This is Joshua Hoffman and welcome to another episode of The Masters in Marketing Agency podcast where we deconstruct the why and how agency owners found their success and discuss a few things they learned along the way today I have Ramsay Swice the founder and president of Aqaba a tech driven agency that brings consumers and brands together through high impact tactical digital marketing strategies and personalized online experience welcome Ramsey hi Josh so naturally I have to ask and open up with do you have any story or anything around the name how you got to it anything like that yes interesting you ask back in the the.com bust or boom in 2000 I left the bay area and decided to go away on a scuba diving trip in the port of Acaba Jordan and trying to figure out what the rest of my career is going to look like so what I did I went ahead and was just a deep thought a transcendental thought and I looked over to my left and there was a sign that says welcome to Akba and then that was it so I came up with Akaba Technologies at the time it just hit me right then and there and problem solved then when I returned home I was anxious to start working on building out my agency from my living room and here we are today as a result I'm showing my cards a little bit here but did you have any story about how you guys picked the branding and everything yes so in our office once we outgrew my home we went through a branding challenge and what we did is we didn't like the logo but it was just something to start so we had 72 renditions of that logo at the time and we have a long narrow hallway from our front entrance to the back of the office where the sales and the operations were and down that hallway we had taped eight and a half by eleven sheets of paper all along the sides of the walls the sides of the cubicle partitions and each day our team as they entered they walked from the front to the back you would pass by these 72 renditions which I still have each and every single one of them by the way from 2004 and we would just check off which one really stuck out the most and then over time it just narrowed down to two and they were close but similar in design but close and count in terms of check marks and we chose the logo that we have today I love that did you have you done that with any other practice whether it's in the company whether it's with your kids have you applied that anywhere else it just hit me because I knew I was onto something we were originally a search engine marketing company doing PPC and Google had just incorporated not very long before then and things were simple flat design and I wanted it to be similar but the thought of simple I was challenged with simple I wanted everything to be elegant and overly eye-catching and meaningful so I've learned to trim it back and keep things simple I follow a similar process but we don't need 72 renditions we've narrowed it down that was just me and being overkill as what I'm known for doing that makes me think of the Starbucks logo I think it's the first Starbucks logo is this incredibly complicated thing yeah and then over time it just gets absurdly simple so I don't know if that's a tie but okay cool so let's take a step back then and can you just tell me more about the firm yes so Aqua Technologies of today solves problems unique to the internet marketing and web design user experience world so our philosophy is to provide meaningful user experiences on the various different viewports and devices and doing so there needs to be relevance so the audience needs to be clearly defined the goals and outcomes need to be clearly defined which call for a slew of scientific worksheets that we've perfected over time and constantly evolving and that's what I really take great pride in this is the agency who we are as of today and having this collective thought process from our team invested in these worksheets have really simplified and narrowed the focus on the goals and outcomes as a result so wait did you have a process before these worksheets that were they from the beginning like how did you come up with these worksheets the worksheets it evolved into a formal worksheet it used to be just a questionnaire and then the more intuitive and sophisticated the internet and the internet audience has become and the saturation of social and paid and organic platforms that we all are aware of today including emails we get bombarded with data it's just overload on a daily basis it needs to be meaningful there has to be a purpose-driven brand in terms of online where non-traditional agency we have no experience of traditional media it's it's all digital and it's all driven by data so that's where we really invest and focus our efforts in and how did you guys end up getting your first customer or set of customers yeah it was actually we were working on a referral basis the prior company that I left when I decided to part ways and go off on my own a lot of those folks followed me wherever I went and ended up becoming loyal clients which many of them we still have to date so obviously that's a great way to start a firm not just with one client and a lot of times we're hearing stories of usually it may be someone in their old job or it's a friend that just needed help and then that sparked their idea but it's very nice to just move in that direction with your first customers but more importantly how are you getting new business well back then it was the Wild Wild West it was simple competition was very thin and for our agency and for me personally to make sure that everyone is busy and earning a living and happy we said yes to everything and then figured out some of it along the way and the the more experience we had over time the more sophisticated our customer base became and we pulled away from saying yes to everything and became more select and precise and even to this day we turn away work for several reasons one if we can be of benefit and help them great if we get along and we are a good payer we'd love to work with them and if we feel that we can't deliver meaningful results we just turn them away we're fortunate enough to be in this position because we're very busy we have a very deep roster of of clients loyal clients and friends and we cherish that so why try to fix something that's not broke was there a moment that you thought you could make that change essentially going from always saying yes to being a little bit more selective efficiency profitability the randomness of some clients once a year update my website they didn't have the budget for advertising they didn't get the internet so it became more and more of a challenge and more time spent trying to not convince but persuade them to take the risk and trust so after a while you knock on so many doors you decide sooner than later hopefully you decide to find a path to least resistance and align yourself with the right people and clients and friends and he mentioned I don't know if he was jokingly or literal but you mentioned outgrowing your home when the agency first started so when was that moment also and who were your first hires was there a mistake in hiring can you speak a little bit more towards that my first hire was my biggest mistake yeah it was the the worst decision I had made every other bad decision I made was far less that's the last impact on our business but yeah I learned quickly I learned how to delegate and hold people accountable and teach them to hold themselves accountable and that there's a bar and that you're failing the clients and you're failing your team if you don't deliver if you're not on point and not attentive to the client needs higher education too the constant need to feed yourself with knowledge and increase your knowledge base because the more knowledgeable that you become the more knowledgeable your team becomes from a knowledge based sharing standpoint and then your clients are the benefactors and you have a job as a result well speaking of higher education I think looking at your LinkedIn I thought was very interesting that I believe you went to Community College but you did not go to a four-year or grad school did you have an option of doing that is there anything that you felt like you're missing is there anything that gave you more motivation how did that impact your your career I had personal reasons from my lack of of completing my four-year degree and who knows maybe beyond not that I'm against education but at the time I was not fortunate enough to be able to afford to go to school and get my four-year degree I was head of household and took care of my family as best as I could so I put everyone else first and by chance I excelled in the automotive industry as a design engineer and got into production and learned how to work with very tight tolerances and timelines project management all the skill sets that that I adhere to today as a result and our agencies foundation of project management and product delivery and output follows almost mirrors the same process that I was groomed through in my upbringing in the automotive career early on in my career and now you are a board member of several organizations you were actually an instructor at was it the community college or is it Oakland I think Oakland University Oakland Michigan yes so how did those two positions whether it's the board member and or being an instructor how did that impact your job today whether it's management skills or whatever it is yeah so I served at the time and still do I was co-chair and chair of the international services business advisory committee to automation alley and it had been comprised of business professionals board members executives instructors business administrative deans and of the likes and in a presentation that my team put together for the automation alley board we were sharing data analysis analytics trending data and the importance of it and the late Ravi Parmeswarin who was the dean of the business administration to OU approached me and said hey we're trying to develop and mature the curriculum and digital marketing and we'd like to talk to you and I declined because I was just busy growing my business and I was serving other boards I was on the East Michigan district council which is basically the Commerce Department division of the Commerce Department supported by the Commerce Department U.S Commerce department and then I just met with him for lunch one day and he was sharing with me some of the challenges they had and I looked at their curriculum the syllabus and their books and I was not very impressed at all and said well if I were to do it I would I would request under the contingency of a request of having new books and rewrite the syllabus which he agreed he already had that in mind on the syllabus but the book it was all in Euros it was in metric system and so you can tell it was a European book meant for the European market educational market and so we went through things and in my presentation I defined what would become a a protocol for the undergrad program and rewrote the syllabus chose the books I became an instructor the graduate level Professor sat in on a class and got what I was trying to do and then approached me and I was doing that part-time so I had my arm twisted and decided to help him teach and develop a similar type program for graduate level students and in that program we did the same thing and it was well received and they did quite well I did that for two and a half years and then I passed the torch to one of my students who was a graduate and an intern of mine from OU he actually taught me I believe as an undergrad class that he sat in on and I recruited him for an internship and then now he may still be teaching and participating with OU so you had the business you were teaching and then you're a board member how the heck do you manage your time I was single at the time and ultimate if that answers your question and then my wife and things tapered down quickly after that but I really enjoyed it I think in my next life I would probably teach or when I retire I would probably teach at some level I really enjoyed being able to help folks establish a career and apply real world practices and not just textbook driven which becomes dated the moment that book is printed it's dated that was a very very big finding in in my research with the university did you have any tricks of the trade when it comes to managing your time or are you just as long as your day was scheduled then you just followed the schedule well it evolves on an ongoing basis basically we have a presence in the Middle East and big in Dubai we for myself I start off my day checking my emails and a chat app that we use with our team in Dubai and that's the first order of business because we're overlapping so usually I am an early bird I wake up about 4 35 o'clock ish each morning and I'll spend the first hour just delegating tasks and supporting our team abroad then my calendar I go through and I fill in my calendar I also have appointments that are being made from the different time zones we have clients all over the globe so I'll oversee that make sure that I've got my day planned and scheduled ahead in advance while I'm having my first cup of coffee and then when I make it into work immediately pounding out emails and placing calls and supporting our team so delegating is key when you get to that point customers all over the globe what differences do you see or do you have to implement in the different countries is there well everyone wants the same outcome the same result their goals are economically driven we do it's not about scheduling appointments or visits to the website those days are done anyone that's thinking along those lines should really rethink their approach it's a monetary outcome return on ad spend there may be a variance in culture maybe a variance in language mostly English speaking and the results are pretty much the same so it's not what you say it's how you say it and the same philosophy and practice we implement in all of our product builds and marketing there's some cultural learning which usually the worksheets are the the same process it's just a matter of understanding regionally how our ad copy will work how our designs will work a lot more a b testing which you should be doing regardless whether you're localized or not and and constant refinement same question for industries marketing for different industries do you find that there's huge differences is there a lot of similarities well I get bored by niching up that's when things become in the form of a template and you're not forced to think because it's kind of done for you and those folks are a dime a dozen that's just me personally that's that's my outlook on that but we do have a depth of knowledge a vast depth and knowledge in the automotive industry manufacturing advanced manufacturing technology SaaS some e-commerce healthcare medical vanity so plastic surgery invasive surgeries I would say gastric bypass lap band sleeve very big in that plastic surgery high price ticket items tend to bear results quicker more profitable we lean more towards those but then there's also the challenges where it's a branding initiative it's not the metrics that are followed are not sales it's how do we get to the point of preparing for lead flow or sales so we take a reverse engineering approach to that work our way back to step one and then build it out so it it all depends on the industry it all depends on vertical sometimes within an industry there's variation between verticals and within the same industry that's where the worksheets come into play and help prop you up on a foundation that allows you to view it from a lens with more clarity and then you you practice our product build outs following these guidelines so what percentage of your strategy and implementation do you think is similar across customers and what percentage has to be very specific for that customer or that industry I'll go very broad B2B yeah and B2B tend to follow the same workflows it's just the delivery maybe some timing and the promotions will vary but the concepts the framework tend to be almost identical oh I'm glad I asked that then you mentioned earlier data analysis I think it was in reference to when you're an instructor out of curiosity what kind of data and reporting tools do you use for your marketing firm while we have multiple layers and it all depends on the goals and the outcomes the amount of data that that we need to manage in our care to get optimal results but we use Hot Jar Google Analytics Agency Analytics Heat Map and then user experience of video recordings of the human eye how it's working up down left right what colors it gravitates to based on a per user basis it's all this trending data will really help this optimize the user experience any way we can shorten the path these utilities such as Agency Analytics for SEO and PPC we use I believe it's Ninja for some paid ads we use a lot of reverse lookups for lead generation it all depends on what the goals and outcomes are I'm speaking very loose tongue because if you were to ask me about a specific business or business type I pretty much know what systems we need in place to provide better than average results perfect and getting to the ends here and just have a few questions if you had to teach something to other marketers what would it be relevance that was quick can you can you go into more detail yes so you have an audience you have a pretty good idea the range where that audience resides how do you speak with that audience that's the first question we ask ourselves what are they looking for on and then how do we speak to that audience on a per platform basis Facebook Insta right TikTok LinkedIn it's more professional the tone is different more serious than Facebook which is more tongue-in-cheek not as serious TikTok is more of a I like to call it gamified YouTube you know it's a blend of everything so relevance you need to be relevant your ad copy your landing page your website copy everything has to vertically align the journey is established the moment you're outside of those boundaries you're non-relevant there's loss right so your design copy has to be in line with the goals and objectives colors need to be relevant landing page copy your tag lines your H1 if it's SEO everything needs to be vertically aligned based on the keyword the goal and the outcome you could have derivatives of that in micro campaigns or an ad group but your core your main artery that you're tapping into if you're non-relevant they look past you they look over you they look to the right or left of you because think about it today January 6 2023 open your email how much spam do you have to go through to filter through to get to something that's going to catch your eye Facebook bombarded with information right what sticks out you can remember you can be looking at for tennis shoes for example performing a search in tennis shoes and your Facebook picks up on your search Google picks up on your search that's relevant there's a reason why you have these retargeting features and it follows you it ghosts you everywhere it'll shatter you wherever you go each step you take you're being followed and ghosted by relevant material oh I visited that website I saw those shoes here right that's relevance that's a perfection there that's a campaign that is articulated well and the folks behind that campaign know the audience know what they're looking for know what they're looking for similar to upstream on page downstream off page all of this has to be relevant are there any common mistakes that you see other marketers make in that aspect not zooming in enough and over budgeting underperforming throwing more money is not going to solve the problem whether the client has the budget or not if you ask any CMO you submit a proposal to a CMO and in that proposal you're going to have visitors these are the metrics I'm going to increase your visitors I'm going to increase the page the duration of time spent on a landing page I'm going to build you a sales funnel right I'm going to do all of these things and at the end they're going to take your proposal set it aside call the next person until someone comes in with ROAs return on ad spend our goal is to optimize so the relevance the constant wrenching on all of these assets take to bear the greatest results which means sales booked appointments if it's a professional they want their calendar filled it's not about the visits it's the quality if it converts what's my return on ad spend a lot of mistakes too is that agencies and Freelancers don't really understand business they wear a PPC hat they wear an SEO hat their results are I'll get you high rankings here you go I got you on the first page we're within the top five mission accomplished right folks that are not very goal driven that understand SEO true SEO is I need my profit center keywords ones that will bear the greatest return on investment that convert into sales not visits to my site that's not the goal that's not the metric I'm managing or monitoring so they're going to fire you if you can't cover your basis at least and shoot for profitability yeah great answer and then the last question is any books or podcast recommendations can be marketing doesn't have to be business philosophy anything you want yes good to great perfect and anything else I follow Grant Cardone and the reason why I follow Grant Cardone is he's wrong he's not reading a script Gary Vaynerchuk as long as you're not being convinced that nfts and crypto is the way to go right now he's made a lot of mistakes on that but the guy is very knowledgeable he understands media and it's raw what you see is what you get and he's built a successful following and career as a result self-branding and I envy them because I don't have that type of charisma I'm a very black and white kind of person I know how I am and I wish I had that type of charisma to build a following such as they have a been able to accomplish yeah I love their work I think Grant Cardone to me is the epitome of of brand awareness he is the brand perfect I'm still a proponent of the long-term view on nfts so I am too but I thought that in the very beginning all those folks that that bought the crypto punks the monkeys and all that stuff Logan Paul they've all lost I just got it but anytime there's this exciting new technology that you usually get the money grabbers early but yeah okay we don't have to go too far but Vader Check's name is on that loss that's that's my point right current loss might be a gain at some point I actually do believe in his the restaurant idea that he has awesome well as we do come up to the end of the episode I just want to really give you an opportunity to mention how people can find you and anything else you want to end with yes I'd love to help even if you just want some advice love to give it if I can help I will if I can I'll tell you and we'll enjoy a cup of coffee together visit our website www.akaba Technologies AQ a b a t e c h.com and also web EXO dot IO is a new product that we've launched and look me up on LinkedIn I reply very well on LinkedIn more so than any other platform so we learned to get you on here so thank you so much for coming on the show and I hope everyone has a great day Josh I had a great time thank you so much thanks for listening to The Masters in Marketing Agency podcast I hope got a ton of value out of this episode and before we go I just want to thank our sponsors Devnoodle Devnoodle provides marketing agencies with the ability to offer their clients unlimited website design build and management services with fixed monthly plans if website design development and maintenance is holding your agency back from growing please reach out to us at devnoodle.com where we make websites easy for you and easy for your clients devnoodle.com
2023-01-17