In this episode of B2B Marketing Methods, host Terri Hoffman, CEO of Marketing Refresh, sits down with Danny Gavin, founder of Optidge, professor of digital marketing at the University of Houston, and host of The Digital Marketing Mentor podcast.
Danny shares insights from his many “hats” in the digital marketing world—agency leader, educator, mentor, and family man. The conversation dives into the importance of CRM systems for tracking leads and driving ROI, how to align sales and marketing teams for greater transparency, and why strategy—not quick fixes—is the foundation of sustainable growth.
Danny also discusses the role of mentorship in building strong teams, the balance of culture and accountability in agency life, and how AI can streamline processes without replacing the fundamentals of great marketing.
Tune in for a thoughtful discussion on building trust, leveraging strategy, and leading with purpose in today’s fast-changing digital marketing landscape.
To learn more about Danny Gavin, connect with him on LinkedIn at:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannygavin/
Or, email him at:
To learn more about Terri, connect with her on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terrihartley/
To connect with Marketing Refresh, visit: MarketingRefresh.com
Full Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Terri: Welcome to B2B Marketing Methods. I’m your host, Terri Hoffman, and I’m the CEO of Marketing Refresh. Let’s face it, embracing digital marketing is daunting. This podcast was created to make it more approachable. Join me as we talk to CEOs, sales leaders and revenue growth experts who will share lessons learned and tips from their own journeys. Welcome everybody to another episode of B2B Marketing Methods. Our guest today is Danny Gavin. Danny, he just loves hats. He just has one that he wears every day. He has many that he switches to and I’m going to let you learn a little bit more about all the interesting things.
I’m having Danny on because I respect him greatly. He owns a marketing agency. We do compete against each other, but we’ve never viewed each other as competitors, and we’ve always viewed each other more as allies and kind of strategic partners to help each one of us improve what we’re doing for our clients.
So I’m excited to have him on today because he has so much great information to share about HubSpot, about CRM platforms, about the importance of strategy in ad campaigns and so many more things that we’re going to dig into, but let’s start with introductions. Danny, I didn’t talk about the name of your agency yet, and that wasn’t intentional.
I would like for you to talk about that and maybe just kind of give us an overview of those different hats that you wear. So, welcome.
[00:01:30] Danny: Super, well, thank you so much, Terri.
[00:01:31] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:01:32] Danny: It’s an absolute pleasure and honor to be on the show. Like you said, it’s kind of weird to have competitors, but, but, but we really aren’t and that’s why it’s so cool.
Yeah. And we’ll talk more about that throughout today. So, yeah. I run an agency called Optidge. I started it about 15 years ago, similar to around the same time that Terri started hers.
[00:01:53] Terri: Yep.
[00:01:53] Danny: And, Basically that’s my main focus, but I’m also involved. I’m a professor of digital marketing at the University of Houston.
I’ve done that for 10 years. Teaching and mentorship is really, really important to me. one day I’m also gonna write a book about recruitment by being a professor. because some of my best employees are former students of mine. So it’s kinda like a cheat hack code, that I figured out.
[00:02:19] Terri: Uhhuh
[00:02:20] Danny: And then recently, about four or five years ago, I also started my own digital educational academy called ODEO Academy because I was like, Hey, I, what I’m teaching, I don’t just have to teach people who go to university, but also individuals who, you know, maybe have a family and they’re looking for something to do something different.
I’ve also had a lot of like former teachers and people in the medical industry who are like, you know, I’m done with this. I need to find something different. And the beautiful thing about digital marketing, which I think you could agree Terri, is that there’s so much variety, whether you’re creative, whether you’re analytical, and you know, there are [00:03:00] people, there’s a place for everyone, whether you’re either of those sides or everywhere in between as well.
[00:03:05] Terri: Yeah, for sure. And then, he’s got two more hats and one of them is he also hosts his own podcast. Tell us a little bit about that.
[00:03:15] Danny: My podcast is called The Digital Marketing Mentor.
[00:03:17] Terri: Okay.
[00:03:18] Danny: And the whole idea is that I interview guests and go through their mentorship journey. Who are the people that influence them, and then how are they going ahead and influencing the next generation and the people under them?
And it’s been awesome because I’ve had just that opportunity, number one, to really deep dive into mentorship and what that means and there are like 50 million definitions. Every person who comes on, it’s like a different angle and a different perspective. But it also gives people the opportunity to stop and think about, ooh, who are the people that influenced me?
And thank them. And it’s just been cool, especially post-show and the episode going live and on social media, people being able to tag those people influenced their [00:04:00] lives. It’s just been kind of a cool, all around event every single time.
[00:04:04] Terri: Yeah.
[00:04:04] Danny: With my guests.
[00:04:05] Terri: That is really cool. Danny, your final hat I know is the most important one to you, which is being a family guy, your a
[00:04:11] Danny: Yeah.
[00:04:12] Terri: Husband and a father. I think that’s another way you and I bond because our families are really important to us, right?
[00:04:18] Danny: Yeah, very much so. I’ve got six kids. Ranging from 16 all the way down to four months. It’s a really big part of our lives. I mean, you know, I got married when I was 22 and we had our first child a couple years later, now I’m 40 and we had another child.
So it’s a big part, for a lot of people it’s like, oh my gosh, six kids, what about it? But like, you know what, you know, family is, is really important part and I couldn’t see it any other way. Of course, there are days where it’s like, oh my gosh, what were we thinking? This house is crazy. But then there’s also those moments where it’s like, oh my gosh, this is really beautiful and amazing and, you know, me and my wife wouldn’t really have it any other way.
[00:04:53] Terri: Yeah. That’s awesome. Well, I, love it. Thanks for sharing that too, because at the end of the day, we’re all people, right? We have [00:05:00] careers that are important to each of us. A lot of it has to do with mentorship. Like how we’re able to build a company that serves the employees, that serves the clients that we work with, but at the end of the day, it serves our families and it’s one of the ways that we can each, like be a meaningful leader in our families, which I love.
[00:05:19] Danny: Yes.
[00:05:19] Terri: I would love to start the conversation by talking about, three letters that when you talk to business owners about these three letters, they’re like, oh my goodness,
not another marketer preaching about CRM. But, you and I both believe that type of system is really important to have in place and really can make the difference between having a mildly successful sales and marketing program and a wildly successful sales and marketing program. So, I would love to have you elaborate a bit about the value that CRM brings, how that fits into your model as well at your agency.
[00:05:58] Danny: Sure. So for [00:06:00] those who don’t know, CRM stands for customer relationship management, and the idea is having a system in your business so that you’re able to track leads when they come in and nurture those leads and ideally turn them into sales. So us B2B marketers, we don’t have it easy like e-commerce. E-commerce, you know, people come to the website, they purchase and that’s it.
And obviously there are programs to then try to get people to purchase more, buy something different. But for a lot of us, when someone comes to our website or interacts with us digitally, they’re not ready to purchase right away.
[00:06:34] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:06:34] Danny: And that first interaction is usually a lead, right?
Someone filling out a form or downloading a white paper. Then there’s a whole life cycle after that we have to actually go nurture and you know, even if it’s just sending out a quote. But that’s usually a process, right? Like Terri, we both know we send out a proposal, usually they don’t just sign it right away, right?
[00:06:52] Terri: Right.
[00:06:52] Danny: It takes time to get through that process. So if you think about it, if you’re approaching a agency to help you with [00:07:00] marketing and they are generating leads for you, and Okay, you know, I get in phone calls, I get my form filled out. That’s really cool. But if I’m not able to track those calls and those leads and see what actually happened to them, did they actually turn into customers, did they not?
Were they qualified leads, were they not? It’s going to be very difficult to note, did this marketing program work or not? And therefore, if you are doing some sort of digital marketing, having that CRM is going to help justify your spend and are things working or not? Because it’s really easy to say, Hey, my program generated this many leads, but we all know, especially those CEOs or CFOs, that if I don’t know, what did that actually turn into?
What were the dollars and cents, then I’m most probably going to stop that program or be very questionable of, is it working or not? Having a CRM is [00:08:00] exactly the tool to help you figure out what’s going on.
[00:08:03] Terri: Oh my gosh. Very well said and I think you just really described the biggest pain point we encounter in developing a relationship with the brand is how do we know what we’re spending money on in marketing is actually working?
And so a CRM tool gives you that foundational piece to be able to answer that question, right? Especially in a B2B world where you might have a 12 or 18 month sales cycle or three year sales cycle, you know, it’s, that’s not uncommon in the B2B space. So, yeah, it, it gives you that foundation.
[00:08:37] Danny: Obviously we’re marketers, so we’re biased, and we’re like, okay, well if you want a marketing program, you need a CRM.
But really, even if you weren’t doing marketing, having a CRM, having your salespeople use a tool to keep track of things, their follow ups, even having that visibility so you know, are they working? How many emails are they getting out a day? And not to be big brother, but just to be able to measure like with anything in life.
If you want [00:09:00] to get better at something, it’s good to measure it and see how am I doing? How could I do better? Just like we measure activities on websites and we want to optimize, you can also optimize your salesforce as well. So even outside of the marketing, having the CRM in place is good. Now,
yes, sometimes salespeople are a little bit, you know, wary because it’s like, I’ve got my Rolodex and I don’t want to come and share it with you, or, ooh, what’s going to happen? But you know, that is something where as with any sort of, software adoption, there’s always going to be that change and therefore it’s about education and how it’s going to help and that can really push those salespeople to jump on board to use that CRM.
[00:09:40] Terri: I was just talking to a business owner who’s considering HubSpot and was asking for my opinion on it. One of the points of view I have about it as an advantage, and you’re right, we’re biased because we’re marketers and we want to track everything. But I think as a business owner, one of the value points is that it forces you to define a [00:10:00] sales process, and have a system for holding your salespeople accountable.
I think what I just said can be scary to a lot of business owners because you want to believe you have the right sales team and sales people and sales management structure in place. And it’s possible you could implement something like this and realize that maybe the sales team isn’t being held accountable in the right way.
And you’ve got to make some changes, that you, that you don’t want to make due to loyalty, or longevity it forces you to think about how to coach and train those people so that they’re following the process that you’ve put into place with the CRM, I mean, that’s kind of a, a bigger concept, than just software, right?
Software enables these things, but I think it’s the processes that it forces you to put in place to hold people accountable that is just hugely valuable to thinking about the value of your company.
[00:10:58] Danny: Yeah, and then when you put [00:11:00] processes into place, like you said, there are naturally people who don’t fit.
[00:11:05] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:05] Danny: And that is scary, but you know what long term you kind of have to look at it as, yes. In my previous life when I didn’t have that software process, this might have been a really good individual, a good performer. But in order for us to grow, in order for us to be where we need to go, we need these processes.
And therefore, if certain individuals don’t fit into that, that’s okay. Right? And that just means you’ve grown, right? And the people who got you there might not be the people who need to get you to the next step. We all know that change is scary and it’s difficult, but don’t think of it as I’m putting in the process, I’m putting in the software and that’s ruining my old system.
No, you’re actually growing up and now, yeah, you might lose some people along the way, but that means that they’re not the right people now and therefore it’s okay to grow. We can both look back and understand why certain CEOs or CFOs or sales managers would be scared about it because this could cause major change or [00:12:00] even little change, which is scary and maybe I just don’t even want to deal with it.
[00:12:03] Terri: Yeah, exactly. And so let’s say, you encounter that situation, it’s like I’m not quite ready to take that step. What are some more, precursors to a CRM solution that you’ve seen successfully put into place when you’re not quite ready to make that investment of time and money and change?
[00:12:23] Danny: So something that we do in a very simple way is we set up, let’s say we call it a, Spreadsheet CRM.
[00:12:30] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:31] Danny: Where that spreadsheet is keeping track of every lead that comes in and it also say, says where that lead came from. And at a very simplistic way what the team or the client or the business has to do, is, in that spreadsheet mark whether that lead was qualified or not qualified, and then eventually if a sale did occur or some set of transaction, put that dollar value or say that a sale occurred. So [00:13:00] yes, it’s not going to have all the bells and whistles, but for the point of having a successful marketing campaign, at least now we have a system to see which are the leads that came from our marketing efforts, and what happened to those adding that qualification and those dollar values to there. And that’s a really good sort of baseline, and no one should really be scared about it. The only thing is, is that it’s important that the company comes into that spreadsheet and actually updates the information.
You know, we work with some lawyers and they don’t even want to touch it, but then what they do is, like once a quarter, they’ll go in and then they’ll update everything and that’s what they do. In a perfect world, our partners are going in and actually updating that every single day. So the idea is something is better than nothing.
[00:13:48] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:13:48] Danny: And if you can’t do it every day, that’s okay, but we need to do something in order to shine a light on how well this marketing program is doing.
[00:13:57] Terri: Yeah. I think you’re right. I think a cadence [00:14:00] is better than no cadence.
So if it’s quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily, in the moment, it’s sort of like time tracking. No agency employee likes tracking their time, but you have to do it to ensure that all of your projects are being run appropriately, you have the right resourcing in place, and so many other reasons. I think that commitment to updating data in a CRM or a spreadsheet or whatever tool you’re using is just as important.
Otherwise, you’re never able to answer that largest pain point that we talked about right at the beginning , what are all these marketing activities doing for me? And I think it leads into the alignment of those groups, right? Especially in the B2B environment, there’s a very clear delineation between, your salespeople, your sales reps who have different territories or different product lines, and then you’ve got the marketing department and the marketing efforts going into that.
How do you, kind of establish that cadence and structure for those two groups interacting in your engagement? [00:15:00] I think it’s a real challenge that we run into quite a bit with our clients.
[00:15:06] Danny: Yeah. The alignment between the two is really important. I think transparency is key, right?
When sales knows exactly what marketing’s doing, and what marketing’s doing for sales and no one’s hiding anything. I think that can solve a lot of the issues. If I have my little spreadsheet over here and they don’t really know what’s going on and what the purposes and what the value is.
So I think transparency and education is key.
[00:15:30] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:30] Danny: And, and I think it’s exciting, right? Like when people know, Ooh, wow. The reason we’re doing this, like, Hey salesperson, the reason why I need you to come and report these things to me is because then we can actually see what works and doesn’t and we could spend more right.
And get you more leads, right? Then the salesperson realizes that this is not just a pain, but I can see what’s going on. I can measure myself better. It might push me to focus on certain things rather than others. So the idea is the sales and marketing should not be in two silos.
It needs to be together, and there should be transparency, and I [00:16:00] think that can help. In some organizations it’s a little more difficult, but maybe approaching it this way could help.
[00:16:06] Terri: I completely agree. I think there’s too much of a history and stigma between those groups that says salespeople are just taking people out for lunch and golfing and going to dinner, and Yeah, that’s what they should be doing.
They’re building relationships, right? So why is that wrong? Marketing is just out there trying to put together trade show booths and email campaigns and Google ads campaigns, and we don’t really understand what they do. It’s not okay to have that mindset anymore. Have the groups get on the same page about each department’s roles and responsibilities and how they actually work together.
Because what I just described is what both of those groups should be doing. I think where it falls apart and fails is that you’re not understanding how those strengths in different roles actually can complement each other and work together. It really actually upsets me [00:17:00] when I see that mindset, and not seeing the mindset of transparency and we’re working together and we’re in partnership with each other, right?
Like, marketing can bring things to a certain point and a salesperson is going to do the really hardest part, bringing it home and turning it into revenue. But without that communication and interaction and information coming from what’s working and what’s not working, it’s very difficult for a marketer to be as effective as a marketer could be.
[00:17:31] Danny: Yeah, because then what marketing ends up being is more like, it’s called spray and pray. Right? It’s like we’re just doing what we’re doing, and hoping that it’s going to work, and you know, sometimes that works, but usually it’s a lot more expensive and it can’t scale that way.
Right? Because then you don’t know which part of it worked and therefore it’s just a mess.
[00:17:50] Terri: Well, I think you, you’re touching on something that I think a lot of business people might not experience and that as marketers we own this. That’s how I look [00:18:00] at it. You and I want our clients and brands that we work with to have an experience where they feel like marketing is an investment, it’s driving value.
Every dollar you’re spending is going as far as it can go. Not the mindset of, oh great, I just sold another service and it’s making me this much more revenue. We both want our work to actually work, right? Like you’ve won many awards at your agency for the work that you’re doing, and I think you’re not winning those awards because you’re saying, look at us we’re so great at what we do. It’s because that’s so important to you to actually drive results. That’s why you’re applying for and winning awards because it’s that important to you, right?
[00:18:45] Danny: We do have that additional pressure. It’s funny because a lot of people have that award-winning mindset where it’s like, man, I need to get this to work because the idea is every campaign that we do should win an award.
And the only way to do that is if you actually track what’s [00:19:00] going on. If I just say I brought a bunch of leads, there’s no way that would win an award and it also won’t win. In the mind of our client. It’s kind of interesting that those two things go together, but when you’re actually pushing a campaign in the right way and being able to measure it, that’s something worth being award-winning and vice versa.
[00:19:16] Terri: Yeah. Exactly. The award itself kind of becomes unimportant. It’s what the award shows to the market and to your team our teams work really hard and they put a lot of thought and passion and care into each thing. A lot of times I’m like, I just want my team to win this award because I know what they’ve put into it, to make it successful.
It really means a lot
[00:19:40] Danny: Yes.
[00:19:40] Terri: Yeah.
[00:19:40] Danny: I’ll tell a quick award story. My most, it was just really, really exciting. A couple years ago and we were, it was like a page paid search, large campaign, a medium campaign.
The two people on my team who worked on these, they’re really, really close friends. So the, you know, it was [00:20:00] announcing, you know, best award for medium paid search, and it said Optidge, and the person who worked on that campaign was Brianna, who was more junior to Rachel, who’s senior. Brianna was so excited and she’s like, oh my gosh, they haven’t announced large yet.
I can’t go on there without Rachel. Everything that I’ve done is because of Rachel. She’s like, I’m going to go on the stage, but you have to come with me. And she grabs her. They run to the stage and then while they’re on the stage they say, okay, now the winner for the best large campaign was also Optidge.
That was Rachel’s campaign. But it was just like, it was one of the happiest moments of my life where it was true kindness of like, I’m going up there, but I don’t know if you’re going to win. And then based off of that, I’m not saying it’s due to that, but like actually bringing the person up on the stage and sharing in that joy and then suddenly, oh my god, we won again.
It was insane. But it was that kindness and respect to me, that was one of my most beautiful professional moments because it showed, I don’t know how to describe it, but it was that sort of happiness [00:21:00] and kindness and love. It was just so cool.
[00:21:02] Terri: Yeah. No, that, that is awesome. It’s funny because you and I have both watched each other’s agencies win awards. I’m not sure if we’ve competed in the same categories we must have by this point, but it’s always interesting because you want the good guys to win. Every time you win, I’m like, that’s awesome because, unfortunately in our line of work, if you’re a business owner listening to this, you get bombarded with ads. From marketers all day, right? And from people who have some, magic pill for you to swallow, three steps to follow, whatever, all the ads sound the same, and that’s what Danny and I in our agencies are competing against.
There aren’t quick fixes and there aren’t quick wins out there. We wish there were, because if there were, we would be doing them. We would want you to get results as fast as possible, but it definitely takes a strategy and a consistent approach over time to really build your brand and become successful.
And so when I see your agency win, I’m like, that is great because we [00:22:00] know this is what’s sustainable and reliable and scalable. The little quick fixes, three step programs that you get ads for on social platforms could definitely work today. I’m not saying some of those don’t work, but they’re not sustainable.
They’re tricks and they’re just hacks and it really stinks. It’s another reason I wanted to have you on as a guest today, because I want people to understand the true meaning of strategy. So that might be a good segue to another one of our topics. I didn’t even mean to take us there, but I think I did.
So strategy, that can apply to a lot of different parts of a marketing program, maybe the best way to ask you this question is just tell me where you see the importance of strategy and how that fits in and what happens when there isn’t a strategy to kind of counterpoint that. I mean, I’m going to give you kind of an open, open-ended question for you to talk a little bit about that.
[00:22:55] Danny: Sure. So when you are [00:23:00] planning to get into something, you’re going to reap what you sow. Therefore, it’s really important to figure out what are our goals? What does success mean? How are we going to get there? Even deeper, what truly are the pain points of our clients? How do we actually solve those issues? Which things should we focus on? Which should we not? So you can see like there’s so many decisions to make, right?
[00:23:29] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:29] Danny: Like it’s not just creating an ad and putting it out there, but there’s a lot of thought in all these different things. And I think that the first one that I mentioned about what’s considered success, what’s not, that’s really important, right?
Especially for the marketers. When we go in, we’re running campaigns and we’re optimizing and we’re doing, something might be considered successful to us, but if it doesn’t translate into success to you, then that program’s going to be shut down. [00:24:00] So kind of checking these boxes off ahead of time and figuring things out, that’s truly going to then set up a program set up a marketing campaign that is set up for success, right?
[00:24:13] Terri: Yeah.
[00:24:13] Danny: Because it’s all clear. We know what we need to do, and then when we actually go and run it there’s so much more of a likelihood that this will be successful. Not every campaign that is run is automatically going to work, but at least now we’re all on the same page.
For us, often our setup time and strategy time is a couple weeks. And sometimes I get some complaints about that where it’s, man, but I need to start a campaign right away. Like, can’t we do it tomorrow? And, you know, people don’t realize that, no, like we could, like, anyone could slap a bunch of keywords and just start a campaign or go to Canva, design something really quickly and put it out on meta or on LinkedIn right away.
But we know that the likelihood of failure when you do that [00:25:00] is going to be so much greater. I mean, what do they say? I’m sure you’ve heard this as well, Terri. You know, a lot of people come to us and you say, oh, well, Google ads might be good for you. And like, oh, we tried it already. Right? And yeah, you did try it already, but you must probably try it in that way, right?
Without a strategy, without a plan, without what’s going on and that’s why you fail. There’s 99% chance that it’s going to fail. So, I just think people have to wrap their head around this concept that there is some upfront work, there is some strategy. You got to invest in that first.
And yes, it might be hard because you want to get those campaigns running right away, but you have to set that foundation first.
[00:25:39] Terri: Yeah. We get asked that question all the time and whenever I hear that they’ve tried Google ads or LinkedIn ads or Meta ads and it didn’t work.
I have a lot of questions, you know, and it’s, it’s not because I’m trying to poke holes in what they did. I want to understand, did it really not work or was there a lack of a strategy? Was it the wrong strategy? Was the [00:26:00] creative wrong? Was the targeting wrong? Where might it have fallen apart?
I also agree not every campaign is going to be successful, especially not right off of the bat. But that’s where that feedback and interaction with leadership and the sales team comes into play. Because you can definitely start out with one goal in mind and have the strategy put into place and as activities starts coming in and your salespeople start to have calls, you start to hear, some pain points that are maybe a little bit different than what you thought going in, or, how they value what you’re selling is a little bit different. And that means you don’t necessarily have to just rip the whole strategy apart and start over, but you’ve got to go back to the strategy and say like, is this what we thought going in?
Or are there differences that would then impact the messaging and the creative and the targeting and all of the diff the bid strategy, the competitive layout, right? It, it gives you more insight into where the strategy needs to be and the delivery needs to [00:27:00] be adjusted when you have that feedback.
[00:27:02] Danny: To add on that, another example would be that, you might think that a certain, like let’s say you’re selling two products, or two services or two, whatever, and you think the big fish, you know, is going to be A, and you put, you know, 70% of the budget against that, and then you’ve got B, which is 30%.
And then when you put it to market. It could be that it’s opposite. Like we’re seeing really good response on that thing that you think is less important, and therefore you might have to switch budget and change what you need to do. It doesn’t mean that always happens that way, but that’s a really good example where you set up the strategy and this is what we’re focusing on, but those things change and therefore that’s why you have to meet and you have to have feedback and talk and often pivots are required.
[00:27:43] Terri: Yeah, exactly. And I think too, one more and I’m open to more points about strategy and the importance of it, but one other thing that I’ve seen is there is time and cost to a strategy, right? And it doesn’t always counter against [00:28:00] the sense of urgency that an owner or somebody in a leadership role has, but, you’ll spend more money on the ads and the management of those ads that doesn’t produce what you’re looking for if you don’t have the right strategy. So it sort of balances out. I think that time and the money to put the strategy in place means your ability to be effective is closer to you. If you just invest those two weeks, or three weeks, or four weeks, or whatever that strategy time is, if you don’t do that and you just go right into the market.
I’ve seen it time and time again. You’re going to wait four weeks for it to work anyway, why not have that money be productive right off the bat and have all of your team members working in the same direction with the strategy.
[00:28:47] Danny: I wanted to add one other sort of perspective.
[00:28:49] Terri: Yeah.
[00:28:50] Danny: This is based on what you said, like two before was like.
Often you’ll see that at the beginning, things aren’t working as well, but then eventually, they do work well. I like to present it to people [00:29:00] is for all those people who love Shark Tank. We know that Mark Cuban, he invests in let’s say 10 businesses throughout the show.
More often than not, nine of those don’t do well. So then the question is, well, why does he do it? Because there is that 10th business, which really does well, and it does so well that eventually over time, it’s going to cover all those losses that you have. And often when we run campaigns, let’s say we’ll go in 10 areas, 10 ad groups, 10 ads, 10 strategies, or whatever it is.
I don’t literally mean it’s always 10, but just that idea. And yes, we know that some of these are not going to work, but it’s possible that we’re going to see a couple more losses than those wins. But if we stick to it and stick with the strategy.
Over time, those losses are going to fall away and we’re going to find those areas that really work well and then that’s what’s going to propel us moving forward. So the people who are looking for that quick win, it’s not going to work. So just like Mark Cuban,
[00:29:56] Terri: Yeah.
[00:29:56] Danny: he knows I got to invest in these 10 companies in order to find that winner.[00:30:00]
There is that process, similar process when you are doing digital marketing advertising and so therefore there’s a patience that is required.
[00:30:09] Terri: Yeah.
[00:30:10] Danny: And eventually, you know it, it’s going to work, but just hold on. Right. Let’s, let’s get there.
[00:30:15] Terri: Yeah. Well, and I think it’s not just, oh, well these nine didn’t work and this one did the nine that don’t work.
You always learn so many things that can be added on to or put into the one that did work. Like, if it’s a Google search campaign. You thought one thing was going to be searched and there would be a certain path that someone took, you actually do get to see what they searched, to see those ads.
And it might be surprising, huh? That’s not how I thought people would phrase things. That’s really interesting. That may be why our creative didn’t work. Maybe we should adjust the creative to better match the, intent that somebody had in the words they used to do [00:31:00] that search and we’re not meeting with them with the right message at the right time.
Oh my God, I could go on. There’s like so many things you can learn. So those aren’t just throwaways when they don’t work. Those are massive learning opportunities. But if you don’t have the right strategist and marketer in place to analyze and interpret what you’re seeing, even in the losses, I don’t think you can turn those losses into wins.
I
[00:31:24] Danny: Agree.
[00:31:25] Terri: Yeah. It’s huge. And through that conversation with leadership and the sales team, you can get there. Like, here’s what we’re seeing. This is what we think that means. What do you think? Oh, that’s what you think? Okay. That’s interesting because that ties to something else we were seeing.
That conversation helps you as a group collaborate and better analyze, what was wrong, what was right, what can be improved, what the learnings are. It’s really interesting and I think that gets to looking at that relationship as a partnership. If you look at your agency and think they’re just trying to figure out [00:32:00] how to, grow the account and make more money to grow their revenue, you’ve set the wrong tone in their relationship.
Right? And maybe they’re setting that tone, the agency is. Think the right agency relationship. You feel like, I want to tell them what I’m after. And I want to tell them what success looks like to me because I trust them to be on the same path as me and to take me there
[00:32:23] Danny: Because it’s a partnership, just like in a marriage or you need both partners to be involved in order for it to work.
It’s the same thing here. So, often when agencies like ours are working with a company, we need a good partner, right? For us to be successful, we need to have that point of contact, that individual who’s going to be able to, maybe if they don’t make the decisions, but at least they’ll be able to get there. We can’t live on an island or an iceberg on our own, because the magic happens when we come together and do it because there are certain things that we bring to the table.
There’s certain things that the client brings to the table. And if we can work together, that’s truly when you’re going to have success.
[00:32:57] Terri: Yeah. And it’s all built on a foundation of [00:33:00] trust. And credibility. What are some other keys that you see to a good agency client relationship?
[00:33:11] Danny: So I think open communication is really important.
[00:33:14] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:33:15] Danny: You know, sometimes it’s like with anything, right? When something festers, that’s when it gets bad. There should be this feeling where. Hey, if you’re feeling something’s off, we want to hear it and it’s vice versa.
Like often from an agency side, we’ll see like a client, you know, maybe they’ve done something wrong or at least appears to us that there might be something wrong. We, we’ve got to open up and, you know, be, don’t be afraid that, oh, we’re going to chase them away, but no, let’s have that open communication.
It’s interesting you talk about agencies chasing how to grow retainers. It’s fine. It’s such a like, careful balance. I would say earlier on with us, we were overly careful not to ever say, Hey, you should spend more money,
[00:33:54] Terri: Right. Yeah.
[00:33:54] Danny: But sometimes it backfires where it’s like, man, like it’s going well, why don’t you tell me to spend more [00:34:00] money? So, over time, both the agency and the business. You kinda have to feel each other out and be like, okay, how do you like to be spoken to,
when does it make sense to be, Hey, you know, this is going well. I’m going to give you suggestion. so some of that kind of, you have to figure out, but it’s interesting because I’ve seen it backfire the opposite way where it’s like, Ooh, you should have brought it up. You should have told us we should spend more money.
[00:34:23] Terri: We’ve gone through that experience as well. There’s a certain component of reading the room. So if a client is like, oh, we just went and bought a million dollar piece of equipment and hired three new salespeople and had to get four new trucks, that is not the moment to say, if you spent this much more on your ads every month, you’d get more leads you have to read the room and understand what’s going on in their business.
But at the same time, we’re paid to make recommendations that would help a company grow. I think it’s all about intention. If your intention is we see an opportunity for them to spend some more money so they can grow, I think that’s the right intention. That’s what we’re paid for.
[00:35:00] If the intention is we really need to increase our revenue at the agency. And get them into this other plan, not the right intention. I think that’s another battle we fight, because there are a lot of agency owners or consultants who operate with that intention. And it’s hard to be taken seriously and trusted as an agency owner when our intentions are to help the client grow.
[00:35:23] Danny: Yes.
[00:35:24] Terri: Yeah. You’ve got to read the room we both have, account teams and that’s something they have to be really good at, right? It’s like if we’re asking for five blogs to be approved and they just got done telling you that they were, up all night, helping somebody, a kid with homework and they’re exhausted. Probably not the time to push for the approvals, right? Just maybe a time to remind them.
[00:35:51] Danny: Right.
[00:35:51] Terri: And then you can push a little later. There has to be some emotional intelligence and read the room component in those relationships as well.
[00:35:59] Danny: A hundred [00:36:00] percent.
[00:36:00] Terri: Yeah. I’d like to talk a little bit about AI.
This is another broad topic too. I could ask this in a really specific way or ask it in a broad way. I’m curious to hear your perspective on how you see so far AI age, changing like the agency model or agency relationships, marketing programs in general. What are some kind of big picture changes you’ve noticed?
[00:36:24] Danny: First of all, we’re putting together an AI policy now. I was actually interviewed by a doctoral student about AI policies and I was like, well, I don’t have one, but I want to actually be interviewed because I want to hear the questions.
[00:36:36] Terri: Yeah.
[00:36:36] Danny: We’ve started to put it together because we see it’s really important things that you may take for granted as like
oh, of course an employee knows that they shouldn’t put customer data directly into chat GPT. I’m not saying that anyone’s ever done that, but you can’t assume that
[00:36:54] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:36:54] Danny: people hold the same standards. So it’s really important for the agency to create that policy. That’s just something that’s on [00:37:00] top of mind.
So I wanted to mention it first. There’s a lot, especially on LinkedIn I find every single day. There’s just so much that’s being broadcasted there about the changes and it’s honestly a little overwhelming. I think that we have to start from a very, simple place, and what that means is literally looking at processes that we do every single day.
That’s kind of the same thing. And the question is, are we doing them really as most efficiently as possible? And usually the answer will be no. So is there a way that I can use automation or AI to come in so that I can speed that up? Most of the time it’s not to take over the complete process because usually you’re going to need that actual human to analyze, but think about all the steps to get to that point. So a good example would be like a really good chef. They have someone who prepares and cuts up all the [00:38:00] ingredients, gets everything ready so that they can literally come in and then start doing their magic and they don’t have to spend the time getting, you know, choosing the ingredients, cutting it up, preparing it.
So the same thing is here is I feel like there’s so much room to get that help to get the analysis. The information, the ad or whatever it is, to a point where then I can work my magic. So I feel like that’s huge. And that’s for agencies. And then I think for businesses it’s the same thing.
Right now, at least where we’re at, to think that I can bring this AI in and fire people, you know, or suddenly now you know, I’m going to be able to do everything a million times quicker. I don’t think that’s the point. But I think that by approaching it, how I’ve said, we can slowly chip away at the extra time that we’re using.
We all have a limited amount of hours in the day. Let’s say usually I’m spending four or five hours for analysis, but four or five hours for, for [00:39:00] prep. But now if I could switch that, man, if I could get that prep done in one or two hours.
Now suddenly I’ve got six hours to analyze. I think there’s how much more valuable that agency will be. So that’s kind of where I’m looking at right now.
[00:39:13] Terri: Yeah. That’s a really great way to summarize it. I think what’s, what’s tough is that we’re just all barraged every day with so many new AI tools and features.
And, again, kind of going back to the ads that were all bombarded with from consultants and agencies and these, marketing kind of hacks and programs. Same thing happens with AI tools and I think you can’t lose sight of the fact that yeah, these tools can do great things and that’s rapidly changing and growing and expanding.
It doesn’t take away from the fundamentals like you still have to have a message, you still have to have very solid awareness of who you’re targeting with that message and why your message would resonate with them. And, how you’re going to develop a way to [00:40:00] reach those people with that strategy. That’s never going to change.
I’ve been in marketing 30 years and it’s never changed, right? And I wasn’t part of an industry that invented this 30 years ago. That, what I just described already existed before I started in the industry. It’s just the methods of getting in front of them and the tools being used. That is what constantly evolves and it’ll never stop evolving and changing, because new inventions will come out and new innovations will come out, but you can’t lose sight of the fundamentals. And, and I agree with you, like how that enables the fundamentals is what I’m really excited about. That’s exciting. But it doesn’t devalue the work that a really great analyzer or strategist or planner or writer or designer or videographer, any of those specialty areas, like they still are important.
[00:40:57] Danny: It makes me think of like my, my uncle, he’s a [00:41:00] former added exec.
[00:41:01] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:41:02] Danny: And he recently created this most amazing AI video. For a charity campaign and it over a three minute period, it shows hands in different situations. And eventually it’s about, but what we care most about is your hand and then, the pitch for, but man, like he wrote the most beautiful script and he even like decided what the music would be and the type of baseline
yes, he used AI to create this crazy video, but this is someone with like 70 years of experience and I don’t think AI or anyone else would’ve been able to create that besides him because yes, he used that tool, but there was so much thought and artistry behind it it just makes me think about that.
And I think every situation is like that, right? We’ve got these tools, but the person behind it really is the key to unlocking it. Because we all see that when you let [00:42:00] AI kind of go on its own, the output is very subpar. And also how do you apply it then?
[00:42:07] Terri: Yeah.
[00:42:07] Danny: And usually you need someone to do that.
[00:42:09] Terri: Yeah. I think very well said that that’s just going to be an ongoing, evolution. And it’s probably going to happen very quickly in the next year or two. What just happened 2024 to 2025 was quick and fast. And I think that’s one of the fun parts of being in the industry that we’re in, is we get to be on that ride.
It’s kind of interesting, it’s like LinkedIn, Google, these platforms don’t give us a sneak peek of what they’re doing because we’re in the marketing industry, we’re figuring it out along with everyone else. But I think when you have a perspective on meaningful marketing strategy. It’s more clear to us how to use those tools effectively and how to guide, the brands that we work with on how to use those tools effectively, versus just jumping in and saying, like, thinking about it more tactically.
[00:42:58] Danny: Agreed. So therefore, if you’re just [00:43:00] about the tools and you’re not about the strategy, then you’re going to have problems. But if you know the strategy, if you know what you need and you marry that together with a new tool, a new thing, it’s going to be fine. You’ll find the success that you found before, just in a different way.
[00:43:16] Terri: Yep, exactly. Well, this has been an incredible conversation. I think we’ve given, the audience a lot of little nuggets. What if somebody wants to connect with you, whether it’s about, by the way, I didn’t mention this. We hired an unbelievable employee who went through the Odeo Academy. Came out very well trained.
I can’t speak highly enough about that program. I think it’s really cool that you’ve offered that option to people who are either in career transition or, full-time university isn’t for them. It’s a really meaningful alternative that can help you get positioned for a career in marketing.
[00:43:53] Danny: Thank you. It’s one of the blessings that came outta COVID.
The best way to contact me would be on LinkedIn, Danny Gavin. [00:44:00] That’s where I spend most of my time.
And then if you want to check out the podcast, or, the agency, we have optidge.com and odeoacademy.com as well.
[00:44:08] Terri: I would definitely encourage you, if you’re listening and you want to reach out to Danny, do that. He is a wealth of information and somebody I really respect. Very credible.
Very professional. I appreciate you coming on Danny, and thanks so much for your time. Have a good time with your family. I know it’s back to school time, so good luck and many blessings in all of those days ahead.
[00:44:31] Danny: Thank you Terri. And thank you for your friendship and your comradery and just always being there when I need you.
Heres to many more years.
[00:44:37] Terri: Thank you for listening to B2B marketing methods. Please be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast channel and leave us a review. We’d love to hear from you and connect. You can find me on LinkedIn or visit our company [email protected].