Marketing to the Masses

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (38.5MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | Email | RSS | More

Michael Silva – Physical Therapy Coach

 

Podcast Overview:

00:00 12 years in UK agency, communication struggles.
05:36 Credit card company sent 3 AM payment text.
06:24 PredictiveSend identifies your optimal email open time.
12:35 First business: SMS to PayPal payment solution.
14:00 WhatsApp marketing will overtake SMS usage.
17:26 Spoke to agencies, decided to work independently.
21:10 Fiverr’s name misleads, targets prefer extensive projects.
23:52 Preferred Upwork/Fiverr for cost-effective freelance services.
28:08 Facebook ads, landing page, email, TikTok promotion.
29:34 Finish projects before starting new ones.
34:09 Segment audience by product interest for targeting.
38:19 Answering service unsuitable for low-cost transactions.
40:03 Boost value with add-ons during calls.
45:12 Tipping prevents bartenders from seeking other jobs.
47:19 Understand audience, build persona, market uniquely, use data.
50:22 Build connections with trustworthy, competent colleagues is crucial.

Podcast Transcription:

Ross Jenkins [00:00:00]:
If you visit one of my clients’ websites, it automatically gives them your email address and your IP address and various other things. It doesn’t give the customer your IP address, but I believe retention has it. So then you can email market to them directly. So So you just visiting that website without even giving them your information. They already have it.

James [00:00:22]:
You have found authentic business adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumph and successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found in the podcast link found at draw in customers.com. We are locally underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie. And today, we’re welcoming slash preparing to learn from Ross Jenkins, the CEO of Digital Me. So, Ross, how is it going today?

Ross Jenkins [00:00:46]:
Doing good. Thank you very much for having me on the podcast, James.

James [00:00:49]:
Yeah. I’m glad to have you. Today, we’re talking marketing. So why don’t we start with what is Digital Me?

Ross Jenkins [00:00:55]:
Sure. So Digital Me is a a full round agency that focuses, specifically on email marketing. That’s from your your setup all the way to sort of diagnostics, analytics and understanding your audience and understanding how best to to deal with them.

James [00:01:10]:
And do you tell me typical clients that you work with? Are they smaller businesses or bigger businesses?

Ross Jenkins [00:01:16]:
Yeah. Sure. So, the majority are under 50 staff. We have some really big clients, some that you’d know pretty pretty well. We have people who have run for US president, and we have various other sort of warmer bands. So it varies.

James [00:01:31]:
Nice. Alright. And tell me, how did you get in the marketing game?

Ross Jenkins [00:01:36]:
Sure. So I’ve been in it for about 12 years. I started working for an agency in the UK, and I worked for agencies ever since. And I I I understood what the struggle was. I understood that communication sucked and, you know, result, it’s pretty much take the money and then work out how you’re On deal with it. And that’s not right, right? You don’t sell a car and hope for the best. It’s your maybe Tesla. So it’s kind of understanding the market and understanding what’s needed.

James [00:02:06]:
Got it. And you I mean, the digital me portion, I imagine. Are you exclusively DigitalME, or are you getting into some of the, I On dare say, older forms of media, but, we’ll just say other forms, not necessarily digital.

Ross Jenkins [00:02:20]:
I mean, we do some forms. Listen, if you come on board with us, you know, let’s say your your payment balances, we’re gonna call you. We’re gonna WhatsApp you. We’re gonna text you. But outbound in terms of for our clients, we try to stick to the normal sort of email marketing, WhatsApp. You know, WhatsApp works fantastically as the marketing’s all now. So it’s email, SMS, and WhatsApp.

James [00:02:41]:
Oh, I guess I should clarify the question more. I mean, as far as marketing channels for your clients using. So do you get into billboards or newspapers, magazines, anything like that?

Ross Jenkins [00:02:51]:
Nope. We leave that to the to the people who could do that best.

James [00:02:54]:
Gotcha. Alright. And as far as the digital side online, are you getting into everything from social media of every channel? I don’t even know all that exists or YouTube or It doesn’t matter. It’s things like that.

Ross Jenkins [00:03:08]:
I wanna kinda stick to stick to what works and stick to what we can build, like, the best performance. You look at ads and ads either work amazingly or, you know, it’s a massive hole. And for me, that that’s never gonna work. You know, we want the client to be happy. We want results, and the best way is we do deal with the tools that we’re the best at.

James [00:03:28]:
Alright. And what are those?

Ross Jenkins [00:03:31]:
You look at email marketing, WhatsApp, SMS. Those are the 3 sort of fundamentals we use for our tools.

James [00:03:37]:
Oh, oh, I apologize. Okay. So you’re going after really targeted people. Tell me, I guess I’m out of touch here. So tell me how do you market to people through SMS?

Ross Jenkins [00:03:48]:
Sure. So we use tools like ActiveCampaign, which allows us to SMS blast, as well as email blast. So it’s quite quite a great combo, and we’ve built a tool on top of that to to WhatsApp as well. So we we kind of have every angle within the tool. So when you you wanna market, you could say, hey, Ross. I wanna, you know, I wanna SMS. I don’t know. This list of my past customers, they’re all in the US.

Ross Jenkins [00:04:13]:
You know, I’ve worked with them before. I wanna show them, you know, a new thing that we’re working on or a customer recommendation. You know, we’ll put it into email or whatever you you plan.

James [00:04:23]:
Alright. No. Tell me, I mean, you’re a younger guy, so I remember when texting wasn’t much of a thing because we had a text with a keypad that only included the numbers. And if you wanted the letter t, whatever, you had to press it 3 times or something like that. So texting when I was kid wasn’t that much of a thing. Email was more of a thing or became a thing. But email, I feel like it’s kinda slowly falling off the bandwagon because there’s so much junk, so much spam. People just get inundated with Calls.

James [00:04:54]:
So their inbox is 50,000 messages that may or might may not have been read. So how do you avoid that happening to text messaging?

Ross Jenkins [00:05:03]:
Sure. So text messages always deliver to the point of, you know, there isn’t a spam box in inside of it. So they’re always gonna deliver. But who you who you have the biggest problem with is sort of appeasing their SMS providers. So you’re sort of if you look at the UK, you’ve got Vodafone, Orange and all those guys. You know, they’re the people who are gonna stop the spam. Whereas, you know, with email, it just goes into a spam folder and they allow it. It Call just go into the spam folder.

Ross Jenkins [00:05:31]:
So it’s just ensuring that you’re sending decent messages and, you know, you’re keeping up with regulations and whatnot.

James [00:05:36]:
Alright. I can tell you last night, I got a test text message from my credit card company saying thanks for your payment, and that message came through at 3 in the morning. Yeah. And luckily, I do not disturb On, but I get I wake up at whatever 4 something, and I’m like, why would they send this message at 3 in the morning with all the technology and all the computers and all the programmers and all the people that I feel should be smart enough to think we don’t need to send this text message out at 3 in the morning, if at all. We can send it at a more reasonable time. How do you figure out was what a reasonable time is, or can you figure out what a reasonable time is if you have clients or your clients have customers that are all over the globe? Yeah.

Ross Jenkins [00:06:24]:
So there’s there’s fantastic tools out there. There’s a tool that ActiveCampaign uses called PredictiveSend. So it works on data of when you open, but when you open best. Like, for instance, if you open emails or something, you know, when you wake up and you’ll just, you know, you’ll just smash it through them. You’re like, I’m not interested. Not On interested. It’s gonna say, you know, he opens emails at 9 AM, but he’s not really optimal. But then at 11 AM, when he hit your desk and you’re opening Calls and you’re actually reading through them, you’re clicking on links, you know, you’re showing interest, you’re applying to them, it then marks that as your optimal time.

Ross Jenkins [00:06:57]:
So then it’s gonna say, you know what? We’ll send emails to James at 11 AM, but we’ll send emails to Ross at 12:45 AM. And it works out the optimal time and it’s a fantastic tool because it it fixes that problem that you just had.

James [00:07:12]:
That is incredible. So it’s taking it beyond just when they open them, but actually when the person opens it and responds favoratively to it. That’s incredible.

Ross Jenkins [00:07:21]:
Yeah. Because they’ve got so much data. They just utilize all their data, and it’s you know, now we’ve got AI coming in. It becomes even more so, like, what else do we do we plan to have in the future?

James [00:07:33]:
So I always look at it.

Ross Jenkins [00:07:34]:
I mean, I don’t know if

James [00:07:35]:
this is good or bad, but I always look at it from considering that we’re talking about marketing here. I get annoyed by marketing messages. I get annoyed by commercials. I get annoyed. I even get annoyed by billboards. I was just in Scotland a few weeks ago, and I was amazed to see that there were no billboards. It was actually

Ross Jenkins [00:07:54]:
It’s pretty big.

James [00:07:54]:
A relief. So if I’m a person that ends up with these text messages, is there a way that I can get off the list or remove them? Or

Ross Jenkins [00:08:04]:
Yeah. So it’s a legal regulation that you’ve gotta have that opt up button. You know? You’ve got to have it, the same as email. You’ve got to have it. But with email, there’s a way that you can get around it. For instance, you know, if someone doesn’t have that unsubscribe button, you can click spam at the top. And that’s more damaging to them, but, you know, they they should have an unsubscribe button.

James [00:08:23]:
Gotcha. Alright. And could I, as a client, come to you and say, hey. Here, I was gonna say the phone book, but I guess it doesn’t really exist. Here’s a bunch of phone numbers that were totally maybe should be my clients. Can you just get them, or do you have to have some like, how do you vet the list?

Ross Jenkins [00:08:43]:
Yeah. So we have this often. Honestly, probably once every 5, 6 weeks, you have someone come to us with similar to what you just said, like a phone book of email addresses and they say, you know, I wanna email all these people. You know, there’s a million people. I wanna email them tomorrow. The realistic thing is you’ve never spoken to any of them. They’re from different niches, from completely different audiences, completely different demographic. You know, you’re On email them and now, you know, they’re gonna put you in spam and you’re gonna come back and be upset with me.

Ross Jenkins [00:09:11]:
So realistically, people like that, we just tell them, you know, I’m sure there’s someone who Call help you, but, for us, this project isn’t worth it.

James [00:09:19]:
Got it. Alright. And then tell me a story about WhatsApp. I don’t know much about WhatsApp. So is that essentially the same or tell me more about that?

Ross Jenkins [00:09:27]:
Sure. So WhatsApp similar to SMS, Europe uses it and the Middle East uses it. You know, because we work quite a lot in the Middle East, we find that they don’t open emails as often as people from the UK or US, but they open WhatsApps, they’ll WhatsApp you all day. And so WhatsApp similar to SMS, it works great. It has somewhat similar regulations in terms of, you know, you couldn’t spam thousands of the numbers. They’ll just ban you. It’s there to Call them. You know their rules.

James [00:09:56]:
Got it. Now WhatsApp, that’s owned by Facebook. Right? Or Meta?

Ross Jenkins [00:09:59]:
That’s it. Yeah.

James [00:10:00]:
Okay. So where SMS man, I don’t even know SMS is just a means of communication. Right? No one necessarily owns it as a as a tool. Right?

Ross Jenkins [00:10:14]:
Technically, the the phone operators own it in a way because they they control what what comes in and what goes out.

James [00:10:20]:
Okay. So that said, has it been more challenging working with WhatsApp versus SMS since meta changes the rules of the game on a minute by minute basis?

Ross Jenkins [00:10:32]:
No. You’ll find the phone operators are like the mafia. They’re Oh, really? Yeah. They’re real tricky to to please. I have a customer who’s got, you know, 10,000 clients, and we SMS them, 3 times a year. And, honestly, even though these clients are spending tens of 1,000 of dollars and they’re getting engagement, people don’t wanna touch them. And it’s it’s tricky. It really is it’s such a a mafia owned game that it’s just very difficult to get into sometimes.

James [00:11:02]:
Interesting. Okay. So when you say the phone companies, are you talking the AT and Ts and Verizons of the world?

Ross Jenkins [00:11:09]:
Yeah. Those guys are the the the Call movers. They decide if your SMS goes through or doesn’t go through. Okay. And it’s based on reputation. And when you start from the start, you have no reputation. And to build reputation, realistically, you need to send an SMS. But how are you On send an SMS when you’ve got no reputation? So you’ve then got that that sort of odd angle when no one wants to let you send an SMS, but you have to build SMS reputation.

Ross Jenkins [00:11:35]:
And there’s there’s companies out there, but they make you jump through a 1,000 hoops. And so that’s kind of the the things that we’re seeing.

James [00:11:43]:
Alright. The thing I guess what I’m thinking is people must buy and sell phone numbers with reputations that are good. Right?

Ross Jenkins [00:11:51]:
To to some degree, yeah. But, you know, you do one wrong thing and your reputation is gone, and that’s it really. Sure. But you look at people like Domino’s Pizza and Papa John’s. Those guys are amazing. They clearly have a great reputation with phone operators. Every Friday you’ll get an SMS, every Tuesday you get an SMS and, you know, they they have no problem and that’s what money can kind of buy you. You can buy that reputation to be able to consistently do those SMSes.

James [00:12:17]:
Oh, okay. But I I imagine this not just on their website, like, hey. You wanna send a bunch of SMS messages? Click here and pay us 1,000,000 of dollars or something like that.

Ross Jenkins [00:12:27]:
It’s probably who you know. Yeah.

James [00:12:28]:
Okay. Interesting. Very interesting. So how did you end up getting in this game?

Ross Jenkins [00:12:35]:
Sure. So when I you know, my first business was a friends and family investment. It was called SMS to PayPal. At the time Paypal was really difficult to get your money into. And you know, if you’re under, so you could have an account when you were under 18 and Paypal, everyone accepted Paypal at the time, there was no credit card, there was no strike, nothing like that. And so you were stuck in a dilemma where you couldn’t get money into it, but everyone accepted it. And so I built SMS to paypal. I worked with a few people who built out the tool for us.

Ross Jenkins [00:13:08]:
And it worked fantastically. And that’s when I kind of started to understand how the SMS game worked. And then after that, you know, we we had some offers to purchase. We we declined them. And I went to start working for for different agencies and doing email marketing. And that’s when I started to see the love of kind of sales and marketing and I guess the gratification that you get when when campaigns go out and they work well, you know, you’re like, damn, you know, we built that and that’s that’s amazing. And so that’s how it how it all started.

James [00:13:40]:
That’s cool. And how long ago was this?

Ross Jenkins [00:13:42]:
12 years ago.

James [00:13:43]:
12 years ago. Okay. So it’s been a while. Yeah. So I mentioned the s well, even the smartphone game has changed over the course of a decade. So what people have and how often they look at it and what they look at it Ross. So how has your business had to evolve over the course of that time?

Ross Jenkins [00:14:00]:
Sure. So that’s why I think WhatsApp marketing will become more relevant more and more as method is weirdly opening the Ross somewhat. They released an API not too long ago and kind of gave you the graph to be able to do what you want. That’s why I believe WhatsApp will at least overtake in the UK and Middle East. US is a bit funky because you guys don’t use WhatsApp as much, but, you know, over here, we use it massively. And so I think we’ll come to a time where people will stop using SMS, and marketing will be primarily WhatsApp.

James [00:14:32]:
Interesting. So do you see WhatsApp as being somewhat of a monopoly then?

Ross Jenkins [00:14:39]:
Yeah. It’s a funky one, isn’t it? Yeah. I’m not sure if it’s a monopoly or just a great way to market currently. You know, it could change quite quickly. You know, when you’re in the Middle East, you find you get WhatsApps consistently. Like, I’m in Spain right now, but when I go back to Dubai, I will get WhatsApps, and my phone Call do be pinging full of people, marketing to me. If that’s your convenience store, that’s your pizza, that’s this, that’s that. That’s your WeWork office.

Ross Jenkins [00:15:08]:
Everyone is messaging you through WhatsApp and they’re giving you consistent campaigns. So I don’t know how long WhatsApp marketing will last for. I don’t know if they’re gonna rule it down or what they plan to do.

James [00:15:19]:
Okay. Is there any competition to them besides SMS?

Ross Jenkins [00:15:23]:
Not really. Not in that kind of area. That’s a real smartphone area, and that’s why it’s fantastic because people, when they’re on their phones, they they can be seriously focused.

James [00:15:35]:
Now I guess you mind if we dig into WhatsApp a little bit more because I have to admit, I don’t know much about it at all. To me, it just looked like another way to text message, which I looked at it and I was like, I already have a way to text message. What do I need this thing for? So why are people, US or otherwise, why are they installing WhatsApp and using WhatsApp? Are they using WhatsApp?

Ross Jenkins [00:15:58]:
WhatsApp’s great for international, messaging. It allows you to to instantly message people. It’s online, meaning that you don’t need a cell phone provider. You can use your Wi Fi. It allows you to send pictures consistently. You know, SMS, when you send pictures, it’s like MMS. It’s port it’s just it’s hassle, isn’t it? And WhatsApp is pretty convenient in that way. They allow you to group message.

Ross Jenkins [00:16:21]:
In comparison to sort of Imessage, it’s probably quite similar. It’s just probably a little bit more advanced.

James [00:16:28]:
Okay. So I feel is that similar to a Google Voice type thing where they’re using the data that you have versus the cell phone

Ross Jenkins [00:16:37]:
Yeah. Yeah. So it will come from your your Internet rather than your cellular, sort of messaging.

James [00:16:45]:
Gotcha. Alright. And when you when did you decide to go off on your own versus just working for a company or with a company kind of thing? When did you decide, hey, man. I’m gonna start my own gig here.

Ross Jenkins [00:16:58]:
Yeah. So I moved to Ireland and, I was getting amazing results, like incredible results. And, I made a deal a verbal agreement with the the CEO. And, that was a bad move obviously On my part. I hit my side of the deal. He didn’t hit his side of the deal. And so I knew I could market well. I was getting amazing results, not for every client, but for the majority of the clients who were getting incredible results, you know, through my agency days and then through that.

Ross Jenkins [00:17:26]:
I went and spoke to some agencies in Ireland, and I I just kind of winged it. I just said to them, you know, I’d like a percentage of the business rather than giving me a huge wage on a percentage of business and this and that. And it it was going somewhere, and they realized the potential. And I thought, oh, if they’re seeing such a big potential, why aren’t I just doing this on my own? You know, I can market. What I need is something like escrow. I need something to hold the money because when people talk about money, they don’t On to send you $100,000 You know, they want that to go in escrow and they want their side of deal done and such and such. And so I signed up to Upwork and at the time, freelancing wasn’t that big. We, you know, at the time, there was no one over $100,000 earned.

Ross Jenkins [00:18:12]:
And so I worked on that. I started on $25 an hour, and now I’m up to $365.

James [00:18:18]:
Oh, that’s a jump. Alright?

Ross Jenkins [00:18:21]:
Yeah. And then, just under $2,000,000 a month.

James [00:18:24]:
Alright. That’s awesome. Tell me, are you still working through Upwork?

Ross Jenkins [00:18:30]:
I I work through Upwork as well, but, obviously, most of my clients come direct now. Things have changed, and we’ve built a brand around us, and, it’s worked quite well.

James [00:18:39]:
Yeah. Tell me, how was it working initially at least to get started? How was it working for, I’m gonna say through Upwork?

Ross Jenkins [00:18:48]:
You said through Yeah. The middle one. Yeah. The middle one. It was honestly, it was it wasn’t too tricky. At the time, you know, there was I worked for American guy, and he was fantastic. I speak to him now still. You know, for the most part, it was okay.

Ross Jenkins [00:19:03]:
It’s still a grind. Listen, I dropped my wages massively to do that, but it’s something that I I knew I saw a vision On. And I thought, you know what? I’ll I’ll wing it. I have nothing else. So I’ll go for it.

James [00:19:17]:
Alright. Very cool. And were you on Upwork as well as other competitors to Upwork, or were you pretty exclusive to Upwork?

Ross Jenkins [00:19:26]:
No. I I I was weirdly pretty exclusive to Upwork. The reason being is I didn’t On have a 100 different things open and just go, you know, I’m gonna have my finger in every part, especially when you’re trying to focus on specifically one goal. I knew if I earn more at Upwork, more people would trust me, more people would hire me, and I’d I’d continue to be able to grow. So I specifically went for that. I didn’t touch anything like 5 or anything like that.

James [00:19:51]:
Okay. I was just gonna ask you because I’ve used people On fiber a ton

Ross Jenkins [00:19:56]:
in the past.

James [00:19:58]:
Man, it’s been On, I don’t know. I don’t know how long fiber has been around, but I remember actually paying $5 for stuff if that gives you an idea. That’s not much of a thing anymore.

Ross Jenkins [00:20:09]:
So that’s that’s why I never touched fiber. That was my main reason. And even so still, it’s kind of sketchy. They they have resolved their reputation in that sense, but that’s why I avoided fiber originally because I was like, you know, looking to sign up to the site as 5 dollars. But, I mean, they’ve they’ve got the guy who made the Apple logo, the actual original Apple logo on Fiverr, which is

James [00:20:32]:
so Nice. Okay. Yeah. It’s interesting. I ended up getting, one of the editors for my book through Fiverr, and I can promise you I paid her much more than $5.

Ross Jenkins [00:20:46]:
Yeah. There is

James [00:20:46]:
that comma On that number. So

Ross Jenkins [00:20:48]:
It’s definitely Ross. The guy who built the Apple logo, he’s $250,000, I think. So Alright. I think quite rapidly.

James [00:20:56]:
Interesting. So what is, I guess, just so as we can understand and go off on this tangent a little bit more. What is the difference really between Fiverr and Upwork as far as why people would go to 1 versus the other?

Ross Jenkins [00:21:10]:
Fiverr probably needs to change their name, but I think people still have that. You know, like when you go to like dollar tree or something like that, in your mind, everything costs a dollar. Realistically it doesn’t anymore, but in your mind, everything costs a dollar. And that was the same way that people see Fiverr. And so it wasn’t great for the audience I wanted to target. Like if you look at the audience that we target now, they’re pretty high end clients and to be able to afford our wage. You know, I don’t On to work on a 1 or 2 hour gig. I wanna work on a gig for you, you know, 5, 10 hours a week.

Ross Jenkins [00:21:43]:
And so Upwork had that audience. Upwork consistently has an amazing audience, whereas Fiverr, you know, at the time, it was just everything is $5.

James [00:21:52]:
Gotcha. Okay. So Upwork, I guess I know that I’ve used someone or a couple of people on Upwork before. That was a long time ago. And, it was for a software project I was putting together. I’m trying to think what it was, but I feel like that was more, I wanna say hourly or project ish based where I feel like fiber is not hourly. It’s definitely project. I want this logo or this website or this thing.

James [00:22:20]:
Where Upwork, I feel, is more like I wanna

Ross Jenkins [00:22:23]:
Ongoing continually

James [00:22:25]:
work with them.

Ross Jenkins [00:22:27]:
Yeah. Exactly. Upwork really allows you to to have a a more ongoing relationship, whereas Fiverr is a On off gig, which is fine in some some instances. Say for instance, you want someone to do a logo, you don’t need to keep in contact with them for 5 years. Call, exactly. So that’s why fiber, I think has some amazing elements where Upwork doesn’t. And, you know, both of them, their their fee structures are getting worse and worse for freelancers. So it’s becoming trickier and trickier to become a freelancer really.

James [00:23:01]:
Alright. It is becoming more DigitalME, you said.

Ross Jenkins [00:23:04]:
Yeah. I’d say so. I mean, your persona on freelancing has changed massively since COVID as On, like, you know, people are actually freelancers. It’s not just them in between 2 jobs trying to pretend they’re working.

James [00:23:18]:
Oh, sure.

Ross Jenkins [00:23:19]:
But in terms of the fee structure that I work in 5 charge, it’s pretty criminal. Yeah.

James [00:23:24]:
Okay. Interesting. Yeah. I can tell you I had a I

Ross Jenkins [00:23:29]:
don’t know.

James [00:23:29]:
Past year, I used someone on Fiverr and something happened where they’re like, hey. Use this, vendor instead. Right? And it was it was them just with a different name. This is weird.

Ross Jenkins [00:23:49]:
Yeah. People used to do that in my book as well.

James [00:23:52]:
Yeah. It was just a bizarre, like, I don’t know what your game is. I just want this thing, this logo or whatever. Like, what’s the easiest way to make that happen? I don’t need to dink around with all this stuff. So I just didn’t use them anymore. Ross I’m like, there’s 5,000,000,000 other people on this platform and growing. And you don’t necessarily know who’s good and who’s bad, but I guess it’s one of the advantages that I like of even Upwork or Fiverr is that you don’t have to go and lay down 6 figures to get somebody that you find out isn’t gonna work out. Like, you can spend $50, a $100, something like that and find out, you know what? You’re super great.

James [00:24:29]:
Let’s keep rolling like I did with my editor, or, hey. You’re terrible at what you do.

Ross Jenkins [00:24:36]:
Yeah. And that’s why the the tools are great. You know, they do give you that platform to be able to to reach out to clients, but also clients reach out to freelancers. And for the most part, you know, there there’s not many bad apples. There’s the odd person that you’d, you know, refuse to work with, but for the most part, you get some amazing people that you can speak to.

James [00:24:55]:
Fair. Tell me, so you removed yourself from Upwork or you’re still on there?

Ross Jenkins [00:25:01]:
I’m still on Upwork. Listen, if you On pay the rate, pay the rate, but, it doesn’t make sense for me to not be on Upwork. It’s it’s a marketing platform for me. You know, I’m plastered all over their website as well, which is great marketing as well. Yeah. But, yeah, realistically, it makes sense for me to just stay on there. Any client that wants to work with me, we can work together on Upwork and, you know, if you find me direct, you find me direct and that’s so that works Call there.

James [00:25:26]:
Fair. So not talking exact numbers just because we don’t know when the listeners are actually listening to this, what they’re gonna be, because you never know. But tell me, how do you figure out what price you’re gonna charge for a given project or hour or however you charge for yourself?

Ross Jenkins [00:25:43]:
Sure. So my hourly is $365 an hour. Now let’s say for instance, you say, you know, Ross, I’d like a fixed price. Here’s my project. Here’s what I’m looking for, you know, and it’s not variable. There’s no way it can be variable. For instance, you know, you want 5 emails in a sequence. You want a list, a specific list made, and you’re gonna give me the list up front, and I I’ve quoted it.

Ross Jenkins [00:26:08]:
There’s no way that you can change it. That’s it. It’s locked in. What I do is I quote 20% over what I believe it will be in terms of my hourly, and I just do it that way. So it’s fair. It gives me some leeway as well, because some people take ages to pay. Some people will pay immediately, and unfortunately, that’s just the way you have to do it.

James [00:26:29]:
Fair. And, of the clients that you’re working with, are the majority of them European based On are they all over?

Ross Jenkins [00:26:35]:
So the majority of them American. Americans love email marketing in comparison to British and Middle East. We Call quite a lot of Middle East clients nowadays, but majority American, second Middle East for sure.

James [00:26:47]:
Alright. Why is that? Why do Americans like their email versus some other parts of the world?

Ross Jenkins [00:26:54]:
You guys have less restrictions. We have GDPR and various other things in in the UK. And there’s a lot more sort of, red tape in the UK and a lot more problems in terms of I’ve got to ask this person. I’ve got to ask this person. Yeah, it’s it’s just not worth it. Whereas Americans, they they’re quite quick to spend.

James [00:27:12]:
Alright. So GDPR came about I don’t know. Is that 5 years ago? How long was that?

Ross Jenkins [00:27:17]:
What was that amount? Yeah. It’s it’s not been too long. But, yeah, that I mean, UK email marketing didn’t really exist as much anyway, but that that probably put the nail on top of it for the most part.

James [00:27:29]:
Gotcha. Okay. I was just gonna ask if that was a bigger part of your business back then or if that changed?

Ross Jenkins [00:27:35]:
No. You’ve always had that problem. For the majority of the clients, you know, that listen. If you wanna email your your customer Ross than the UK, fine. But, you know, if you On a cold email or stuff like that, then, yeah, you’re in a bit of a bit of a big hole.

James [00:27:49]:
Gotcha. Interesting. So if you were to start a business of, let’s say, not a marketing business specifically, what would you use? Let’s just say, let’s just say a frame maker just because I see a bunch of frames in the background there. If you’re a frame maker, how would you market that business?

Ross Jenkins [00:28:08]:
Sure. Something like Facebook ads, and then On a landing page and then email and marketing in the backup, but back end. That’d be kind of the route that I’d go depending on how unique it is. Like these are Call. They’re made by, what are they Call? Mixed tiles or something like Call. And they they mainly get their audience from things like TikTok and YouTube creators and, they go down that angle where people technically promote them for them. And that’s that’s quite a good angle because people like me or you, like, I’ll be On, I cannot be bothered framing stuff. I’d rather just send them the picture.

Ross Jenkins [00:28:44]:
They can frame it for me, send it back, and I’ll put it wherever. Yeah. I I want the ease. And so that’s what they’re they’re great at. You know, a marketing stack like that just works phenomenal.

James [00:28:58]:
No. I get that. I completely understand where you’re coming from with the ease thing. I had to tell myself to stop buying parts and pieces for projects until I finish the projects with the parts and pieces that I already have. I get into motorcycling and stuff like that, and I was like, ah, I should put different handlebars on this bike. And I’m like, okay. It is not as easy as just buying the handlebars. You gotta buy the handlebars.

James [00:29:23]:
You gotta receive the handlebars, and then you gotta actually find a time that you can take everything off the old handlebars, put the new ones back on and try to find that one block of time where it’s all together.

Ross Jenkins [00:29:33]:
So you

James [00:29:34]:
don’t break it up and all of a sudden lose your pieces or your train of thought. You’re like, where did this thing go? So it was interesting because I gotta just pull the reins on there and stop myself from getting into another project because you get all excited. Right? You’re just like, oh, this thing looks amazing. These handlebars look great, or these frames look amazing. But then you realize like, oh, I gotta take the time to do all this stuff and grid it out where I’m gonna hang them up and all that jazz, and I’m gonna get them. They’re gonna sit in the corner. And every time I pass that corner, I’m gonna be like, oh,

Ross Jenkins [00:30:07]:
I should

James [00:30:07]:
probably do that one of these days. It’s on the to do list kind of thing.

Ross Jenkins [00:30:10]:
And that’s why paying Sure. 20, 25%. Just make sense. These even come with sticky parts, so you don’t even have to hang them. Oh, wow.

James [00:30:21]:
It’s just shy of having a person come out and On them up on their own.

Ross Jenkins [00:30:24]:
Pretty much. Yeah. And so that’s that’s why, you know, we need to make things easier for clients as well. And so communication is such a big part and, you know, showing them a tool that has everything that they need and and show them how they use it. Just like we did when you purchase things like this, you On make it as easy as possible for a client to purchase.

James [00:30:45]:
Yeah. Tell me about the following of people as far as marketing goes, where somebody looks something up online and then a week later or a couple days later, other stuff starts showing up on their phone or they get a text message or whatever. My buddy and I were talking about his pool, and I started getting ads about pool filters and stuff like that.

Ross Jenkins [00:31:07]:
Yeah. So there’s there’s there’s a few ways that that’s happening. So one is called retargeting ads. So Google Ads and Facebook Ads, utilize this. Pretty much books a cookie in your phone or your your PC, and then every page you go to after might have that image saying, you know, you looked at them or or so forth. And then there’s other tools like retention. Retention is a new company. It’s just came about.

Ross Jenkins [00:31:32]:
Not sure how old they are, but they they’re amazing. What they do is, for instance, if you visit one of my clients’ websites, it automatically gives them your email address and your IP address and various other things. It doesn’t give the customer your IP address, but I believe retention has it. So then you can email market to them directly. So you just visiting that website without even giving them your information. They already have it. And so there’s various different tactics that you can use to sort retarget people.

James [00:32:05]:
Can you how just this is me not being technologically aware. Yeah. But I know it certainly happens, so it’s it’s gotta happen. I know what’s happened to me. So when I visit a website, let’s just say I go to, I don’t know, bettycrocker.com or something like that. I look up a recipe on how to make macaroni and cheese or something of that nature, whatever.

Ross Jenkins [00:32:27]:
Nice.

James [00:32:28]:
And then later, I end up getting an email from Betty Crocker about the top 5 macaroni cheese recipes or something like that, whatever it is. How are they getting my email address from my IP address?

Ross Jenkins [00:32:40]:
Sure. So retention uses amazing tools. They’ve they’ve pretty much legally bought databases. In the US, you can only use this in the US. They’ve legally bought databases, and they’ll obviously just match you up to what they’ve got On your records. They’ll then give it to the client, client will then email you. It’s not remarkably expensive. Obviously, when you look at the whole text that you need, it becomes quite expensive.

Ross Jenkins [00:33:03]:
So for instance, your your ecommerce stores utilize this massively, Such a good tool for ecommerce stores. We’ve seen insane results pretty much based upon it.

James [00:33:15]:
Say that what scores now? I’m sorry.

Ross Jenkins [00:33:17]:
Sure. So based pretty much ecommerce stores use this tool or should be using this tool because the the kind of scores and the the ratings we found based off it is just incredible.

James [00:33:29]:
Gotcha. Ecommerce. Okay. I see what you’re saying. I see what you’re saying. So that means essentially if someone goes, I go to bettycrocker.com, and I answer, I don’t know, maybe a cookbook. I don’t know if Betty Crocker sells food or some kind. Yeah.

James [00:33:42]:
I put something in the cart, but I don’t finish. I don’t actually complete the checkout. They can find my IP Ross, and they put that against the database. That database says, hey, 192168, whatever lines up with James. This is James’s email. So therefore, Betty Crocker, here’s the email you sent to James because, you know, I didn’t complete the checkout. And they send an email to me that says, James, you forgot to hit checkout or whatever.

Ross Jenkins [00:34:09]:
Yes. You can segment even further down. You can segment based on the actual product that they were looking at. For instance, you were looking at mac and cheese. We could segment and say, you know, you didn’t even enter any details. You literally just looked at a recipe. We could say, you know, we have the best mac and cheese, you know, ready meal that you can get or diner meal that you can get. And that’s kind of where it becomes so powerful because you’re you’re segmenting an audience that you’d never usually get.

James [00:34:37]:
Interesting. I always wondered that because I’m like, we can see IP addresses and stuff like that, but how am I constantly getting retargeted with stuff where I never actually entered any information?

Ross Jenkins [00:34:49]:
Yeah.

James [00:34:50]:
And part of me was just like, how are they doing that? But the other part of me business side was like, how can I do that to get clients kind of thing?

Ross Jenkins [00:34:59]:
It’s honestly amazing. I’ve seen a good few clients and they sign up and they’ve got insane results. It’s just, it’s a tool that I never thought would legally exist. And it does.

James [00:35:10]:
Gotcha. Isn’t that the truth? But that’s and that’s a US thing or is that

Ross Jenkins [00:35:18]:
Yeah. US only. And I I suspect it would probably stay that way.

James [00:35:23]:
Gotcha. Okay. And how I guess from your point of view, is this something that a smaller business it’s attainable for a smaller business, or do you have to be some multibillion dollar, I don’t General Motors or something like that to be able to even begin to use something like that?

Ross Jenkins [00:35:39]:
No. You’ve got to have a considerable amount of sort of hits to your website to make it worth it. Otherwise, you’re paying for something that you’re just not getting usable or use of unless like your your conversion rates. Let’s say that your average client’s worth $50,000 and you only get 5,000 visitors a month. That’s probably okay because your average client, just one client pretty much pays off everything. But realistically, the prices aren’t that expensive. I’m pretty sure it’s under $1,000 a month.

James [00:36:08]:
Okay. Got it. Alright. So you but you need more than a handful of people come to your website to even be able to make the tool justifiable.

Ross Jenkins [00:36:18]:
Yeah. You need at least 10,000, 10000 people from America per month to to kinda make justify the cost.

James [00:36:25]:
Gotcha. Okay. And is retention the only company that’s doing this, or are there other companies I imagine that have these databases as well?

Ross Jenkins [00:36:32]:
There’s a couple of other companies, but they don’t do it anywhere near as good as retention. You know, I have one client that has 5 different retention competitors on their side. And honestly, retention just absolutely smashes. It. I think they’re getting like 2,000 contacts a day. Wow. Is and they they sell quick as well. I think they made a 22, $25,000 just off that retention spend.

Ross Jenkins [00:36:57]:
So it’s

James [00:36:58]:
Holy cow. That is do you imagine that that’ll stay the way it is, or do you think that regulation will come in and

Ross Jenkins [00:37:06]:
break it? I don’t know. I hope it stays, but,

James [00:37:10]:
As a marketer. Right?

Ross Jenkins [00:37:12]:
Yeah. I suspect it will stay. You guys aren’t very strict on regulations in that sense. I suspect it will stay. I hope your attention gets better, and I hope competitors get better. Just so I can hop On that bandwagon as well. But,

James [00:37:27]:
that’s it. Alright. So is this something that you offer as Call, or you’re more the SMS, WhatsApp?

Ross Jenkins [00:37:33]:
Yeah. So we push people to retention, and then retention then say, okay, Ross. They need to set up. You know? How do you plan to do it? And we’ll work with the client in terms of getting retention installed and then active campaign or various other CRMs on the back end.

James [00:37:48]:
Gotcha. Alright. Do you do anything with websites, search engine optimization, or anything of that nature?

Ross Jenkins [00:37:55]:
We used to. We don’t do it as much now. If we gave it a too much cost price basis where people want the cheapest price, and you’ve got tools like elemental now which allow you to you know, your average Joe just to make his own website and and as well. And so it doesn’t make sense for us to stay in that space. We’re we’re amazing at emails. We get great results. So what’s the point On being in another space that we’re not gonna be the best at?

James [00:38:19]:
Sure. Tell me, I’m just curious about this one because we so I have the call answering service. Call answering service, we can answer phones for any comp company, but there’s some companies where it just doesn’t make sense. Right? I always joke with people that if you’re at a hot dog stand, it wouldn’t be worthwhile having us answer your phone because you’re gonna sell a hot dog. Right? You’re gonna sell your hot dog for a few bucks, and you’re gonna end up paying us a few bucks for that phone call. So therefore, you’re On not make any money or lose money because you still have to pay for the hot dog and the bun and all that jazz. But if you have a hot dog cart company, we’re a great business to answer your phone because we’re only gonna charge you a few bucks for that call, and you’re gonna sell you $20,000 On $50,000 whatever hot dog cart. I don’t know how much hot dog carts Ross, but it’s gonna be enough money that a few dollars doesn’t even matter.

Ross Jenkins [00:39:09]:
Yep.

James [00:39:10]:
So for the marketing that you do, is there an ideal client? I’m gonna say, average ticket value for those clients where it makes sense to use someone like you.

Ross Jenkins [00:39:21]:
Yeah. It really varies. Like, if you’re gonna tell me, you know, Ross, we On sell items for, you know, $5 a pop and we’ve got no clients currently, we want On to go reach out to people. Realistically, it’s not gonna work. You know, my Call versus the cost of, acquiring a customer, there’s no profit. There’s just none. So it really varies. We’ve got some customers who sell courses for, you know, 5, $10,000.

Ross Jenkins [00:39:47]:
You know, and we’ve had we’ve got some customers who sell courses for, you know, your 2, $300. 2, $300 per product is kind of our our soft spot, I’d say. Anything below that, you’re you’re probably going to the profit margin.

James [00:40:03]:
Gotcha. That makes sense. We’re the same way. Same way. We answer phones for a few massage clients, and that’s why I’m always trying to have the crew. I’m gonna Ross say talk people into some add ons, hot stones, facial scrub, whatever. I don’t even know what all they do, but try to get some add ons to build up that total value of the call. Because as soon as that customer calls to reschedule or to cancel or something like that, now our client’s upside down, so we gotta make sure that we’re maintaining the value to even answer their phone.

Ross Jenkins [00:40:36]:
Yeah. And upselling something, it’s something you just said there is probably one of the biggest mistakes that most people make. They don’t have upselling on their website and you see this on ecommerce stores every day. They don’t. And, you know, it’s so powerful, isn’t it?

James [00:40:54]:
Yeah. It’s huge. It’s huge because I think of this I used to work at a movie theater forever ago, and this was back before movie theaters had 5,000,000 products. Right? The movie theater that I worked at, we had popcorn, we had soda, we had candy.

Ross Jenkins [00:41:09]:
Yep.

James [00:41:09]:
And so the pricing was very easy. Right? Small, medium, large popcorn, small, medium, large soda, and then the candy, I think we had 2 different prices for candy, depending upon what it was. Anyways, someone would come and they’d be like, medium soda, medium popcorn because that’s super easy, and they don’t have to think. Right? They’re on their dates or with their family or whatever. They don’t Yeah. Medium. Right? It’s easy. And I would say, hey, man.

James [00:41:33]:
For 25¢ more, you can go from 32 ounces to 44 ounces. And I’d say 80% of the time people said yes. And it’s I didn’t get commission or anything. It was just one of those. I feel like I’m doing you a favor by upselling you because you already got I don’t know what you got. $20 invested in popcorn and

Ross Jenkins [00:41:51]:
soda. Yeah.

James [00:41:52]:
Laying down another quarter and so midway through the movie, you’re not hearing that. Right? I’m on a. Right? So I felt

Ross Jenkins [00:42:00]:
like I

James [00:42:00]:
was doing them a favor and the company I’m sure the company had all of, I don’t know, a penny into that extra soda. So they made 24¢ every time I asked that question. And so I felt like it was win win. So from my point of view, the upsells are just as much for the company that you’re taking care of as well as for the client that you’re chatting with.

Ross Jenkins [00:42:21]:
Agreed. It’s massive. And I it’s it’s so odd that, you know, you look at sites like Tamu. Tamu is obviously the Chinese On right now and they upsell the hell out of you. Like it’s it’s not even it’s crazy how how hard they upsell you. Whereas I find other sites, you know, your more traditional sites, they don’t upsell you half as much as they should.

James [00:42:43]:
That’s fair. It’s interesting. I was at a I was at a bar the Call, last night, and I used my credit Call, and they’re like, hey. There’s just gonna be a few questions. And it’s like, 1, do you On tip? Right? Because in the US, you’d

Ross Jenkins [00:42:57]:
just 25%.

James [00:42:58]:
And then you wanna up, up thing to donate to some cause. And then, oh, do you wanna get on our list and all this kind of stuff? So I’m like, ah, I should’ve just given you a $20 bill. Yeah.

Ross Jenkins [00:43:10]:
That’s right. That sounds like that literally sounds like that. Yeah. I mean, America is so much harder with with their technology on upselling and getting you to spend more money. You know, I live in Spain right now and you know, you’re you’re lucky for them even to bring your bill out. So they’re not going to help sell you at all.

James [00:43:34]:
You know, I kind of like that personally because it was just easy. There was no expectation. You give me the stuff, I give you the money, we move on with your life and I don’t have to think that you don’t like me if I do or don’t tip you or how much do I tip. It’s just a weird there are still people, myself included, that don’t understand when do you tip and when do you don’t.

Ross Jenkins [00:43:56]:
That’s the same with me. Yeah.

James [00:43:58]:
You go to a coffee shop, you order a coffee, they give you a cup and tell you the coffee’s over there, and then they’re like,

Ross Jenkins [00:44:04]:
I expect a tip. Like, you

James [00:44:06]:
literally just handed me a cup. Right?

Ross Jenkins [00:44:10]:
Yeah. Yeah.

James [00:44:10]:
But a guy that comes to fix my plug toilet, that’s service, and I’m not tipping him, so it’s kinda like, ugh.

Ross Jenkins [00:44:18]:
It’s a weird dynamic. Pretty hard with with the tipping culture on here. It’s getting quiet.

James [00:44:22]:
Yeah. It’s even gotten more aggressive. Since the pandemic, it’s gotten definitely more aggressive.

Ross Jenkins [00:44:28]:
Yeah. I was in America maybe. I was in California maybe 2 or 3 months ago, and your tip tip thing is, like, 25% as as On old Yeah. Yeah. Like, I I think that that has to be something like restaurants need to pay more money. It’s just simple, isn’t it? Right?

James [00:44:43]:
Yeah. Yeah. In the end, they could I mean, it’s working in Europe. They have On, very nice restaurants. So, yeah, we could solve it. But it’s just it’s a weird it’s a societal thing, so I don’t know how you shift away. Yeah. And there’s a lot of people I know a few bartenders that could have other full time jobs that pay very Call.

James [00:45:06]:
But bartending with tips, they’re doing they’re doing incredible.

Ross Jenkins [00:45:12]:
Yeah. It’s a tricky one, isn’t it, really? But then if you didn’t tip those people who are making a huge amount of money, they would go get an office job. They would really bartending. By for instance, bartending is normally what you find you’re doing when you’re 16 to 18. And then you you go to an office job or you go to construction or you go to go to university. So, yeah, I guess it’s tricky to work out.

James [00:45:33]:
Yeah. I think even Mark Cuban, when someone asked him the question, if you weren’t rich, right, and you’re starting out, how it was the first step you would do? What job would you get if you On it to be a millionaire? And he says, the first thing I would do is start out as a bartender.

Ross Jenkins [00:45:47]:
Oh, really?

James [00:45:47]:
And essentially it comes down because you’re making a lot of money per hour if you’re working at the right place and you’re connecting with people. So then you’re meeting people and then you find a good connection or 2 and then just go from there.

Ross Jenkins [00:46:00]:
Yeah. I guess you get pretty good opportunities if you Call well and you’re you’re polite and you you work hard. You probably get.

James [00:46:08]:
Yeah. You never know versus being stuck in a cubicle. You know what you’re making, but you’re not interacting with anyone, so no one knows you. Now if you wanna advance, you’re you’re limited.

Ross Jenkins [00:46:19]:
Oh, that’s super true. Yeah. Because bartending, ultimately, your all your skills are on showcase. Yeah. As if you, you know, your skills are very hidden.

James [00:46:27]:
Mhmm. Yeah. Super cool. Ross, I wanna dig in a little bit. Tell me let’s just figure out the top three marketing mistakes that you see business owners making.

Ross Jenkins [00:46:41]:
A lot of them wanna do things themselves. So you’ll get owners who wanna do, you know, email marketing, and they’ll either never email their list or they’ll email their list and it will be, their logo will be the full size of the screen. And then honestly, I’ve seen probably the worst things in my life, when CEOs go wild and cut costs. Upselling, probably the 2nd biggest thing. You know, why haven’t you got upselling on your website? I don’t understand. Especially in your b to c, it makes complete sense. The third one is just know your audience. Understand who’s purchasing.

Ross Jenkins [00:47:19]:
You know, if most of the people who are purchasing from me are, you know, middle age between 40 to 50 or 55, they’re male, they are, you know, American, they, from California, they have these Ross, understand every part of your audience and what they’re doing, and build it, build a persona and then market to it, but find different ways to market to it because for instance, one way might work for James here and one way might work for me here. Different audiences react to different techniques. And you know, your biggest marketing speaker probably hasn’t marketed for 10, 15 years. So when you’re listening to 20 different marketers and they will tell you different things, you need to kind of understand the data yourself and kind of work out, you know, do I need to go on Tiktok and target 18 to 25 year Ross, or do I need to go on to Instagram and Facebook and target, you know, 35 to 55 year olds? Know who you’re talking to and and use those tools wisely.

James [00:48:23]:
Gotcha. Interesting. Tell me when you are working with clients and you have your verticals that you work in as far as the marketing channels, do you work with other marketers that are in other diverse marketing places, I guess, to try to put together a a bigger marketing project, so to speak?

Ross Jenkins [00:48:46]:
Yeah. If it makes sense. Like, for instance, if you say to me, Ross, you know, I need Facebook ads. This is kind of the route that I need to go. You know, the Facebook ads will go to our landing page, which will have an opt in form, which you’ll do the email marketing on the back end and get me this kind of stuff. We’ll link up with our Facebook ads guy. He’s not On our team, but he’s on someone else’s team. And, we’ll work out a deal, then he’ll be happy.

Ross Jenkins [00:49:07]:
I’ll be happy, and the client will be happy.

James [00:49:10]:
Very cool. You know, it’s interesting from the marketing standpoint. I went to school for graphic design, so I just I don’t know. I was naive, and I had just had this assumption that and I had this assumption because I worked at a a marketing company as a graphic designer. But this was also I mean, Internet was infant back then. So we were a marketing company that did everything. Right? But everything back then was newspapers, magazines, yellow pages, if you remember those. Yeah.

James [00:49:40]:
And billboards, radio, TV. I mean, it’s pretty limited. Right? And TV, you had ABC, CBS, NBC. Right? You did a 50 channels.

Ross Jenkins [00:49:50]:
Yeah.

James [00:49:51]:
So now I’m learning or I have learned, I guess, over the course of time getting out of that industry that there are a lot of marketers, but those marketers focus on their thing, whatever that thing is. And so if you want multiple channels, a lot of times you have to work with multiple marketers, and you have to hope that those marketers work well with each other. Yeah. Understand there may be a little bit of crossover, but, I mean, that’s the that’s the game. In order to be an expert on a given channel, you really got to be an expert on that channel.

Ross Jenkins [00:50:22]:
Yeah, you’ll find obviously you build connections. I’ve been asking long enough to to work out with people that are good at their jobs. I’ve worked with some awful people in PPE in paper click and you know, there isn’t a day in my life where I’d recommend a client to them. And then there’s people who I’ve worked with who I’ve spent myself tens of 1,000 of dollars with on PPC, and I know I can trust them and I know I can trust them with my client. And we we all work together and it works quite well. Once you’ve built kind of a trusted network, you kind of work out where the boundaries are and you know, there’s sometimes clients bring in people and they’re they’re rude or they’re nasty or they’re this and you know, that just sucks, but it’s the aim of the game. And it’s the same if you go to work in a workplace. There’s people you aren’t gonna like and who are arrogant and rude, and you just have to get on with them.

Ross Jenkins [00:51:10]:
Fair. But when I decide, then then you’re not my team. You know? Yeah.

James [00:51:16]:
Got it. Tell me if you had a business, we’ll put this really broadly. If you if there was a percentage of either revenue or profit, whichever one you wanna use, that you would recommend people throw at marketing, even if it’s a range, do you have a number that you think is a good ballpark figure?

Ross Jenkins [00:51:36]:
It really depends on what you’re trying to achieve. Listen, if you’re trying to do b to b marketing and you’re let’s say I’ve got big enterprise company right now that is wanting to email hotels, to get feedback on their their fitness tool. The the fitness tool goes into hotel Ross, but it’s also backed by a huge brand. And they are gonna email around 6,000 sort of hotels, worldwide and all they want is feedback. You know, a marketing campaign like that costs only a couple of $1,000 and you’re On get the feedback. You’re gonna be able to speak to people like Marriott, you know, w anyone that you On to kind of speak to in that range. But if you’re looking for conversions, you need to look harder. You know, if you’re looking for someone to spend $10,000 you know, we’re not On get that overnight.

Ross Jenkins [00:52:26]:
That does take time. It really varies. It varies so hard in terms of a price.

James [00:52:31]:
Gotcha. Fair. Fair. Ross, how can people find you?

Ross Jenkins [00:52:36]:
Sure. So my website is DigitalME dot c c, or find me on LinkedIn. Ross Jenkins.

James [00:52:42]:
Alright. What is the dotcc?

Ross Jenkins [00:52:46]:
Dotcom was taken. So

James [00:52:48]:
Gotcha. Okay. I’ve never heard that cc. So is that specific to a country, or is that just whatever? It’s a thing.

Ross Jenkins [00:52:55]:
I believe it is specific to a country, but it just sounded right. So I thought, you know what? We’ll take that.

James [00:53:00]:
Alright. Call, dotcc sounds cool to me. So awesome. That’s digital me dotcc.

Ross Jenkins [00:53:06]:
Correct. Okay.

James [00:53:07]:
Awesome. Ross, thank you so much for being on the show.

Ross Jenkins [00:53:10]:
Thank you very much.

James [00:53:12]:
This has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. My name is James Kidman, and Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls On Call, offering call answering and receptionist services for service businesses across the country on the web at callsoncall.com. And, of course, the Bold Business Book, a book for the entrepreneur in all of us, available wherever fine books are sold. If you’re listening to this on the web, if you could do us a huge favor, give it the big old thumbs up, subscribe, and of course, share it with your entrepreneurial friends, especially those that may be interested in marketing, which should realistically be all of them, and, those that may not be, which they should be. Right? We’d like to thank your wonderful listeners as well as our guest, Ross Jenkins, CEO of Digital Me. Ross, can you tell us that website one more time?

Ross Jenkins [00:54:05]:
Digitalme.cc.

James [00:54:08]:
Perfect. Love it. Past episodes can be found morning, noon, and night at the podcast link On a draw in customers.com. Thank you for joining us. We will see you next week. I want you to stay awesome. And if you do nothing else, enjoy your business.