1997 – Breaking the Marketing Agency Cycle with LoudMouse’s Marc Ensign

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1:05With us right now, Mark Ensign. Mark, you are a fractional CMO for the legal, financial, medical industries, and you are the founder and CEO of Loudmouse. You are found on the web at loudmouse.com. Most importantly, Mark, you're a friend and a fellow bass player. So welcome to the show. We've got to stick together. Yes, yes. Do you mind, before we kind of get into live most of your professional work, do you mind sharing just a little bit about your background with bass? And, I mean, you go on tour with amazing shows. Obviously, I saw you in a lot of the video and clips and photos you posted of touring, being able to tour with Jesus Christ Superstar, which is just a phenomenal soundtrack.

1:50And I can't imagine what these experiences have been like for you. Yeah. So I started my professional life as a musician. I had this dream of getting through college and working on Broadway. And, you know, I was I was I just moved to New York after school and I didn't have any connections. I probably wasn't good enough to get the gig. You know, I didn't know anybody. I was as green as they come, but I was really good at marketing myself and getting in front of people, which is like, you know, So, you know, when you have a bass player that can get attention, you know, outside of like being on stage, you know, it goes a long way.

2:26And and so within about a year or two, I was able to weasel my way on to the Broadway stage with the show Rent. That was my first Broadway show. So this is back in the day of the the original cast, like when when the show really kind of hit its high and it was, you know, everybody's camping outside for tickets and all that. And and so I started subbing the show on Broadway. then I got the national tour, then I got the international tour. And, and, and I did that for a long time. And at some point, I just got really, I got really tired of being on the road all the time. And I wanted to start a family.

2:59And I also kind of start, you know, I wanted more stability. And so I started a marketing agency, because I figured if I could do for myself, let me see if I can do for other people. And, and that went really well. And then all of a sudden, I stopped playing altogether. And that happened, you know, that happened for about five or 10 years. And then right before COVID, perfect timing, I decided I was like, I really miss it. And I want to get back into it. And so I started calling everybody again, saying, you know, and I kind of pitched this idea of like, I don't want to go on tour for a year. But if you're ever in a bind, and you need a bass player, and life blows up, like if there's a bass player emergency, you know, give me a call.

3:35And sure enough, COVID hit, and then there were all these bass player emergencies. So I was like running out and doing shows and going on tours for four weeks at a time, eight weeks at a time, went to Japan for six weeks. And so I run my business from the road. I probably go out about three times a year and it is the best of both worlds. Yeah. And there's kind of the common joke of the bass player, right? A lot of the other folks in the band have a lot of things to worry about. Usually the bass player is like, I'm just the bass player. I come in, do my thing and I'm out. That's right. So, um, so you have that time to still run operations during the day.

4:14Yeah. And, you know, and, and like, like, yeah, I would be on the tour bus and I'd have my little office set up and I'd be getting work done. And then I'd jump off the tour bus and go on stage and play a show and then go back to the hotel and get a little more work done. Like it just, it really was, I mean, it was exhausting for more than like, you know, six, seven, eight weeks, it starts to get tiring. But, um, but for the most part, you know, it's, it's, uh, it really is this, this just great, like it's, it's one of the coolest side hustles that you'll ever find. Yeah. Broadway. So. I am on your website right now, Mark.

4:47It's loudmouse.com. At the very top, it says stop wasting time and money on marketing that doesn't work. Well, Mark, that begs the question, what works? That's a great question. So yeah, so I, I, I ran a marketing agency ever. I've, If we go back to when I first started, my first marketing agency was the early 2000s. So it's probably been about 20 years. And so I've kind of run the gamut of web design, SEO, social media, and everything else in between, full service digital marketing agency. We worked with Nike and American Express and all these big companies. And so I really got a good look at what works, what doesn't work, what other companies are doing, what they're not doing.

5:27And the one thing that I found that across the board is missing from most companies and decent sized companies that are spending money on marketing is leadership. There's a missing in leadership within the marketing. You have a CEO, you have a CFO, you have a sales team lead or something along those lines. But like marketing is just like, yeah, let's just hire an SEO company, a bunch of other agencies. I'm sure they'll know what to do and they'll do a great job. and there's nobody really kind of overseeing them, managing them, you know, managing the budget and the strategy and everything else.

6:00There's just a missing in leadership. And so that's where we kind of slotted ourselves in a couple of years ago, totally by accident. Like a company just asked us to be a fractional CMO for him. And I was like, okay, let's give it a shot. And then you really kind of see what's going on. And having been in marketing and running marketing meetings for so long, I really kind of know where all the bones are buried. When somebody, when this SEO company hands me a report and I know they've kind of fudged the numbers or cherry pick the data, whereas a CEO might not recognize that, I see it right away and I'm able to call it out and we adjust as we go.

6:36All right. So share a little bit, if you could, Mark, about maybe trends that you've been seeing in marketing. So, you know, for those business owners that are listening right now and get a lot of folks that listen to this program tend to be kind of seasoned, but they're focused on lots of things. And so you've got your ears to you've got your ear to the track on what's been going on in marketing. And so I'm curious what observations you have around what's trending, what's on the horizon, what has fallen out of fashion. Can you give us a state of the union? Yeah, I mean, it changes so fast. So by the time, you know, we're done here and, you know, in 20 minutes or so, like, like, I probably have a different answer for you, you know, because it's changed.

7:21But one thing that I find that is really very solid is your voice, your approach, your story, who you are, your transparency, your ability to actually be human within your market. You know, the tactics are great, but if, you know, if you have a great new fresh Google tactic, you know, for Google ads or for SEO or whatever, and it drives a bunch of people to a site where it just doesn't connect with people, it's just not going to work. So really nailing down who you are and how to present yourself in a way that really speaks to that audience is always key. You always have to start there and have that nailed down.

8:15Yeah. Mark, talk about what engagement looks like when you're working with a client. What does that typically look like? What might your client be coming in with? Do they know that they have big gaps? Do they know they have big problems? And so they're seeking you out. And then when that happens, where do you usually begin? Sure. So in most cases, our clients come to us because they don't know the answer to certain questions. Like when you ask them, you know, how's your marketing going? They go, I have no idea. You know, is what's your conversion rate? I don't know. You know, is your marketing working?

8:51I have no clue. We're paying people. We're paying people a lot of money. I just don't really know if it's if they're doing what they're supposed to be doing. Like there's there's a sense of like just they just seem disconnected from like we just don't know what's going on. So that's usually when I get the call, which is why our first step when we work with somebody is transparency. Like the first thing that we'll do is we'll dig into all their tracking. Let's figure out where every visitor is coming from. Let's figure out where every lead is coming from. Let's find what's working and what's not working.

9:23You may be spending 20 grand a month in Google Ads or whatever. And then once we really kind of get down to it, you're losing money. Or maybe you should be spending$50 ,000 a month. You know, we really don't know until, you know, and it can't be a gut feeling. You know, it's got to be like based on data. So we spent a lot of time in that first couple of weeks really getting, you know, grabbing hold of, you know, where all those leads are coming from. Make sure all your tracking is set. And then the second piece is we get to know your team. Like I want to know what agencies you're working for, working with.

9:58If you have any internal marketing people, I want to know who they are. We want to talk to them, figure out who your team is, because, you know, if, you know, now that we have the transparency, now that we can make smart decisions, who are the people that are going to actually implement these decisions? And are they the right people? Do we have the right people in the right place? You know, and then and then beyond that, we have the actual strategy. So, you know, we can't really, you know, you know, we can't implement a strategy without the right people. We can't really have the right people without the right data.

10:30So it really is that transparency, figuring out the data, getting the right people in place, and then developing the strategy. Whereas a lot of people just start with like, what's our strategy? Let's just start throwing spaghetti at the wall. Ready, shoot, aim, right? Right. And marketing has gotten more and more expensive. If you look at paid ads this year versus last year, they've almost doubled in price. It is only getting more and more expensive. So you have to be really smart about what you're doing. Yeah. Mark, your website is loudmouse.com. Do you mind maybe just sharing a little bit about the resources that you make available?

11:08So even just, you know, kind of outside of direct engagement with your clients. I mean, I guess what is your thought leadership that you share? What kind of content or resources do you generally make available to folks? One of the things that we put out, we put out an e-book a couple weeks ago that everybody seems to be clamoring over. that has grabbed some attention. And it's about what we call breaking the marketing agency cycle. And this cycle is this idea that you get all excited, you hire a marketing agency. Maybe they're an SEO company, a Google ads company, a social media company, whatever.

11:44You hire them to do some marketing for you. And then you get to that first meeting and they're like, well, it's a little too soon for us to see results, but here's what we've been working on. Okay, cool. Then the next month, it's just like, we're starting to see a little activity, but it's still way too soon to really be celebrating anything. And then you start getting a little antsy, you know, and, and so meanwhile, you're spending money every month and you're not quite getting anything. And then you start getting frustrated and then you start getting angry and then you fire them because you're like, you know what?

12:11It's been six months. I'm not really seeing anything, or I just keep getting dragged along, you know, for this ride and it's just getting very expensive. I need to see results. So you get rid of them and then you go to a networking event, you meet somebody new and you hire that new agency. And then guess what? The month, the first month rolls around and it's that same thing. Well, it's a little too soon for us to see anything. And then, you know, and it's that just that constant cycle of, you know, finding agencies, spend a lot of money, get frustrated, fire them, start over. And so we put together an e-book that kind of explains that process and then what to do to kind of break that cycle.

12:45You know, how can you have, what are the right conversations to have with your agency? How do you hire the right agency? How do you, you know, how do you set yourself up for success? Because a lot of times you have very different goals from the, from like your SEO company and nobody really knows this. You know, you're looking at revenue saying like, I really need revenue to go up. We're down 10 % for the month. and then you get into the SEO meeting and they're all excited because they got this one keyword to rank in the top 10 and they're celebrating. But meanwhile, revenue is down. Like I don't really like, so you have very different goals.

13:18They're working with one metric. You're working with another. How do you get all of that to start to, you know, how do you communicate with them in a way where everybody's on the same page? And so that ebook has really kind of caused a little bit of a stir and gotten a lot of people, you know, a lot of people that help or that understanding with how to deal with agencies. Yeah, man, I just that meme comes to mind of that Olympic athlete who's like, you know, shooting the champagne and biting the metal and stuff like that and celebrating. And then, of course, it has a picture of all of them together and he's on the lowest pedestal out of all of them.

13:52That's kind of immediately what comes to mind when you think about that SEO agency. Right, right. High-fiving each other over a, yeah, cool. That's. Yeah, we got a keyword that doesn't drive any traffic like this. You're right. You know, I mean, it's great, but it's not helping us. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, I think most clients, what they want is, you know, they want to increase revenue. Like what is driving the bottom line? You know, where is business and growth and revenue coming from? That's what matters. You know, not some of maybe these fluffy emotional things, which are great.

14:23But at the end of the day, I mean, we got to, you know, we have to, you know, CEOs and founders have a lot of decisions to make. We have a lot of pressure on our shoulders to lead the company in a way that benefits the market and our company and our teams and so forth. Yeah, so there's a lot of things to feel good about, but then there's the important stuff that I think really matters at the end of the day. Right. And when you walk into a meeting and let's say your AdWords company is celebrating the fact that like, hey, we got the cost per lead down 30%. That sounds really good until you realize that the cost per lead went down.

14:58because the quality of lead went down also. So we're buying cheaper leads that aren't closing as much. So now even though the cost per lead is down, that's not an indication that we're successful because our revenue might be down also. So really the only number that matters is like, I wanna know what the revenue is. Like if our revenue is going up, we're doing something right. Then what we do is we go back and track like, okay, where is that revenue coming from? And how can we do more of that? Instead of saying like, hey, let's get the cost per lead down and just assume that it's going to impact the revenue.

15:30It doesn't work that way. Yeah. Mark Ensign, your website, loudmouse.com. You shared, you know, certainly like grab that ebook. Do you know what folks click on in order to get that? Yeah, if you just go to loudmouse.com slash breaking. And yeah, like I said, it's a new ebook. So it'll probably be, by the time people are listening to this, it will be on the site. It'll be front and center. but we literally just released it about a week ago. So if you go to loudmouse.com slash breaking, you'll find it that way as well. Yeah, love it, love it. Mark Ensign, again, you are the founder and CEO of Loudmouse, AKA also The Big Cheese.

16:09Your website again, loudmouse.com. Mark, thank you so much. It's been great to have you. Thanks, Josh, appreciate it.

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