#11 – Len Ward – Understanding your business’s true marketing ROI and needs!
Len began his entrepreneurial journey in 2004 when he left behind a successful career in finance with Credit Suisse to take on a partnership role in an e-commerce startup. Through that experience, Len realized that he was more interested in marketing products than in selling them. He took this newfound passion for marketing and turned it into RankMeSEO, an online marketing agency.
Today, Len has channeled his passion for investing and marketing into Commexis, a marketing consulting firm specializing in financial auditing, investment allocation, and reporting of digital marketing campaigns. Commexis has worked with brands like the University of Pennsylvania, Johnson & Johnson, American Water, ESF Camps, Exceptional Foods, Analysis Prime, and Thyroid Virtual Clinic. In short, Commexis solves your digital marketing ROI problems and will teach you how to optimize your investment to improve your ROI.
Show Notes and Highlights from the Episode are below.
How Len got his start and his first few ventures 0:00
From wall Street to entrepreneur 2:36
The early days of SEO 7:48
Digital marketing, ROI, and customer acquisition costs 11:10
Tips to get a more true ROI 14:39
Companies will start to go out of business because they can’t afford to advertise 17:32
A good process to go through with your company to identify you are marketing needs 21:10
How should newer companies start the marketing process 25:30
What is content strategy? 27:25
What is a sales funnel? 28:19
The Connexis platform and what they offer 30:01
WHY A DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCY IS YOUR BEST SOLUTION FOR SUCCESS
“And I went down a rabbit hole, and I started looking into customer acquisition costs, lifetime value ratios, lifetime values of a client. And I said, why can nobody come up with a financial plan or financial model to say. Invest this; if you have the right message, your rate of return should be this. And that’s the iteration we’re at right now, where we get people away from stop worrying about your rankings, your traffic, your bounce rate.
Forget that, that leave that to your agency. We’re trying to get you to say here’s what your investments should be. This is what your marketing budget should be. And predicated upon you having a good product and your agency is doing the right job, and you’re investing the right amount of money.
This is the rate of return you should be looking for. So it’s that conversation, the financial conversation that nobody wanted to have, that we’re now forcing our way in. And this is an industry that I believe is emerging out of the SEO out of the digital world. And it’s like space in between the CEO and over to the CMO.
I think this is where we’re emerging right now is we’re talking directly to the CFO, and then they know how to allocate their money better if that makes sense.”
HOW TO PROPERLY LOOK AT HOW MUCH YOUR MARKETING BUDGET SHOULD BE
“Your budget is predicated on your funnel needs. So if you’re a company out there, you’re a lawn maintenance company, or you’re, let’s say you’re a lawyer, a startup law firm, and you need leads, let’s say your referral base isn’t too big, but you need leads. . And you come to me and say, okay, well I have $10,000 to invest in leads.
Well, the problem is that if you need leads, that means you need to start filling the middle of the funnel. Let’s say you need 50 leads to get to the revenue, and I’ll walk back to the numbers in a minute, but let’s say you need 50 leads. Now the top of the funnel is your brand. That’s your awareness of where you get people in, but the leads are like qualified leads in the middle. So you have to spend on pay-per-click or something like that.
Well, what if that costs you more than $10,000? What if that’s like a $25,000 investment or a $50,000 investment for certain types of attorneys it can be. So, your marketing budget is predicated on what your funnel deficiencies are. And then what the platforms are telling you the bidding environment is it’s not, I’m going to walk in and say, I have this much to spend.
It doesn’t work that way anymore. You come in and Google and Facebook and Twitter and Tik TOK, they’re going to tell you how much you have to spend predicated on where your funnel deficiencies are, and that right there is the fundamental problem 90% of companies have out there when they’re trying to establish a marketing budget.”
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