It’s easy to assume that paid ads are the magic fix, but without understanding your numbers and setting clear business goals, you’re just throwing money into the void. But you’re not alone! Most marketers and business owners misunderstand what it really takes to scale, and it starts with customer conversations.
Today, we’re sharing how many businesses, especially when strapped for cash, need to refocus their energy not just on digital ads but on getting back to the marketing basics. You need to connect with your audience, learn what broke, and rebuild trust to scale your business.
Ready to take control? The path forward requires patience, data, and strategy. Stop focusing on quick wins and start investing in your business’s long-term growth.
In This Episode:
03:57 Understanding Media Efficiency Ratio (MER) in marketing
09:54 Strategies for businesses with limited marketing budgets
15:41 Why setting clear business goals is critical
18:41 The importance of marketing and experiential play
24:15 Case studies and practical applications
27:02 The role of customer feedback & how to get it
Mentioned In the Episode:
Focus on strategy, not setup—ActiveCampaign’s AI agents handle your marketing for you. With smart next steps, personalized content, and goal-aware reporting, you can turn ideas into revenue across email, SMS, and WhatsApp—without the heavy lifting.
👉 Try it free at ActiveCampaign.com
Unbounce: Use the code “PT10off” at the end of your trial to get 10% off https://unbounce.com/pt/
Get Your Marketing Performance Indicators (MPI) Checklist: https://www.tiereleven.com/mpi
Oren Klaff’s book, Pitch Anything: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B004AN5OJA?ccs_id=afc782d8-f4ac-4f26-80f6-243a19b471d4
Previous episodes on maximising your marketing budget:
Read more about Cadillac’s bid to join F1:
Learn more about F1 bids and partners:
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Connect with Ralph Burns:
- LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphburns
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- Hire Tier11 – https://www.tiereleven.com/apply-now
Connect with Lauren Petrullo:
- Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/laurenepetrullo/
- LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenpetrullo
- Consult Mongoose Media – https://mongoosemedia.us/
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READ THE TRANSCRIPT:
The #1 Lesson Marketers Can Steal From Cadillac’s $450M Wager on F1
00:00:00:00 – 00:00:10:15
Lauren
If you’re using paid ads to compensate for where your marketing dropped the ball, where your offer is irrelevant, where your audience lost brand equity and trust with you, your runway is going to run out like
00:00:10:15 – 00:00:11:01
Lauren
so.
00:00:11:01 – 00:00:13:01
Ralph
The recommendation back to it, to that
00:00:13:01 – 00:00:20:07
Ralph
next step. I’ve got my $10,000. What do I do next. What would your first second third step be.
00:00:20:08 – 00:00:23:20
Lauren
First and foremost.
00:00:23:22 – 00:00:33:04
Ralph
Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic podcast. This is your host, Ralph Burns, founder and CEO of tier 11, alongside my incredibly amazing co-host.
00:00:33:04 – 00:00:36:02
Lauren
Lauren Petrullo the founder of Mongoose Media.
00:00:36:04 – 00:00:51:00
Ralph
So glad you joined us here today. And if you’re a director of marketing, VP of marketing, or a CMO, or you’re running your own business and you are trying to figure out this digital online marketing stuff or making sure that your team is doing it right, or, you know, God forbid, your agency if they’re not doing it right.
00:00:51:02 – 00:01:12:16
Ralph
You have come to the right place because we teach marketing the right way here with metrics that matter and growth at scales. And today we are going to be talking about sort of an add on to an episode that you and I did a few weeks back. Episode 726 will leave a link in the show notes how to get sales in your first year of digital business with just ten K, which I think is a good way of doing things.
00:01:12:16 – 00:01:23:11
Ralph
Starting out with a very limited budget, learning how to do it yourself, hopefully learning a lot from this show. But then what? Then what do you do?
00:01:23:13 – 00:01:24:17
Lauren
Then? What do you do?
00:01:24:20 – 00:01:50:14
Ralph
Yeah, what’s the next step after that? And you and I have had some interesting experiences this past week with clients who maybe share, I don’t know, move the goalposts a little bit as far as ad budgets are concerned, and kind of still treat this whole online marketing thing as like an ATM. And I’m not talking about at the moment on text, I’m talking about automatic transfer.
00:01:50:16 – 00:01:53:11
Ralph
What actually does ATM stand for? I don’t even know.
00:01:53:13 – 00:01:55:01
Lauren
On that transfer machine.
00:01:55:03 – 00:01:59:18
Ralph
In order for transferring. That’s it, that’s it. I just the cash machine. That’s usually what I say.
00:01:59:20 – 00:02:01:04
Lauren
What? So I’m sorry.
00:02:01:05 – 00:02:04:06
Ralph
What? I don’t know what is it? There’s Venmo and and.
00:02:04:06 – 00:02:06:06
Lauren
I used the same thing.
00:02:06:08 – 00:02:12:20
Ralph
Usdc. And it’s good. Somebody asked me for cash the other day. I was like, what? Like I don’t carry any cash. Oh, no.
00:02:12:23 – 00:02:27:20
Lauren
I was with a friend, Kwanza, and we went out to eat and she’s like, yeah, she has $2 bill. She just goes to the bank, collects $2 bills, is like, what? She’s like, you don’t know how good it feels to give someone an unexpected cash bill. It’s already surprising they have cash. Now it’s a $2 bill. I was like, dang.
00:02:27:22 – 00:02:42:10
Ralph
Well, I mean, that’s a little bit kind of part of the theme of today’s program actually, because that’s so it’s sort of an old school way of looking at things. And we’re so locked into using Venmo. And what is it, Zelle, which now a lot of people know.
00:02:42:11 – 00:02:46:17
Lauren
I accept Amex, visa, Bitcoin, crypto, Venmo, Cash App, you name it.
00:02:46:17 – 00:03:10:18
Ralph
I take it EFT is my preferred modality of choice, like looking at my bank account, just seeing money coming in. The point is, it’s like that is the old school way of collecting money, but the the the, the old school way rather is like cash. I know what it was. I was going to a gym. I was up like our place in and on the lake and the gym that I go to, she’s like, yeah, drop a five in, like, the mail slot.
00:03:10:18 – 00:03:16:14
Ralph
I’m like, oh my God. Like, can I Venmo you? She’s like, I don’t have Venmo. So I kind of like.
00:03:16:17 – 00:03:23:12
Lauren
Homeless men and women are the displaced citizens that live on my street. They have Cash App and Venmo.
00:03:23:13 – 00:03:32:20
Ralph
That’s so funny. Relating that back to today’s show, everybody wants to go like the Venmo route, the Zelle route, the I mean, PayPal is route.
00:03:32:20 – 00:03:34:09
Lauren
Route as point. You say route.
00:03:34:12 – 00:03:51:21
Ralph
Route, I say route. I’m from Massachusetts. The right way to say. But the point is, is like still the other ways work like cash still does work. I will still take cash. Now, we don’t pay any bills here at tier 11. In cash, however, we get checks.
00:03:51:23 – 00:03:57:16
Lauren
Still I tavia checks. Actually I have two squires I pay via check.
00:03:57:18 – 00:04:17:17
Ralph
So this relates to that show because once you get a little bit going on then you sort of expect okay, now digital is just going to be I’m going to put ten grand in, I’m going to get 30 grand back. So an example of this is a recent customer. They’re like, oh we need to get three x in our pay traffic.
00:04:17:17 – 00:04:39:14
Ralph
And I actually did the math. They shared their PNL and they’re actually getting 3.7 back. But they are not. Yeah they are not actually including their email and their SMS. And they’re not including their Amazon. Right. So and they weren’t. Yeah. So but they were saying all right we need three x. But I feel like wait a second, are we getting three plus x for them.
00:04:39:14 – 00:04:59:07
Ralph
Like in mirror media efficiency ratio, which is all the revenue that’s coming in, all that you’re spending on marketing? Well, in some cases it might just be media, it might be total marketing. We’ve had this debate before. I tend to include like, you know, for us, I include my staff. I include what we’re spending.
00:04:59:08 – 00:05:00:20
Lauren
You include marketing labor.
00:05:00:20 – 00:05:02:00
Ralph
I include marketing.
00:05:02:00 – 00:05:03:01
Lauren
I do not.
00:05:03:03 – 00:05:30:11
Ralph
Yeah. So when I do merge, that’s how I look at it. So if you’re a business and you’re trying to figure out your media efficiency ratio, you can look at it two ways. You can either say, all right, here’s my revenue for this quarter months, whatever it happens to be divided by how much I spent on media or divide it by how much I spent on all my marketing, which could include your SEO agency, your paid media agency, your staff, you know, your videographer, all that.
00:05:30:11 – 00:05:57:00
Ralph
So there’s two different ways of looking at it. So in this particular client, they were looking at it the incorrect way from my standpoint so siloed. But that’s what a lot of businesses still are caught up in. And it’s like where do you get to that next step. And they’re like, well, I don’t want to spend anymore because all of that isn’t coming back in channel as a return on that ad spend, when in fact, that’s the shortsighted.
00:05:57:00 – 00:05:58:18
Ralph
That’s the old way of looking at it.
00:05:58:18 – 00:06:27:18
Lauren
You’re already saying the wrong language. You said spend. It’s not spent. You’re investing into marketing. Point blank. You might be spending on advertising, but you’re investing into marketing. And I think a lot of that is like where people can assume that marketing advertising is the same thing because they’re convoluted, used together. But advertising is an element of marketing, and you always invest in marketing and you can spend on ads, but it’s still you’re investing.
00:06:27:18 – 00:06:52:00
Lauren
If you’re introducing a product penetrating a new market like even just that small language, is where kudos to Russell Brunson and Mark Zuckerberg for developing Clickfunnels and meta and allowing small business owners to flush the playbooks of marketing. So modern day marketing was just paid ads in a way that your business could grow and thrive in the world of AI and all this programmatic stuff.
00:06:52:00 – 00:06:58:08
Lauren
What is foundational and was neglected before is now becoming a non-negotiable in a lot of capacity.
00:06:58:13 – 00:07:21:16
Ralph
Just what you’re saying alone, thinking about it as an expense versus an investment. Like once you spend on marketing, you’re never getting it back. But the point is, is that will pay future dividends. Maybe not immediately. That day depends on what kind of product that you have. You have to invest that money and think of it as an investment.
00:07:21:16 – 00:07:46:03
Ralph
If you don’t have the runway to invest in it, either you need to rack up, you know, credit cards, which is what I did when I first started this thing. And or you need to get loans or you need something additional to just your cash flow, because in the case of this particular customer, they were losing money every single month when what they were thinking, oh well, I can just install an agency and boom, voila!
00:07:46:03 – 00:07:48:23
Ralph
All of a sudden everything just magically changes.
00:07:48:23 – 00:07:57:19
Lauren
Did they start taking teeth from little kids to put them under the pillow too, so the tooth fairy can arrive at a bunch of capital and five? Like what?
00:07:58:00 – 00:08:18:07
Ralph
It’s a far flung strategy. So like when you’re confronted with this, this is a common issue. How do you respond to that? How do you obviously, the difference between spending and investing are two different things, right? So getting the mindset shift to occur, don’t think of it as an expense. Think of it as an investment. But that’s all well and good.
00:08:18:07 – 00:08:41:18
Ralph
But if you’re losing 20 or $30,000 a month and you only got, you know, 40 grand in your bank account, you know, your runway ain’t that long. So how do you talk to clients? And how do you sort of convince them that this is an investment? And then what would be that sort of next strategy after you’ve kind of gotten the things going, which we talked about back on episode 726.
00:08:41:20 – 00:09:01:02
Lauren
Okay. I will say on the episode, we adjust films or in class and because you and I just reread for you and I listen to pitch anything, I think first and foremost, anyone that is finding if you’re an agency owner or in sales in general, like definitely episode obsessed with Oren, his name sounds like mine.
00:09:01:04 – 00:09:02:15
Ralph
So Oren. Lauren I never.
00:09:02:15 – 00:09:09:07
Lauren
Thought of that. Oh my god, the whole time I kept thinking of it. I was like, oh, so Lauren, Oren, Laura, or. Anyways,
00:09:09:09 – 00:09:10:18
Ralph
He’s married.
00:09:10:20 – 00:09:14:02
Lauren
Oh.
00:09:14:04 – 00:09:17:22
Lauren
I’m sorry. Did you just think, like my dating producers?
00:09:17:23 – 00:09:22:04
Ralph
Oren oh my God, that’s good. I’m not I to blush.
00:09:22:09 – 00:09:22:21
Lauren
I’m not.
00:09:22:21 – 00:09:23:13
Ralph
Waiting for.
00:09:23:18 – 00:09:30:10
Lauren
Any reply for this answer. I will just get eviscerated from all angles. So anyway.
00:09:30:10 – 00:09:37:15
Ralph
I gotta go on a YouTube rental traffic.com/youtube z Lauren Petrillo blushing. Anyway, go right ahead with what you’re.
00:09:37:17 – 00:09:50:08
Lauren
I can’t like. My knees are short. No, I’m like flashing a little brighter than my lipstick. I’ll dare you know it’s fair play, fair play. Just fair play. Jen. Be ready. He’s coming. I’m coming for him. Oh, okay.
00:09:50:13 – 00:09:51:15
Ralph
Oh.
00:09:51:17 – 00:10:17:12
Lauren
So. Okay, so you’re saying, how do you convince someone that it’s not spendings investments? Yeah, definitely. Check out that episode in, chapter two of his pitch. Anything he talks about, like framing and having control the conversation. And so I think assuming you’ve completed that, that’s where a lot of this continues the conversation. I think a lot of it is when you have a short runway, $40,000, depending on what their monthly expenses.
00:10:17:12 – 00:10:37:06
Lauren
I mean, I’m in the middle of reading like a $100 million money models. But from Alison, he talks about how your $5,000 for one month runway. The guy’s like how much you have left to live is one. This is no longer then interesting in working with us long term. They’re looking for a Hail Mary and sometimes we can perform miracles.
00:10:37:06 – 00:10:49:19
Lauren
But like, I’m not Jesus, I can’t guarantee anything in that capacity. Look, my hair might. We might have clothes for hair color, right? We don’t know that. He could be the sun. All day. No, we do know that he. He was not.
00:10:49:23 – 00:10:51:22
Ralph
Bleached by the end of it. That just.
00:10:51:23 – 00:10:54:13
Lauren
Well, just depends on which doctrine you’re following.
00:10:54:15 – 00:10:59:21
Ralph
Right? Yeah. We’re getting off subject here, so. Yeah. All right. I can tell you that.
00:10:59:21 – 00:11:27:23
Lauren
Todd, someone says I have $40,000 my last $40,000 left. If I don’t figure something out, what do I do? I think hiring an agency to run paid ads is probably the worst thing to do. What I would say, like in that capacity again, like, what would you spend through $10,000? And this is how it tastes like. If you’re looking to spend your last $40,000 on a Hail Mary, the amount of work, you’re just giving me a very hard task for me to maybe make a few grand where it’s like orange.
00:11:27:23 – 00:11:48:15
Lauren
I like 30% gross margin, 5% net. I have to now commit everything to save your company and your employees. That’s a big ask. Where I’m not getting any share of the profits. You know, like that’s a huge, huge ask. So I’m like, if you’re really going to commit, I need you to invest in me. Because if you’re saying that you’re going to spend that with me, I’m already losing.
00:11:48:17 – 00:12:07:08
Lauren
So if you are like, I only have $40,000 left, I would say, like, hire me for an hour or two or like, I like, go back into your team and figure out where is their money you’re leaving on the table. You need to go back into your business and figure out where your marketing failed. Because if you’re using paid ads to compensate for where you’re marketing, drop the ball.
00:12:07:14 – 00:12:27:15
Lauren
Where your offer is irrelevant, where your audience lost brand equity and trust with you, your runway is going to run out like you cannot demand success from a Hail Mary in that capacity. Now, if they have $40,000 and they’re their monthly liabilities to grant, okay, then we have a lot more space to work with. But that’s just like where I go back into it.
00:12:27:15 – 00:12:50:08
Lauren
If you’re like on your dying last 40 grand, you have to pull in and get into the foundational pieces. You have to talk to your customers, get on the phone with every customer. I don’t care, you have $40,000 left and you have $20,000 in labor. You start calling you smiling and dialing, and you try to figure out what broke, what stopped working because likely where I’m like, okay, Russell Brunson, like your Clickfunnels is amazing.
00:12:50:08 – 00:13:14:21
Lauren
You made it really easy to cut all of the garbage that you can or all the fluff that is actual marketing. From people, small businesses. And then then what happens is when Zuckerberg or Bezos, oh my God, his Prime Day changes, or Google or any of these ad networks change the rules on you for advertising. Your whole company collapses because you didn’t do any marketing.
00:13:14:23 – 00:13:31:12
Ralph
So is it because of the platforms themselves. So what you are saying is that this industry has trained these businesses to have such high expectations of return, that it’s unrealistic.
00:13:31:14 – 00:13:44:07
Lauren
Yeah. Well I would say this industry as well as like TikTok and Instagram influencers like think of how many times Ralph someone has come to you that says yeah, but I saw someone on TikTok say this worked for them, so it must work for my business too.
00:13:44:09 – 00:14:09:20
Ralph
If I could have a dollar for every time I heard that. Paid in cash, by the way, not Venmo. So I guess that just leaves me open to this, this problem of like, what’s the next stage? And if you do have money, like, this becomes more of a client and customer issue, understanding why your clients and customers bought from you to begin with, what they like, what they don’t like.
00:14:09:20 – 00:14:36:00
Ralph
You’re saying going down that granular route, going back to sort of the basics of, yes, you know, smiling and dialing and understanding, like how you need to fundamentally shift your product and or add more code. Because the business that I’m referring to here, their average order value is $20. I’m very hard with a let’s see frequency.
00:14:36:05 – 00:14:39:01
Lauren
How often do they refill a seven?
00:14:39:01 – 00:15:02:17
Ralph
It’s a like a 70% gross profit on that. But then it’s such low volume. They’re operating expenses basically just eat all of that 70% up like after cost of goods sold. So yeah. So that’s basically what the math is behind the scenes. They’re like, oh, we need a 3 to 1 to break even. Well actually you don’t. It’s kind of not the right way of looking at it.
00:15:02:18 – 00:15:35:17
Ralph
So I find like there’s this in-between kind of business that like they still don’t to understand their numbers quite yet. And they have to be able to like dive into that, figure out what the expenses are. Obviously, look at everything from a business owner standpoint. We’ve talked about this so many freaking times here on the shelf. So like the empties marketing performance indicators, if you haven’t gotten it, go over to perpetual traffic.com/mpi or tier 11.com/mpi and actually go to the tier 11 one just because you’ll be a a nice sequence there.
00:15:35:17 – 00:15:47:12
Ralph
You’ll learn about like what we do and all these others are something. It’s not a pitch here for tier 11. The point is it’s like this stuff matters. I spoke with two businesses this week, a 25 and a $30 million business. I was like, what’s your goal?
00:15:48:07 – 00:16:05:12
Ralph
Tell me what your goal is. Or I’m like or clapping this all the way by the way because I’m like well it’s like well what is your goal. It’s like I want to be more efficient on this channel. I’m like, I can’t really measure that. I don’t really know what that is like. In order for you to work with me, this is totally like there are in class way.
00:16:05:12 – 00:16:23:13
Ralph
It’s like you are the I need to understand exactly what your goal is and marketing as a means to get to that goal. I don’t care about. Like my team will figure out the marketing strategy to get you there, but I need to know what your goal is. What are your metrics? What’s your profitability? How much can you pay to acquire a customer like all of these things?
00:16:23:18 – 00:16:38:18
Ralph
Still $2,030 million companies like those, a $25 million company. We talked to you last Friday. I was like, all right, guys, you’re hugely profitable. You’re very successful. Oh, we’ve reached a ceiling. What’s your goal? What do you mean, like what? Where do you want to be?
00:16:38:22 – 00:16:39:09
Lauren
Yeah.
00:16:39:10 – 00:16:57:05
Ralph
Like, where do you want to be next year if I work with you now, what is your goal in 2026? Because if you don’t have a goal, I can’t work with you. I can’t help you because we’re we’re we’re operating in the ether. So it’s like, how much can you afford to pay to acquire a customer? And so their guy, their finance guy was on the call.
00:16:57:05 – 00:17:16:21
Ralph
It kind of went through it. He’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like it’s in and around this area. But that’s not really actually it they didn’t know. So you’ve got a highly successful companies at that end of the spectrum that don’t even know their employees. And so we’re talking about the people that have just started spent the ten grand listen to that episode that we talked about.
00:17:16:23 – 00:17:36:20
Ralph
And then they’re in that next stage and you expect them to know their numbers. Like, that was one of the first things that you said is like, look through your numbers, understand your metrics, understand in order for you to pay more to acquire customer, maybe you should actually have a higher end of when people first come in more profit bundling all the things we’ve talked about.
00:17:36:20 – 00:17:55:01
Ralph
There’s so many sounds, cross sales, upsells, all these other sorts of things, or refer to those episodes here that we’ve gone through in the past. The point is, is I don’t think that’s happening at that next stage of business, and that has to happen. And then combined with all the manual things that you said, talk to your customers, who are they?
00:17:55:05 – 00:18:17:19
Ralph
Why did they buy, what are their likes? What are their dislikes? Why did they buy what they what they bought? What other products would go well with those products that they already bought from you? Your best seller? Maybe you have something in there. Maybe that is the first formulation of a funnel, or some kind of upsell sequence, or that’s the first thing that you offer after they actually buy through your email sequence.
00:18:17:21 – 00:18:37:13
Ralph
All of this stuff, everyone just wants to, like, scale it and then put their hands up and say, well, why didn’t it work? Why am I not delivering three x? Why is my internal team not delivering three x? Why is my agency or whatever it happens to be? Because you need to understand all of these things first, and these are not things that you can I automate.
00:18:37:17 – 00:18:40:23
Ralph
These are things that you have to do. This is business and it’s hard work.
00:18:41:01 – 00:18:58:14
Lauren
Yes. And what’s great is like a lot of people are able to jump into business without great products. We just think about the lot. I mean, dropshipping, these are good products that aren’t yours. You’re just white labeling. It’s like again, and like I’m gonna keep referring the or class episode of like where he was talking about like what is a quick rich get quick rich.
00:18:58:14 – 00:19:20:21
Lauren
No, he says get rich crazy kind of scheme. And it’s like a lot of people have set these up. Even a lot of agencies they set up because, oh, I can hire someone off. Like whatever it is, is entering a business has historically been hard, right. And what’s been great is that people can create businesses much easier than ever.
00:19:20:21 – 00:19:38:14
Lauren
However, what’s also been great is that people have been able to make money much easier than ever. But as I said before, if you aren’t competing on price, which is a race to the bottom, you have to win with marketing and an experiential point. Like you can’t just create a product like, oh, I’m going to dropship this, or I’m going to overprice this.
00:19:38:14 – 00:19:56:12
Lauren
I’m trying not because I can get that same product cheaper by going direct. So if you don’t invest in marketing and if you don’t invest in experiential play, you don’t actually have your own business. You have a copycat short life of what’s working. Like. You going back to it, do you have a product and an offer that people want?
00:19:56:14 – 00:20:16:09
Lauren
And if you’re not the cheapest, you sure as shit better have stronger marketing or an experiential play because someone has to have a reason why they choose you over someone else. So I’m not saying you have to compete on price and do the race to the bottom, because that sucks. Margins are eviscerated. That’s what’s going to happen in Black Friday to most people.
00:20:16:09 – 00:20:35:08
Lauren
We pay the most to acquire new customers that are likely never going to come back. They’re just looking for a discount. But when you have, like we were talking earlier about like what F1 is doing, like what Cadillac is doing, like people are going back to, I need to get my brand in front of customers so that they know me, and I’m doing marketing so that my advertising is more successful.
00:20:35:08 – 00:20:57:18
Ralph
Right. That’s pre awareness. I mean, everyone knows who Cadillac is, but obviously it’s like the new F1 play in Bangkok, if I’m not mistaken, is a whole other sort of grab for advertisers. Yeah it’s all brand and it’s upscale and it’s Rolex and it’s Gucci and it’s all this. And now Cadillac obviously is getting into the race is that I forget.
00:20:57:20 – 00:21:01:02
Ralph
What would they be? The 13 team or the 16 two? I forget which one.
00:21:01:05 – 00:21:30:05
Lauren
They’re buying in as a new team and spending $500 million just to have and just to be all the new team. It’s like with MLS, it’s like 500, 500,000 or $5 million, whatever. If you want to have an official sports team, you can buy into these professional leagues. So Cadillac is buying into it. Bangkok like Thailand, the country of Thailand has a $1.23 billion bid to buy in as a location from F1 for a five year contract.
00:21:30:05 – 00:21:55:01
Lauren
Brand government, Cadillac. All of these bigger entities are buying in at levels that maybe a lot of the listeners aren’t accessible to necessarily, but they’re investing in the marketing in a way that was previously rejected because like, oh, I’m sold in digital. I can track how this goes. You cannot track the success of Cadillac’s team buying. I mean, you can look at the overall do we have more cars that are sold?
00:21:55:01 – 00:22:10:07
Lauren
But there’s not this money in, money out ATM kind of scenario as it pertains to investing in marketing at the extreme levels of buying a team on F1 or having a city on the F1 tour.
00:22:10:09 – 00:22:35:11
Ralph
Yeah, we’re not saying here that you should be discouraged or you should figure out a way to buy in F1. I’m not saying that it’s the concept. Yes of this. It is diluted in the digital world. So a lot of these brands are going offline and the country of Thailand understands this is a money grab because they are going to be able to make money on a $1.23 billion investment.
00:22:35:11 – 00:22:57:23
Ralph
Cadillac is going to get a return of a 400 $500 million buy into F1. It’s like I mean these are extreme examples but big companies we’ve said this 100 times here on this show. I feel like I’m repeating myself all the time. But big companies are big for a reason. Big companies, you have to think like a big company even when you’re smaller or mid-sized, right?
00:22:58:01 – 00:23:16:04
Ralph
These companies do not go through an agency and say, hey, I’m 25 million. I want to grow. Like, what are your goals? I don’t know, they have projections. You should know what it is. You should have your metrics dialed in. You need to know all this stuff. Now, we’re obviously we’re doing performance marketing with branding sort of as a secondary play here.
00:23:16:04 – 00:23:35:08
Ralph
So there is all of that that takes into consideration. However, I’m seeing branding, especially in referring back to like the Andromeda update branding, top of funnel stuff that doesn’t sell your product as absolutely essential to being a part of your meta campaigns. Now, through this content diversification strategy.
00:23:35:11 – 00:23:39:05
Lauren
Can I tell you a case study? Yeah, I give you a quick case study.
00:23:39:05 – 00:24:08:20
Ralph
So but what I’m saying is like you can really just let me finish. My point is like you can relay this Bangkok buying into F1 as a money grab. You know, Cadillac buying into F1 for, for 400, $500 million as like an indication that this is the stuff that actually grows brands and and direct marketing. They will never be able to say, oh, that’s a direct result of our 4 or $500 million investment.
00:24:08:22 – 00:24:12:18
Ralph
The point is, is like they will see a lift over restaurant.
00:24:12:20 – 00:24:32:14
Lauren
Relationship building all. Now refresh. So I ask the listener what is your F1 event? Maybe it’s going to your local chamber of commerce, maybe it’s going to a local event, maybe it’s partnering with another business. Like there’s stuff that you can do and you can invest in marketing for where you’re buying in a booth, at a trade show, where you know your customers will be.
00:24:32:18 – 00:24:59:11
Lauren
Maybe it’s you investing to bring someone else to your physical store, like if you’re selling. Monique has been healing and she has different. She sells like stones, gemstones and crystals and all that stuff, and she’ll have other businesses use her storefront to host whatever their ceremony is like. Say there’s a psychic or there’s, some sort of sound bath up people that like her products or would like her products.
00:24:59:11 – 00:25:20:15
Lauren
She invites other people to her store. I don’t I’m not in the that kind of space. So forgive me if I’m saying the wrong crowd, but it’s again, what is your formula one equivalent that you can do? Like how do you get back to business to introducing your, brand? But in the digital play that, like KSAT I was referencing is we had a client where we cut $5,000 a week of ad spend for.
00:25:20:15 – 00:25:40:10
Lauren
And what ended up happening with what we have been saying for the longest is if you don’t invest in top of funnel, you’re paying more for bottom of funnel. So we 80% are efforts in to top of funnel, but we 80% are budget in the bottom of funnel. And then we flip it right. So 20% of efforts is in the bottom of funnel campaigns, 80% of efforts and top of funnel.
00:25:40:12 – 00:26:11:02
Lauren
Then you have 20% of budget in top of funnel, 80% budget. So we did was we cut $5,000 from the top of funnel campaigns because we are limited on resources, and it ended up costing us a $60 increase per acquisition. So we collected a lot fewer acquisitions, and we paid a buttload more because we invested less in our marketing than our advertising, our paid ad bottom of funnel stuff suffered significantly.
00:26:11:02 – 00:26:27:11
Lauren
So if you don’t make that investment type of funnel, you’re going to hurt your bottom of funnel numbers. You’re just gonna make it more competitive. Now that is something you have to have enough budget. If you are spending less than $10,000 a month, you’re probably doing 90 to 100% of your budget to your bottom of funnel things. But then again, you’re going to find yourself in a runway.
00:26:27:11 – 00:26:29:08
Lauren
If all you’re doing is advertising.
00:26:29:08 – 00:26:38:18
Ralph
So the recommendation back to it, to that next step. I’ve got my $10,000. What do I do next? Know thy numbers first and foremost.
00:26:38:20 – 00:26:41:04
Lauren
Yes. In thy numbers we trust.
00:26:41:06 – 00:27:01:11
Ralph
Yes. Perpetual traffic.com/mpi, or Ncac. By the way, you can figure out how much to acquire a customer for two 11.com/ncac. You should have those anyway. Like, I swear to God, like nobody knows any of that stuff. So you need to know your numbers. You need to know your customers and then after that what will be the next step?
00:27:01:11 – 00:27:10:19
Ralph
So somebody comes to you like, yeah, all right, I just spent I just listen to that episode. Lauren. Now I’m ready for the next step. Like what would your first, second, third step be after that?
00:27:10:19 – 00:27:19:02
Lauren
So they spend the $10,000 either on like hiring a videographer, making a bunch of content, or partnering with influencers because I think those are our two strategies.
00:27:19:04 – 00:27:20:05
Ralph
I think they were. Yeah.
00:27:20:07 – 00:27:42:10
Lauren
Let’s assume that your next step is you’ve got your first hundred customers, strangers, like, you’ve got your first 100 strangers that bought for you. Then I would say one, I’m assuming you’ve already established an email marketing system, and if you don’t, you need to start capturing that first party data and start having dialogs with these people and set up in a way automated so that you can get them to give you feedback you have about your customers.
00:27:42:12 – 00:27:43:02
Lauren
Yeah.
00:27:43:04 – 00:27:44:03
Ralph
Like email all of them.
00:27:44:03 – 00:27:54:08
Lauren
Com no call them Andre. If you have 100. Hey my name is Lauren and founder of Mongoose Media. You just purchased my sleeping mask right.
00:27:55:14 – 00:28:07:01
Lauren
Did it. This is I got from shop talk actually shout out to tax clown or to sales tax. Peace of mind I thought this is really clever marketing right. This this is marketing. There’s no market. And then they running.
00:28:07:04 – 00:28:07:19
Ralph
Off on this.
00:28:07:22 – 00:28:27:18
Lauren
For them. Yeah it is. Well yeah it depends. And it’s like hey I just want to see like did you have a good night’s sleep. Did you get peace of mind. How can I help you? I want that consumer feedback before I start advertising and spending more money. You got to know their angles, because now if we go into how Andromeda’s working and how advertising is different, it is a demand for creative surplus.
00:28:27:18 – 00:28:47:18
Lauren
It’s a demand for different angles. It’s a demand for better creative, and it’s demand for creative that is personalized and relevant to the individual. Which means a lot of times before we were creating ads, it talked generically hey, get a sleeping mass that increases your sleep by 13%. And then you had two versions, the same creative with five different copies, and you combine them.
00:28:47:18 – 00:29:03:14
Lauren
Now Madison Drummond is saying like, get a sleeping mass. It tells your husband, I’m too tired for tonight, right? Get a sleeping mask. And that lets your mom know I’m not ready to wake up for school. You’re talking to two different avatars. You’re making a great.
00:29:03:14 – 00:29:28:22
Ralph
Idea for us by the way. Like some sort of visual, like no sex tonight, honey, or like, sex light. But that extra. What? It’s like the subtle suit. Both. Like I’m too tired. Yeah. Anyway. What? That’s a different avatar. Yeah. Somebody who is, I don’t know, like, doesn’t pay for blackout shades. Sure. Like we just got blackout shades in both of our, like, both of our houses.
00:29:28:22 – 00:29:31:11
Ralph
And it’s like, I have a great night’s sleep now, I don’t ever or.
00:29:31:12 – 00:29:41:14
Lauren
Even, like, think about the person. Like, we know your partner’s on their phone till four in the morning. And if it’s like you’re like, block out, they’re scrolling, you got better sleep to do it.
00:29:41:16 – 00:29:58:04
Ralph
And you get that feedback. There’s a way to do this with AI to a certain degree. I’m not going to get into that. But however, if you have like if you have customer service calls or client service call recordings, you can get all that sort of stuff. You can put it into your own lab and you can extract it.
00:29:58:09 – 00:30:12:20
Ralph
I’m not talking about that. Those are what big businesses should be doing. But what you’re doing is finding out, like, why do they buy it instead of me just saying, hey, you know, get this sleep mass, 15% more sleep, you know, get it. Also today with a 20% coupon off best sleep mask ever.
00:30:13:00 – 00:30:14:10
Lauren
That sounds so boring.
00:30:14:10 – 00:30:16:03
Ralph
It’s like the worst marketing ever.
00:30:16:04 – 00:30:32:13
Lauren
You’re like, stop talking to everyone because no one is listening. And Andromeda is closing the door because it’s like you’re not marketing why? You’re just advertising generically. Why you, the business owner, think it’s a great idea, but you’re not listening to your customers. You’re not extrapolating the very specifics.
00:30:32:18 – 00:30:49:17
Ralph
So like, for example, like if I was in the market for that sleep mask, I’d be like, well, the reason why I wear it is because the sun is always coming in and I’m too cheap to get blackout shades. Okay. So it’s like that was my objection. And then Jen went and bought like blackout tights for everything. So it’s like, now I don’t really have that that objection.
00:30:49:22 – 00:30:51:14
Ralph
I don’t know where she got the money from. So she.
00:30:51:18 – 00:31:07:04
Lauren
That could be the blackout shades free gifts until your wife is smart enough to invest in real blackout shades. Here’s our gift with you. And on it it says, like, if you think these look stupid, imagine I’ll take these off when you buy the blackout shades or something like that. That’s marketing.
00:31:07:04 – 00:31:30:10
Ralph
I know this is a ridiculous example. Everyone’s like, oh, what are they talking about here? This is actually how it’s done. Yes, this is actually how it’s done. It’s not a bland, vanilla marketing. Bland and vanilla is out. Although in Orange Class book he talks about bland and vanilla being in there. It’s one thing you’re like, if you’re trying to sort of sell a completely new idea, make it sound bland, vanilla, when it’s actually complex, set that aside for right now.
00:31:30:14 – 00:31:49:07
Ralph
Bland vanilla in for this type of business. I don’t care if you’re a director of marketing or you’re running your own business, or you’re just starting out, this is how you do marketing now, because that’s what stands out in the newsfeeds. Think about it. If like, you get the conversation that’s going on and your prospects head in the newsfeed, they’re going to stop the scroll.
00:31:49:12 – 00:32:04:09
Ralph
And still, we’ve been saying this for 700 shows your job as an advertiser is to stop the scroll, interrupt and interrupt. You might not buy off at stops of scroll. No, the point is, is the impression was made. You’ve invested in that impression.
00:32:04:14 – 00:32:10:02
Lauren
The attention economy demands you invest into getting their attention, and then your marketing has to retain it.
00:32:10:04 – 00:32:30:08
Ralph
Exactly. That is what we’re talking about here. So very manual. I love this because I love handcrafted stuff before you automate. But that would be like you and I are actually in 100% agreement on this. So know your numbers, talk to your customers. You’re like, oh, that seems like so much work. Well, welcome to business.
00:32:30:10 – 00:32:45:03
Lauren
And don’t expect a Hail Mary from your agency because that’s just you’re the business owner. That could be reckless and irresponsible. Like you said, welcome to being a business owner. I’m sure most of the business owners are like, that’s. Sometimes I get stressed and it depends a thousand things.
00:32:45:03 – 00:33:03:21
Ralph
But I know you’re doing a million things as a business owner or as a, you know, somebody is in charge of a marketing department to have one person dedicate a person or dedicate a half a day, block it out on your time schedule on a Friday, not on a Monday. Call customers do it every single week. Like that’s how you understand your business.
00:33:04:02 – 00:33:25:06
Ralph
It’s like that the the I will leave on this that this is not some random thing that you and I have thought of. We have been talking about this for a long period of time, and when Airbnb first started, I’ve used this story many times. Brian Chesney was at a conference out in San Francisco, like some Y Combinator thing, and he’s like, yeah, I need all this money for like, I want to scale this thing up.
00:33:25:06 – 00:33:42:00
Ralph
And whoever it was, it was it was somebody that’s in the space. I forgot exactly what it was anyways. Very smart venture capital guys. Like, what the hell are you doing here? He’s like, well, I want to come out here to get money. It’s like, well, all your customers are in New York. And literally they had like 20 customers, so they had proof of concept.
00:33:42:02 – 00:34:03:09
Ralph
So you go there, talk to all of them, every single one, and then come back and talk to me. Yeah. And so that’s Airbnb and its customers think like that. Think like I want to create something that’s big and great and groundbreaking. And Airbnb I would posit, is actually that.
00:34:03:11 – 00:34:07:15
Lauren
Where they didn’t break any ground like.
00:34:07:17 – 00:34:29:20
Ralph
Well, it broke a few mattresses, I don’t know. The point is this is that follow what some of these brands do think about. Yes, the f one example is an extreme one as well. You have to think like a bigger business, but you also have to understand your customer and understand the math behind the numbers. Yes, that Lani Petrillo is this week show.
00:34:29:22 – 00:34:32:20
Lauren
It was. That was fun. Sorry I got aggressive.
00:34:32:22 – 00:34:54:08
Ralph
I don’t know, we’re very passionate about this. So of course wherever you listen to podcast, make sure that you leave a rating and review. If you like this show, just tell us. Oh, please. But now, more importantly, get the MPI checklist, for crying out loud. Tier 11.com/mpi or perpetual traffic com for example, if you need our help, a tier 11.
00:34:54:08 – 00:35:17:03
Ralph
Of course you can go over to zero 11.com/apply. The point is this is that know your numbers. We’re going to leave those links for those shows in the show notes. Go back and listen to those. And we’ll probably be doing more episodes like this in the future as my guests Lauren. They’re fun. Hey, this is fun. So all right, so on behalf of my amazing co-host Lauren E Petrillo.
00:35:17:06 – 00:35:18:23
Lauren
To go.
00:35:19:01 – 00:35:28:11
Ralph
To the next show, see you.
