10 Business Moats That Actually Protect Your Marketing

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3:00You offer SEO, paid media, CRO, ad creative, and a bunch of other things, right? Like influencer marketing, everything, the full stack. That makes it harder, even if you're performing at a B minus across the board. Even if you're number one on SEO, people are gonna rather, they're gonna, they wanna go with the provider that can provide more, right? They want more full service. And so one of the motes that will protect your marketing is switching costs, right? And so when you think about, cause that is protecting your business ultimately, and these things kind of go hand in hand. So that's number one.

3:27Number two, funny enough, I wasn't going to look at the list, but my number two was similar to the list. I think it's the same thing. I think in marketing, one of the biggest most is your brand. Because you've heard the saying, you don't get fired for hiring IBM. You can say the same for McKinsey, Accenture, Deloitte. Look at Deloitte and all the government products that didn't come to fruition. I'm not saying they suck or they don't. $74 billion. But it's a reality and they keep getting hired. Why? Because Deloitte has a really powerful brand. If someone hires you and you have a really strong brand and they don't get the results and everyone in the industry knows of your brand, the person, their boss will be like, well, you hired a really good person, really good company.

4:10So you try. If you hire a company that's not known, really tiny, unknown brand, and something goes wrong, they'd be like, well, why'd you hire this company? No one knows them. They don't have a proven track record. This is risky. You're taking a gamble here. brand carries a lot of weight. It takes 10 plus years to really build a strong brand, but that is a strong moat in business and marketing. And you can also erode that brand in seconds. That's what Warren Buffett said, right? It takes a lifetime to build a brand. It takes minutes to destroy it. Yeah. And in his annual letters, do you know what he used to always say to people when it came to their brand?

4:47What? If you have a decision to make that would cost you short-term profits or long-term brand, like to hurt your brand in the long run, take the short-term revenue hit, like never do anything to mess up the brand. Another one would be, this is digressing a little bit, but if you wouldn't even hold it for 10 seconds, if you want to hold it for 10 years, don't even hold it for 10 seconds. That relates to investing. But anyway, I digress. So the next one is on process power. And so what process power is, is the actual strength of the process you have. Okay, so I'll give an example. So Toyota is known for their process power.

5:25When everyone was making, everyone still makes a lot of cars today, but everyone was looking at Toyota, like how are they so efficient? How is it that they can crank out so many cars and other people before? Nowadays, I mean, Tesla's kind of really up there when it comes to manufacturing, but also process power ties in with your marketing too. How you go about creating your content? How do you think about strategizing for your long form content? How do you think about redistributing it? How do you think about chopping it up? Right? That can tie in with your marketing, but also process power for your business too.

5:50It could be how you do your work for your clients, how you interact with your clients. All that stuff matters. And then how do you make sure you hold people accountable so the process doesn't start to fall apart, especially if you're a very people-oriented business? Yeah, number four, community. If you can build a really strong community, you'll have a really loyal following of a vandalist who will keep promoting your brand over others. That goes a really long way. But the key with the community, and this is why it's a good moat as long as you do it right, is you got to actually care for a community and be there and totally hear them out and adapt based on what they're saying and their needs are.

6:26You can't just have a community, it be really strong, and then all of a sudden, if your community is giving feedback on something, you just ignore it. A great example of this is Dig back in the day. The Dig users were part of the Dig community. It was owned by Kevin Rose, extremely popular. It was like Reddit, guys. Yes, and he made changes that people really hated. And a lot of the community left and they went to Reddit and they didn't care to come back. And eventually dig fell. And Reddit is now a multi-billion dollar company. Fun fact, Neil used to be a super digger. I was like, that was like a little before my time.

6:59But yeah, Neil's a super digger. He was like, oh, he's on top. Yeah. Anyway, next one would be network effects. And so network effects, when you think about using like Instagram or you think about using a WhatsApp, the more people that use a network, the more valuable it becomes. And so not every business necessarily has network effects, but I do believe that now that most people can build things, I think we're going to start to see more of these mini networks. And a community, you can say, is a mini network. But I do think that because you and I, anybody can vibe code whatever we want to build now, I think we're going to start to see more networks come up.

7:32So number six is you. All right. Number six, speed. The quicker you can move, the better off you're going to be. It's shocking how slow people are. Even with AI, you have all these tools at your fingertips. There's no reason why you just can't get stuff done faster. See, isn't AI so good? Yeah. Okay. Next one is seven, I think. So because so many people right now are able to vibe code whatever they want, because you, me, my dad, I guess, you can vibe code anything you want now. And people think that whatever you build, people are just going to come to it. That's not the reality. Distribution often beats product.

8:12And distribution tastefully. I'm not saying just go and run ads, right? Like that's certainly powerful. You got to think about your creative, all these different things. You got to think about where your audience is hanging out. And so any, and I'll actually flip both too, because I do think, and we'll talk about the SaaSpocalypse in a little bit, but I do think in the next couple of years or so, a lot of software is just going to be given away for free. And that's going to be the way of getting people in the door. And so in some cases, product kind of becomes distribution, but distribution is still kind of the lead domino.

8:41And you think about, I'll just use you as an example, Neil. So the reason why in my mind, MP Digital was able to grow so quickly in the beginning was because of distribution. Yes. Yeah. It wasn't because you had some kind of, the distribution was a secret sauce in my mind. Yeah. And I would say number eight, I would say a big thing is network and not network the way you described. That is a effective moat as well. But I'm talking about who do you know? If you work with amazing people on your team and you yourself have been in the space for a while or have been networking for a while, if you have good, strong contacts with people who could be your ideal customers, it helps the business grow much faster.

9:22People rather do business with people they know and like, the like part is really important, than random strangers. So build up your network. Eric and I have been networking for, call it 20 plus years, and a lot of the deals we work on today are from people we connected with 10 plus years ago. So your network truly is your quote unquote net worth that people have been saying for so many years. It's just more so you got to focus on not just building a network, but building those relationships with people within your network. So when it comes time to doing business, they're much more likely to do it with you than some other stranger.

9:57Dude, let me show you this real quick. So you can see on my screen over here, this is my Telegram bot, right? I call him Alfred, like Alfred from Batman. He has a little butler hat too. Look at that, right? So anyway, you can see it's like, oh, who this person is over here. They're in this ABM role three years over here, spend this 300 grand a month, 3.6 million a year on ABM stuff, okay? Discovery call was like this time, explicitly said she's figuring out a gap, uses these tools over here, here's the gap. So it basically, talking about relationships, this is my ultimate relationship hub, right?

10:25And then not only that, look, it crafted some copy here. Hey, Neil, great connecting last Friday. It's been over a year, so it was a little wrong there. Been thinking about what you said regarding the ad personalization gap, which is what she said on the call, right? You mentioned exploring, you know, competitor and wanting deeper six cents integration for landing pages that's literally carrot sweet spot would you be open to a quick 15 minute demo focus specifically on the one-to-one landing page personalization you asked about and then here's the context over here key question targeting enterprise accounts uh greater than 1 000 employees and so this is a good example of the it's not just building your network the the relationships like it's also how do you mine it right and so when neil told me about how he's been just making sure that he's proactive about it i'm like, I have very bad memory.

11:06I just need something to be proactive for me. So every day I get a deal of the day thing. It's kind of like a, remember, what's the website? Was it Whoop? Or not Whoop. Woot. Woot. Yeah. Yeah. Every day. UTV half off, cell phone half off, headphones one 10th off. Exactly. Or one 10th the price. That's how I see it. So anyway, I digress a little bit, but the next one, I think number nine for my side. Really, this one's a toss up. So I'm going to go with I'm going to go with talent moats. No matter how good your distribution is, how good my distribution is, everything ultimately business wise comes down to the people.

11:43I don't care if you have a product business. I don't care if you have a service business. Everything comes down to how good your team is. And I remember there's Andy Groh's book, The High Output Management. And you know what that book is about, Neil? What? Confrontation. The entire book is about confrontation, basically. If you're not willing to confront it doesn't matter how good you are and you think you are at hiring ultimately but you're going to cap yourself out and one thing i will say that um you know you've been you've since i've known you in the beginning you've always been good at confrontation i've gotten better over the years at confrontation um but talent modes in my mind are the hardest to copy because um you if you have bad talent managing your marketing or your business everything crumbles down and you know what warren buffett and charlie munger used to say they say make sure your business is easy enough to run by an idiot because eventually an idiot will i hope that doesn't happen to us but yeah hopefully not yeah i maybe i'll just stay the idea anyway go ahead continue uh last but not least data in today's world data is more fragmented it's all over the place networks don't give you all the data sadly um and the more first-party data that you own the better off you're gonna be you saw the deal that amazon has right netflix uh is it roku uh who else is in there disney i believe is in there yeah they're all partnering with amazon so Amazon can run ads for them on their platforms for their streaming.

13:00Why is this important? Amazon has so much data on what people are buying. They can connect it all in and serve better ads. It monetizes better. Advertisers will pay more. It's a win-win for everyone, including the Disney's of the world. Yep. Okay, so next topic here. So Neil, I'm gonna read you some examples, human versus AI here, right? So this is where I wanna talk about how Cloud Code makes you a one-man marketing army. So I'm gonna show you some examples and you tell me what you think about these examples. It's like you having a marketing brain. And so here's the first email here. You can jump in here too, Noah.

13:31So wait, you want me to rate one to 10, like what's good or bad? Yeah, I'm going to read you two emails. Are you ready? Okay, I'll be quick. Okay, so one is AI generated, the other one's human generated. Don't tell me which one is what. Okay, I won't. And I'll do the same thing for you. Okay, ready? Okay, here we go, guys. And then this is, guys, the topic here is how cloud code can make you a one-man marketing army, okay? So first email here, the subject line is Salesforce's LinkedIn ads are haunted. Okay, preview of the post, the little preview, by the ghost of impressions that don't convert, quote unquote.

14:00Hey Neil, I have a confession. I've been looking at Salesforce's LinkedIn presence for the past 20 minutes, not in a creepy way, in a quote unquote, wait, they're doing ABM wrong and they probably don't know it, quote unquote way. Quick question, do you know what percent of your target accounts are actually seeing your LinkedIn ads? If the answer is impressions, that's exactly my point. Most ABM teams are paying for eyeballs that will never buy. It's like running a Super Bowl ad to sell B2B software. Expensive, feels good, doesn't work. I built something that might change how you think about this.

14:30But first, am I totally off base here? Is Salesforce crushing it on LinkedIn ABM and I'm the one missing something? Eric, say, so that's number one. Rate that one. Do you think that was human generated, AI generated, rate it one through 100? One through 10 is easier. Okay, one through 10. Yeah. I think it was AI generated and I would rate it as a six. Okay. I also think AI generated, now I'd put it like a five. Okay. So here's the second one. Okay. Subject line is 387 ads in 12 minutes, not a typo. Preview. The math doesn't make sense until it does. Neil, I timed myself yesterday. It took 12 minutes and 47 seconds to create 387 personalized LinkedIn ad creatives for 387 different target accounts.

15:19Each one with the prospect's company logo, their name, a relevant pain point based on their industry, ready to launch. I used to think personalization at scale, quote unquote, was marketing BS. Turns out it just needed better math. The old way, one designer, 387 accounts, 15 minutes per ad, 97 hours, about 2.5 weeks. The new way, 12 minutes, same quality, sometimes better. I know this sounds like I'm pitching you. I'm not yet. I'm genuinely curious if you've seen this kind of efficiency anywhere else in your ABM stack because if you have I want to know about it Eric 6.5 mm-hmm. I would probably say this one is also AI generated in the first one maybe human generated Okay, assuming I can only one of them's human one of the AI.

16:01How about you? Uh-huh. I think it was a combo. I think it was a human with AI AI started it and then human tweaked it. Great, okay. So yeah, they're both AI generated. They're both AI. Yeah, so Neil caught on. But my point here is, I think where I'm going, and I'll share some other examples, but I think the physics of business is changing. You know, like if you and I work together and you told me it's gonna take two weeks to get something like this up, I can at least get this, this took me like five minutes, right? And I can iterate off of it. So you said six initially, you said eight on one of them, right?

16:36That's enough of a good enough starting point, which is what we've been talking about. But I think the problem is, and Steve Jobs said this, right? He's never found anyone in his career that will magically want to work hard that's never worked hard before. And what's happening with this stuff is that it's actually exposing people who aren't motivated a lot faster. Because again, the physics have changed. The laws, like I can get anything up I want, at least up to like a six or seven, right? Which is pretty good. And we actually got new copy up for the ClickFlow site. and we got new copy up for the single range site, right?

17:06Like this week, we changed our pop-up as well. The pop-up looks a lot better. You know, we reworked ads, like all these, like there's this carrot ads plan. There's the onboarding email sequence for all these things. My point is not saying, guys, this is like a 10 out of 10 out the gate, but I do think that you're able to do a lot more now, a lot faster with a lot less stress. If you're a motivated person, it's like, it doesn't matter. Like when you and I were not making any, when my first job was making$32 ,000 a year, I always wanted to work hard every day. Did I play poker in the back online?

17:34Absolutely, I did. I did not accept that answer. But I worked hard, right? That's my point. That's my point. Anyway. By the way, do you want to know why I felt they were AI generated? Why? Too wordy. So that's a big problem with AI. It doesn't get to the point. I don't know why. It rambles. Almost all platforms do it. You know what's crazy? Finish your thought. And what we found, and this is why I gave him a six rating. One was six. The second was 6.5. The first one was too storytelling. I'm not saying storytelling is bad because the marketing storytelling is amazing. But in this example, Eric is a B2B company, right?

18:17He owns Carrot and he's hitting up someone who works at Salesforce. Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm assuming you hit up someone at Salesforce. No, that was, I just inserted. Yeah. Okay. But hypothetically. Salesforce would be a target customer. Okay. Yeah. That's another B2B company. The people Eric are hitting up, they don't want storytelling. They want stats, data, and they want you to get to the point. And that's it. The reason the second one, I liked it a little bit more, is he used some stats and data, but again, it was too wordy. And the angle I would have taken with their approach is, I would have taken how many ads you can do, and I would have talked about how they barely do any ads.

18:56and I would have talked about the ROI by just testing in a mass quantity and I would have said, I created some more ads for you that are personalized, et cetera, based on who we think is your target audience. Let me know if you want to schedule a call. We can actually roll this out and do more for you to grow your revenue or whatever it may be. So that's it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe and we will see you tomorrow.

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