Building a Results (Profit) Driven Search Marketing Agency – Steve Cozzolongo, CMO of Digital Position

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hey there entrepreneurs, my name is Sushant and welcome to Trep Talks. Today I’m really excited to welcome Steve Cozzolongo to the show. Steve is a partner and chief marketing officer of Digital Position. Digital Position is a digital performance marketing agency that is geared towards Not just driving clicks, but profits as well.

And today I’m going to ask Steve a few questions about how he got started in digital marketing. And so the ways digital position brings value to its clients. So Steve, thank you so much for joining me today. I really, really

Roger Parent of Digital Position: appreciate your time. Yeah. Thanks for having us for having me.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So very interesting.

You know, um, you were just telling me the, how you kind of got started with this company. Maybe you can share, [00:01:00] you know, what were you doing before? Getting involved in a digital marketing agency and how, what really interested you to, uh, start a digital marketing agency, a performance marketing agency.

Roger Parent of Digital Position: Yeah, a little bit about my background and how I got into digital marketing.

Um, it was my first job out of college, um, way back in 2010. I started a digital marketing startup. We mainly focused on. SEO, content development and PR. Um, it was really interesting. It was great to get my feet wet. I had the opportunity to meet, um, you know, many important players or many important people within the industry, especially at that time.

Um, I mean, just Google ads was just starting, you know, around that time. Um, from there, I got exposed, I got exposed to. More areas of digital marketing, such as PPC, as I moved around [00:02:00] and hopped around to different jobs. Um, I started working for a large digital marketing agency called Resolution Media. It’s underneath Omnicom Media Group.

There’s over 2000 people in the company. I got the chance to work with Fortune 100 companies with huge budgets, which is really, really good experience. Um, but. All that experience led me to digital position where, you know, there’s things that I didn’t necessarily like about, uh, certain agencies and how they operated.

And once I linked up with my business partner, Roger Parent, we realized that there’s a big hole in the industry that we could fill.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: What was, what was the, the whole or you know, what did you not like what was going on and what, what are you bringing with digital position that was not, uh, that you thought was not, uh, offered in the

Roger Parent of Digital Position: industry?

Yeah, definitely. So in the beginning, [00:03:00] um, at the first startup, uh, I was definitely exposed to a lot of agencies that were just figuring out loopholes around digital marketing. So back then there was a lot of, you know, gray hat, black hat techniques that got people ranking, um, and paid advertising was pretty, uh, It was so new to the space that there is also a lot of challenges and problems in it.

You know, just, you know, thinking back at different match types of keywords that didn’t even exist back then, or you had to have exact spellings or incorrect spellings of keywords that, you know, you need to bid on. Um, but then when I worked at a large agency, I also realized that. Uh, the level of service just didn’t really seem like it was up to par, right?

You had you have these giant agencies that are employing young adults that are looking for stepping stones that don’t necessarily have a passion for digital marketing yet. They’re the ones that are pressing the buttons or pulling the levers for. [00:04:00] These hundred million dollar advertising budgets and it just seemed so crazy that, uh, for the price that these companies are paying, they weren’t really getting the level of service that I thought, uh, was necessary and, you know, thus began digital position where we are able to offer, you know, white glove service and, um, you know, just a higher level of service to each one of

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: our clients.

Definitely. Um. Now, I do know that on your website, I mean, that is kind of your value proposition, right? You’re not just driving the clicks, you’re kind of, you know, your focus is on driving profits. And I mean, I’ve been in e commerce for the last, you know, 11 or so years, and I’ve kind of worked with big retailers and I’ve, you know.

Um, seen digital marketing, I’ve managed digital marketing agencies as well. And I kind of agree with you that a lot of the times, you know, [00:05:00] the, the, the, because agencies, a lot of the times I get quite focused on driving profits. And, you know, uh, because of that, you know, they’re, they’re kind of hiring people who may not be like, you know, the most, uh, um, or yeah, the quality is not as far, um, so.

What is what is different? Um, about your agency? Are you kind of hiding people who are bringing certain expertise? Or are you? Do you just have a management structure that is really focused on making sure like the quality assurance process? So how do you make sure that you know, the performance that you’re driving for your clients is kind of better than an average marketing agency out there?

Roger Parent of Digital Position: Yeah, yeah. That’s a good question. Uh, I mean, there are a lot of agencies out there, uh, that can do digital marketing, where they can do PPC or they can do SEO. Um, do they do it? Well, is it’s really that question. And [00:06:00] that’s what we wanted to kind of change or provide our clients in the way that we do. That is providing a deeper understanding of not only the business, but the industry and even the competitors that our clients.

Have, um, when we immerse ourselves within that world that each client is in, we are able to offer them a much higher level of service and insight into the changes in the strategies that we’re making, right? So every client, you know, could be on tick tock. They could be on. Instagram, Facebook, Google and Bing right as a page channels, for example, but does that really make sense to them or taking a layer deeper?

Um, you know, what, what actual products or services are driving the most? Growth or has the longest lifetime value, uh, for a customer [00:07:00] or where is, you know, the margins, uh, or what, what has the highest margins for a specific consumer? A really good example is, uh, one of our clients, um, sells. Uh, products for, you know, wake boarding, uh, water skiing and all that kind of stuff.

They could sell a hundred to two hundred life jackets every single month. And optically that makes, that makes the results look really good. Right. We’re getting 200 conversions at a 30 CPA. That’s great. Is that really what that’s like driving the needle in terms of profitability for the business? No.

Right. A life jacket might cost 50 to 80. The margins are going to be pretty slim. They’re going to be a third, third party retailer. So yeah, they can drive conversions, but that doesn’t actually mean that the business is healthy. You know, so us understanding that type of information about a business helps us to make better decisions that align with our [00:08:00] clients.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: What kind of clients or what kind of industries do you mainly work with? Are you kind of a Industry category agnostic kind of an agency or do you specialize on certain kind of, um, categories or, or kind of clients? Yeah, that’s a,

Roger Parent of Digital Position: that’s another good question. Uh, so while we’ve, we would love to work with maybe specific industries or niche niches, um, where industry agnostic, the, the main thing that I think that agencies should really consider is it does this service or product.

From this client that you’re working with or potentially working with, is it actually of value to consumers, right? So that is much more important than, you know, only working with people within like an HVAC, uh, industry or only working with sports, uh, products in e commerce, right? We [00:09:00] need to make sure that this product is his providing value, that it’s not junk that we’re just forcing, uh, to sell online.

Then it’s something that we can get behind and believe in as well.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I think that’s, that’s so important. I think probably makes any marketer’s job easier, right? Because if you don’t have a product that has a strong value proposition, it’s very, very difficult to sell online because you’re probably, um, either competing against, you know, people leaving bad reviews or people just don’t liking what they’re buying or.

It’s probably just a commodity and you’re only, you know, competing on the price and, you know, you don’t really have that kind of margin on the product. So to, to really, uh, create a profitable marketing campaign. Um, can you, can you share a little bit about,

Roger Parent of Digital Position: sorry, I would say it just becomes like a numbers game and also becomes really [00:10:00] boring and it’s hard for our digital marketers are like our account leads and our team to stay really engaged.

Uh, I mean, just even think about how you’re supposed to write ad copy or consult around creative, right? You need to have really strong selling propositions and, um, you need to be able to stand out from your competition somehow. So can you share

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: a little bit about your client onboarding process? So, you know, let’s say that a new client kind of contacts your agency.

What, what are the steps that you do initially to kind of understand the needs of the client, what they’re trying to achieve also to understand, you know, what their product is and some of the things that you said around, you know, the value proposition and how valuable the product is in the market and so forth.

So can you share a little bit about how you kind of Start that onboarding process, start that discussion with the client to even understand if you know, that’s the kind of client you want to have, uh, in your agency, helping, helping, uh, [00:11:00]

Roger Parent of Digital Position: helping them. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So we always hop on a call with our prospects or prospective client.

Um, and during that conversation, we really need to do some background information. Take, I mean, just take a look at the website, take a look at that person, what kind of background they have, right? Like who are you, who are you speaking to? Are you, are you talking to a serial entrepreneur that has a lot of background and understands, uh, different areas of growth marketing, or are you talking to an investment banker who is really solely concerned on profitability of that business?

And might not even consider or care about what channels or how it is done, just the fact that it gets done. So, you know, that’s kind of what we’re, what we look at in beginning. Um, you know, when we are, you know, speaking with that, the prospect, we have to get an understanding of how passionate they are about the product.

What, you know, do they know what problems they are solving? Do they know what is, [00:12:00] um, you know, going back to the value propositions, but do they know what makes them stand out from the competitors? Um, you know, where do they think that there’s holes in their current marketing efforts or what they could be doing better?

Uh, another piece to everything that kind of, if we like took a step back and talked about who we like to work with, we have to really understand about, uh, understand the communication style of the clients as well, right? Like, what kind of expectations do they have? Are they reasonable or do they need help setting those expectations?

Have they worked with other agencies that, um, have just made everything more confusing and more difficult for the next agency, uh, to kind of prove their, our own value, uh, to these clients and making sure that they can trust that digital marketing is the right channel or a, an appropriate channel for them to actually grow their business in.

Uh, so typically, you know, we have like about a half hour to an hour conversation. Um, with the [00:13:00] prospect, and we flesh out all those different details and really get a deeper dive into some of the challenges that they’re facing. I think when you’re talking with a prospect, you really need to understand where the problems lie so that you can understand, you know, what you can actually fix.

Because, you know, we focus on PPC and SEO, we might, we might find out that, you know, while they do want to grow and they have the budget to grow and everything like that, first steps are they, they actually need to, you know, fix something with their operations. Like if we, if they don’t have the ability to, um, handle the growth that we could potentially give them, then they need to take a step back and, and, and change up, up, um, their operations before we start spending any advertising dollars.

They might need to revamp their website before we push any traffic to their website.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That’s, that’s so true. I mean, I think every client is probably very different and in terms of, you know, the services [00:14:00] that you’re offering versus what the client, you know, needs versus what the client thinks they need, right?

So, you know, a client, uh, I mean, of course you provide PPC and SEO services, um, but. When you talk to the client, maybe, I mean, do you also offer them strategic advice? I mean, the client may think, I’m assuming that, you know, when a client comes to a digital marketing agency, they’re, you know, they may have a product and they specialize in that product and they may be thinking, I hired this agency and now they’re kind of my, you know, it’s their job for, uh, to bring me.

new customers, right? How do you kind of manage those expectations in terms of what kind of results you will be able to drive for them and what you are able to do for them? Do you kind of help them with strategy? Do you only help with execution? Do you kind of take on the role of, you know, what is called like the fractional CMO, or you kind of become the, the marketing Uh, [00:15:00] arm of that company.

So can you share a little bit about how you manage client expectations? Uh, you know, what they want versus, you know, how you advise them on, on what exactly you can help

Roger Parent of Digital Position: with them. Yeah, definitely. So I’d say that our role, especially our expectations for our account leads, is to be an extension of their marketing team.

Um, I think it’s, it’s a lot to ask to have our account leads be a, you know, assume the role of like a fractional CMO. And that takes a lot of experience. Um, a lot of. Yeah, there’s a lot of experience to get to that point where they can even provide that strategy or that value. But, um, you know, I would say that providing strategy to our clients is an expectation that we have, uh, for our team.

And I think it’s necessary for proper implementation of SEO and PPC services. Um, you know, the last thing that we want to do is have somebody micromanage us [00:16:00] or them steer the ship in terms of what to do. Uh, you know, we have at this point, you know, we’re spending millions of dollars every single month, um, or just in over the our careers and everybody within our company is managing, you know, millions of dollars on PPC, or they’ve, um, you know, diagnosed or worked on hundreds of websites for SEO, whatever it might be, and we understand the best practices and.

Those best practices might not always align with what a business owner thinks should happen, uh, to their website or to their advertising or to their ad copy, whatever it might be. But it’s up to us to be able to explain that properly to each one of our clients and manage those expectations, right? Just because you want your brand voice to come across a certain way, um, doesn’t mean that that’s, uh, what’s best for ranking.

Or the ad [00:17:00] copy on a specific page. So at least by explaining something like that, we can understand like, Hey, your traffic might drop because we’re actually not targeting these specific keywords on the content on that page. But if your brand voice is more important to you. Then absolutely, let’s change up the wording so that it’s authentic to you.

Um, but overall, managing expectations is definitely something that needs to be done constantly. Um, and there’s just so many different areas within digital marketing and just service services in general, where expectations are extremely important, especially when it comes to results. For sure.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, in terms of the, the, the, the services that you offer, you know, uh, your website says you’re a performance marketing agency.

Can you describe exactly, you know, what, uh, what services you’re offering? What are your core services that, uh, That you help

Roger Parent of Digital Position: clients with the [00:18:00] core services are paid advertising. So, you know, everyone uses PPC, but people tend to think that PPC is Google text ads only, or something of that nature. Uh, we do paid advertising, um, and that’s basically any platform that allows you to, you know, pay for advertising space.

And then also. Um, SEO, so more of the organic search engine results, uh, you know, marketing and those two services are our own or our bread and butter. And the only things that we focus on, we really try to keep our blinders on and make sure that we don’t get distracted by everything else. There’s a lot of other areas of digital marketing that affect.

Uh, PPC and SEO, such as like web development or online PR or, um, you know, whatever it might, or email marketing, but in order for us to be the best at what we do, you know, I think it’s, it’s really important [00:19:00] to stay in our lane and then let other experts kind of handle these, these other channels. Um,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: yeah, I think, I think that makes sense.

Are you still there?

Hello.

Can you hear me?

Roger Parent of Digital Position: All right. It looks like you’re back.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Oh, I don’t know what happened there. You just froze.

Roger Parent of Digital Position: Yeah, I think my neck kind of cropped out a little bit. Okay. Okay. No

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: worries. Um, so yeah, I was going to ask, you know, digital marketing, um, paid advertising and also SEO. It used to be, as you were kind of briefly mentioned before, you know, there, there were so many different ways of doing SEO in the past, you know, white hat, [00:20:00] black hat, uh, methods and so forth, and also paid advertising.

Um, now probably has a lot more, uh, competition and, you know, it probably takes, uh, uh, you know, the amount, uh, of dollars that it takes to drive, uh, the traffic, you know, a single person to the website and even to convert that person is probably much higher than what it used to be in the past. Um, can you share a little bit on how in your own experience, um.

Digital marketing, specifically paid advertising and SEO has changed over time. What is kind of working right now? What is not working right now? Um, has things become easier for agencies or it’s like an uphill battle because of, um, oversaturation, um, in the industry?

Roger Parent of Digital Position: Yeah. Uh, so I’m going to try to [00:21:00] try to answer that whole question, but what has changed the most?

I would say that things are. Have probably gotten easier to implement over time, right? So let’s take paid advertising. Uh, we have back then, or, you know, let’s just say 10 years ago, it was so hard to work within the interface and make changes or mass changes, right? Like, if you want to bulk upload keywords, or you had to have a specific format within this Excel sheet just to bulk upload these changes, the amount of changes that you need to make were pretty insane.

Uh, everybody had their own, um, you know, tools or. Kind of like homemade algorithms that they would come up with within their Excel sheets to change bids based on certain metrics that they’re seeing. Now, there’s a lot of automated bidding strategies that helps us get from point A to point B a lot faster on SEO.

I mean, obviously there [00:22:00] is. A lot more. I mean, back in the day, there was a lot more manipulation, right? Like, you know, maybe let’s just take it. For example, you could have added a bunch of text in in white at the bottom of a of a bottom of a page to help get you to make faster because Google is just crawling that the website and seeing those clues and.

But like now Google is much smarter. So they, they can’t, or you can’t use any of those techniques. But the reason why SEO might be a little bit easier now is because we have these core set of rules and, um, optimizations to make that everybody needs to be doing that are. Frankly, easier, uh, to do because it should be, uh, it should be like, just, it should be natural to any business to want to share that information.

Just like, for example, um, you know, you need to, to make sure that you have [00:23:00] an about us page, right? For authenticity and Google needs to. Wants to, wants to see that about, you know, we’re just, we’re just talking about like really simple concepts right now, but that should be something that every website should have or every business should have.

And it’s, it’s, uh, it’s something that Google weighs heavily, um, at the moment. Um, so. In some ways, it’s really, really easy, or it’s gotten a lot easier just because we know what to do and what to look for. Uh, what was the second part of that question?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: What, what, so, so that is easier that, you know, you have now automations and you have some clear cut understanding of what is required to rank or what is required to, uh, you know, get your website.

But, but at the same time, that, that probably also means that, you know, most of the agencies out there or most of the businesses. You know, knowing the clear cut rules and having these automations doing the ability to do things easily. Everybody [00:24:00] can, uh, you know, if there are two different e commerce businesses selling similar products, you know, and they can implement the same strategies.

Um, how does one business, I guess it makes it difficult to compete with that second business, right? So what is difficult then? Gotcha.

Roger Parent of Digital Position: Yeah. Yeah. So when you’re talking about an agency kind of becoming a commodity, right? There’s a low barrier to entry to become a digital marketer or to get into PPC, right?

You could start taking some classes. You could just dive in and test out with some, some advertising dollars or ask a family friend to start managing their Google ads account. That’s for sure. But to actually understand, uh, how to pull some of these levers at the right time is a skill in itself, right?

You can not. The last thing that you want to do is give Google all the control. So like on the paid side, you should not just use smart campaigns and Google owned, uh, or Google run campaigns to spend your dollars. Why would you ever give [00:25:00] somebody who already has a monopoly on the search engines in general, uh, all your money for them to spend freely the way that they want to.

Uh, so. you really need to understand how everything works. So how all these algorithms work and all the levers That you can control and pull, um, to take back as much control as possible. Uh, that is a core, uh, component to why, you know, we remain relevant within the industry and, and really see better results than other agencies, because I think that there are.

I want like the easiest setup and just, Hey, we can just do smart, uh, smart shopping or, uh, performance mass campaigns, or we’ll just do smart campaigns and, you know, put a bunch of broad match terms in there. Yeah. Well, that’s not really, you know, setting yourself up to make proper optimizations for scaling or for scaling for [00:26:00] efficiency, um, later down the road.

Um, and then I would say the way that we stand out, it goes back to. You know, the core values of a digital position that makes us different, you know, really understanding, you know, what are those competitors doing, you know, how, how can we stand out again on the paid side, uh, you know, how are things evolving?

So, you know, the beginning of PPC era, it was text ads, and then it evolved into shopping ads, and then it’s display, and now we’re getting into video, and now we’re getting into other channels and platforms. Which there’s different algorithms for each types of those videos or what types of format of videos now works best on each platform.

So knowing all of that is actually way more difficult than before. Well, while the implementation was a lot harder, um, for Google ads specifically, um, you know, there’s just, it was only one platform or a few platforms where now we’re talking about this pretty complex [00:27:00] ecosystem. Where every single business needs to be on multiple platforms.

If you have a PPC strategy, you can, you pretty much can’t just be on Google ads or Google search ads only, you’re going to have to have some sort of, um, you’re going to have to have some sort of strategy that involves. You know, prospecting, remarking and touching the customer throughout the entire funnel.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So, so it almost seems like that the barrier to entry now is not on the execution side, but really on the knowledge side of understanding the different channels, what works on one channel versus another, and really having the, the, the right measurement. And optimization strategy to always have the pulse on, you know, the campaign and be able to optimize it, not, not just an automated way, but really.

In a manual, you know, person has to keep on looking at the campaigns and making sure they’re optimizing in the right way. [00:28:00]

Roger Parent of Digital Position: Yeah, for sure

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, can you give um an example of you know, maybe one? Uh, one of your clients where you really kind of Took their PPC campaign or SEO campaign, um, you know, uh, where it was not highly optimized, or they were not getting the kind of results that they, that they wanted.

And, and, you know, you came in and what did you do? How did you change, um, their PPC or SEO and what kind of results were you able to drive

Roger Parent of Digital Position: for them? Yeah, yeah, definitely. One that comes to mind, uh, off the top of my head is A business that sells air filters. Um, it’s a, it’s in an industry that’s pretty crowded, right?

And it’s a, it’s a commodity item. Um, I mean, you can buy air filters on Amazon and you can also buy air filters at Home Depot and Lowe’s. So you’re already competing against some of the biggest. [00:29:00] Businesses in the world. And then some of the biggest businesses within America, um, brick and mortar, uh, locations as well.

Um, what we were able to do is. Is take a look at what channels would work for them the best and then how we are sharing that message across each one of those channels. Um, you know, we are really using some of these social channels to figure out what audiences would be on each one of them. So just for example, we all know that it’s a tick tock is going to.

Generally be a little bit younger of a, of an audience versus Instagram versus even Facebook. Um, so on each one of those platforms, you know, what types of messaging should we be, uh, or what types of messaging do we need to have in order to resonate with those audiences? So that needs to change per platform and per audience.

Um, so there’s a lot of strategy [00:30:00] behind that and having, getting like a better understanding. Um, also. Uh, really identifying what types of problems, um, you know, the customers are facing, right? Especially when it is a commodity item. And we were just talking about how when it is a commodity, how are you competing?

Is it going to be price? Uh, what is the major selling proposition? And, you know, why should somebody go with you? Uh, so really digging in and working with the, with the company and the client to identify that as well, to make a really strong case for people, you know, signing up and working with them versus, you know, buying from Amazon or the Home Depot or the Lowe’s, whatever it might be, um, we were able to.

More than double the spend. We also broke into another, an additional market, right? Where we’re first talking about air filters, and then we actually got into fridge filters. Um, so we were growing [00:31:00] another service of that, of the company simultaneously from almost nothing to, um, a category or a service that was equally as impactful as air filters were for that business.

And, um, I mean, that was transformative for the business and allowed them to. Do a lot of other things like work on, you know, rebranding and work on more creative assets and focus. On the things that, uh, you know, we weren’t doing right, like, uh, or that, that they weren’t doing before,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: how do you manage the creative aspect of, um, advertising?

Is this something that, uh, you were collaboratively with the client to come up with? It doesn’t, you know, let’s say for something like, you know. Running a YouTube ad, um, you need, let’s say, a video, uh, advertisement for that. Is that something that your agency is able to, uh, help the clients with? Or is that, is that something that, you know, you talk with the [00:32:00] clients and say, you know, I think for your particular product and your particular messaging, this kind of creative would work and then they’ll go out and create that and provide that to you.

How, how, how do you, um, kind of manage the creative aspect of, uh, marketing

Roger Parent of Digital Position: advertising? Yeah, so over the years, it’s been growing and becoming a more important piece, uh, to the advertising puzzle for every single client. Um, I mean, Even in local service businesses, you could still benefit from having good video creative assets.

Um, so we work with clients and we, we consult and then we also help execute on, on video specifically, um, because we know it’s just so important and because clients typically cannot. Execute video properly, right? They have the ability to design or, you know, design, maybe landing pages or come up with still images that work pretty well.

But we know [00:33:00] that video is king on all those platforms and it’s only going to continue growing. So that’s where we have stepped in, and it’s been a service, a PBC. That has been growing within digital position over the past 3 years, uh, since about covid and you know, what we do is we do everything from, uh, you know, taking a look at competitors, taking a look at the industry, taking a look at best practices on each platform and consult with our clients on what what they need to be doing.

Um, we work with. Other partners to actually execute on the video or obviously the different like creators to execute on the video Or editors whatever it might be, but we want to we want to have a hand in the strategy You know the scripting the messaging even understanding the different like shot lists for example that people need to have in their videos to create something that is Um, not only, uh, [00:34:00] visually pleasing, but also, uh, effective on each platform.

And, you know, we felt like we needed to step in again, just because clients just don’t know where to start. They don’t know how to do it. They don’t know what goes into it. Um, and we’ve just had so much experience at this point, uh, that, you know, we couldn’t, we couldn’t, uh, not, I guess, like have our hands in it.

For sure.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, you know, digital marketing or advertising is kind of evolving so quickly. I mean, this is like, um, advertising is so competitive now. Um, what, what excites you about what’s going on right now? You know, a lot of the newer artificial intelligence technologies that are coming in, um, What, what is exciting for you in terms of, you know, digital marketing, digital advertising right now?

And, you know, what, [00:35:00] what is, what do you think is challenging?

Roger Parent of Digital Position: Yeah. So things that are the same things that are exciting are also challenging. So I would say a cool thing is that. With technology, we can do things a lot faster. Uh, you know, when it even just, for example, when it comes to video, we can, you know, pump out video with our partners a lot faster because of technology, everything from, um, combating writer’s block for coming up with a good script by using maybe AI or chat GBT.

Or, um, you know, just the fact that everything is changing so quickly, right? Uh, earlier this year we had Twitter and now it’s X and we don’t know what X is going to be by the end of next year. Um, TikTok was. Absolutely on a, on a, on a tear over the past three years. And, uh, Snapchat is [00:36:00] now one of the fastest growing platforms.

I didn’t think that Snapchat was going to overtake the growth rate or, uh, such a fast growth rate over Tik TOK, um, but that just recently happened and Snapchat has been around since. Well, like

2012, 13. Um, so it’s been around for a while. Um, so the fact that everything is changing is exciting, but that also makes it more difficult, right? Because now we need to really figure out, all right, well, what’s our processes for each one of these platforms? How are we going to build that into the strategy for our clients?

And, um, you know, what are each one of these platforms really good at? So while you might use video on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and TikTok, you know, like the types of videos has to be way different or the types of advertising in order to be effective, it’s going to be different on every single platform.

So that part is definitely challenge challenging to make sure that you are [00:37:00] an expert. On each one of these platforms, um, and that you really know what, what works, you know, the audiences on each one of those things and that you’re moving fast enough, right? Because we, you know, there’s sometimes where, uh, like, I guess if we weren’t adapting and, uh, to the fact that tick tock was a growing platform over the past three years, we would have been missing out on a huge chunk of, um, not only revenue, but a big piece of, um, important marketing strategy for our clients.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Definitely. I mean, it almost seems like, you know, if, if, if there is a business and there’s so many different platforms and so many things changing all the time, um, every business almost needs to have some sort of a performance and performer in house that can adopt and create. It’s like a constant content creation.

Engine you need to have in order to be relevant in the [00:38:00] marketplace. Um, and a business that comes to an agency, like, do you ever have a conversation? I’m sure, I’m sure you have this conversation all the time where the client, because marketing budgets are always constrained, does the client come to you and say, can you guarantee me that, you know, this is the result I’m looking for, can you guarantee me this result and how do you kind of.

Manage that conversation because I’m assuming no agency can, can ever You know, guarantee authority there, right?

Roger Parent of Digital Position: Yeah. I mean, I think every single person wants to know that there is some sort of guarantee. And I always say that while people are speaking to multiple agencies, if somebody is promising results, that should be a red flag, uh, to to the prospect or to that client.

Um, if somebody is saying that. Uh, the only thing that can be promised is, is effort or, uh, at least explaining in detail [00:39:00] how you’ve accomplished something similar with another client. So through your track record and using data, um, so you could say that at least directionally, you know, these results should be expected, but I mean, you can’t really project out revenue growth or whatever it might be.

Um, every situation is really different though, because you can look at an account and just say, all right, well, I can just tell right there that this is set up wrong. And, you know, we’re going to have a pretty big impact within the 1st month. Um, I think that, you know, maybe taking that approach, you know, when looking at, uh, a prospective or prospect and, you know, actually diving in and auditing.

Their whether it’s their website or their advertising accounts, being able to kind of quantify how much or how fast. Um, things will be changing would be really, really important. And I think. establishes a lot of trust with [00:40:00] that

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: client. Can you share a little bit about what kind of support does a client receive in terms of, you know, once they start working with you, uh, with your agency?

Um, what kind of, um, I guess, you know, do they have an account manager? If they have any questions, issues, or, you know, uh, in terms of performance reporting, um, how does the client feel supported when they’re working with your

Roger Parent of Digital Position: agency? Definitely. Um, so we really try to make sure that the client feels like they are being heard for one, you know, making sure that we’re responding to any inquiries or requests or emails within 24 hours.

That’s a big thing for us within at least business business hours. Um, on the weekends, it’s hard to have account leads, you know. Uh, respond to emails. It’s not an expectation, but lots of our account leads care enough that [00:41:00] they do. Um, they also have, you know, every one of our accounts has a dedicated account lead and, um, also support from a manager.

And then also we have the support team that helps with a lot of the changes in the background. Um, whether that might be like a promotional change or some sort of update in the account, uh, or anything like that. On top of that, we like to be proactive where we can. So, for example, especially on that, on the SEO side, we have, you know, we send out emails with algo updates, right?

So if there’s a major change to the landscape, we want to let people know so that they’re aware of that. And that’s, that’s twofold. Like one, so that we can say, Hey, this is what we’re about to be focusing on and working on. Or. Um, just to let you know, if there is volatility in the rankings or the results that you’re seeing, you know, it’s likely because of this change in Google, um, or one of the [00:42:00] search engines.

So I think that that kind of goes back to expectations as well, um, or how to manage those expectations, but being proactive. So those

types of questions don’t, arise.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: What does your team look like

Roger Parent of Digital Position: right now? So our team, uh, we have 32 people on our team, uh, 32 full time U. S. employees on our team. Um, we structure it where we have, uh, our paid, our PPC team and our SEO team. Um, in the middle, we do have a support team, uh, where it includes developers, um, designers, um, it includes copywriters or even support team that might go in and, you know, help rebuild accounts.

Uh, so those teams that’s in the middle, that support team’s in the middle because it supports PPC or it supports SEO [00:43:00] in order to, to provide the proper service. Um, and then a couple other positions that we have is we have, uh, like an onboarding team. Uh, like onboarding specialist that helps just because onboarding is very disruptive to the entire process of running an agency and to account leads.

And we also have a director, um, of operations, right? So they’re, they’re helping all areas. So whether it be PPC, SEO or support, uh, make sure that processes are in place, making sure that we’re finding ways to be a little bit more efficient. And also connecting the teams together because, you know, while PPC and SEO are completely different services, they are similar enough.

And there are some areas that do overlap. Um, and we want to make sure that, uh, at least internally. And, uh, everybody is working together, and then externally, the client understands that these services are complimentary. [00:44:00]

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: For sure. Um, what is the future vision for your business? How do you see your business evolving, let’s say, the next three to five

Roger Parent of Digital Position: years?

Yeah, definitely. Um, you know, obviously, one of the main visions that we have is growth, right? We want to be a 10 million company or 10 million in revenue. Um, so in order to get there, we’re going to have to really work on having a consistent pipeline of leads and trying to also work with the clients that we.

That we would like, or maybe, uh, hopefully be a little bit more choosy, um, and the clients that we’re working with, um, you know, just as, as far as vision, we also want to remain a core to, uh, we want to continue having the core values that I was discussing earlier in this conversation, where we are taking the time to really understand our clients.

You know, [00:45:00] we’re not providing a cookie cutter service. You know, we are recommending strategy that is unique to each client or each client’s industry. Um, you know, that is super important and that can easily get lost when it comes to, you know, uh, digital marketing agencies. You know, the best way to scale is kind of just to do the exact same thing with multiple people.

Uh, and that’s just not who we are and that’s just not how. We’re going to get the results that we expect.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, one question that I’m curious about. I mean, of course, you are the chief marketing officer of this agency. And, you know, um, you’re kind of probably responsible for bringing in new leads, new prospects to the, to the, the agency.

Um, and. This space, how do you see the space of whole, you know, digital marketing? I mean, agency business, there’s, it seems like it’s probably very oversaturated [00:46:00] now. Um, so what challenges do you face as a CM or, or maybe it’s not a challenge, you know, how, you know, what do you focus on in terms of bringing in new clients for the agency?

Roger Parent of Digital Position: Yeah, so it’s definitely a challenge, you know, I would say that it’s probably over saturated, but I’m not sure if we necessarily feel that as much, um, once we are talking to a client, especially one that’s a really good fit for us. We don’t really have that. We don’t have that much difficulty actually landing these clients just because we have these same type of conversation that I’m having with you.

And we’re just really explaining everything or playing out all of our cards up front and. Explaining expectations and talking about the strategy that we would implement. We will we are willing to teach and talk about anything that we would be doing in the account Just knowing that as a client you’re probably not going to be doing that or like I could teach you [00:47:00] everything on how I would run the account and my exact strategy But the fact is that you wouldn’t be able to implement it the way that we’re doing it and we feel confident in that um, but when it comes to Landing new business or keeping our pipeline healthy is something that’s that we always have to be testing, right?

Are we doing our own PPC properly? Are there different channels that we need to be working on? Um, like for us, advertising on Instagram and Facebook just isn’t the right channel for us, right? Uh, that’s not who we’re trying to, to reach. Um, but you know, what type of, um, or like what type of content should we be making?

Thank you. Um, that would resonate with our ideal audience. So that’s something that we have to consider. Um, networking is, is always important. So, um, when it comes to doing a good job with every single one of our clients, I mean, that’s [00:48:00] our number one priority because they’re the ones who are telling their friends.

If you’re working with any CEO. Chances are that they know another CEO of a company. Uh, and then they are going to, if they’re excited about you, they’re going to proactively share information about you and share your name to them. Because, um, I mean, that’s just like how, how networking works. Uh, so we really put a lot of effort and pride into that.

And in our relationships that we’re making, uh, but I would say like the same thing happens like, uh, you know, you asked about what makes digital marketing so, so challenging and it’s because there’s always new mediums and, and there’s always new platforms. And I think that that is something that we have to keep in mind as a business ourselves is to stay on top of all the different platforms that could be relevant to us.

And how we’re supposed to, or how we can connect with our audience. [00:49:00] For sure. Um,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: in any business, there’s always, you know, learning, uh, and, and what that means is, you know, there’s something doesn’t work and you, you have to readjust your strategy or you have to learn from that and correct the course and, um, and move forward, uh, in your own business, what has been, or in your role, maybe.

Uh, what has been some, you know, challenges, learnings that you have, uh, kind of experienced, uh, that have been a learning experience for you. What did you learn from it? And what can maybe other marketers learn from from your mistakes or? experiences.

Roger Parent of Digital Position: Yeah. Uh, there’s probably two things. So the first one would be, uh, within digital marketing, like, yeah, maybe this is a low barrier to entry.

And when you’re really small, you know, when it was just Roger and myself. We were willing to do anything, right? We were willing [00:50:00] to build a website. We were willing to figure out how to do email marketing on top of PVC and SEO. If you do that, you’re going to spread yourself too thin. And I think that everybody who starts a business or especially in digital marketing.

Just find, pick a lane and stay in it and have the desire to be the best at it. If you are the best email marketer, you’re going to be able to, you’ll be able to thrive and then partner with somebody like digital position, because we, we could do email marketing, but we’re not going to be the best at it.

So why even bother? We might as well find that other, the other agency or that other partner or contractor, whatever it might be to help fill in the gaps for our client. Um, also, if you are, if you are providing so many different services, if you mess up on one of them, and that’s reasons for one of your clients to leave.

So you’re [00:51:00] just giving, it’s almost like you’re setting yourself up for failure when you’re trying to take on more, uh, you know, too many different services. That you can’t be at the top of your game at, um, so I would say that that would be something to really focus on, especially in the early days, even when there is that carrot dangling and just saying like, somebody’s like, Oh, I’ll pay you 10, 000 to redo my website.

If you don’t feel like you’re going to be the best at designing websites and you’re really good at PPC and SEO, don’t design that website. The second thing is just, is this hiring. Um, you know, a lot of people, especially if they’re just starting out, they probably want to make money doing digital marketing.

Um, it’s worth taking risks and hiring really good people and compensating them or giving them what they need and having them share in the upside. Um, because you can’t do everything alone, like you will, you will hit a ceiling at some point, [00:52:00] you could be really, really intelligent and be able to make a million dollars on your own.

But if your goals and aspirations are to become a 5, 10 million dollar business. There’s no chance for you to do that, uh, be able to do that on your own.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That’s, uh, that’s really great advice, both of them, I think. Uh, now I’m going to move on to our rapid fire segment. In this segment, I’m going to ask you a few quick questions, and you have to answer them maybe in a couple of words or a sentence or so.

Um, any book recommendations for marketers?

Roger Parent of Digital Position: Um, and why? Yeah, it’s funny. I’m I’m reading this book. I’m using ourselves to death and it’s a really old book. I think it was written in like 1985, um, and it just, it just talks about how media changes everything. And, um, I think it’s a really good perspective and it’s a timeless book on, you know, what it or like how to utilize media.[00:53:00]

Or, um, how it’s shaping our culture and it just is very, uh, it’s just very relatable to digital marketing in general

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: and innovative product or idea that you currently feel excited about.

Roger Parent of Digital Position: Yeah, I know it’s like a hot topic and probably everybody is saying this, but, you know, is. Is crazy. Um, the amount of new businesses, the amount of new opportunities that are coming from it.

Um, if you’re a true go getter, then you should be staying on top of AI and what’s happening. Um, otherwise you’re just going to fall behind.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Definitely. I mean, yeah, we have to see what, what, what, what everything becomes because of AI. So yeah, it may be a very different world, uh, a business or productivity tool or software that you would recommend or a productivity

Roger Parent of Digital Position: tip.

Um, [00:54:00] Yeah, we just started using this, this tool called notion. Um, it’s really, really, uh, cool. And, you know, one of the main reasons why we started using it is because. Uh, well, one, it also integrates AI and those AI capabilities, but two, it allows us to kind of brain dump all the knowledge that we have across our business into one central area, uh, where every team member can kind of look up and access very easily.

So it’s like, instead of using OneDrive or Dropbox or Google drive and then using Slack and then using some other. Um, project management soft software kind of integrates all of that into one. So it’s just really good for at least a company of

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: our size. Definitely a startup or business that you think is currently doing great

Roger Parent of Digital Position: things.[00:55:00]

Yeah, that’s a, that’s a good question. Uh, what’s funny is that I’ve been thinking a lot about how things are shifting in our economy and a lot of manual labor businesses are actually are thriving. Um, I mean, I, I would say it’s pretty hard to find a plumber or H back technician or somebody like that to, to come over immediately these days.

So, um, even though. You’d probably imagine that I would think of something that’s a little bit more technology focused, I think, at least for maybe some of those young entrepreneurs out there that you should maybe consider some of those, uh, old school

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: businesses. Definitely. I think there’s a lot of opportunities, uh, in service based businesses because, um, yeah, not, not everybody wants to do it.

And, uh, and there’s a shortage of it, um, a peer entrepreneur or business person whom you look up to, or someone who inspires you.[00:56:00]

Yeah. Uh,

Roger Parent of Digital Position: I have a, I have a friend that is, his name, his name is Pete and I look up to him mainly because I really appreciate people’s effort that they put into, um, uh, business or, uh, the things that, that they do. Um, so it’s no, it’s not, my answer isn’t like an Elon Musk or something like that, for example, it’s really more of the, uh, the effort that people put in, uh, is very inspiring that I can see, you know, like, are you willing to do things that other people aren’t willing to do?

If you are, especially in this day and age, it’s very likely that you’re going to be successful and also just being really consistent at it. You know, there’s so many times myself included that I get really excited about a certain topic or an idea, and that might last for a week or 2, but it’s very rare for somebody to get really excited and start consistently working towards a goal for a month, 2 months or a [00:57:00] year.

And only those are the only people that end up being really successful. Um, so yeah, not only do I admire my friend, but I think I just admire that quality and people in general. That’s,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: that’s really great advice. Yeah. Consistency is definitely key. Final question. Best business advice you ever received or you would give to, uh, to other entrepreneurs

Roger Parent of Digital Position: or marketers?

Yeah, so I have some recency bias on this 1, but a quote that I’ve been thinking about a lot this year is, um, how you do 1 thing is how you do everything. And I think that that’s a good advice to give to any business person or entrepreneur, just because I think that they need to reflect on every action that they’re doing, whether it’s.

You know, are you, if you’re eating and you’re being really lazy and you’re just eating whatever because it’s convenient, uh, that kind of will spill into everything else, even if you don’t [00:58:00] intend it to, it’s because, well, you know, maybe now it’s just not proper nutrition or you’re just being lazy about this activity in general.

And now are you just gonna be lazy about everything else that you do? I think that if you are really serious about being successful. That needs to be, um, that needs to be shown in, in all your, every action that you take in life. Um, so being conscious of that statement, I think it is super important to, to reflect on making sure that you are the person that you want to be at all times.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Definitely. I think anybody who’s kind of in the pursuit of excellence, you know, they try to do things. In an excellent way in every area of their life. So that’s definitely really really great advice Well steve, those were all the questions that I had Thank you so much for joining today treptox for sharing a little bit about yourself your story as a marketer Um, a little bit about digital [00:59:00] position, you know, the product services you provide, how you help your clients and, and, uh, also your, uh, thoughts on marketing and what’s going on right now in the digital marketing world.

So thank you so much again. Uh, if anybody wants to check, check out digital position, what’s the best way to do that.

Roger Parent of Digital Position: Yeah, uh, just check out our website, digitalposition. com, um, and then reach out if you have any questions. I’d love to

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: have a chat with you. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. And wish you all the very best.

Roger Parent of Digital Position: All right. Thank you. Thanks for having me.