Columbus marketing playbook: Brutally honest advice to my younger self as a marketer

Kind: captions Language: en Hey there friends. My name's Andy. I own a solo marketing business that did $26,000 last month. And this is my channel where I build and strategize in public and teach you what's working in live time. This is your guys' first time here. I own three businesses. One is with the Columbus Marketing Organization, which is my in-person community job board and mastermind for marketers here in Columbus. The second, which is my main horse, which is my design studio called MMG Studio based here in Columbus, Ohio. We do web and SEO for the leading healthcare brands in the country. And the third one is my podcast, which is technically unmonetized, but we do have several sponsors and supporters. And this is where I get to we interview all the leading marketers on healthcare, B2B, and beyond. Apologies in advance for the low production value setup here. I have just gone to incredibly I've learned to incredibly enjoy recording these videos because part of it is documenting my journey and another part of it is I'm starting to realize that I'm probably speaking to this kid right here a little bit. And that's kind of what I view these as is this kid right here. If I was teaching this marketer who just got laid off, how to be successful, this kid right here, February 1st of 2024 when I got laid off from my first full-time marketing job and a single floor plan office of 65 people, everybody knew what was going on and I was blowing my eyes out. How would I get this kid on the right path? So, in order to make that method of teaching as as effective as possible, I've gathered more questions from our community members that I've gathered from LinkedIn, uh, responses to the newsletter, and just from our first event, things that could be really helpful for job seeking, networking, money mindset, the job search, networking, uh, personal branding and referrals, building a package, so you know, portraying yourself well online. all these things, but I would tell that kid if I wanted him to be successful as quickly as possible. So, without further ado, let's dive straight on in. Content and LinkedIn. Two years of posting is a long time. Was there a point where you almost stopped? And what actually kept you going through through the slow stretches when nothing seemed to land? To be honest with you guys, I think the best mindset to have, I think I answered this in the past Q&A, something similar to it. The best mindset to have is when you're starting anything new is to reset the standards of what you deem success to be. Some people literally the definition of lack of fulfillment and failure is your expectations being too high to meet the results. And if you just close that gap and you say from the beginning, my metric of success is that I show up and post every day. And you don't compare yourself to other people who have been at this way longer than you have already. you you can control the inputbased goals that will lead you towards success. So I mean in the beginning uh definitely check out the first video on this channel where I talked about you know my first several LinkedIn posts. I'm just watching some tutorials here. This video right here uh where is it at? There's more videos on here. This one right here. How I made my 200k my first year as a freelance marketer. I gave this presentation at an SEO summit and this part of the presentation was particularly val as a thought exercise, but I'm going to try and jump ahead directly to that part where I talked about my first couple LinkedIn posts. See if I can skip ahead to that right here. Uh yeah, so I was getting between one and 10 engagements per post. I did start posting when I was in-house at my full-time job. This is a big mental unlock for a lot of us in-house marketers here is that we do not want to appear cringey and we do not want to portray to the other people that we work with potentially that we are not committed that we have priorities outside of our working environment. Two things I want to tell to you and probably to that kid as well. There is so few people watching and by definition of the fact that you're getting five likes, six likes, four four likes. By definition of the fact that you're getting that amount of likes, there is so few people seeing. This is like the biggest counterintuitive unlock that I realized when I started posting content in an attempt to get leads. By the way, when you do post content, make sure you're posting the right kinds. Um, I'll drop in a link to a resource below where I talk about the eight LinkedIn posts that I made that actually led directly to paying clients. Super helpful, by the way. That's that took a long time to find those posts. So, I highly recommend you guys check that out. Um, there are so few people watching and that's like the biggest reframe and unlock is we fear we fear rejection and putting ourselves out there. But at the same time, if you put something out there and it doesn't get any feedback, no one like by definition, nobody saw it. That is such a helpful mindset to adopt and has made my process of posting, putting myself out there a lot easier to slide into. So, I hope that helps you. Networking AMA Columbus. Andy, you're VP of membership at the AMA Columbus and you talk to a ton of marketers through the podcast. what's the pattern you're seeing right now across Columbus specifically that people outside of the city wouldn't notice. So about three issues back for the Columbus marketing jobs newsletter. By the way, definitely subscribe. Uh I send you curated job postings. We're usually between 80 and 100 new jobs every single week, hybrid and in-person jobs right here in Columbus that are in marketing. So subscribe to that. But this idea that um to for a few trends that I noticed just in the past couple weeks, one is that internships are filling up remarkably quickly. I think there's a lot of anxiety whether or not it's validated or true in the newly working class and new graduates that they need to take anything that they can get and they are willing to work for free uh at any established agency that's in house. So one is that remark that internships are filling up remarkably quickly. Two, I did a cross reference comparison of the hiring trends in Columbus and cross reference that with the actual Bureau of Labor Statistics data. And what we found is that mid to senior level generalists are being hired at the highest rate. And that I do actually have data to validate. So if you go to columbusmarketingjob.com jobs.com, it's this issue right here. Boom. From July 27th to 31st. Me with a weird face pointing to a chart. This one right here kind of is a job visual visualizer in terms of the data. Um, TLDDR Columbus market is booming. Headwinds don't tell us the full story. Meaning overall marketing jobs aren't technically going up, but they aren't disappearing. So, um, yeah, look into this, uh, issue for the exact data. I'll link that below. So, those are the things that I'm noticing that I can firmly say that I have data to validate. So, I hope that's helpful. Next, money and pricing. I'm loving the range we're getting with these money and pricing. How did you figure out what to actually charge when you were just starting out? Did you just guess and adjust or was there something more deliberate behind the number? I think this is very much a stairstep process that first of all, everyone has their own relationship with money based on how they were raised, their external circumstances, your frame of reference, the people that are close to you around you, and what you've made in your past jobs. So, when I first started, my first graphic my first full-time graphic design job that I was laid off from, uh, this kid right here, he was making, he was on contract rule, but I was making around $30,000 netted out for the year post taxes. So, relatively speaking, that's quite low, but I was 22. So, take from that what you will. There's obviously if you scroll on LinkedIn for any or Instagram for any period of time, you'll see, you know, 18 year olds making 500K a month. So whether or not that's real, I don't view that to be real as often as some might let on. But it's all about frame of reference. So when it comes to money mindset, I was raised in a very traditional Midwest background. You know, salt to the earth. Family didn't really talk about money. I wasn't really raised talking about money. Wasn't taught, you know, financial best practices aside from saving. So, I have a very strong savers mentality. That's part of my Midwest nice background. I recorded a podcast with a lady by the name of Casey Brown. one of my favorite podcasts I've ever recorded because she really helped me not only spot my my own uh Midwest nice mindset, but just this realization that if you are scared to charge high because of your own upbringing and personality, you will grow to hate freelancing because it will be so much harder. And I'm telling you, this is such a stereotype, but the clients that are budget sensitive and that are lowering you on price are the worst clients to work with. They always want revisions, they always expect the world for, you know, the lowest price. And you just have to accept that a healthy close range for the the deals that you do put forth is around 30 to 40%. So you can kind of reverse engineer how many total sales calls or salesled meetings that you have and look to close about 30 to 40% of them and the other 60% should not close because they are out of price. So when anyone's qualified, use that as a reference to how many how often you should be closing and really just try and shove down that feeling aside of you that says you shouldn't be charging more, that you don't have enough experience, that you shouldn't get this. The amount of money that you get for a project should correlate to the value that you add, not how easy it is for you to fulfill. That's why hourly pricing is totally broken. And if you are charging hourly, especially as a marketer, highly encourage you to adjust that and work more towards outcomes based pricing. Next up, pricing or question on job search. I've applied to like 60 marketing jobs on LinkedIn and Indeed over the past few months, and I think maybe two people have even opened my resume. Is applying through the job boards basically dead at this point, or am I just bad at it? So without having the contextual relevance of being able to see your exact job applications, I'm going to answer this in a way that I think would be helpful. First thing I want to say just cold applying to jobs is going to be a remarkable uphill battle. And I do have good evidence and reason to believe that hiring managers and people that are at agencies or in-house jobs are using AI to do the initial intake of their job applications. So making sure that your website is very or that your uh application is and your resume is very skimable and easy to read. I would also just from other what other people told me that has worked is injecting personality. So do everything everything that you can like fight tooth and nail to have a talk or a conversation with the person that is seeing the resume so you can humanize yourself. If say that you have a 100 bars of total effort that you're putting into your job search currently you're spending 90 90% of it just applying resumes finding jobs submitting a PDF filling out fields and the other 10 of it is meeting people shift the effort to be 80% is meeting people and 20% is submitting resume to the people that you have gotten connected with even if it's only a few of these people in those 80% that's going to be a much higher ROI use of your time and obviously outreach networking. I post daily videos showing you guys the boring work that I do. I'm a freelancer. I've been doing this for years and I still spend at least one hour every day doing some kind of manual bizdev and outreach. Take the same lens on it to your job search. You're looking for prospects. You're looking for leads. And the more that you can personalize, build relationships, the higher your odds are going to be. So try and reallocate your efforts. If this is your scenario and you feel like you're just cold applying and not getting any responses, shift the allocation of your attention and effort toward something that's more personal personalized and may lead to you sending less total volume of jobs and I could tell you firsthand that the odds of you get a conversion because you're only you only need one conversion. This is the good part about finding a job. You only need one yes. And while it may seem counterintuitive to just seem volume, volume volume, volume volume, when it comes like this, you need to raise your standard for what a qualified submission looks like. And then then you press on the volume button. So your prerequisite for a qualified submission is a point of contact and a really well done standout resume job submission that is tailored to them. So I hope that helps. A lot of contextualization there. Second question on job search. I keep getting to the final round of interviews and then losing to someone else. Is that a resume problem, an interview problem, or just a bad luck at some point? So, usually when you get to the final rounds of a job search process, they're really honestly looking for the safe pick. So, if you make it to the final rounds, there's a high chance that you could get there from, you know, luck, from a referral, from someone else. but they really want someone that's deep and experienced and shows that this person is invested. Um, I know it can feel incredibly heart-wrenching when you're one of the final ones considered and then you get rejected at the very end. That's I don't I can't say I've ever personally been there and I know that just has to be heart-wrenching. So, like I said, [gasps] the lens that I've taken on it is having a doing everything I can to have just a rigid iron good mindset and um and my relationship to rejection and failure that every no is just getting me closer to the one yes that matters. I would also say too when you get to the end, it does mean you're doing something right. Take that as a positive signal and encourage and actually ask for feedback. If you're doing the right thing in the beginning of building relationships with people at the company and hiring managers, I would say to like asking them like what's one thing that I can improve or what like what we're so close, what do you think I could do to be a good fit for the next one? If you go in and ask that these companies that you're working with, odds are they will have another opportunity down the line. And I know that's I know that's not what you want to hear, but it is so true. And I've seen it happen multiple times. with my friend Dear Casey has told multiple case studies of people who initially didn't make out of the company but stayed in touch, kept doing the reps and became a fit later on. So, I hope that's helpful. [clears throat] Take a quick sip of water here. My voice is dry. All right, networking. Everyone says network more, but I don't really know what that means beyond going to happy hours and collecting business cards that go nowhere. What does actual useful networking look like on a week- toeek basis? Great question. Um, this question specifically says week to week. Daily. Make it some kind of a daily habit. And I would also say that networking works two ways. So, every time that you meet someone, connect with on LinkedIn. Connect with them on LinkedIn afterwards and introduce them to somebody else. If you have one, if you look through your entire network, there's always going to be someone who has higher social status or appeal or someone that you're someone that people are impressed that you know. Feel free to introduce them to other people. It's like this is what I'm honestly I'm increasingly getting better at too is being the puzzle piece between multiple people. Making good introductions is such an awesome skill to have. And people, this is the best part is that people associate that value back with you. If someone that if you create an event or if you introduce two people personally and they go on to form a friendship or work together on a business sense, they associate that value back with you. And that is such an unbelievable thing. It lets people it leads people to think that you're a well-worked person. And when people think you're a well- networked person, which you are, and you eventually become. I still, it's so funny because I used to be the traditional creative introvert at my job, not wanting to work with anybody, just wanting to sit down and do work. And my friend Matt Bojack, who owns Made by Things Creative Studio in Columbus, he used to do this thing and it inspired me so much that I did it. Every time, every hour at my job, when the clock hit double zero, I would get up and I would talk to someone that I had never talked to before. And this did absolutely absolute wonders for my articulation, my ability to connect and just the people that I knew and I stayed in touch with after that job. The best story that I can tell about this too is after I got laid off, after this kid right here got laid off, he walked around to everybody in the 65 person single floor plan office. Everybody knew he got laid off and he collect all of these. He collected all their phone numbers and he stayed in touch. And to really bring that story home, about a year and a half later, one of the people that were in sales at that company, they happened to have a their their father owned a 80 person business in Wisconsin. We ended up doing a website for them that paid me more than my entire time at this company. So yeah, at the end of the day, networking, uh, it works two ways. coming down to making great introductions for other people is just literally gas on that fire and having some intentional habit of making it a daily part of your routine. Something that I personally am trying to get better at is the reciprocal staying in touch. So the proactive nature of going first, not letting happen stance bring you back in touch with people, but the proactive, hey, is there anything I can be a cheerleader for you on spending 30 minutes, you know, once a week going in to people that I haven't talked to in a while and just sending a message like that. And when they find out that you don't have anything to ask or you're not looking for a favor, because we all have that space in the back of our mind where it's like, I haven't heard from this person for a while and they're reaching out and I kind of get suspicious. That's um you can avoid that and you create a lot of social value when you reach out without asking for anything in return. So prioritize going first as well. All right, last one here. My voice is starting to get really dry. I used to be able to do this for hours, but I think we can end with a 20 minute marketer AMA. Um I got introduced to someone through a mutual connection a few months back and I never followed up because I didn't have a reason to. How do you keep a relationship warm when there's no immediate ask on the other side? That's a great segue from what we just talked about. Keeping a relationship warm. A few things you can do tactically. You can obviously connect on LinkedIn. That's probably obvious. And um initially to that, take it one step further. You can also go to your notifications. So I'll just go to Kayla's right here. Shout out to Kayla. She's awesome. You can go here and then you can go on to all post notifications. You hit that little bell on their profile and hit save. Now, every time that this person posts, shares or does anything on LinkedIn, they will appear in this notifications tab. Um, so you would get notified when they post and then that's kind of a proactive ping to be able to go in and do that. a couple other handy software tools. I use a tool called Dex DEX, a great little aggregator of all your LinkedIn connections, iMessage contacts, email contacts. It syncs to your Google, and you can set proactive reminders to go and follow up on people. I don't use that software anymore because I have a CRM called Folk, this one right here. This one here also allows you to create reminder events for people. So you can create these things called tasks and you can schedule a task uh whenever you want to get back in touch with someone and hit create task. That's my tactical recommendation just on a holistic level. It can be as simple as when you're on a walk scrolling to the bottom of your IME messages and saying hey I'm going to send a couple messages. It can be proactive going first like you hear someone in a conversation and like when you're talking to someone in your family and they reference someone that you knew from your childhood just a proactive hey before I forget I'm going to go in and do that. And the good thing about this is if they are meant to stay in touch with you it doesn't have to be a long conversation. I know how stress look and feel when you know sending one message leads to another message. It doesn't always have to be a huge back and forth, but if you know something small about a person, this is the best thing you can do. If you know something small about a person that they maybe don't share that often, you can always go in and just personalize it and say, "Hey, this made me think of you." And send them that message back to them. It's really help cling to do. And that has done wonders for me. So, appreciate you guys watching. That's about all the steam I have. If you guys have any questions, check out the links below and please please would love it if you would subscribe. Uh we did cut off right here in terms of our questions. Uh next Q&A we'll be doing personal branding. So I'm looking forward to sharing those with you guys. And like I said, be sure to subscribe. Appreciate you all. Comment with any questions that you do have. And I'll see you in the next