and 2021 being crazy anomalies, and tricks to get clients to implement SEO suggestions.

On Episode 72, Kim Doughty of RicketyRoo shares her experience working with a variety of different clients, how she adapts to their communication style, and the important processes that she has to develop a fruitful and positive relationship with them.

On Episode 71, Andrea Cruz of KoMarketing, dives into the complexity of the modern B2B buyer's journey, how you can tie in marketing attribution, and how she likes to introduce clients to non-traditional marketing channels.

On Episode 70, Colan Nielsen, VP of Local Search at Sterling Sky shares his day in the life as a Local SEO, how he approaches the work/life balance, and what he anticipates being key local search focuses for 2021.

On Episode 69, Mercy Janaki of Position2 joined as a podcast guest for the very first time. She shared how she educates clients on technical SEO, uses Position2's own proprietary reporting tools, and addressed some common technical SEO issues she encounters.

On Episode 68, Victoria Kennedy, an opera singer turned PR agency CEO, breaks down her tips on developing relationships with the media when you no longer can connect at real-life events. She shares confidence tips, personal brand building, and more in this PR-focused episode.

On Episode 67, agency owner and author Julia McCoy diagrams the path to building a successful content agency, the importance of content for businesses, and how agencies can differentiate and provide an incredible service.

On Episode 66, Amanda Jordan of LOCOMOTIVE delivers a ton of suggestions for using everything that Google My Business has to offer for local search when it comes to COVID. She shares her expertise in working with clients on their local presence.

On Episode 65, Mordy Oberstein, search liaison at Wix, dispels a variety of myths about the SEO capabilities of the CRM. He also shares his obsession with looking at Google SERPs along with some of his predictions for Google going forward.

On Episode 64, Noah Learner of Two Octobers shares his obsession tinkering with code to develop insanely helpful automation processes for his clients, his agency, and the greater marketing community.

On Episode 63, James Rose of Content Snare breaks down the opportunities to automate your processes, specific examples of ways to make your agency more efficient, and how automations can make you a better marketer.

On Episode 62, Areej AbuAli depicts her journey growing a strong and successful SEO community for women, #WomenInTechSEO. She shares the principles and values that the community stands for and highlights the causes that it aims to address.

On Episode 61, Chris Walker of GatherUp shared his 5-step framework for responding to online reviews. Chris dissects the role that agencies can play in educating clients on how to properly ensure their responses represent their brand well while solving their customer's problems.

On Episode 60, agency owners Selena Vidya (Orthris Media), Akvile DeFazio (AKvertise), and Michael King (iPullRank) join as panelists on a webinar replay in which they discuss with Garrett the challenges, milestones, and processes, they have encountered and overcome in their respective agencies to find success.

On Episode 59, Lily Ray, SEO Director at Path Interactive, picks apart Google's concept of E-A-T, what it means for SEO, and how you can use the Google Search Quality Guidelines to inform your content. She also discusses some of her predictions in search for 2021.

On Episode 58, Elise Dopson shares her story of how she discovered her passion for writing. Her ability to consume, learn, and create content in the B2B world has jumpstarted her freelance career. Now she's building a community where she can share her knowledge and teach other budding freelancers.

On Episode 57, Azeem Ahmad touches on a range of subjects including how you can discover the plans for increased diversity at an organization through the hiring process, networking in your industry on social media during a pandemic, and agency vs in-house marketing culture.

On Episode 56, Jason Barnard explains the importance of the brand SERP. He distills the elements that can potentially appear, how you can control it, and why it should be an important part of your content strategy.

On Episode 55, Nicole DeLeon, founder of North Star Inbound, depicts her agency's content marketing services, process, tactics, and strategy that has delivered awards, happy customers, and success. She also shares her thoughts on the complicated nature of search intent.

On Episode 54, Ben Aston, founder of The Digital Project Manager, talks about when to hire a project manager for your agency, choosing project management frameworks for early-stage marketing agencies, and what to look for in the processes and tools for project management.

On Episode 53, Kanika Thakran offers the main Google My Business features that local businesses should be optimizing for the 2020 holiday season. She also touches on brand messaging that she believes will be effective over the next few months.

On Episode 52, Eugene Levin, Chief Strategy Officer of SEMrush, highlights the SaaS SEO tool's focus on building feature sets that are perfect for agencies helping their clients. Eugene zeroes in on the importance of SEO reporting for agencies.

On Episode 51, Brad Fagan of Uberall breaks down the insights from his recent research on how Global brands are approaching local marketing, reputation management, and local SEO. He offers some strategies that work for larger brands at a local level.

On Episode 50, co-founder of Postaga, Andy Cabasso shares his experiences growing, developing, and ultimately selling his digital marketing agency. Andy delivers fantastic advice on knowing your niche, creating effective processes, and nurturing relationships.