Proven Online Marketing Tactic for 2019 & Top Mistakes Businesses Make

Today. We will talk about global. Online marketing. Tactics, for 2019. And top mistakes businesses. Make and we're starting, right now. Welcome. To the shows of business owners how they brought to you by easy break up hodor in tips. If. You want to learn more about other, business, growth, tips then, subscribe to this channel my. Name is max and you can ask me any additional questions in the comments below our, guest today is Todd, Whelan, from overdose, digital, who is the founder, and group CEO of overdose. A French breed of digital. Commerce agency. That, works in deeply, interleague, partnerships. With their retail clients, overdose, has been going through some, exceptional. Growth and now. Taking their business to to, a global level their. Company has been recognized, as Westpac. Auckland's, best emerging, business of. 2018. But. Would you like to add anything about yourself. Thanks. To the invite to join you Maxim yes. So happy. To give you a little bit of a history of overdose. We. Founded, the organization myself and Ryan back. In, roundabout. Late, 2016. Over. The course of about, two and a half years we've grown out from the two of us as founders, to a team of around about eighty-five guys I. Take. Our teams are spread across about, 30 guys in downtown. Auckland, a big, team over in Melbourne, about 30 guys there a. Small. New team I've been Singapore and then we have a service centre over in the Ukraine, so. Our, key offering is that we're a, mid-market. Digital. Commerce partnership. Essentially. What that means is we work with retailers, who, tend. To retail online between 1 and 20 million dollars and. We work with them in a strategic, partnership format, through the entire lifecycle of digital commerce so. We. View our business of three key pillars. Strategy. Execution. And then activation, so, strategically. I do a lot of my work with CEOs. Md's, Chairman's, really. Trying to understand, and what, digital transformation, means to the organization. Modeling. Digital into their business how do we incorporate digital into, a omni-channel, physical. Presence. That. Then leads into the, design, user experience, platform, selection. Integrations. Architecture. Website. Builds and then, off the back of that we then go into some really deep long-term relationships. Around search. Performance, marketing social, media or, summation AI, so. Essentially majority. Of our clients we're always in like a you, know one, of the two to five year, relationship.

There, And the, focus is always on that, long tail growth of the organization. So. As we go into 2019, and yeah. We've got some big growth, prospects, so we've, just joined a global, alliance called the together group based out of London so, a, couple, of weeks I fly out to London. And New York and we are opening offices there so, the intention being that are within, the next sort of year you'll, see overdose going from a 80, man team to an over 200, man team with. A truly global presence and, we intend to stay in that same market. Niche Maksim so really, servicing, those high growth mid market retailers. We. Don't particularly have much ambition to go into. The, super. Big. Organizations. We really enjoy working with those midsize. Organizations that. Still have the hustle where, people are passionate there's, not too much organizational. Structure that's holding an organization, back. And. Yet that that's kind of fast, growth lots of attitude lots, of speed very hungry, and. Genuinely. Passionate about. The small to medium enterprise, market, in the, Australian New Zealand markets, and there with, the fantastic, opportunity, to take that vision globally, as well I know. That, it's very. Challenging to achieve Westpac. Business. Award what, kind of steps did, you take to, get. This achievement. Um. So. We're. Not quite sure to. Be honest Maxim, we. Turned up and they gave us the trophy and obviously, we filled in a lot of the paperwork to, to, go through there and I, I. Think what they particular, recognized, is that when. We architected, our business we architected something, that was very deliberately, different. Now. For, those that work in a client, vendor agency, partnership. Relationship. You'll, be used to a very. Prosaic structure, of how those relationships tend to be you know it's, very much time materials, cost resource, speed you, kind of live in that triangle and we very deliberately architected, over those with an intent to be not. Just better but genuinely, different maximum so we wanted, a vision. Of a business model that separated. Us away from the crowd, and where everyone was running in one direction we. Said well you know what it's actually not about the, the. Speed of delivery or the cost of delivery or the quality of delivery it actually comes down to the resonance or the depth of relationship that you have with your partners and. Taking a an approach, which wasn't based on what, have you asked for how can I deliver it cheaper but instead let's be sitting down together with our clients, and really, I da ting out what does the future look like and and, how can we collectively make, a change there. Was those couple of decisions which really triggered our growth and, as a young organization of, only you know a couple, years ago was just for four or five guys in a basement in in Ponsonby. We. Were managing to land, clients, the likes of. Barker's. And merchants, that and, the comfort group which, were way, beyond.

Our Standings, for what they bought into was our attitude and I think is that is their attitude and the hustle and the, group, of entrepreneurial, guys that we've built around us which, is allowed us to trigger. That growth so. I guess they've never told us but I guess what the. What. The guys at Westpac particularly liked in our model was that it's a majority. Of the world it doesn't sound they're that, innovative, but in our world it was a pretty innovative, and. Bold bold. Step we've. Seen really, amazing, both internal, growth and international, growth so the, fact that we basically exported. Our business within 18 months and decided to go into Australia, and Singapore, very. Early on. Essentially, the that. Speed of growth so you know we we've, gone from a our, first year we turned over, about half, a million dollars in our third year we'll, be turning over eight to ten million dollars so that speed of growth is obviously, something that I guess is a quotient. Of what they look for in, what, imaging, means as well. You. Mentioned, that. You grew from, two people to nearly, 80 people and. As. A business, owner myself. I know that, it's. Important, not only to get, new clients but retain, the current clients, and existing, customers, what, specific, tactics, and all, things do, you guys have. In. Your company to retain. The clients do you have any incentives, or any contract. So how do you get. A show if I actually check we. Actually took the reverse approach maximum, and we went with complete, grace and Trust so. Every. Contract, that we have with our clients is on a 28-day, notice so nobody's, locked in nobody's, tied down and instead. The approach we took was if we. Want to be accountable, and if we expect our clients to pay a premium for our services, we, should be bloody delivering, right, on we should be delivering every, day consistently, now. At. The end of the day as a business, owner all the, overdose, really, sells is it sells time people, and ideas right, that's that's genuinely, what we sell so, our, our. Issue with scaling, always came down to the quality and caliber of resource, that we could attract, in them into the business so.

As I identified, key individuals that I needed around me that was my my, CTO Ryan, who's my co-founder, is my creative director Paul. Who came in as my chief operating, officer as, we acquired out into, the Australian, market I was, very very quick to share to. Dilute. My shareholding, of the organisation, to lock those individuals, in so, I now only own about 45% of the company and I have another, 11, shareholders, in in the organisation, and they range from 11 percent up to 20 percent in terms of you know what those individuals, own but, it's a true. Group mentality and, I'm a huge believer that, collaboration. Is, the future of business success and if, you're expecting, to get people to work as hard as you, got to cut these guys in right now, we've taken that to the next level with, where we're going through this global growth now we've, recently diluted. The organization, another 20 percent and given that to all of our staff, okay so literally. Now every member of staff is a shareholder and in. The overdose group globally, and, they will have the opportunity to not just have a two-year. Career and jump agency to agency we'd, love to see these guys hanging around for four five six years and really, feeling like they're part of that so. The end of the day retention. Comes down to people right, and the, the, impact of the people comes down to our management style and that management style is incredibly. Flat it's incredibly, inclusive, and, we talked about a few keywords and, the, most important, one internally, is accountability. And that's, both individual. And accountable. As a group and, what we tend to see is that with, a group of really highly engaged staff that. If someone comes into that group and they're not performing at that same level that, group naturally, kind of squeezes that person out because, they've seen what, we can achieve as, a group and they basically, everyone who comes in has to amplify that process, more so, it's, a really, really tight-knit team, we've. Had hardly any churn in our staff resourcing. We. Have incredibly, liberal a trehala. C's so it's. Work when you do want work where you want okay, so nobody, is locked down to location and if, you've got problems with the kids at home work from home you need to take a day off no problem catch up on Sunday right um, everyone. Is judged based on their delivery, outcomes to, the group and not, based on ours in the seat an exact number of tickets that they've achieved and. Off the back of that what we've seen is that when. You give back to your staff and you show them that you genuinely. Genuinely. Care. About them in their lives and that you want them refreshed you want them on full. Speed targeting, that, they give you a hundred and. Ten. Percent and when one guy sees the other guy giving 110%. It becomes like, this beautiful toxic, environment, where everyone, is playing off each other so it. All comes down to the people and we wouldn't have retained our clients if we didn't have those right resources, on board I think. Another interesting part, of that as well as the a lot of our resourcing, has been quite organic, as well so. A lot, of our development. And marketing, and account, management teams, whenever. We have new. Roles, available we. Tend to feel probably 60 70 % of those off of internal, referrals. And that again keeps that accountability pipe because someone's back to you in where, we've. Used a I, think we made one hire through, a. Recruitment. And didn't, work so we've never used a. Recruiter. At all and now, we're really, really. Really lucky that we probably on a weekly basis of people hitting me up there and hey. I've heard what you guys are doing I want in how do I make that happen I'm, in fact we just hired a head. Of business development who, cold called us and said I work, here I want to work for you this is where I want, to be and. Yeah. We kind of got people pitching to us now and that's and that's really, really lucky and it's really humbling I hundred. Percent agree with you told if you look after your, team they, will take care of your stuff and I, mean they, will take care of your clients as well so. It's so it's so connected so you've. Got a a unique position where you work, with dozens.

Of Small. And big brands and you see, what's working and what doesn't, what. Do you think are, going to be the tracks 2019. In terms of the, marketing, yeah so. We. Get into some interesting situations, so if you look at New Zealand we probably look after, you. Know just, as an idea. Three, of New Zealand's largest suiting. And menswear companies who are all direct. Competitors. Right now, we get, into some very awkward, positions there where those. Guys all want us to be exclusive but we can't be exclusive. In in what, we do but, what we have the opportunity to do is because we see such, a broad diversity, of businesses, that. The. Learnings, that we get off of that are applicable out to a much broader broader. Market, so. What's. Been happening over the last sort of two. Years and, there's. Many trends that have happened if, you look at. A systems. Architecture trend there's been a definite move from what, we refer to as hosted open source into, what we now refer to sass cloud environment, okay, so typically. If. You were working with a promise agency, in, a you know a high, million dollar space in terms of revenue you, probably, paying two or three hundred thousand dollars for the website and the tools that you'd be buying and, it would usually take you sort of six to nine months to get to market now, that's still the truth if you are in a particularly complex, you know, combined. B2b, b2c multi, currency multi-location, environment. But, if you're in a much one linear environment, where you're. A single, store just in New Zealand Dollars, where if one revenue source you, can now look at products, such as your, shopify, bigcommerce, solutions. That. Allow you to get to market a lot quicker but. What you have to do is you have to change your shape of the model to fit that platform. Right, so, we've seen that as a real trend that's happened in in the market and Shopify has been. The. Leading light there that. Has certainly reduced the time to market its are just that reduce the cost of ownership and it's reduced the. The. Cost of the bill as well so. There's one key, trend it's happened there as. That product, line has evolved, what, you've also seen, is that you vorse we've. Had a lot of other tools that have evolved in the background so the snapchats your Instagram stories, your Facebook. Canvasses. Your. Pinterest. So. All of these platforms. Have, meant that the experience. Is now, happening, off website. So. What used to happen two, three four years ago was, that you would build these incredibly. Intricate detailed, experiences. That would happen on your website so, you'd have interactive. Look books and hotspots, and you know these very. Very clever. Solutions. That. Was because we were using the website to drive conversion. And drive intent, and experience, that. Experience, of moved off-site okay, and, what that means is that the, website itself has become much more transactional. In nature so. Now when, someone sees your amazing, snapchats, and videos on Instagram and, they choose to come to your website they've already had that experience in their tent and their intent level is high, so, what that means when you are building your user experience for your website is, there has to be a much more linear, path to purchase and a much deeper understanding, of those unique. Conversion, triggers because, psychologically, in, the. Majority, of cases that, convert. Ocean. Happened, at the point of where they double tapped on that photo on Instagram and then it's our job as marketers, to, guide, you through that process from, inspiration. To conversion. Now, that. Then changes our role as marketers maximum ok so historically. It used to be our job as marketers, to, grab, these customers, and drag, them kicking and, screaming, through this website and we would hound you with remarketing. If. You looked at a pair of sneakers we'd show you that same bloody pair of sneakers 10 15 20 times until you gave in. That's. Now changed, and we have to live in this environment of what I refer to as muscle lighter touches, and building, more of the breadcrumbs, so. With. The democratization, of. Of the internet where any, player can, take on the big boys we, now have to accept, that the control, has passed from the retailer, now, into the consumers, hand if, the consumer has so, many platforms to engage with so, many retailers, throwing, them up, similar.

Products And similar options and you know even, be that your Alibaba bars and your Amazons trying to parallel. Import into the country and compete and direct we, have to pass through the. Owner. Ownership. Over to the consumer, and it's our job as retailers and marketers to. Be there and do those light touches, along the way and guide, the path and it's, more of a hand-holding, exercise to let them push. Them behind so. With that you'll notice the candor, and style of marketing will start to change, the. The, spam and slam and you know just spray it wide, it's it's it, still works a little bit but it's starting to die and now, we're getting more into this face where, we need to tell programmatic. Stories so. Let's. Look at example right so if you've gone and looked at a pair of sneakers online, and historically, we would show you five. Other similar pairs of sneakers or, one higher or one lower all the same pair of sneakers 20 times and we've checked on every platform and every and I read now what, we do is use a process of what we refer to a shoe lacing and, what that means is we're going to start telling you a story about that far alright, and their features and benefits, as opposed to just going buy buy buy so, let's look at that pair of sneakers let's, use something like an all birds for example instead. Of showing you here's, here's the sneakers would you like attempts an off coupon, we're, going to tell you an eco story about that product we're going to start talking about design, provenance, we're, going to start talking about other. Consumers, who have looked at that product we're, going to talk about social truth right what, we're not going to do is. Go straight for the jugular and discount discount discount enter your purchase okay so, that race to the bottom what's happened, everyone's, now having to come up a bit and we now have to start talking about the value add and the benefits, and gains of that platform, not, just driving a hardcore conversion. So, I think biggest, change that I see it's, just marketers. Have, to think. A lot. More at home though right to convert not. Just rely on program. Factor. Tools where, we force-feed, consumers, so those, that will win but those that are driving really. High-quality content, I've got, a really smart understanding. Of consumer intent. Understand. The difference between features, and benefits, of their product and and. Genuinely, are looking, at everything from a consumer perspective not. A CFO's, bottom line conversion, perspective, and. Look there's. Heaps of other tools coming. To market and. Voice. Search is is, a thing now, you've. Got I, think, in one, month's time we release. Our first client he's going to have a a. Augmented. Reality website. Where you'll be able to buy kitchen hardware you'll be able to literally see a tap, on the desk and you can turn it on and water comes out and you can walk around that with your phone so that's a thing there. You're. Going to see image search as a real thing in fashion, now take a picture of the, Jersey you like in a shop and do, image recognition and, find out the web sites that do that so, optimizing, your website to make sure that your images are searchable, that's going to be a. Real, real key key benefit but, the majority of all of these are sort of flourishing, in the one to two percent slate max in the. Core of Commerce. And Marx and peasant chains wrapped in a good products, got to be well priced it's gotta be well mark so Jeff understanding, consumer, Google. And search will still, be king and you just have to keep on pushing through through, those channels.

So. Do you mentioned a, lot of different, tactics. Voice, search, and social. Media and I've met a lot of business, owners who've, got. Big. And medium-sized. And. Small sized companies, and. Some. Of them even haven't. Detached themselves from the idea of paper. Mm how do you. Suggest. Those, business, owners to work out when. Is the right time to. Do a different, type of marketing. Because, it will require a, lot of expense right you either have to hire a digital, agency or. Enjoy. It so I'll. Give you some I, give, your audience some free consulting, here that we usually charge a lot of money for okay so. Here's. The trick. Facebook. Instagram all these guys are incredibly. Good at convincing, me to advertise okay, and there, is a whole raft of guys out there on the market that a snake. Oil salesman that will tell you will run your Facebook ads and we'll take five percent of you Evan okay if. It's too good to be true it is too good to be true what, now, the, truth here and this is really important that we understand this is that any. Marketing. Campaign that you run on facebook when, and again let's go back to that stealing. A pair of sneakers example, when, you decide, that I want to run an advert campaign, to, people. Who like, sports. Activewear, right. There. Is nobody that's gone into Facebook and said please send me adverts about sports active way nobody, has done that right what, has happened is that all, of these social channels have used assimilation. To, assume, that you will like that product, and then, they match that with your other activities that, they've trapped online so, Facebook is tracking you saying hey look you've followed all these different sneaker brands and, hey look I can actually see that you actually converted, and bought some sneakers they're, going so assimilation. These people like sneakers now. We. Might be selling a hiking speaker or, hi athletic, sneaker right so that, assimilated. Knowledge is never going to get. Particular. The. Only place on the Internet where you can get accurate, accurate intent-based marketing, is, on search ok so, when you're going to type into Google search I want a pair of. Nike. Air Max size, 10 blue trainers, I know. Explicitly. That, you want that product we're not doing any assimilation. We're not guessing you, have shown consumer, intent. So. Overdose, the way that we run marketing, tech campaigns, is that we run them from both ends we, run them on one end where we're doing everything from a brand and consumer, reach perspective, and at, the other end we're running at them from consumer. Content, which is based on search in. The middle, you arrive at the space which is social media but, you don't start there ok, so. What we would do is we would be running an, SEO. Before we'd be running marketing, we'd be optimizing, our site we'd be understanding, what is the traffic we want what is this consumer. That should be coming to our page as they. Come in to our website we then collect and build audiences, now, we might not know your email we might not know enough about you but we can still get you into an audience and we've got you pixel and we can market to you will. Then slowly build up an audience of people, who visited, page. About Nike sneakers that, came through search we've. Then got an audience people who we know like that bloody product right well. Then push that audience, up into a social, space and then, we'll start marketing to those people and then. We will ask Google so I will ask Facebook, to say write, of this, snapshot of 200, people that we have laser-targeted can. You please now tell me other people in that and look for like audience and that, will then go and hit their peers and their influencers and stuff like that, that, process, is, how we get crazy, return.

On Investment, for our clients because, we're not guessing there is zero guesswork in there we're using intent, to, then drive an audience, and then from the audience, we then ask to get that little assimilation. Layer so either we, can, then blossom out of those larger layers. Of the onion skin, with. The brand. Space you, have to write off those those budgets and differ. So, a key thing for any CMO, out there is they, need to chop up their marketing budgets into, marketing, which is dude which is there to drive revenue and marketing. Which is do to drive awareness okay, what, we see all the time Maxim, is people you know new sneaker brand runs, these adverts on Facebook, and they get zero conversions, they. May have actually acquired a thousand. Two thousand fans and a couple of people have been. I've. Been talking. About their that their product but, they will look at that and say well that's a resolute failure it's. Actually not a failure it's, actually a misunderstanding. Of how marketing. Really works and it's that assumption that I can hit you with one piece of content and you will fall down my funnel and automatically, convert and the. Truth is you. Know current. Current. Standards. Is we're looking at around between twelve to twenty touch points, to generate a convert motion. Okay, so that, might be I'm seeing, a picture, on Instagram, seeing you inside search, seeing, a Facebook post seeing, a billboard ads seeing the score seeing, a friend with those shoes on but, we tend to see twelve to twenty eight or normal touch points so. If you're running a marketing campaign which is assuming I can introduce you to a new brand and just, hope that works, good. Luck because you're actually not going to be successful there so. You have to you have to build value in different ways, so. You look at one budget and, say right this is this is money I'm gonna give that is holy, represented. To generate, conversion, so that's working, from the search intent, upwards, this.

Other Budget I'm gonna give you is to feel brand awareness and, that's. Going to go from a top, of funnel downwards, and that is to drop more people in, the, top and then the other processes, should. Drip. Them down so, look, we've got guys here and I, think. In fact just at a small business level and we took on a new client who sells. Speciality. Gin online. Okay, they'd. Never actually done any digital marketing they've been in market for about a year they were doing around about five. Six seven hundred bucks a day in revenue okay so that'd. Be exciting, but it, was, a good one-man, band of other. Business, we. Took this approach and we ran a. $3,000. Marketing campaign across December, and, we, grew them out in one month from a usual. $15,000. A month revenue, to, around about a seventy. To ninety thousand, dollars in in. Revenue. And, all that was doing was touching the right D people. At the right time so. You, don't need to spend huge money on this you need to spend smart money now, that, comes back again in, the last point in this Maxim into, how, you use, your digital agency, to, run your ads now. For. Goodness sake do, not run, ad, campaigns. Where. Your. Agency. Is getting, a commission. On what, they spend okay, so this, is the old way that agencies used, to work which, would be the we're. Gonna book for you, $10,000. Worth of adverts and for, every thousand dollars worth of adverts we've booked you have to give us a certain commission on that and that's our payment, for, doing that it's, a the worst possible way you could do business is, what you're basically saying to the agency is spend. More money and I'll give you more money right, it's a you're. Guaranteed, to lose there and there's hardly any motivation, to, make these things work, the. Second one and what then happened was set for agency started saying well instead, of giving me a percentage, of the spend. Give. Me a percentage of the revenue that we generate for, you. Now. That again, is really dangerous, is what you start doing is you start passing your, whole marketing, message on to this market here and when, we're in this world of doing highly personalized, advertising, and gamification, what. You then of motivating. This guys to do is to create sales at any cost, right, so don't do that either the. Way to use your marketing, agency, is to pay them a service fee for their hours and their time to, run really good cost-effective campaigns, and then, give them a budget to work with and a, really smart agency, will go right you're.

Going To give me five grand. It's. Going to cost you in resource two three four grand for me to run this but, we want to hit this KPI together and set, those KPIs together, and build campaigns together and get involved with how, those campaigns, are being architected. So that in the future you, can take those back and start running, them internally, and any. Good agency, that's. Worth its salt should, be doing heavy lifting for you and that's why we call ourselves consultants, right is that we're. Consulting, we should have be there every day to run your business we, should be there to educate and help you grow as an organization and, put. Some of that knowledge into, your team, however junior or see. Ya. And so that whenever you come back to your consultant, agency was charging you 150. 200 bucks an hour that, these guys are adding. Value and not, just rinsing and repeating right. So we should be doing the heavy lifting you should, be learning off the back of those skills and then you should be able to, reemployment. Those and then. Your cost of ownership with the agency starts to go down or if you love them thank. You lots of asking if you're giving us lots of new and other things to be getting on with but, that you're always in this Nets up and. Growth so. Never view their agency is about source view it as a value add the compliments, and make sure that you're learning through, that process as well, so. The interest in that you mentioned about. Rewarding. Your service. Provider and, as. A business owner myself, I'm. Interested, in the return on investment and. I'd. Like to know your opinion, on a, different. Way of. Working. With the digital, agency for example is, it possible, I don't, know is, it happening on different, on certain type, of marketing. Campaigns where you can share the actual, benefit. That. The. Client will receive I don't know if it's a commission, and a 50/50, split or some kind of percentage because, in, this way I can see the. Actual results and, yes. I spent five thousand dollars it doesn't mean that I will get $10,000. Back right yeah so we, have three or four of those relationships, Matson in, fact a couple of them we've even taken equity, in our clients business but. There is a couple of those relationships, where we take a percentage of the total revenue, of the. Business. Now. I have, no problem with you building, out a a reward. Mechanism. Where your agency, gets to keep the ticket but, that clipping of the ticket should be across, the whole all semantics. Of the business and not, on one campaign, okay. So if you are isolating, yourself saying, I'll give you Facebook, and any money you make on Facebook you can clip that ticket you actually end up with someone who is this they're. Overly motivated, to do the wrong things in the wrong spaces, what, I'd rather see and how, we've architected it is that that Commission is much lower so, we tend to be in more of a 10% sort of space so. The Commission's much lower but we're taking it across the whole broader picture and that, and that's because we've taken a true partnership approach and that's where we will be touching the search strategy the, the platform strategy and. The, marketing strategy, the interview, know what's how we doing integrations, how we saw some stock, where'd that stuff located, and we're taking a much broader, perspective of, the business and not, just assuming, that there is this magical, silver bullet that someone can fire up some Adwords and that fixes your business because. Again any markets, here worth, their salt, they. Will look at your website and say well, hey look Maxim I'm pushing you all this traffic but I can see these bugs on your website I don't, like this user experience, I think your pricing, is well I think we should be bundling like this right, so, if they're just looking at it as a I'm gonna, throw traffic again, I'm gonna hope and pray it converts, and if it doesn't I'm gonna try and find more cheaper, that's, just not good business that's, just not smart business there, has to be a broader approach so, yeah absolutely build, those relationships but.

Build It in a deeper and more entwined space, where, those. Guys genuinely. Understand. Your business right. There's. Far too many times. In those situations, there, is no, real motivation, for them to, genuinely. Genuinely understand. Your business right and we're. We're, we're in relationships, that get it go into a couple of years we. Fully. Fully get it right. And. If your marketeer doesn't get it and they walk into a room and they start saying my, problem Mattson lock, me into your account so I started, making it work I can, guarantee you all that guy's going to do is exactly what I said which, is people, who like sneakers and live in Auckland and plan, over 100k year please, send them these sneaker. Adverts, it's just guesswork right, if you want real smart so it takes time it takes energy and it's, energy in both directions, right so, the retailer, has to spend the time with their agency to make sure that they understand, as well and the, agency has to, be spending that time as well to get under the skin and. Therefore you need to be building out at minimum. Three, to six months relationships. To expect, to see genuine results, and, as I say anyone, who tells you they're going to throw you up results. Up overnight it, is possible, it can be done um. But. The. Longevity and the sustainability. Comes to your partnership, I thought, you spoke about, sneakers. And all birds brands, who. Managed. To find. Their own niche I believe they they. Unique selling point is that they source their materials. In a sustainable, way and I, remembered, one of your recent articles. On LinkedIn. Something. About different. Is, better, than, better, could. You briefly. Give some examples, of some. Of your clients maybe that, idealize. This. Idea. How how, do they find their own unique selling point or this difference, that gave, them advantage. Yes. And this, is actually more of a principle that I apply to my own business and then it echoes through other, successful, businesses. When. You are architecting. Your, product your business your strategy, your your. Reason for existence, um. If. The only thing you have is that you're better than the competition. Then. I don't think you've really got any chance of having sustainability. Or longevity. In the market um there, are a couple of our retailers, who genuinely aren't, different but are really. Better so I took. Two examples, and rebel, sport and riscos, right, they. Are rebel. Sport is hands, down the best, sportswear. Retailer, in New Zealand and, they understand, pricing, they understand, the gamification of that are, they different no but, they were pretty, much first to market and they've got volume if. You and I Maksim wanted to start a sportswear company, and we wanted to take on rebel, sports, man. We're going to struggle right because, we haven't got their buying power we're, not going to have the access to inventory and. So they are just better they haven't created a unique product when, you go into a rebel sports store it's, really well merchandise, but it's not like some amazing. Nike store right so, they just do all of the right things incredibly. Well so. If you want to break into these spaces and you want to take on the industry giants, they've, just got too much mass and volume around them so, I I, look at businesses, a little bit like sort, of like these solar planets, that have gravity, towards, them and so, now, that we've got Tata. Max in sports we're, kind of gravitationally. Pulled towards. Rebel right and starts thinking wow that's, where it is it. Has to be priced driven right you know we need to have sports celebrities, marketing. These things and what, happens is is you start playing. The same game, as your, competition, and if, you don't have the ability to compete at that scale you're, going to lose right, it's it's pretty simple now. I applied, that to overdose where look. Being. Better that's, not an option right if you want to win you just got to be better right, but what's. Better than better is being better and different okay.

So I think. All but it's a great example not one of our clients by the way but we'd love to have them I think. We're all those have done it I said look we've actually got a better shoot this shoot is more comfortable right, this shoe is more sustainable, right um this. Shoe is aesthetically, pleasing but. It's different right, it's different it it. Connected. With a different demographic, it, talks about a different set, of values it, was a digital, digital. First product, before they started going and driving, physical. Stores leftnav a great store and in a San Francisco um, so. The. Beautiful components. Are when you've got your. You're serving, a similar need but, you're doing it ask you to where they are I think, the best visualization of this is if you've got kids, soccer. Leagues right and I see this all the time where someone, kicks a ball and you have. 19. Of those 20 kids all run to war there's one ball right and then there's that one kid that goes well, the goals over here and that ball is going to pop out at some point and I'm gonna be the kid that picks it up and scores the goal so. What there's are the 19 kids that, have towards the ball the, only kid that wins is the biggest strongest or the fastest kid right that's got the most skills and pushes. About the other side but, if you haven't got all those skills you haven't got that weight or that speed or that opportunity, you, can build your own opportunity, by being different and standing to the side and saying I'm gonna wait for that opportunity to come over here but I'm gonna be the one that scores the goal so. When. You're architecting a business when you're. Looking. For how, do you compete with those around you finding. That true differentiation. Is critical. And then, even harder, but even more critical is communicating. That differentiation, so. If you looked at the overdose model the way that we communicated, our differentiation, was. That we called ourselves an anti agency agency right. So, we literally went to market with this concept and by the way that term was made up by one of our clients not us we weren't that smart but. We went to Marcus said. Hey look we. Are we're an agency and you understand, that we're, an agency but, we're an anti agency agency and that, one piece of content, that. The. Little video that we run on our homepage probably. Gets us as many leads as everybody. Else if you. Go to every. Other agency. Website. Within Australia and New Zealand - you, know these so. Kind of the same stuff with us they'll build you a magenta website they'll show you some ads though they don't. Do research they're. Their. Shape of their business, is almost identical Maxim, okay so they'll all tell you we are the fastest we are the best we are the cheapest and we've, got more clients than you have and we. Went with a completely contrarian, message, which, was. We. Don't have any of that we don't do any of that but, we'd really love your, opportunity. To work with you and we've pretty smart guys and it worked and it's stuck right, now I don't. Think that there is any real mechanism of, where, you can. Falsely. Engineer, that I think, it's almost that you Rikka moment that happens, when you choose to start a business right where you go this, is my angle, and, what happens I seen so many of these businesses is they find this angle this unique proposition and slowly. With time that, proposition gets eroded because you get. Gravitationally. Drawn to your bigger competitors and you start looking too much at your compare you compare yourselves, you, go well I can't, beat them because they've got that so I'll create my version of that and in fact all you're doing is you're becoming a me to brand and, what you have to do is say well, they're doing that screw.

It I'm gonna go and do this I'm gonna find something really unique, and innovative so. I believe. The trick to successful, SMEs, and startups is. Having. A message which is communicable. And understandable, and people, genuinely get it who, you are they understand we're an agency. They. Understood that uber. Is like taxis, right, I think, it's a tax thing I think it's where Tech's from place to place but. It's also different, right, and again you look at all of those and none use big, examples, there if you're your Airbnb, it's still somewhere to stay but it's different you, look at your line it's, still public transport, but it's cool when it's different right, so it's serving, its same similar. Purpose, but it's just got those high notes parts, and, from. My own personal experience, trying. To keep those sparks alive and stay committed to your sparks and your. You know that that, true north of you're a ha moment that. Happened two three four years ago I think, that's the hardest role of an entrepreneur, is to not be sucked towards where, the rest of the market lies but, to still believe in your vision and stay, true to that and a, lot of that means you have to ignore some. Some of your clients you have to ignore some of your staff but. You have to stay true to what you believe is right and. The. Quickest way to not. Achieve that is to over analyze your competitors and, to spend more time looking at their business when you do it your own I genuinely, believe, that if you spend more time on your own and. Self-belief. And a, bit, of obstinance, in there that you get to a better place, in the long run but it means you're fighting. That harder battle and, the heart of the battle I think the bigger the rewards are the company. Does. We can talk for hours and, really appreciate your advice, would. You like to mention anything, else or the sake how can people find you sure. Yes I where I'm over, dosed digital overdrive stop digital and you'll find me on on, LinkedIn. Find. Our website there just do overdose, and you'll know who we are. We. Are active, and present. Across Australia, New Zealand and. Soon to be in London and New, York so if, people would like to speak to us we'd love to speak to you and, that's. Kind of us thank you for your time tours and I hope talking. And reading about your successful, companies and time again in the future thank you. You.

2019-01-30 08:46

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