Transform Your SMMA into a SaaS Agency with Sam Carlson

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network with great shows like Marketing Against the Grain. Today, we'll be breaking down how to transform your SMMA into a SaaS agency. To drop these value bombs, I are brought to Sam Carlson and to EO Fire Studios. Sam has operated an SMMA offering Facebook ads as a service since 2015. Today, he's transformed his service-based business into a software as a service model and entirely changing how agencies can make money now. And today, Far Nation, we'll talk about how media buyers are pricey and how you can use software to run Facebook ads instead, about how attention is key.

0:45We'll talk about how there are over 10 ,000 local businesses running their own ads without previous experience. How is this possible? We'll talk about SMMA and so much more. And a big thank you for sparsing today's episode goes to Sam and our sponsors. Business Made Simple, hosted by Donald Miller, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Business Made Simple takes the mystery out of growing your business with episodes like how to get out of your day-to-day operations without crashing your business. Listen to Business Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts.

1:20Sam, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. You know, GLD, thanks for having me, buddy. I'm excited to be here. And the thing that I think, There's a saying out there that a lot of people tout and pare it out, and that is jack of all trades, master of none. You've heard that? Oh, yeah. The real quote there is actually jack of all trades, master of none, though often better than master of one. That's the actual original quote. And the reason I really liked that when I first heard that, it rang true to me because what it says is every person can actually become an expert in and of themselves.

2:02meaning you unique person, you are an expert of you. Now it does, in my opinion, mean that you need to be a jack of all trades, have a lot of, uh, knowledge experience in a lot of things, but go deep in that thing that you were gifted and born to do. So to me, uh, it's encouraging because, you know, some of us just feel like we can't compete, but the only person we're actually competing with is us. If we put in the work and be a better us, we win. I love that Fire Nation. It's a fantastic start to an episode where we're focusing on transforming your SMMA into a SaaS agency. Now the acronym SMMA stands for Social Media Marketing Agency.

2:49Talk to us about why they are losing clients to new SaaS models? A lot of things happening right now in the landscape. So the SMMA model, I mean, I started doing it in 2015 and it provides a lot of benefit to local businesses. But the inherent problem is the amount of money that these businesses have to pay for the service. And at this point, when you pay a lot of money as a retainer for a service, it's really if you look at a little local business that is the only time they pay those types of fees everything else are utilities everything else are you know your website your utility bill whatever businesses are not paying these huge retainers for social media marketing so it's usually the first thing on the chopping block which makes a lot of these businesses these smma businesses very vulnerable to you know first getting clients as time goes by and the second keeping them.

3:46Now, SaaS or software as a service, if it can accomplish the same thing as an SMMA, but do it for a lower price and put the control of the marketing in the business owner's hands, they win. I mean, hands down, it's not rocket science. If I can do the same thing better for cheaper, I win. Fire Nation, that is a truism that has always existed and that will always exist going forward. But one thing I want to talk about, Sam, is most people use media buyers to run Facebook ads. And one thing that I've experienced personally, and it's just a reality, they're pricey. So you actually believe that we should use software to run Facebook ads instead of these expensive media buyers.

4:32Tell us more. There's always a place for people who are really good at things. Okay. But when it comes to local media, if you're buying traffic, Facebook ads specifically for local businesses. Software, namely Upex, can actually do that thing, do it better, do it cheaper, and do it perfectly every single time. And you said it, John, is SMMA agencies have for a very long time grown to a point where they say, hey, we need to hire more people, manage more people, increase our overhead. Well, the media buyer has always been a pinch point because the media buyer needs experience, needs the ability and the education to adapt and move freely, and therefore they're a higher paid position.

5:19So media buyers in local businesses, they're too cost prohibitive. It's not like e-commerce where we're talking about budgets into the millions where they can, hey, we can hire one media buyer. We can hire hundreds, potentially of media buyers. Local businesses don't have that luxury. So, you know, media buyers, they have a place, but in the local lead generation marketplace, it's kind of game over, in my opinion. Game over, says Sam. And I kind of want to go down to the level of where we're talking about attention being key, because that is so critical in this world. I mean, we're always getting pulled in a million different directions, whether it be social media, our phone, television, radio, podcasts.

6:09I mean, we're just getting pulled all over the place. Let's talk about how we can get the attention of local businesses with a solution to their problems. Because a lot of my listeners and a lot of people within Fire Nation, that's what they're looking at. They're looking at how can I get the attention of these local businesses with a solution to their real problems? What do you say, Sam? Well, if you're an SMMA and you're looking to get the attention of local businesses, it really comes down to marketing 101. You need an irresistible offer. In sales, we talk about, there's a phrase, a tactic known is a tactic blown.

6:45Okay? So there was a point in time where the SMMA model was unique, was pretty original. You go to businesses and say, hey, we're going to run ads on this platform, Facebook, for example. We're going to get you a bunch of leads. That's incredibly attractive. But the more people do it, again, a tactic known is a tactic blown. So you need to adapt with the times. And having an irresistible offer, a big part of that is having a unique mechanism, a unique approach, a unique way to position what you do to where the audience is like, well, I have never heard of Facebook ads being able to be run by a software.

7:24I haven't heard of that. So if you want the attention, you've got to be unique. You have to approach your audience in a way where they haven't heard that before. That's really the big thing is positioning yourself as unique with an irresistible offer, in my opinion. Fire Nation, people will beat a path to the doorstep of the number one solution to their problems. How can you identify a unique, real problem in this world and offer the best, unique, specialized solution to that problem? Then people will find you. Then you will win. But guess what? there's ways that we can even ramp that up on top of that once you've identified that first thing.

8:01And we'll talk about that when we get back from thanking our sponsors. We all want the same things for our business, more leads, faster sales, and better insights so we can serve our customers at the highest level. One thing we all don't want to waste time and money trying to figure these things out. So what's the solution? A CRM that's easy to set up and customize. Sounds too good to be true, right? But this CRM exists and it's called HubSpot. What sets HubSpot apart is it's easy to use and integrate. Instead of wasting days or even months trying to figure everything out, HubSpot gives you tools like their AI content assistant, which helps you save time on tedious manual tasks right away.

8:36Looking to step up your game with email broadcasts and landing pages, HubSpot's drag and drop builder makes it easy to create attention-grabbing emails and pages in minutes. And that's only the beginning. HubSpot has 1 ,300 plus integrations that you can add for customization like you've never seen before. HubSpot CRM's powerful tools will help marketers wow prospects. Sales teams, lock-in deals, and service teams improve response times and overall service. Get started for free at HubSpot.com. That's HubSpot.com. Sam, I want to dive right in because we get a lot to talk about, my friend. There are now over 10 ,000 local businesses running their own ads without any previous experience.

9:18How the heck is this even possible? It's a very story but we'll just can we'll just make this as concise as possible in 2018 my smma agency had a published case study by facebook and we had a lot of interest we didn't get the interest from our customers we thought our customers would be like oh my gosh these guys have all this you know a published case study by facebook that should be amazing we should get a bunch of customers we did not but we got a lot of interest from other agencies from other companies and there was a software development company that said, hey, we're working on a project and we want to do this particular thing.

9:55Long story short, we worked in development with them for about a year. And the whole idea was media buyers, what they're doing when they're actually buying media for local businesses, the buttons they push are incredibly redundant. And as an SMMA guy, I knew that when I got a new client, I wasn't reinventing the wheel in terms of my ads. I wasn't going and creating brand new ads, you know, uh, bringing around brand new offers. It was the same things. I knew they worked. So why reinvent the wheel? And so we got to this point where like, we thought, Hey, what if we could take it to where we could upload all of our proven ads into this engine?

10:37And then with a couple of clicks of a button, they would be executed. The orders would be executed. Those ads would be pushed out on our clients' ad accounts, and boom, we would be getting leads for those businesses. And that was the idea, and that is the execution. That's what we do today to be able to generate leads. Businesses go in, they don't have to be trained as a media buyer, because all they're doing is they're saying, oh, look at this library of proven ads. Click that one. I like that. Here's my daily budget launch campaign. And boom, the campaign goes. Wow. I mean, Fire Nation, these are the type of processes and strategies you need to be thinking about as you're going forward.

11:17And one thing, Sam, that I want to dive into is that you think there's actually a great opportunity to help local businesses get more customers. Let's really dive into some deep, specific examples of these opportunities. Tell us more. Local businesses are, you know, they're great. They're the lifeblood of our economy, first of all. And I think a lot of agencies, when they get in and the online space, they really want to go after the big e-commerce budgets and things like that. But right where you live, there are businesses that need your help. There's plumbers. There's contractors. There's real estate people.

11:52Just throw a dart down the main street in your town, and there are local businesses that need help getting more business. And this is the core SMMA model. Right now, those businesses, they're great at potentially running their business. But I have found over eight years of doing this, the one thing that they're not great at, and it's ironic, is actually getting business, is acquiring new customers. And so we make that our business. When we walk in to their business and we say, hey, Mr. Orthodontist, the lifeblood of your practice is a whole bunch of new braces, new cases. What if I could get you 20 to 30 of those a month?

12:37Would you be interested? Boom. Absolutely. There's a really good exchange there. Those are the opportunities that are there and that won't go away. Whether anything, the economy can go up, can go down. And some businesses locally will close. But there are durable services in your local town and just in our country across the world that need that help, that need to be able to reach out and get the attention of their prospects and that's your job. That's what you do. Fire Nation, I hope you're realizing the opportunities that are literally laying out there at your figurative and literal doorstep.

13:12But one thing I do want to touch upon, Sam, because this is something that I've seen for years is that churn will absolutely kill businesses. So if we do all the right things and we work so hard and we find and we get these clients and they're paying us money and we're providing them great services. How do we keep these clients for years, not just weeks? Churn is the enemy of every agency. If you've been in the agency business for a couple months, you know that getting clients is a lot easier than keeping clients. And I think there's a lot of reasons for that. But for me, I really learned this just intuitively when we shifted our own agency from an SMMA to a SaaS.

13:58And in that time, we had, I think, 25 SMMA clients. And we had built the tool Upex to do what it does today. And we were really nervous. We're like, man, we have customers right now. What if we lose these customers? What if this doesn't work? But we took the leap. We did it. We shifted from, hey, we'll run your ads to, hey, you run your ads. This is how easy it is. And I didn't plan on churn being, I just thought, hey, we'll get more customers. You know, my dad said when I was a kid, you sell to the masses, you live with the classes. I'm like, I'll get a bunch of more customers because the price point will be lower.

14:34The thing I didn't anticipate, and I just learned through falling backwards into it, which is how I learned some of the most important things in my career, was as soon as we shifted from, hey, we're offering you a service at this high retainer fee to, hey, we're selling you a SaaS at a lower feet and you click the buttons and it goes, all of a sudden our churn just fixed itself. It's the law of exchange. People don't necessarily value what you do the same way you value what you do. And they put into a box, their own mental box, what it is that you do. They don't think as an SMMA person that you're doing anything, right?

15:14And so they don't get how hard it is, but they understand the idea of software. And so when they pay for software and when it puts out the result that they've been paying an agency, oh man, they just stick around. They don't go. They don't churn. Churn becomes of no concern. That rhymed. Just because, you know, by virtue of what they're paying for, all of a sudden, you didn't have to engineer it. It just happened because of a little mental switch. That mental switch, Fire Nation, it's right there in front of you. And Sam, you've dropped some value bombs today, brother. And if you could just step back and say, what is the one key thing that you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our entire conversation today?

15:54What is that one thing? People in our community are shifting from SMA to SaaS. And that's great. If you have an existing business, that's great. But we also have people who are getting started. We also have people who want to scale. And they're always asking me a lot of questions that quite frankly, are symptomatic of not understanding, I think, a couple of general things. The most important thing to me is who are we serving? Okay. Now, a lot of people hear that and they'll think, oh, I've heard things like that. And you're right. It's kind of become very cliche. Who do you serve? And so for me, it's all about not just having a niche, but having a sub niche, having a person that you serve so granularly.

16:36In fact, JLD, I have used your avatar tool that I think you did probably seven, eight years ago. I don't know how long it's been now. And I've used that to help people in my community identify not just a specific avatar, but a granular person that when they talk to, the sales process, the growth process, the offer creation becomes intuitive because they're just helping a single person, right? So for me, niching down in whatever business you're in is the most critical, most important thing. It'll be the impetus that grows the rest of your business if you niche down to a very specific person. Niche your flipping face off, Fire Nation.

17:20And Sam, I want you to give Fire Nation a call to action. I want you to tell us where we can connect with you, any call to action you have for Fire Nation, and then we'll say goodbye. I appreciate it, JLD. So we have a really cool thing that we've been putting together specifically for this episode here. And so if you go to our website, which is uphex.com forward slash fire, that's U-P-H-E-X dot com forward slash fire. You'll find you'll learn more about uphex there. But we also have a course that you can take that shows you how to transition your SMMA into a SAS. It gives you all the steps. It gives you the tools.

17:59It gives you everything you need to do. So in a short amount of time, you can look at the opportunity, evaluate whether or not it's right for you and take it on. It's completely free. And I appreciate you having me on here, buddy. Listen, I'm fired up as well, brother, because Fire Nation knows they're the average of the five people they spend the most time with. And Fire Nation, you've been hanging out with SC and JLD today. So keep up that heat. And links for everything we talked about today, just head over to eofire.com, type Sam in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. And Sam, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today.

18:33For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks, John. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Sam for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, successful entrepreneurs are great at three things, productivity, discipline, and focus. That is why I created the Mastery Journal so that you can master productivity, discipline, and focus in 100 days. And we're talking step by step. Visit themasteryjournal.com. and I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Business Made Simple, hosted by Donald Miller, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

19:08Business Made Simple takes the mystery out of growing your business with episodes like how to get out of your day-to-day operations without crashing your business. Listen to Business Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts.