2109 – Elevating Digital Marketing Strategies with Andre Savoie

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1:05With us right now is Andre Savoy. Andre, you are a consultant, lifetime entrepreneur. I like this wannabe fishing captain. But most importantly in the work that you do is that you help other leaders turn complex ideas into crystal clear, executable strategies. Andre, it's great to have you. Thank you, Josh. I appreciate you having me on the show and look forward to talking today. Yeah, certainly. Tell me a little bit about your work and your approach. So I've been in the marketing space now a little over 20 years and I'm in the digital marketing space, but I consider myself very old school just because a lot of what I learned, Josh, came from people that are not in the digital space.

1:55And so what I found as a digital marketer was that there was this overemphasis on nerdy things. Like, okay, this page is right because it has the right keywords on it or it has the right URL or this kind of stuff. And so there's this whole group of nerds in the digital marketing space that tell you that things are right, but they're not good or effective. And so I got around early on. I was lucky enough to get around some of the largest advertisers in radio and TV as a marketer and just to listen to how they thought and what they did really gave me a different level of exposure to what should be done on the digital side.

2:30And so my career has really been about kind of fighting against nerds in the digital space to make sure that what's being done, yes, it needs to be technically correct, but it needs to have the right strategy. And frankly, you know, a lot of things in the strategy world haven't really changed, you know, in a long time. And so there's a real need to be to incorporate sort of old school learning with kind of the new school technology that's out there. And that's kind of where I feel like I've, you know, we focused heavily over the years on that. You know, I want to commend you for your approach.

3:01And I would say that that is probably one of the biggest complaints I have around many, not all, but many digital marketers is they spend so much time, you know, kind of this insular, self-referential echo chamber, you know, that they just get so cloistered. and, you know, I don't want to say incestuously, you know, collaborative, but, but, you know, it's like, it's, you know, I see a lot of digital marketers are like, you know, a lot of times they're like high five and each other, you know, but it's just, it sounds great at the nerd table, but in the reality, you know, of the real world, like we need stuff that sometimes doesn't sound brilliant, but it works.

3:55And you know, through experience that it's able to work consistently, not just a shot in the arm, right? So tried and true principles. Andre, am I kind of like, those are just kind of some of my, you know. Yeah, no, you're exactly right. I mean, the reality is, is the tried and true stuff is how you build a long-term business. And so what I found over the years is that with digital, there's this temptation that some strategy should go work and it should work immediately, right? So we can launch Google ads. So they should work today. They'll be live today. The website goes live today. And over the years, I've had clients launch websites and tell me within a month, well, we don't have anything coming through this website.

4:35And it's like, great. The website is step one in a process of, you know, building a brand and building a strategy for this sort of thing. So there's this, I think the digital immediacy has caused people to shorten in their reality and when they think expectations should happen. And also, I think that that's part of, again, nerds telling you, well, you've got a page and it's right, so it should be done. And I think what I've learned is that I talked to, I learned personally from guys that run radio campaigns and they tell you like, don't expect anything for the first year, but then these businesses are 30 years old, Josh, and they're just rolling based on having done radio for 30 years.

5:11And so that shows you that like, I've seen it with my own two eyes that a lot of things worth doing take more than a couple of days to do. And so, you know, and I think that that immediacy, I think that part of the problem, Josh, is that immediacy feeds into like our, our desire today to like, Hey, I got my phone out. Like, you know, I can do this quickly and like being overwhelmed with what's going on. So I think all those things kind of happen together now with digital. And I think that's why in my case, focusing on strategy and helping people get clear on what they're doing, I think is maybe the most important skill for a business owner to have these days, especially going into next year, getting clarity and being clear about why what you're doing.

5:51I think that's really what the number one challenge is for business owners today. So I don't know if you can kind of give me a little bit of a state of the union, but from your perspective, Andre, what are you seeing? It's fine. We could talk about maybe your specific clients. What are the trends? Obviously, I would imagine AI is a big part of this. But what are the major trends in marketing now that we're kind of going into 2025? That if you were to say, listen, if you really want to be where, you know, these tried and true principles are going to work at the end of the day, yes, there still are platforms and mechanisms and tools and these, you know, ways of connecting people, right?

6:40Because that's a lot of times what marketing is really about is, you know, kind of that connection and, you know, education and identifying and building relationships. But do you mind maybe just, I don't know, kind of giving a little bit of a state of the union? Yeah, sure. So I think there are two things that I really feel strongly about that are going to be really important going into the next year. And I think number one is authenticity. You know, I think that there's a desire when you do marketing to polish up your warts and to make yourself look like somebody that you're not. And I say that at a company level, right, to present a certain front.

7:14But what I have found is that even with clients that had 30 locations, when we start talking to them about what's going on in their marketing and does that represent what happens when people come into the store, there was a disconnect. so talking to them and helping them take what happens in the store and make that part of their marketing that authenticity so that when people see the marketing and then they respond to it they come in the showroom they have that experience that they that they heard about wanted so that authenticity i think is is getting harder for people to do because they want to it's hard to outsource that right it's hard to just hire yep they do this for us because you have to be involved and so i think that being authentic and being involved is going to be a really important role for the business owners and managers to take because that's the guidance that a marketing agency needs, right?

8:02They need your authenticity. They need your voice. They need the company's beliefs. They need all those things to create real content and real campaigns that reach people at a real level. So I think authenticity is really important. And then the other thing I think is, and this is maybe gonna be counter to what most people will tell you, Josh, but I think simplicity is part of what people need going forward because there's a real temptation when you're marketing to say, well, let's be on TikTok and Instagram and email. And there's like, like there's 500 things we could be doing. So let's do them all, but do them all poorly.

8:36And what I've seen over and over again is that when companies will focus on a couple of channels, whatever they are, and do those channels really, really well, that they get so much more growth out of that. And it's a daily grind to stay focused on those things and not chase the 500 other things. you know, and whatever they are. But I think the authenticity and simplicity, I think that's where people are going to get real growth in this, in this very fragmented, distracted market right now, you know, and I think that's where, where they're going to see growth. Yeah. Yeah. Andre, do you mind sharing a little bit about when you're working with your clients, what that looks like?

9:15Like when you come in, what is your role? you know the role that I play is you know call it a marketing an outsourced marketing director but really I feel that the market the role that I play is to help them get clarity on a on the direction that they want to go and to help build a plan for how to do it right because most companies when we come in are are internally they have 5 ,000 priorities going on so everything's competing and even if they have internal marketing staff that internal marketing staff has other people that they're answering to and different priorities and that sort of thing.

9:49So my job is to really come in and help them make sure that we have the right strategy, the right messaging, you know, because that's very critical, like we talked about with authenticity and that sort of thing. And then have the systems in place to evaluate what's happening. Because as you begin to do things, you obviously need to see what's the return or what's the growth or what are we getting for this. So understanding, making sure you have a plan with the right message and a growth structure. And then the other thing that I've done a lot of with clients is I've helped clients figure out how that they can grow internally and how to grow their own staff.

10:19Because what I found is that a lot of times business owners have a marketing person, but they don't know how to communicate with that marketing person. So the marketing person is getting outside information. The owners or directors are giving them stuff. So there's a disconnect. So a lot of times we'll wind up going and helping train an internal person to give them some additional skills, or maybe it's just communication skills or marketing skills or whatever it is to help them do a better job. And so we found that the more we can help companies learn how to do things in-house, it reduces their dependency on outside sources and also allows them to be more selective when they go look for outside help, right?

10:55Now that we know what we need help with, we can go exactly fill this position and we know how to hold that vendor accountable and what we should expect versus the other thing, which is I don't know what we need. We just need a proposal and we hope it works and we'll see you in six months. And that's kind of the process, I think, that used to be popular, but I think it's very ineffective these days. Oh, God, we don't have time for that today. Are you kidding? Andre, I want to ask you about this because this is so unique and interesting, is that you've actually done a lot of work in and around charter fishing operations.

11:32Take us into that world a little bit. yeah so um i'm a fisherman i've been a fisherman since i could walk and um as a digital marketer wound up on a fishing boat with a guy who said you know my buddy's been screwing around with this website blah blah blah so i wound up helping him and pretty soon he popped up number one on google he's like man i don't know what you did but like i'm getting phone calls and this is crazy well then he introduced me to a friend and then another friend and before i knew it i had 15 clients that were all charter fishing captains and they all kind of needed the same thing so So when I looked around in the space, there was really no marketing agencies and no marketing services specifically serving the charter space.

12:11And so that's what I was like, we're doing this. So we created saltwater marketing and the whole the whole the whole. Program and the whole point of the program is to support guys that are charter fishermen that need affordable help and they need certain things and done for them, but they also need to learn. And so I'm really proud of the component for this program, which is there's a bit of a done for you with it to take care of some of the things that they're not going to be able to figure out, like ad buying and that sort of stuff. But I also put them in a course and a group setting to where we can learn and say, OK, these guys are doing this on their own and look what they're doing really well.

12:46And you can learn from this and do this yourself. So it's really the only group learning program available for those guys. And I'm really proud of that because I feel like as we were talking about, they can be more authentic. they can simplify, they can learn to do things themselves. And now we have somebody to teach them because there's a lot of that in other segments. I mean, almost every niche you look around, there's, there's marketing programs specifically for those things. And there's really nothing in the saltwater space. I'm really proud to have brought that to the market. And, you know, we're having an impact on people, which is really exciting to see, you know, the changes that we're making with people.

13:15And then it's, you know, those are good people. They like, they like taking people fishing. They like, they don't want to protect the marine resources. You know, they're all serious about that. So just been a lot of fun. You can say, I got my fishing pole in the back there. Yeah. Well, I was going to say, you know, we've been out charter fishing. We live here in Central Florida, so we've gone out a couple of times. And you're right. Charter fishing people are just, they're so passionate about what they do. And I couldn't help, Andre, and I'm sure you have thought about this quite a bit, you know, that a charter fisher woman, you know, someone running that business.

13:48I mean, it's a metaphor for any business owner or leader, right? So you think about like all of the responsibilities and usually what fuels, you know, charter fisher, you know, I keep wanting to call the charter fisher person, gender in specific. You can call it charter fishing captains. Yeah, captain. There we go. Yes, yes. You know, but we think about like what that life is like, and it's no different than you or I. No. No. Yeah, well, it's just good. I don't know if you wanted to kind of explore that for a little bit. Do you have experience with these folks? Like a lot of people, they got into a business because they had an interest in it or they were good at it, one of the two.

14:29And then as they get busier, they find they need help to market and grow, get more customers. And then they find when they get to a certain point of busy, they need to bring in more staff or hire so they can bring other people in. And then they need technology, right, to communicate with customers, to do booking and that sort of stuff. So it's really not that unusual at all, which is why, you know, everything I had learned at the agency over 17 years really applied easily to those things. And it was just exciting to look at like a space where nobody had really stopped to help those people and say, here's a toolbox for you.

15:01And let's give you some guidance on how to do this. And that's what's been fun. And I can tell you this next year, we're making some plans for this right now. But next year, we're going to take this army of armada, we're going to call them, of charter fishing captains because we've got captains literally from Belize to Alaska. And what we're going to do is we're going to organize a single day next summer. I haven't picked the day yet where we're going to do a day for charity. And we're going to have we're going to encourage each one of the clients to take a kid in the boat from this charity that we're going to be working with.

15:30And we're going to say we're going to make this possible from all over the country. and we're going to do this. So it's going to be a really cool thing for everybody to say, hey, we want to take a kid, a kid with either disability or a special needs kid fishing, give them that experience. It's going to be free. It's going to be part of the charity thing. We're going to make sure the captains get recognized for it. But I think we're going to have just a really big impact doing that as a fun project. Oh, that's so cool. And the media is going to love something like that. I could just tell you as someone who's done a little bit of work in the past on that front.

15:57One little blip here, Andre, in 30 seconds or less, Can you tell me, you know, just for someone that hasn't been, you know, in charter fishing or hasn't been out, especially ocean, right? Like, if you haven't done that, what that experience is like, and, you know, whether you, you know, let's say you take your team out and you do this together or you take your family out, what are some of the biggest observations you see of those who do that activity? yeah the biggest observation is you see this thing it goes away for a while and when you get away from the shore you're holding up your phone by the way yeah right i mean your phone goes away and and you make you you just have connections with people and the connections are centered around nature so i would just say like if anybody's ever enjoyed the quiet and the peacefulness of a good hike or a camping trip yeah going charter fishing is kind of like that because we're leaving we're going out into nature we're going to be on the water there's going to be some elements maybe it's hot, maybe it's cold, maybe it's breezy, we don't know, but there's the nature component to it.

16:59And then you're in a tight space on a boat. And so there's just more connection, you know, you can't like necessarily just escape from everybody, you're going to be sitting next to each other, and you're going to wind up talking to people, and making connections and making friendships and learning things about people that you didn't know before. And then if you're lucky on the charter trip, somebody is going to catch a really cool fish, that's going to be a core memory, you know, because I still have pictures of my son when he was 12 catching his first tuna. and you know he'll remember that till till you know as long as we walk this earth so i mean those are core memories that you make on those things and when you have time alone you have you have connection you have core memories you have nature i mean that's a really magical kind of environment to be in and uh and and really enjoy living you know i mean it's about living and i think that's what charter fishing is all about so i i think hopefully most of us have those core memories of going fishing and that, you know, that delight, or maybe we went out with our kids and just, you just see like just how much excitement, you know, that, that goes into that experience.

17:59Andre, that's awesome. Okay. So your website is andresavoy.com and we have the spelling. It's, it's not your traditional spelling. It's not the Savoy truffle. It's S-A-V-O-I-E. And we have that again, direct link to our friend that's listening to this episode and your podcast player. Just click on the show notes, the information icon, the details. You'll find it. And open up the website. But Andre, let's talk about next steps for a friend that's been listening to our conversation. Like who should be reaching out and where do they go from here? Yeah, so I work with clients. At this point, we're directing clients initially to go into our group learning program.

18:41Because what I found with most clients is that if I can help them get a base of knowledge, that eliminates about three quarters of the questions they would ever have for a marketing agency or me or anyone else. And so my goal after 18 years running an agency is to disseminate that information on a really affordable basis. And so I really want people to come in and be part of that program so that they can learn. We can do and train them and they can kind of elevate. And that's why I call the program elevate, elevate their knowledge so that they become more empowered to do what they want to do. And then the other group of people that we work with are the fishing captains and that those go through saltwater marketing so those links are all on my website if anybody wants to learn more about it yeah andresavoy.com andresavoy thank you so much for joining i've enjoyed the conversation uh and uh again i what one last thing i have you what is the biggest fish that you've personally ever like it was your fish yeah so we caught a 165 pound yellowfin tuna and it took five of us to get him in the boat it took about an hour and a half of five of us passing the pole around and my dad was still alive at the time so we're talking about core memories like that's you know it's one of the last trips I went on with my dad but it so the fish came up off the back of the boat and it was like a Volkswagen coming out of the water I just remember this big silver thing coming out and it crashed right behind us and I was like oh my god and then they hit the full 165 pound yellowfin tuna just incredible no joke those things are huge.

20:09Go to our friend that's listening, go do a Google search really quick. If you don't, I mean, it's kind of like the show, like I'm looking at some pictures of like people who haven't like stood up for the, you know, big display. You have to do it on the nose, stand up on the nose. It's a six foot long fish. It's incredible. That's crazy. Andre Samoy, thanks so much for joining us. You're welcome, Josh. Thank you for having me. I enjoyed it.

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