What 10 Years in Ecommerce Teaches You About Agencies, Ads & Scaling (w/ Ben Dickshinski)

Speaker A: What do you think a good agency looks like and what should he said? Oh, boy, look.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think I'll just start with I think a great agency, right? Is that customer, uh, service, like, focused mindset. I firmly believe in that. And so for us at Fluency, we don't have like a junior intake training program. We just wanted to go out and hire the best people, uh, that we could afford that had a lot of experience and, and we wanted them to grow with the business.

Speaker A: Yo, what's going on, guys? Welcome back to the E Commerce Growth Mop M podcast. And if you've been paying attention to the podcast, you know, just typically me just kind of doing solo conversation, uh, everything like E commerce, everything, dtc, paid media, et cetera. But today we actually will have our first guest on of the podcast and this is just going to be an exciting conversation. So, like, if you're a founder, like an operator, just running DTC and, uh, you're relatively new to the space, or you just have ton of experience, I think you're still going to get a lot of value from this podcast because who we have today is somebody that does carry extensive knowledge in this space. So we're just going to break a lot of things down from talking about, like, the business side of E commerce, the business side of just running a, uh, digital marketing agency, and just like the, uh, breaking down of like, the specific, like, platform metrics, et cetera. So there's gonna be so much that we're gonna be talking about in this podcast, so stay tuned for that. But without further ado, let's welcome the homie Ben to the podcast. What's going on, Ben?

Speaker B: Howdy. Great to be here.

Speaker A: Nice, dude. Thanks, man. Thanks for agreeing to, like, you know, come on the podcast because I know this is something that we, we had planned for like a couple weeks ago, you know, but, uh, life gets busy. You're a busy person running like two companies essentially, you know. But thank you for, for being here today. I'm, um, excited for this conversation that we're about to have, you know.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker A: Yeah. Awesome, awesome. So kind of what I want, I want to first start with just like the background of, like, who you are. I even got to the space of like, E commerce, you know, so if you can kind of like take us back to what you said, like 2015, like, how you got started in this space, man.

Speaker B: Oh, boy. Yeah. Um, you know, graduated college 2015, moved out to Salt Lake City, joined, uh, my first agency out there, uh, in 2015, small, uh, SEO uh, shop, not really doing a ton of E. Com, but I got personally my start doing SEO, keyword analytics, all that stuff, deep diving into Google Analytics, um, et cetera, and was uh, only there for a few months and then transitioned full time into uh, really which was like an E Commerce social forward agency. Was there for a year, year and a half and moved on to MrM McCann which really opened my eyes to large budgets, everything across all different types of media, um, publications. And I was deep into the analytics side working in Adobe GA Tableau. Uh, dang. Yeah, it was a lot of work, um, a lot of fun. But, uh, you know, learned a lot there. And from there I went in house at a couple of B2B brands out in Salt Lake, did uh, that for three or four years, then pivoted, started my own little shop, uh, working with some B2B with some D2C, you know, smaller companies, did some whitelisting, white labeling for larger agencies, you know, out in New York. And then that kind of led me where I am today, like working with fluency and, and joined them in uh, 2022. Joined full time as head of growth in 2023. And since then we've been growing like crazy and having a great time doing it.

Speaker A: That's amazing, dude. That's amazing and I love that. So 2015 is. That's where you got your start in like meta or just like overall like advertising, Is that right?

Speaker B: Yeah, I joined that major, not, uh, major, you know, smaller startup, uh, paid social agency in. It was like February 2016. Okay. And that's, you know, not, not early days of meta advertising, but for me it was still like very new and they kind of just threw me in. I was managing 25 accounts. 25, yeah. All different spend levels. Right. And those were the days, right, when in Meta, ah, you could audience hack, you bid hack, you could do all these different things. Yeah, you really can't do that now, but it was great. Right? And creative was what it was. Or you just kind of throw in things at the wall, see what sticks. Um, but yeah, it was, it was fantastic. You know, we were all young. It was, I was 23. I think the average age of the company was like 23.

Speaker A: 23.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, we had, you know, an organic social arm. We had, you know, paid social. We did reputation, uh, management, we did all sorts of things. Um, and I was with that agency for about a year. We grew from, I don't know, 30 employees to like 100 employees in like a year. And it was you, you so you

Speaker A: experienced that you like, you saw like.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, while I was there, they opened an office in Nashville, they opened, ah, another office in Dallas and um, you know, headquarters in Salt Lake. And I think that agency has since been acquired as of last year or the year previous. But that's really where I started. And uh, yeah, working, working with clients. You know, again, I was brand new to Meta, so they're asking me questions about all these marketing things. I'm like, I don't really know that much but I can give him a shot. Um, so, so there were a lot of very valuable lessons learned at that, at that spot.

Speaker A: Dude, that's amazing. And so from that then you. Is that when you started working more like in house in specific companies?

Speaker B: Yeah, from there I went to MRM.

Speaker A: Um, what is MRM?

Speaker B: MRM, McCann. Um, they had a big, still, uh, have a pretty sizable uh, presence out in Salt Lake, headquartered in New York. And really I made that shift because I personally wanted to expand my knowledge outside of just paid social.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Which looking back I don't, I don't really think that mattered a ton for what I ended up doing now, right, like working within paid Social and primarily, uh, D2C. But I wanted to learn more about the analytics side and specifically working with enterprise level clients. Right. So I worked with Verizon Enterprise and you know, I was, I was not the lead on that account by any means. I was way, way, way in the back doing analytics and preparing, you know, decks and reports and things like that. But I got a lot of experience working, right, with ga, uh, Google Analytics, Adobe, uh, and Tableau and spent a year and a half really just grinding and doing that. And uh, yeah, decided try in house work in tech. Right. Because a lot of my friends were working in tech. That was really around the time when Salt Lake was really starting to grow as a West coast, ah, tech hub, uh, so to speak. And um, yeah, joined Avanti as a demand gen manager. So there I was managing paid social, right, like LinkedIn, Google, Meta, pretty sizable budgets. We were running ads in 12 different countries. We were localizing, right. I got to go to the uk, I got to go to Paris, France to visit those offices and yeah, it was, it was a great time.

Speaker A: Um, that's exciting, dude. That's amazing.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker A: And so, and then from that experience then you went on to go start your own, uh, agency.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I, you know, after Avanti, I went and was a director of Demand gen at a few other B2B startups.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And that's really where I think most of my experience in what I'm doing today does translate because instead of just owning paid social, uh, and managing a small paid social team, I was doing the website CRO, managing SEO, uh, I even ran a team of SDRs, like salespeople at one point.

Speaker A: Damn, dude.

Speaker B: Uh, helping with forecasting, having those conversations with my own CFO right around pipeline generation and what metrics matter and how we should be measuring things. And it was, it was great. And so I did that at two other B2B startups out in, in Utah. And at the same time, right as Covid was kind of kicked in, I had free time and was, was getting some interest, uh, from other brands and other agencies on helping with their paid social strategy and acquisition strategy. So I started to build a little bit of a freelancing ah, as it typically does start. Um, you start to build that freelance book and then you're like, well, I'm pretty busy. How do I. I either got to decide to like cap it or I started hiring people and expanding that and I opted uh, to. Again, this was 2020, 2020 21. So everything was locked down. I had nothing else really going on. So I, uh, decided that was the time to start to expand, uh, the business a little bit. And what led, uh, led me to fluency and where we're at today.

Speaker A: You have a lot more experience than I actually thought that you have. You've literally done everything, dude, which is kind of crazy. So you have so much experience in, in this space, not just with one platform of one channel, but like with multiple. You said like, you mentioned meta Google, um, in addition to like, uh, um what, um, is it LinkedIn as well?

Speaker B: Uh, Reddit.

Speaker A: Reddit for.

Speaker B: Uh, we've done, we've done pretty much TikTok. I mean we've done pretty much everything you can do. Um, it's. Yeah, it's been great, dude.

Speaker A: That, that's. That's amazing dude. That's amazing. Now understanding like, like the background story kind of like where you come from, you know. So I'm excited to talk about more like, kind of in specific, like specific channels and I. Different like strategies, things within that scope, you know. So specifically if a new brand is like a new brand that's, you know, coming up in the DTC space, they have a product and they want to grow. Where. Where do you think they should start?

Speaker B: Oh boy.

Speaker A: With all the channels that is available, like, where do you think they should start? Meta Google, like, where is.

Speaker B: Ah. I mean, truthfully, if, if it's a brand new product. Um, and again, even it sounded like a brand new groundbreaking product that defines a new category. Uh, for me, I always ask founders, if you're entering a crowded space and you're a new brand, what's your differentiator? Say you're starting a T shirt business. There's no shortage of, uh, T shirt companies, but yet there are so many successful ones and they all have a very unique differentiator or promise to their consumer. And so instead of spending a bunch of money to prove that concept, what can you do on your earned channels? Like your own channels. Right. So organic social popups, um, partnerships, different things like that to see if there's initial traction and if the customers, uh, enjoy the product, if they're gonna come back. Right. It's very much almost guerrilla marketing, boots on the ground type stuff. Um, and then once you sort of see that initial spark that people do value your product in, whether it's a new market or a crowded market, then whether you need to raise or you need to, how are you going to get the funds? I would definitely say Metta for sure. M. Meta is still, in my opinion from a CPM pov, the, the most like, financially responsible way to go about getting in front of new customers.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Right. And it's, it is very labor intensive in terms of the creative and things like that, but nothing compared to like a TikTok for example, or YouTube. Yeah. Um, and so I would definitely start there and then once you start to capture that initial interest and you're spreading that, uh, awareness. Google's great for capturing demand. Right. We all know that it's someone sees your ad on Meta or Instagram and they're like, oh, what's this? They might save it and then type you in later. Right. You want to make sure you're showing up to some degree. But as you're doing that, I would absolutely be hammering, uh, your SEO, like writing content, like getting in front of publications. Right. Whatever that is. So that you're prolonging how much you need to pay to play in your space. Right. Because those early, you know, early years for really any business, cash is tight. You gotta be scrappy. You gotta, you honestly have to do things that don't scale. Yeah, right. The example I gave earlier of doing pop ups, right. That might mean you have 500 versions of your product. Right. And you go down to Santa Monica Pier and you spread out a table and you're like giving away samples and interviewing people and. Right. We've all seen that type of content. Right. But you know when you're spending a million a month on Meta and you have a team of 20 people and you're doing all these things, sure you can do that. Uh, you can still do those pop ups, but you as the founder likely are not that involved at that point. And if you are, that's fantastic, right? I still love seeing big brands that are that involved in sort of those don't scale tactics. Cause I do think it resonates super well with both new and your loyal customers.

Speaker A: That's good man. It's a good way to continue to build community, especially when the founders continue to involve with that. And one of the reasons why I asked that question, because I think people think Meta is just kind of like this magic bullet that can literally just create magic for them, create demand and people will just buy products like crazy, which is not the case. But what you mentioned, you gotta make sure that you first have a good product market fit, you know. And I think a good way to do that, uh, at least like in not an expensive way. It's like doing like the pop up, you know, because I know a few people like that's actually how they started their brand. So like they'll do like local pop ups, go around here to see if people actually like the product, you know, um, that's, that's. I think it's a really good way to test out your product in the market. You know, you'll quickly know because this is like you get face to face experience. Like you quickly know like is this product good? Do people like this product? Are they coming back and purchasing like the product again? If so, okay, so good night. Start thinking about like a strategy to skill to where like Meta, then it's a really good opportunity uh, to do that, you know. And in that same process like also create getting content that you can, you know, when you look, you don't like to pop up like getting content because the content thing like that's like it's such a valuable assets, you know, that you like, it's like literally bullets for you to use. Uh, like when you start to get like into like the paid media front, you know, because that's literally probably 80% of like literally like your whole strategy is like content. How good is like your creative uh, strategy? So that's really good that you mentioned that. So like any like startup founder just trying to get into like the marketplace, you know, like I mean you don't have to do this, but I think it's a really inexpensive Way to like start testing like your product, doing like local pop ups. Start like feeding people your product and seeing if that's something that people like and something you think you know, can like later, like scale, you know, using like platforms like meta and like you know, so on and so forth. So that's really good. Now another question that I have for you because sometimes specifically with Google, which is like it's a demand capture platform essentially. Right. Do you ever advise for brands to start it? Because it's kind of a low hanging fruit to start getting revenue into the business before then going and starting meta or doing the other things. What is kind of your viewpoint on that?

Speaker B: It definitely depends on your industry and how competitive it is.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So if you enter a space and uh, you feel you have a great product and you do right. Your own research inside of the Google Ad platform. Right. You won't be able to run brand right away. Right.

Speaker A: Because no one knows who you are. Yep.

Speaker B: But if you see like non brand keywords and you're like, oh people will absolutely convert my product, my product is very like one to one with that non brand keyword and it's not competitive or you know, the average price that Google is quoting you is within your budget and you feel like you can scale into that then. Absolutely. Right. Same thing with YouTube. Right. There's no, you know, I know a lot of brands are somewhat hesitant, especially in the past before, you know, these different attribution tools to like scale into YouTube. But YouTube is another great one. Right. Especially if you're a founder that already has a YouTube channel and you've been pushing content. Right. I mean that brand that I was telling you about, you know, before we got started here, um, you know, we started working with them um, at the end of Q4 last year and you know, not a huge catalog of products. Right. Higher aov. But their founder aligned the product with his area of expertise. He's very much in that space. He's well known in the space. For two plus years leading into launching paid media, he was doing uh, a ton on YouTube. His channel gets hundreds of thousands of views a month. He's very plugged into that community that would use his product and so organically, you know, he was already doing 30, 40, $50,000 a month, uh, in revenue with, without any paid media. Which when you're talking about starting. Right. He was already starting but he hadn't done any paid media. And so for us as an agency, sure, like it's always a little bit of a risk like taking on a new brand, whatever the size. Yeah, but you can clearly see like his core audience resonates super well with, with him and how he relates to the product and also the, you know, the industry that he's in. And so there was a lot of uh, for us we just saw a ton of opportunity. Right. And your earlier point around content, we have a whole YouTube repository that we can then clip and use, uh, for meta ads. And so when we launched we had a ton of content, right. And him being a creator at heart, he was really able to take our direction for like creative briefs and creative strategy and just start churning out a ton of ads. Uh, that's just like one example right outside of pop ups, right? Like if you're a founder and like you are creating a product that you're really passionate about, uh, and you're knowledgeable about the space and you already have somewhat of a following, you're already a few steps ahead than a founder that's say drop shipping into a competitive category and they're like, well I'll just run ads. Cause that's a very tough place, uh, to start. So I think the passion for your product in your industry and then building that organic following is super important.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, I agree 1000% because the example that you mentioned, I think this Casio, he had a YouTube presence, you know, so it makes things not easy but easier for him because he already has like the content to be able to produce there. But for like a new brand that doesn't yet have any content on YouTube particularly what scares people away from YouTube is like the, the video creation aspect of things, you know. Uh, now obviously YouTube, like they, they have these like new stuff to where like AI to. It's like actually creating a video for you. But I don't think it's that good yet. But still I think the hardest g. The, the hardest barrier into YouTube is just like the content piece of it, you know, so. Yeah, man, that's good. That's good. Okay, awesome. So if you're just focusing on one channel, right? So if meta is like you're already advertising on meta, like that's like your main bread and butter. At what point do you start to scale into like other channels? Like at what spend level do you recommend for like brands to start scaling into like different channels such as like Google, TikTok, et cetera.

Speaker B: I think Google in particular will tell you when it's time to do that. Right. Based on the analytics that it gives you. Uh, you know, with our analytics internally at our agency Right. We're tracking not only paid performance, but we're using GA4 not as a direct source of truth, but directional efficiency across paid and non paid channels. An example of that, right? When we're pulling a weekly or monthly report, we'll be looking at last click across paid social. Let's say we're not running paid search at this point. If we're seeing direct and organic continue to climb and, and convert at a high rate, it might be time to start looking at maybe not cannibalizing that direct and organic traffic, uh, via Google, right? Or not direct in that case, but organic traffic. But doing some research inside of Google and what keywords are starting to pop up. Are people looking for your brand? Are other competitors? Now that you've been scaling on Meta or like TikTok or another platform, are they starting to cannibalize on your brand? Right. And if so, you want to protect that. Right?

Speaker A: I see.

Speaker B: And in our approach we never want to over index on brand, right? We run shopping campaigns, we run new customer acquisition only, right. A lot of what we do, I would say 80 plus percent is actually non branded, right? Because as you grow your brand ROAS is going to be super high, right? You want to kind of protect that space as much as you can. But then you want to start showing up in those shopping feeds, right? You want to start showing up in those additional placements that PMAX offers you, uh, you want to start expanding your YouTube presence, right? So yeah, I think, I think the data will tell you when it's time. I mean for us typically, right, if a brand is already spending 30, 40, 50 plus K a month on Meta, we're already looking at Google like okay, we need to start even at a small spend, right? We might start at $500 a week, right? And see, right? Because Google, the way their budgeting works as you know it, it realistically, if the demand's not there, if our controls are pretty tight, it won't even spend it. And that in its, in and of itself is a signal, right? And it's, it could be a signal that your brand demand isn't as high. And if that's the case, then if you're looking at the holistic, you know, MER or uh, CAC or whatever it is of the business, can we start to expand into non brand? Can we essentially start to do and take some of the content that we're producing on Meta and plug it into PMAX and YouTube and other things and start to generate additional sources of new eyeballs to the Business.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, uh, that's good. Now, you started mentioning something like the metrics. Cause for brand new founders. I wanted to kind of explain what that is and why that's so important. So you mentioned customer acquisition costs, CAC and marketing efficiency ratios. What are those specific metrics and why is it important for brand new founders to pay attention to those from a business perspective?

Speaker B: Yeah. You honestly just want to understand if you're making money or not. And CAC and MER are not those metrics to a degree. They're leading indicators. Right. And we do have quite a few brands where they're mainly focused on new customer acquisition. That's why they come to us. Right. They have their retention piece in house. Um, and that's all well and good and it plays very nicely together. I mean, the, the number one metric. Right. Is probably contribution margin.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: Uh, and for newer founders, it's really just dialing in before you start to scale. Like, if I have a core set of SKUs, what is it costing me as a, as a business to produce that, ship that package it, um, et cetera. And then layering on your ad, your projected ad spend cost, and does that number mean that I'm profitable or if I'm not first order profitable, what is my retention and LTV metrics look like for a specific cohort? And am I willing to stomach that? Right. Because there's something in E commerce called the cash conversion cycle and you have to have enough cash coming back into the business to continue to grow your inventory if your goal is to scale. Right. Because the last thing you would want to do is really two scenarios you don't want to be in as a founder is you have way too much inventory that's sitting on shelves and then you're unable to move it without spending a ton of money. And oftentimes, I mean spending it inefficiently. Right. So not only do you have all this inventory you've already paid for sitting in a warehouse, but now you're going through it or selling through it in a unprofitable way. And then the other is your hero skews because you know you didn't forecast correctly or you weren't really sure if it was going to take off. Uh, your hero skus go out of stock very quickly and it tanks. Meta performance, Google performance, site conversion rate. Uh, and then you have to scale back and then you're kind of in this yo yo based on your inventory planning. Uh, and you know, your, your holistic business forecast.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So I would say like Knowing your numbers for sure before you really start to scale, what does that mean for your business? Like can, can your business go from 50k a month in meta spend to, to 200k? Assuming right. Your, your CAC doesn't fluctuate, you know, more than 10 or 15%, um, in that acquisition cycle. And what does that mean for like your inventory planning?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's good because I know it just a lot of like, just startup like brands, they won't really understand like this piece. But like the, the numbers is actually like the first thing that you should actually do, like just kind of planning that out, like what is your break even? Like cac. And like what does it look like? What does it look like scaling on like forward and like what does it look like to make money? And you mentioned like contribution margin, which literally that's the thing that founders should actually be focusing on at the end of the day, at the end of the month. Are, uh, you making money in that point? Is it a positive or is it a negative? If it's negative, then you kind of have to go back and adjust strategy. Is that right?

Speaker B: Some brands that we work with don't get to a place where contribution margin is the most important factor right away. Uh, sometimes it's just cac. It's uh, acquisition costs, first order profitability, which is I would say an easier metric to get to from day one. Another metric that a lot of the CFOs that we work with care a lot about is spend to net. Spend to net, yeah. So how much you're spending against net revenue, it's sort of like, it's similar to MER. And the reason for that is in the CFO's model, they'll typically have a range where the business can continue operating profitably. Um, whether it's like 15 to 20%, 20 to 30% just based on the AOV of the product and things like that. So that's another really important one. We found that a lot of brands, especially on the finance side, do track and we track all of that inside of our internal metrics as well.

Speaker A: Do you guys use like any like particular um, like platforms like a tracking mechanism or do you guys kind of have like your own, your own like in house, like tracking mechanism in terms of analytics?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So we're like new school and old school a little bit. So we have uh, you know, a dashboard that's built inside of Google sheets that kind of pulls everything From Shopify to GA4. All the platforms broken down, uh, you know, daily, weekly, monthly, um, and a lot of our brands do enjoy looking at that, right? And we update that a couple times a week. And then we also have that same sort of uh, ecosystem. It's a little bit elevated, right? We have like SKU analytics and location analytics and all of that built into a looker data studio and that's all hosted inside of BigQuery and that runs three times a day. And that has everything from like executive level dashboarding. Right. Say the CEO of the company can pull it up on their phone and say, oh, how are we tracking today versus yesterday? All the way down to your inventory planner can look at uh, top selling SKUs and fluctuations day over day, week over week. Uh, where, uh, geo locations, right. Typically New York, California, Chicago, those types of places. Uh, but then any like, say you're a seasonal brand and the weather is shifting, right? Are we seeing fluctuations in not only SKU but location? And how does that change our media strategy and things like that? So um, we have a couple different tools that we use and we're actually always trying to find the right mix. Right. We have a ton of analytics and our approach is uh, signals over noise.

Speaker A: Signals over noise.

Speaker B: Signals over noise. So like, okay, we have 15 tabs and dozens of dashboards. But what is this telling us on any given day or any given week? And how is retention, uh, pivoting their strategy? How is media, how is organic, how is influencer marketing gonna pivot based on these changes? And again, all of those analytics need to ladder into a forecast that's shared between the brand and the agencies that they work with. And uh, without all those things coming together, everyone's kind of operating in a silo which can be very tough to like hit that uh, that forecast does.

Speaker A: Now in terms of forecast, that's, I think that's a very good point that you mentioned as well. So like in your perspective, like who do you think should really just be managing or taking charge of like the forecasts? Like is it like the cfo, the CEO, Is it like the marketing team? Like what? Like who do you think should be like taking charge of that?

Speaker B: I love this question because it is um, I would say controversial, but people have a lot of different opinions on who should own.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, truthfully I do believe that the brand, ah, whether it's the CEO, the cfo, uh, it's obviously going to be a combination of both of them working together, should own the initial forecast. And then what we do um, at our agency is we ask to see it and we'll pressure test it. Against historicals because we have all the historical data, what we're seeing, uh, not only in the market but within Meta Inventory and how meta's changing. For example, if we see a lot of forecasts that are broken down um, by platform, laddering into holistic and then laddering into a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly view. Well if those forecast assumptions that you publish in January are based on meta performance from let's say last year, well even take what happened on Meta this week, right? They changed their entire. Not entire, but they made some major changes to how they look at uh, attribution. Right. Like what does a click mean? How is CPA calculated based on that? Right from one day click, seven day click and how views are counted. Right. So if your forecast is assuming the same structural setup and same signals that Meta had last year and that's laddering into a specific cpa, that's no longer relevant at that point because the CPA technically changes. We asked to see that uh, because we have all that historical uh, knowledge inside of the platforms and also the brand data and it's an ongoing conversation. Sometimes that conversation is this is absolutely realistic. We feel that we can do this. And here's our approach over the next 30, 60, 90 days, um, here's what we recommend doing, uh, if you have a spike in the summer and you know, based on your brand seasonality, here's what we recommend doing from like a content creative, uh, you know, bundle and save gwp, whatever it might be. Um, yeah, and so I think it's a shared, I would say agencies do have, um, they have a major role to play, right? Because if they're completely hands off then they're actually putting themselves in a position where it's easy to point their finger at them. And so I'd rather have m more input and see the forecast and have conversations with brands than to be completely hands off. But at the end of the day it is the brand's responsibility to understand because we don't see their whole P and L, we don't see how much they're paying internal and external people. And uh, we obviously know their cogs and different things like that inside of Shopify. But um, yeah, I think it's a shared uh, experience for sure.

Speaker A: No, I definitely agree with that. I definitely agree with that. And so because my background is from like ctc, you know, so I've kind ah, of implemented a lot of their like strategy in terms of like forecasting into like what we do at Lion Media, you know, cause with some of like, the brands that we work with, like, they'll give us like, um, kind of like their version of a forecast, you know, kind of for what you mentioned. It's like, a lot of times this is, like, unrealistic, right? And the reason being is, uh, maybe they might be. Maybe the forecast might be based upon, like, last year, right? Um, or maybe it might be based upon last month. Maybe from coming from Black Friday to, um, in January or February, they kind of have the same expectation of return on ad spend. And so kind of when we look at that, it's like, well, looking like their calendar. I was like, okay, what is going on in your calendar that makes you think that you guys can kind of hit, uh, these revenue? Are you guys launching a new product type of thing? Are you guys doing, uh, a promotion that can kind of back up this increase or this increase, like, in revenue or like this, like, efficiency level? So that's kind of when we, when we're talking, like, with founders, like, hey, there's not, there's not really anything on, like, the marketing calendar that's kind of like, helping us or that can really, like, help you kind, um, of hit this revenue number. Because this is kind of like that's. It's going to be very hard to hit that based upon, like, the current situation that's happening, like, in the marketplace right now and what you guys have on, like, on your marketing calendar. So I'm curious, do you guys also kind of look at it like, that way, like the market calendar, or also really help, ah, determine kind of how this is, like, how to essentially approach this or to hit those targets?

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, I mean, we've tried, right? And we're always trying to get better in what questions we're asking, what assumptions, uh, we're making, what assumptions maybe the brand is making. And we've seen a lot, right? A couple of examples. We've seen forecasts that we felt were absolutely doable, uh, when onboarding a new brand. And then we're working together for a few months and things are a little off, and we're not really sure why. And then we start doing some digging, and it turns out, well, last year they had this hero skew that was an early, um, early to the market in their space. And it just, like, took off like wildfire. And since, like, competitors have come out with competitor SKUs, right? And so, uh, it's not performing as well. Well, that can kind of throw up your forecast and the expectations, right? Like, you're no longer the sole player within that. Within that space with that specific product. We've, we've had brands where you know, they give us a gross revenue number year over year, uh, and their forecast is based on gross revenue. And then we're, you know, we're scaling and things are going well, but we're, we're missing the top line revenue target. And then we dig deeper into analytics and comes to find out the brand had been heavily discounting like a large portion of SKUs for six months. Months. And so gross revenue is very high, but net revenue is actually like demand revenue is actually very low. And so then when we look at demand revenue, it's actually flat compared to last year. Because when you remove those discounts, right, and things like that, we're actually doing a pretty good job. But like when you're only looking at gross, it's like, oh, we're down 30%. It's like, yeah, and our spend is flat and our demand revenue is flat. So m. It's really not worst case scenario. The business just changed the way they were operating and, and that's okay, right? We're as an agency, right. You have to be flexible, you have to be nimble and adapt to those changing circumstances. Just like you do on, on Meta and Google every single day.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Getting back into like meta and Google because obviously there's been a lot of update that's been happening in the space, you know, because what is kind of like currently, um, like the play right now, like what is like leading meta in terms of like the optimization strategy is very different from kind of when you started back in 2015. Because back then meta was completely, completely different. And you mentioned it's like, you know, you didn't really have to put a whole lot of effort but like you just put creative, you put a product out there, like people start buying, but that's no longer the case. Right. So one is like what, what changes like have you have. Do you guys see like happening now compared to like back then when, you know, when you first started getting into like market in like 2015?

Speaker B: Oh, uh, I mean I can go all the way back to 2015 or I can go back to like six months ago.

Speaker A: What's one of some of like the biggest shift?

Speaker B: Oh, I mean from when I first started, uh, I think we talked about this off screen a little bit. I mean you could, you know, audience segments, you could audience hack all day long. Right. You could, you could have a pretty uh, broad, not broad targeting, but in terms of the number of campaigns and ad sets and different things. Like that, um, I mean, I've been in the space for too long, so

Speaker A: I remember too long.

Speaker B: Power Editor, right. Like, which doesn't even exist anymore and Power Editor. Yeah, that's.

Speaker A: I don't even know what, though.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's. Yeah, it was what Ads Manager basically used to be.

Speaker A: Oh, interesting.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's what it was called. But, um, yeah, I would definitely say, like, the audience targeting. Right. I know the last couple years it's been, you know, creative does the targeting, which is absolutely true. It's not just creative, right? It's not just your imagery. It's. It's your landing page. It's. It's your offer, it's your copy, it's your on text, uh, on image, text in your image and, uh, your hook. All of that stuff. Right? So I think saying, like, it's just creative. There's seven or eight different elements that go into that that are really doing the targeting. Um, so that's where we're at now. But I mean, yeah, back in the day it was like, creative, whatever. I mean, less restrictions for sure. Um, both on creative and targeting. And then, yeah, I would say, like, lookalikes. I mean, I remember doing lookalike stacks on, you know, purchasers and going like 1 to 3% and then stacking like a 10%. Right. And the bigger the percentage, the larger the audience and all of that. And then obviously you have your cost caps, bid caps, all of that, which is still very much in play today. Um, I think those have gotten, um, smarter, for sure. Yeah. Uh, and then, yeah, I would say those are the biggest differences over the last. I'm probably missing a dozen other things. But, um, I mean, incremental attribution didn't exist even until, you know, what, a year ago or, uh, for early accounts and things like that, um, increment.

Speaker A: That's actually. That's another thing. I know we talked. We did talk about that, like, offline before. Like, incrementality, that's actually kind of a big thing right now, especially for, like, massive brands, like running across, like, multiple platform. If you could explain what incrementality is. Because I think there's. There is also a bit of just. People don't really actually know what incrementality is. So if you can explain to, like, how, like, what is it? And like, why does that, like, even matter? Because that's actually a good point.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'll do my. I'll do my best. I'm not an incrementality expert. The, uh, way that I look at it is uh, next profitable dollar spent. Right? Like, so if you're going to spend a dollar here, um, like your next dollar spent, where are you going to get that purchase regardless? Right. And, and that, you know, we live in this world of incrementality tools and MTA tools and different forms of attribution, both off, you know, off meta third party platforms as well as within meta itself. Right. Like should you only be running one day click or should you add view through conversions because you have a longer sales conversion cycle. Right. And are you limiting meta signals because of your attribution settings and all of that? But that's how I view incrementality. And uh, I know it can be a little bit confusing or get a little muddy. I mean what I, what I tell my team and other brands is you, you can actually just run your own incrementality study. And the simplest way to do that before incrementality was this buzzword. We've been doing this forever, right, As a Google search brand holdout test, right? That's technically you're measuring the incrementality of your next dollar spent inside of brand search. The way that you do that, right, if you have all your analytics buttoned up, is you're looking at what is you can use last click, you can use in platform. I like to use last click as sort of that last stop because direct organic and Google search all show significantly higher CVR traffic and revenue numbers in GA4 than say like paid search or email. Um, but you take your baseline, you can do three months worth of data, average it out, um, across organic. Uh, really it would be like organic and then paid search isolating to brand and then you would remove brand completely. And then what's. Does organic search over the testing period actually show a lift in revenue, in traffic, in conversions. Right. And if not, then that tells you, okay, brand is doing some work. And if, in uh, if organic search just makes up the, you know, the entire revenue delta and that tells you like maybe you don't need to spend as much on brand search. Right? Uh, that's a very oversimplified way. I mean you can also do holdouts within specific geos, right? You have your tests and control groups pull that data in Google, pull the same revenue data inside of Shopify and uh, cross reference and then you put specific geos inside of the test and control group and run that for a month. That's another way to do an incrementality test.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's good. I've seen, I heard some brands they just like massive brands. They like completely stop spending on like brand, like the revenues stays the same, you know, which is kind of like crazy.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.

Speaker A: And uh, I think so. Sometimes like the play that like agencies would do. Cause like some accounts specifically on Google, you know, sometimes like the brand Roas actually carries like the whole account because like, just like new acquisition campaigns is just not like, it's just not there. Like, I've seen that because of my experience with other agencies, you know. But. Yeah, uh, that's interesting. That's interesting. Another question for you. So when you guys are bringing on like a new account, like within, like the agency, right. So if an account is not performing well within like the first like three days or 72 hours, like what, like what are some of like the signals that you guys are looking at and then based upon the signals, like, what are you guys doing?

Speaker B: Yeah, I would say that's a pretty tight window for us, for sure. Um, you know, our, our process of fluency is pretty, pretty dialed in. On the onboarding side, I will typically do an audit, which our audits are, are mainly, um, forward thinking. Right. We're not trying to sit here and tell you all the things that you're doing wrong or that your agency is doing wrong. And to be honest, a lot of the brands that we look at, a lot of what they're doing, they're doing right. And the agencies that they're working with are doing phenomenal work. Right. And sure, we ask questions around. Well, you know, your meta account is set up XYZ way. We're seeing repeat, uh, right. Come in because it's not excluded in these certain campaigns. Like, is that intentional? And they'll. Sometimes they'll say, yeah, that is intentional because, uh, you know, our repeat is down. And sometimes they'll say, no, like we don't want to be spending anything on repeat. Um, and so we'll call that out and say, well, that, you know, it's not a lot of spend, but it's something that could be going towards new customer acquisition. Um, and so our audits are mainly used to be a roadmap. And then we take that roadmap. First week of onboarding, we do a brand questionnaire. And it's a deep dive into who you are, what you're doing, where you want to be in five years. Right. What's your differentiator? Who are your competitors? What do you, who do you look to for creative inspiration? Right. Uh, there's a lot more, but that's sort of the gist of it, right? The next week, uh, the next week is really all creative. So we do a whole creative questionnaire, we start building out all of our motion analytics, we start pulling inspo boards, um, we go through our creative process because we have a lot of brands where we're doing paid media. We're also doing obviously creative strategy as part of that paid media. And then we're doing, uh, creative production. We'll walk through like, hey, we're gonna deliver you 10, 15, 20 assets a month. Here's kind of the breakdown, here's what we're thinking, here's our process for creation. And when we're briefing, we'll do two sets of briefs, we'll brief our internal design team, and then we'll brief your team. And here's what that brief is gonna look like. Here's the workflow for intaking the brief, reviewing, approving, and then going to production. And then week three is when we take that audit and we turn it into a whole roadmap where we look at every single campaign that's live across every single platform and then we annotate the changes we plan on making and the expected outcome and sort of the rationale, we review all that with the brand. And then week four is we're hands on keys, we're making decisions. And also that's when we go through all of our analytics, right? So that would be the looker dashboard, uh, data, trend sheets, all of that. Um, and really that initial roadmap, it has timelines to it. Because what we've seen, and this is a mistake that we as an agency have learned from, is if you flip an account, let's say, for a larger brand. And what I mean by flip is like you rename everything, you start to exclude all these repeat purchasers, right? All these things that will, quote, unquote, tank performance, um, even though structurally it's the right thing to do, that the brand has asked us to do, if you do it too quickly, I mean, you worked with plenty of brands, right? They see that meta revenue go from 250k a week to like 150k a week. And they're like, what did you do? It's like, well, we actually, we did what we discussed. And this is what your actual meta revenue is, right, when excluding view through conversions and repeat customers and all these other things. But that's sort of putting yourself in a disadvantage, uh, right. In terms of the relationship that you're trying to build with the brand. And so we've started to, uh, over the Last two years, like really slow our role a little bit in terms of how aggressive we're changing. Right. Uh, because let's say a brand has been running on like 70% retention, 30% new customer acquisition for years on Meta and their ROAS is like a 10x. Right. I mean we've all seen this kind of stuff and then we go in and within 72 hours we flip that.

Speaker A: Definitely see that.

Speaker B: You know what's gonna happen, The ROAS is gonna go to a 2 and revenue's gonna go down and they're spending the same and they're gonna be like, you, you ruined everything. Right. And whether that's true or not, that can be debated. But our approach has definitely been to start with the easy wins. A lot of that is stuff in Events Manager. What is your match rate on core metrics? Um, things like that and really building that foundation. And then we start to layer in the bigger changes over the course of 30 to 60 days.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's good. And just in terms of Events Manager, so I presume those are some of the first things that when you guys are taking on a new account, just making sure audit tracking is good, conversion API and all those things are set up properly.

Speaker B: That's in our audit we have a whole health score. When we're looking at uh, an aggregate of our brands and what we're hearing from Meta in terms of what each event really should look like in terms of that match rate, we look at, uh, duplication. Right. Is something we see a lot. Uh, we ask about tech partnerships. Are you using Elevar, Are you using some other third party tracking tool? Uh, things like that, just so we understand what we're walking into and so we limit our assumptions and um. Yeah, I mean, right. Because if your capi isn't set up correctly or there's like broken links and tracking or like UTMs are off, I mean there's a whole bunch, uh, of things that will affect like how we're looking at the business and we don't want to make uh, the wrong assumptions. Right. Um, and so yeah, we, we really start with that foundational layer first.

Speaker A: Yeah, you gotta get your process like really dialed out. That's good. Yeah, that's good. And now kind of going back now creative, because we've been talking about creative for, for quite some time now. It's um, with like, with Andromeda. Right. So because Andromeda just kind of essentially like put into place like the necessity for like creative diversification. Like just like a larger volume of like creatives do you guys push as much creative, um, as like, as Andromeda actually, like, requires kind of like what is the thinking, like the process, like around that? Are you guys just pushing like a ton of new creative, like every single week type of thing every single month? So like what kind of demand does that put on, like accounts?

Speaker B: Yeah, great question. It's very much brand dependent. Account dependent, uh, both in terms of like the space, the aov, skus. Right, all of that, as well as spend level.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Right. And so a brand spending 20k a month doesn't really plan to scale much beyond that. They don't need 100 creatives a month. And the other thing too, that's important to remember when we're pushing this. You have to have hundreds of creatives. There's very much a very real cost to creating that. Not just in terms of paying designers and all that, but the time to review and brief, um, and all that and also spend. And that's a big one that, um, you know, we, we try to educate brands on is like, it would be great if we had this content creation machine where, you know, we were testing hundreds of creatives a month. But right now with where our spend's at, do you want us to be forcing spend to hundreds of assets a month? Like, and there's different, you know, there are many, many ways that you can do creative testing. Everyone kind of has their own best practice. Ours, we don't have a best practice because it's very much account dependent. Like you can set up creative testing based on specific SKUs and Personas. Right. If you have that dialed in, you can do it based on hook angle, like creative type. Right. I mean you could do cbo, abo, whatever you want. Right. Um, I don't think we need to debate that. It's more so like the understanding as an agency, uh, and also one that produces content, not pushing brands to like produce content, just to produce content and making sure that when we are producing content, it's rooted in our creative strategy. So rooted in the briefs, rooted in the metrics that we're pulling in motion. Right. Our creative strategists are, they're doing reporting every single week and they're looking at everything from like product performance. Right. Obviously they're looking at what meta is allowed to give them. Right. From whether we're running like an awareness campaign, top of funnel retention, whatever it is. So we're looking at hold rate, hook rate, we're looking at cvr, click through rate. Uh, CPA and roas are big Ones like purchase volume, spend is also a massive leading indicator for us. Right. If the way that we're testing the creative and we're not forcing it, um, Meta is telling us, hey, this is a winner. We were able to scale it and we did it, uh, against your cost controls. We did it at a healthy CPA that's within your target range. That's a clear signal that that creative type, uh, is working. And so our strategists take that information and they brief out dozens of more concepts around that with different diverse hooks and angles. Right. Uh, to test. So I mean, to answer your question, it is very much account dependent. Yeah. But we want to be mindful of the time and the cost that it takes brands to produce that creative. Because I'm sure you've been on the other end of this. Right. It's like, well, I spent so much time creating all these ads, like, why did they get spent?

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: It's like, well, there are a couple of reasons for that. One, it's, we're, we're setting it up in the way that we feel is most advantageous to not waste money in platform. But then there's an associated cost outside of platform because the brand is viewing that as wasted spend and they took the time and, um, production value to create it and it didn't get spent.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's good. Now, in terms of just like now AI Creative, because obviously Meta now has its own built in AI creative system to, it's like producing creative kind of based upon what you already injected. Is that something that you guys leverage a lot or is that something that you guys, you know, just don't like, let Meta take as much control from like the creative output of things.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I think there's two parts to that. Right. In terms of our own creative production, we offer as a service like AI Assisted, we call it AI Assisted Creative.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And that's very much brand dependent. We work with a lot of amazing brands that, um, you know, they're very brand forward. And so there are just certain things that they don't want to see associated with their brand, which makes total sense. Right. Uh, and then we work with other brands that are like, sure, we'll try it. Right. And both approaches have pros and cons, for sure. Um, and then for brands that are open to like trying some different AI Assisted creatives, we have AI Assisted creative packages that will pitch them and. Right. In terms of pricing, it's a little more favorable. In terms of the output, it's a little bit more Favorable. Um, but yeah, that's something we've been working on for the last four months and we've seen some good traction on in terms of how we're allowing meta in platform. We're again going back to the brands that are more brand forward. Like they don't. They work really hard to create assets that they're proud of and that fit their brand identity and they don't want to see random text overlays or you know, weird transitions or music or other things like that, which uh, is totally fine. And we, you know, we turn all those things off. We don't mess with that. And as you know, like meta turns those things on all the time and then you have to turn it back off. So, um, yeah, we're pretty. We try to stay away from that for the most part, uh, where we can just to respect our brands, like brand guidelines and boundaries.

Speaker A: That's good. Now that question is like, do they perform better? Like, have you guys like tested to where you know, you're allowing meta to have a little more control of like, you know, all these different like assistive things that they have in place? Like have you guys tested both side of the. Of like the optimizations?

Speaker B: Yeah, I would say not definitive. Like, and again, just because we have so few brands that would want all AI optimizations on, right? Because to your question, like, we don't really have a brand that like if you're AB testing would say have all AI meta optimizations on. Uh, they might allow a select few, but that sort of skews the data because then you don't really know like which of Those that's true. 10 or 12 different optimizations actually work. Yeah. Um, now we have seen some success with AI like creative that's been made, right. And like short snappy videos and uh, like product overlays and you know, we use a couple of uh, different partners for like DPA overlays and things like that that are like AI generated and, and those work super well right now. Do they just scale to infinity and like blow everything else out of the water? Like of course not. But, um, always worth having that in your toolkit. Uh, for sure.

Speaker A: That's good man. That's good. Now something. Now another new platform that's been kind of coming into the play, Applovin. What is your thoughts on Applovin?

Speaker B: Dude, to be honest, we haven't tested a ton, uh, brands. Uh, our brands have been really focused on really the core three. So like Meta, Google and TikTok. Uh, I've seen a Lot of other operators have a ton of success from my understanding. And speaking with those operators, it's very much dependent on uh, your icp. M. Right. Because it's mobile apps, mobile games, things like that. Um, and so depending on where your core customer fits in that demographic, I'm sure it could do really, really well. Um, but we haven't really tested enough for me to have a firm opinion on it. M. We tested other things not similar to Applovin, but ah, we tested Vibe for ctv. We have a lot of brands using, uh, Critio and Mountain and, and things like that. And uh, those are great. And we're doing more and more on YouTube for sure. Right. Like standard YouTube campaigns, but also YouTube shorts has been great. Um, but yeah, not a ton on Applovin, unfortunately.

Speaker A: Yeah, I know we haven't tested like Mountain yet, but like, I'm curious, like, just like the whole ctv like play, like, is that, does that really work, like from an efficiency standpoint from like driving new customer acquisition? Like, is that like an effective tool? I'm always like on the fence with that.

Speaker B: I think it depends on how you're looking and defining efficiency. Right.

Speaker A: Um, from a new, from a new customer acquisition standpoint, like is, does that get a good enough job of.

Speaker B: I think depending on your attribution and sort of how you're measuring it, the platforms can tell you one thing and your holistic data can tell you another transparently. But the, the way that I talk to brands about those platforms is if you're looking to measure it in the same one to one as like a Meta or TikTok or a Google, you're gonna be disappointed. Right, Right. But if you're looking to see an incremental lift in, right. Direct traffic, organic traffic, even brand search, um, you know, new customers, overall new traffic, percentages, things like that, then that's what we need to be measuring. Because you're reaching people where they're watching TV and yeah, you can scan QR codes and do like how many people actually do that? I don't know. Like I've seen some of our brand stuff on like YouTube, TV and other things. Right. And you know, I'm obviously not like Googling because I work with the brand, but like other people, right. If they're sitting there with their laptop or on their phone, they might just Google them. Right. Uh, so it's, it's a little bit different in that way. And so I think that's where the education piece comes in. And just being honest with. Right. It's you're not going to measure it the same way. And if we're comfortable with that, that's, that's okay. We can have like a small test budget and we can like plant our stakes in the ground. This is where we're at in terms of total net new traffic percentage. Here's where we're at with uh, new customer acquisition and direct uh, traffic, organic traffic. And are we seeing a lift? And if we are, then great. That's amazing. And we can continue to scale that channel.

Speaker A: That's good, man. Yeah, that's good. Good answer. Yeah, that's a good way to look at that. Now I know there's also going to be because I have some friends, they also starting up agencies and whatnot. And so they always like to kind of ask me a different question from, from like the business aspect of it. Obviously you have a lot more experience on the business aspect of like an agency to start off. Like what makes like what do you think a good agency looks like from like start to finish? And what does a bad agency look like? And I mean we can break this down from like the whole process of like onboarding a new client or just like methodology of kind of how the agency looks at paid medias. Like what do you think makes up like a good agency versus like a bad one? And what should. And then. I know. And then actually let's, let's go there first before we, you know, before we further kind of, you know, break it down. He said, oh boy.

Speaker B: Look. Yeah, I think I'll just start with I've been in this space for a long time and you know, when I was younger I'd be like, oh, this, you know, this agency is this. And then whatever. And um, as I've been in the space long enough and experiencing growing agencies and scaling and working with hundreds of different brands, like, you know, you can get on an audit and rip someone apart without any context.

Speaker A: True.

Speaker B: What does that really do for you? Right. Like it's an ego thing maybe. I don't know. But I try to approach all of these engagements and things like that. No one has mal intent essentially. Like they're not purposely trying to do a bad job or like harm a brand. Right. Like, I don't, I would be shocked if agencies were operating that way. Um, so I mean, in terms of good agencies, I tell my team this all the time. Like at the most foundational level, we're in the customer service industry. Right. And yes, there are like highly technical components to it and we're in a space Where, Right. I guess a good analogy would be like we're running a pizza shop but like the oven breaks or the temperature changes, uh, every other day. Like referring to Meta. Right. And so we're dealing with other variables where like, the customer expects like a consistent outcome, but like behind the scenes things are changing constantly. Um, and so it does take like a special type of person to like, want to be in the space and like handle things that like, they can fundamentally not control. Like we can't control when Meta makes an update or Google changes something that will fundamentally change the landscape of how things are measured. Right. Which changes all historical analytics, which changes delivery, which changes cpa, all of these things. Right. Um, so I think a great agency, right. Is that customer, uh, service focused mindset. And then really you can talk about tech, you can talk about, uh, the foundations of how you're doing, project management, intake, sales, all that stuff. All that stuff matters a ton. And we've learned a lot the last three years, years at Fluency on why those things matter in terms of like, visibility for internal processes and, you know, how you can go from onboarding one client a month to three to four. Right. And making sure that's not just relying on people and that they have tools that allow them and empower them to do great work.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: But really what it comes down to is the team and the people. Uh, because, right. Like Fluency is nothing without the team. Right. Like Noon Club is nothing without the team. So I firmly believe in that. And so for us, right, we made a decision from day one at Fluency, whether this is the right or wrong decision, I don't know. It's the decision we went with and we're continuing to do it. We don't have like a junior intake training program. Um, because we started like very lean and scrappy. We just wanted to go out and hire the best people that we could afford that had a lot of experience and we wanted them to grow with the business. Right. And a couple good examples of that. The first full time paid social buyer that we hired, we hired her in January 2023. She's now our head of paid media. She manages a team of 20 people. Right?

Speaker A: 20, 23.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah. So three years. She's been with us a little over three years and it's been amazing to watch her go from managing five or six accounts to now, uh, went from that to team lead, managing a couple of accounts and then a small team to now, right. Managing a team of 15 to 20 people, helping with the hiring process. Uh, Evaluating client pitches, doing audits. Uh, I mean, she's not only expanded her knowledge and skillset in the space, but across agency operations. Right. Which is great. Um, and same thing with our paid search director, started with us two years ago. Incredible buyer, also incredible leader. Uh, we promoted her two weeks ago to director of paid search, and now she's running that whole department. And so we just continue to try and find the best people we can and create pathways for them, whether it's. We have people who absolutely want to run teams and they want to move into management and leadership. And so we do our best to ensure that they have a very clear path, uh, to do so. But, uh, then we have people who we ask and they say, you know, I'm not super interested in that right now. And so that means for us as an agency, we have to be adaptable to that mindset because it's a non traditional mindset. Right. Like, you think, like, you enter your career and you're kind of told, like, the only way up is management. So I just climb these ladders. And uh, for us, it's like, for those people who want to manage accounts, how do we challenge them? How do we keep them engaged? Right. And so it's, do they get to take on bigger accounts? Do they get to expand into new lines of business? Right. For certain, that could mean doing more programmatic or like Bing or YouTube and things like that. Right. Um, and so keeping them engaged as well is super important. Um, so I think the best agencies invest the most in their people and have those conversations. And um, again, not just through like, promotions and new opportunities and things like that, um, but challenging them, allowing them to adapt and try new tools as things, uh, progress not only in meta, in Google and these platforms, but in the analytics space, in the AI space. Right. And having the freedom and flexibility to do that.

Speaker A: No, that's a very good point, man. Because like, the, like the space that we're in is very people led. You know, like, if you have good people, I think you will do like very well into the space. If you have crappy people or not now what, to use the word crappy. But like, if you have very junior people who don't necessarily know what they're doing and you kind of happen to like, kind of help them grow, like that kind of leaves room from like, you know, a lot of mistakes. And if you're handing them like big clients, like, they'll, they'll make some mistakes. Because I've definitely seen that, um, just like with my, my experience A brand came in. Like a brand comes in, um, maybe they'll have like a senior person, like starting first and then it's like, you know, they do decent enough, then they get passed down to like a junior like, level person. And he may not know as well what he's doing and he'll take that and like, obviously not, um, do as well because we definitely seen that's like some brands will come to us and it's like, yeah, we were with X, y and Z Co. And you know, this is, this is how we're doing. Um, like they were doing pretty decent. But then over time, like just performance just kind of started to like, degrade over time. And like, we've definitely seen that. So, like, I agree with what you're saying. Like, it's definitely people led. If you can keep people, like, if you can get, if you can get and keep good talent, dude, I think you're gonna be very successful in that space. And that's like something that like, we're like doing too as well, trying to find good talent that can like, obviously like execute to the level that we need, uh, that we need them to and like keep them to as well, you know.

Speaker B: Yeah. And that whole thing ladders into like the fluency model.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Right. So I mentioned, right. We only try to hire senior level people and we also don't give them 15 accounts to work on.

Speaker A: That's. Yep.

Speaker B: We give them from day one, it was always okay, five to six accounts. Sometimes it's three, depending on the size of the account. Sometimes it's a little more. Right. And we're always trying to find that balance. And every week we're having and trying to continue to have open conversations with the team around. Around bandwidth. Right. And we've been, uh, one lesson that we've been learning and we've been pivoting and trying to learn and grow from is not just looking at like the client retainer size against, Right. Like an MRR multiple and stuff. Because like a client that has a massive retainer might be a lot less, like, have a lot less like ad hoc requests or like, you know, things like that than a client that's a little bit smaller. Right. And those things need to be taken into consideration when, when you're evaluating like someone's bandwidth. Right. And so it's having those open conversations and um, encouraging and empowering the team to feel like they absolutely have a voice in those conversations. Right. Is super important for us. Um, and yeah, like, our model is very high touch. And so I interview Candidates every week from different agencies. And some of them, they have the exact same model. They're like, yeah, I'm on like three brands or like even larger agencies. I'm on one brand, right, which, which is awesome. Really allows you to go deep and like understand that brand as if you're a member of their own team. But then I also interview uh, other candidates where they're like, yeah, I'm on 15 brands, I'm um, on 20 brands. I'm like, well, how often are you talking to those brands? Once a month maybe sometimes. Or I'm not even talking to them because I have an account manager, which is something at fluency we don't do. Uh, when Jacob and I first met and we were talking about this model, one of the things we both felt very strongly about was not having like layers upon layers upon layers of account managers, regardless of the client size, to like hide buyers and creative strategists. Right. So at Fluency every week you're talking to the person spending your dollars on Meta and your dollars on Google directly. Right. And of course like I can jump in and help with questions and you know, our head of paid media can jump in and help support where necessary. And Right. We have layers of support, but we're not the primary. Um, and that is a little bit of a shift. And, and I think it's a shift for people coming into Fluency too that are used to sort of having that little buffer, right. Or not having to talk to clients directly. But I think it, I think it's super important and I don't think we'll ever really waver from that. And we might add on layers. Right. We get a ton of questions about holistic growth, which it would be great down the line if we're able to hire like a growth strategy lead who can, who can take those like non media questions and work on those things. Right. Things like forecasting and inventory planning and CRM and whatever it is. Right. But um, that's another big piece of our model that I think our brands do appreciate.

Speaker A: That's pretty good, dude. Now on that same topic, dude, what about AI now? So like how does, and what I mean by that is like do you think with the direction in which we're heading with AI, like with uh, uh, Meta acquiring like manners and stuff like that. So do you think there's going to be a point in time to where media buyer is not going to be needed as much or to the point to where you won't need as many media buyers because you have one media buyer that can handle more accounts now because you have things like menace that can literally get reports from you, um, provide you, uh, analysis and things to execute and things like that. Firstly, where do you think that's, that, that's going? Do you think there will be a point to where we don't get as many media buyers? I guess that'll be the first question and I'll lead up with the other question with that.

Speaker B: Yeah, I don't, I don't know if I would say not as many media buyers like as a whole, because that, because that's also dependent on how many brands exist and how many companies exist, which is true.

Speaker A: And what I mean by that is that. So like for example, like what a, uh, media buyer being able to handle more accounts now because they can do a lot more because of this, like the AI assistant doing like the analysis, like the report, etc.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, great question. And that's the conversation we're actively having at Fluency right now.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: M. Right. So I mentioned earlier we, we typically try to have a buyer have five accounts or six accounts. And what I told the team was, look, we're, we're trying to find the right AI solutions that um, that work alongside you and that handle ad hoc tasks, reporting tasks, data visualization, analyzation, whatever it is. Right, yeah, analyzing data, um, things like that, um, so that repeatable things become routine for your AI. Call it like companion. Uh, and then sure, you maybe take on one or two. Right. But what I told the team was I'm not saying we're going to layer on AI and then you're going to go from 5 to 10 because again, there's still a heavy component of client comms and back and forth and all of that. And sure, AI can like route requests and set timelines and stuff like that. But look, at the end of the day, like I still feel very confident and obviously there are gonna be outliers. There are currently, and there will be more and more brands that have maybe like one growth person and like a host of AI agents. Uh, those are people who are very much like AI native. And they also understand the complexity and like the context of what meta's saying, what Google's saying, what Shopify is saying. Right. Those are like the 1% of the 1%. Right. And, but like most brands, right, they still need people to help contextualize things and they need someone to talk them through what these things look like. And I think AI will continue to get better in those areas. But right I uh, think we talked about this a couple weeks ago. Agencies in my opinion, like technically today. Right. And even for the last however long agencies have been around, any business can run their own marketing. Yeah, right. Like any, any business owner can go into meta, create a campaign and start pressing buttons and spending money. Right. But you come to Fluency because our team has decade plus every buyer of experience and they're not going to waste your money. Mhm. And they're going to tell you exactly why they're doing something and how it layers into your, you know, your forecast, into your product roadmap, um, into your like, you know, uh, sales. All these different things, right. Uh, brand moments, um, which again like a one on one operator that has Meta and Google and uh, inventory experience and organic experience technically could do all that with the help of AI. Like no question, we're already there. But all of those possibilities existed before AI. And so I think as long as agencies are smart and how they adapt it and they're communicating to their team why it's important and for us I've communicated to the team, it's really important for us to leverage and lean in and learn these tools just for your career. Not just at fluency, but after 1000%. And that's what we screen for in the interview process. I ask every candidate now for the last four months, five months, like how are you leveraging AI currently today? And like what, uh, you know, what problems do you want to be leveraging it for, you know, at your next role. And sometimes I hear amazing use cases. More often than not I'm hearing we're not allowed to use AI or like it's really, we're only, we have, you know, chatgpt and we just use it to like ask questions or you know, something like that.

Speaker A: But yeah, yeah, I feel like some uh, some agencies are kind of challenged with the uh, with the AI because if a brand comes up to you and you guys are heavily using AI, just going to do a lot of your optimization, whatever, maybe they feel repelled to be able to charge clients uh, as much retainer because the team is not really doing much of the world. The AI is probably doing all the work. This is just an assumption of mine. I feel maybe some agency might feel that way. Dude, um, I'm very pro AI. We're trying to implement as much of that in our agency right now. Uh, like I told you to do like I'm like staying up to like 2:00am um, just kind of like building up like these agents and like just Connecting all like, all of them to like uh, like meta, like, like meta Google, like all that accounts like API integration to where literally taking my phone and like yo, like can you send me a report on like this specific account? Like dude, it's just, it's, it's an exciting moment in just like the media buying space and it's, it's. Yeah, again, for what you said, like agency, not only agency, but like as far as like the media buyers. You know, like if you're running an account I think you need to be equipped with these things because they only make you, make you faster and just kind of make you more able to just uh, perform better and help your accounts out in that sense.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think the point you're getting at is margin compression for agencies and I think that's where buyers and other team members being able to handle a little bit more work can offset some of that. Um, but we've both been using AI for a lot in terms of reporting and contextualization and things like that. But unless you like here's an example. If I ask um, if I ask meta or if I ask Claude, right, For example and ah, download a CSV or whatever performance report from a meta campaign and I give it more context around the marketing calendar and brand moments and whatever it is and I say hey, like build me this roadmap. Here are the assumptions I'm making that a pressure test it and then I'm going back and forth and I'm, and I'm calling Claude out for like inconsistencies or like different things. I'm helping it gain more context. I can do that because I've been in this space for 10 plus years and I understand the brand and I understand like the forecast and all these things. Someone without any or very limited media buyer knowledge or like growth knowledge. That's the piece that makes highly experienced operators and agencies with AI.

Speaker A: Good point.

Speaker B: That much more effective because you see people uh, on Twitter or wherever, right? And they're like oh, uh, chatgpt told me this thing. Or like Claude told me this thing and it's like that's not right. Like that's like that's totally wrong. And um, but it's also the way that AI is delivering that information. It's so convincing that it is.

Speaker A: Right, That's a very good point.

Speaker B: And sure, like when you're talking about like best pizza place in Chicago, whatever. When you're talking about like pressure testing a uh, spend analysis or forecast against CAC and things like that and Claude Gives you like something that sounds really good and you don't have the knowledge, the contextual industry knowledge to like say okay, push back, do this, this and this and you just take that at face value, give it to a brand.

Speaker A: That's a very good point.

Speaker B: You can get into some weird spots and again I think AI will get better. But again you have to have the experience to know additional context. And then uh, like when you should see my like clock cowork, like I'm going back and forth like arguing like, and saying like okay, well take this away and assume this happens. Okay. And then assume like a meta outage happens on this date and this date. Right. Because meta has outages all the time and Google has outages. And how does that change like your spend pacing and how does that change your CPA and all of that. Right. So again it's very exciting but um, we'll just have to see. We're taking it like month by month at this point. Right. Because it's changing so rapidly.

Speaker A: That's true. It's exciting man. It's definitely exciting. And now still on the agency side of things. So obviously with your experience like growing like multiple agencies, somebody's trying to build an agency because again I get asked a lot of these questions, um, on the acquisition side, what are you guys like acquisition strategy from a client, new client. And this is from somebody that's trying to start an agency, um, building an agency. Like what is your guys acquisition strategy or if that's even something you can um, to talk about.

Speaker B: Yeah, um, I mean a lot of our growth to be honest has come from like referrals, word of mouth. Um, you know our founder Jacob, he's been in the space for 15 years longer than me. Yeah. And he's been out in LA and he's worked at a ton of brands, he's consulted with a ton of brands and he just, he knows everyone. Right. Uh, uh, and so he ah, has a vast network and uh, very, very good networker and communicator. And uh, you know, obviously that's how we, he started fluency and then it's just kind of snowballed. Right. And that's great. Uh, that's how we've grown. But really that only works if you're consistently delivering like solid results to your brands. Right. And we have a pretty long client ltv at fluency. Very uh, very healthy by most industry standards. Um, but again you have to deliver. Right. If you're banking like Jacob banked on his network and his reputation to like Say, hey, I'm starting this thing. Like, here's my team. And then the team and myself, right, we all had to like, step up and deliver. Otherwise that breaks down pretty quickly. Uh, you know, we also have a head of sales who, who does a ton of outbound and, and she's been amazing. Like, she's helping move deals so much faster through our pipeline and great, um, at, at our pitch and, and selling fluency as a service and, and all of that. Um, and so, yeah, we get, we get some, uh, inbound and outbound deals, things like that. We go to events. Right. I was mentioning shop talk and things like that. And um, uh, and yeah, we also just do content. Right? Just like you're doing content. Like, we do some content. We're on LinkedIn. Um, I'm doing this podcast.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Uh, things like that. So we try to do a mix. I definitely think our inbound marketing efforts. Interesting saying this as an agency could be better. And we're trying. We've just been so focused on client fulfillment and making sure we have the best client experience, best service that we can offer. But we've been making strides the last year or so to really ramp up, uh, those marketing efforts for the agency.

Speaker A: That's good, man. Totally agree. Yeah, I think even just like this podcast, I think it's a good piece of like, m marketing, uh, strategy for a client. Like new clients. Like, I'm obviously, I'm m gonna definitely share this with you as well so your team can use it as you as you wish. But yeah, just like, I think content is one of the biggest pieces. Um, because if you're able to put your face out there and potential clients, brands, they can see some of like the marketing content that you're putting out there, like seeing like your, like your experience in this, like, in terms of like the platform, like the industry, et cetera, it definitely helps communicate to brands that, oh, this person is knowledgeable in what they talking about. Um, and if you're also able to kind of like share a little bit about like your background, so kind of where you come from, you know, kind of building credibility. I think it's a good way of just like marketing overall. Like brands. Brands are seeing that, like, oh, I think I would like to work with this person, or maybe they have a person, a personality type that I really like, you know, so all of those little mix definitely helps from like an acquisition standpoint because that's what we've been heavily focusing on. Um, I think just me being in front of the cameras I think it's a good way for us to acquire, like, new clients as a founder as well. And so that's something that I'm currently, like, focusing on a lot as a founder for like, new client acquisition. And so again, you kind of also have to look at, like, your expertise to see, okay, what are you actually, like, good at? Are you a good communicator? Are you good in front of like, cameras? You know, if looking at those type of, like, looking at that and determining what your skills level is, if that's something that you're good at, I would invest, like, time and energy into actually kind of like building that, you know, um, if you're like, you're a blogger, you're somebody that's kind of more like behind the scene, maybe just that's doing like, cold email outbound, you know, using all these platforms, you know. But again, this is just me answering the questions like, that I often get from like, other people trying to, like, start like, agencies and whatnot, you know. So. Yeah, but now that's a. That's good what you said. Now I know we're jumping back and forth over here. Dude, this is, this is good, man. This is good. We're like an hour and 20 minutes. An hour and 20, I think, into this. Yeah. So in terms of like, specific, like, in terms of like, specific, um, platforms that you guys use for maybe like email marketing, you know, because there's obviously there's like various vendors and platform that you can use across like, all these things. For email specifically, what do you guys recommend is the best and what do you guys like, heavily, like, you know, skew to us or lean towards for, like, clients or.

Speaker B: For.

Speaker A: For clients. Yeah, for clients. Yeah. This is not more like on the brand side. Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, Klaviyo for sure.

Speaker A: Klaviyo. Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, that's. I'm not as familiar, like, truthfully, on the CRM, um, lifecycle marketing side. Um, I mean, my own. My main background in CRM, um, is on B2B. So that's like Marketo, HubSpot, all of that. But yeah, I would say most of the brands that we work with or that we talk to for life cycle marketing and retention, they're already using Klaviyo. Some are on like, attentive and other things like that, which we absolutely work with as well. And, um, you know, they're awesome as well. But, uh, I would say most of the brands are on Klaviyo that we talk to.

Speaker A: Okay, now that's good. Now from A, um, like, um, analytical standpoint. You mentioned you guys use a lot like a ga, which is obviously like a free platform. Is there any other platform that you guys use that you recommend?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, a lot of our larger brands, they come to us already using something like a North Beam or

Speaker A: a Triple L. Those things get expensive, man.

Speaker B: Yeah, they can for sure. Um, so they typically will have like a North Beam or a Triple Whale or a Measured, for example, for incrementality. Uh, some of them are very large brands. They have their own in house analytics suite. That is just unbelievable. Right? We have a couple of massive brands that they built all this out. They have their own data engineering teams and all of that. Um, but then most of our brands, they rely on us for sort of their core analytics, which is fine. Uh, that's why we offer it, that's why we build it, that's why we customize it to their needs and what matters most to them. So, um, yeah, I would say like 100 to $300 million brands, like they, they are often leveraging like a third party MTA or attribution tool that has like full analytics capabilities. And then they'll also usually have like an in house, fully customized for sure.

Speaker A: No, that's good, that's good, that's good, man. I went 24, dude. I definitely want, definitely want to do like a rerun of this to where we kind of talk more about an. Because we touched upon like incrementality a little bit, just like forecasting and uh, we dove a little bit more into like meta. That's kind of like the main thing that we focused on, you know. So like, I'll definitely love to do a rerun, maybe just kind of get more specific in terms like other platforms like Google or like even TikTok or even Snapchat, if that's even something that you guys use, you know. But yeah, but dude, I think this has been fantastic. This has been great. I do have one last question that just came, that just, oh boy. Came came to mind. Now obviously like different brands at different level kind of have different like problems, you know. So what is the biggest struggle that a brand anywhere from like anywhere doing from like 30 or 20k? It was like 20k to like 500k. Like what is like the biggest like bottleneck or do you see that all of these brands have very similar bottleneck? Just like from a growth perspective they try to go like, what is the biggest bottleneck of those different stages? From like a growth perspective?

Speaker B: Sure. I mean, I would say Bottlenecks that really affect any brand. I don't, I don't even know, like, if 500k in revenue a month is like a cap for these. Um, yeah, I would, I would say inventory planning and positioning, for sure.

Speaker A: It's like a universal one.

Speaker B: Yeah, just like, like sell through and like, the bigger you get, the more mature and, like, easier it is to like, forecast those things. But early on, it can be a challenge, right? Like, you could have a viral brand moment and sell out of your hero SKU and you go from doing like 20k a month in revenue to like a million, and then you're like, oh, I'm out, and all that stuff. Right? We sort of talked about that. Um, but again, we see a lot of brands mature very quickly, um, based on that, and there are tons of tools that they're able to leverage to help with that.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Um, uh, I would say on the media side, it's definitely creative, right? And not just media, but also like for the organic channels, their own media, all of that, uh, creative is definitely a big one. Um, man, there's a lot, right? Uh, and these questions also change depending on if you're bootstrapped or if you're funded, right? If you're growing and you're bootstrapped and you get to 2, 3, 4 million a year and you're like, hey, I need, uh, you're a founder. Like, hey, I need to raise. That creates additional challenges, right? Because now your investors and your board, they might have a different vision for what growth needs to look like, right? And that might mean the assumptions you made on first order profitability and LTV and like, different, um, different SKUs to launch and like, to a company like Hero SKUs, that all needs to shift in order to hit a specific growth target, right? And so that's a lot of change, right? And again, it does depend heavily on, like, if you're, if you're funded or if you're bootstrapping or like, what that looks like. What does your growth rate need to be in those two different scenarios? Um, I think matters a lot. Right? And so again, those are not specific to, like, a specific stage of growth that can happen to, um, a brand that just started and gets funded versus a brand that is doing $500 million a year. And also the growth rate for a brand and sort of the positioning looks different for a brand that doesn't care about acquisition and getting acquired versus a brand who's targeting a specific acquirer and how they position themselves as in the market.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: So all of those things are pretty nuanced and we've experienced that fluency. But, um, yeah, and then I think, I think for a smaller brand, definitely the biggest struggle is once you start spending on Meta, on Google, on TikTok, whatever it is. Uh, we find that early stage founders, they're accustomed to looking at the numbers in terms of day trading and they're like, oh, we had a bad day, we got to change all this stuff, right? And it's. And you know, those are pretty easy conversations to have, right? You, you listen and you empathize and, uh, you go back to them with a plan and sort of say, yeah, we totally hear you. Like, yesterday sucked and we acknowledge that and here's why we think that happened. Or last week sucked. Here's why we think that happened. We have all the data to show that and here's our plan and our path forward. But sometimes, right, if it's a reoccurring incident, we'll just say, hey, for your own sanity, we just want to let you know, like, here's how we view Meta and here's how we view Google performance, like during these evergreen periods, obviously sale periods, it's a little bit different. Um, but here's how we view it and here's how Meta is telling us and like the signals they're giving us. And so here's how we should be looking at the business on like, you know, day over day, week over week, you know, month over month. Um, obviously daily performance matters. That's why we track it. But we don't want to overcorrect. Right. I always say, or not always say, but I talk to the team. Like, the best media buyers know when to be patient.

Speaker A: Yeah, right.

Speaker B: And do nothing. Because sometimes doing nothing is absolutely the better option than going into account and restructuring, turning a bunch of stuff off. I mean, you know the game, right? But junior media buyers and, and people who are used to sort of day trading on those metrics, right? And those incomplete signals, they get caught in a cycle and it's a tough cycle to get out of and it's very draining, right, for, for the founder and for the agency as well. Well, so I think it's just communication and helping them understand, like, why those signals matter.

Speaker A: I agree 1000%. Dude, this has been so good, man. Ben, thank you so much, dude, I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, man. We'll definitely have to run this again. Man, we'll definitely have to run this again. Um, I know you're not that much on social media. But do you care for people to, like, follow you and do you care to show, like, share, like, your social handles and. Sure, you know all of that, like LinkedIn, etc.

Speaker B: Yeah, you can follow me on LinkedIn, Ben Dachinsky and like, uh, what do you call it?

Speaker A: Instagram. I mean, you're. Yeah, you're there, but kind of not so much.

Speaker B: I've posted four times in the last five years on Instagram, so you can follow me. I don't know what you're gonna see.

Speaker A: Yeah, and then, like, if people are interested, like, working with you guys, you know, like, what does that look like?

Speaker B: Yeah, fluencyfirm.com um, reach out via the website or reach out to me directly on LinkedIn. Um, yeah, happy to chat. Benluencyfirm.com is my. My email. So.

Speaker A: Awesome. Perfect. Awesome, man. Let's land this plane, guys. We hope you guys enjoyed this conversation between myself and Ben. You know, hope it was impactful not only, like, on the brand side, because I know a lot of people that are gonna be watching this are gonna be like, um, people like, trying to launch a brand, trying to, trying to grow a brand. So we hope this conversation was, like, impactful in terms of, like, problems that you may encounter or like, different strategies that you can do to kind of, kind of optimize. Um, also, like I said, you can also reach out to, like, myself or Ben if you guys are interested in partnering together. Um, so we can also help people like paid media, marketing, et cetera, and also as well as people trying to launch an agency from the business side. You kind of, based on our conversation, you kind of understood what the struggles are and kind of how to solve for some of those problems. So we really hope that conversation was impactful for you guys. And again, if you guys have any question, leave them down in the comment section below. We're going to drop Ben's information, um, in the description and all of that. So if you guys again, want to reach out to him, but any question that you guys have, drop them down in the comment section below and then we'll see you guys on the next one.