2154 - High-Impact Strategies That Turn Marketing Into Sales with Far Beyond Marketing's Amber Gaige

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt-in required where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments.

0:51Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you.

1:05With us right now, it's Amber Gage. Amber, you are a chief marketing advisor. You are the founder and CEO of Far Beyond Marketing. Your website is farbeyondmarketing.com. Amber, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me, Josh. It's a privilege. Yes, well, thank you. Hey, so, you know, before we get started, kind of talking about your superpowers, what have you been doing for fun lately? Have you been watching anything or listening to anything that you're kind of geeking out on? Yes. Oh my gosh. I'm totally geeking out on the new book by Mel Robbins. Let Them. I love that book. I'm an audio-holic when it comes to listening to books.

1:43So I've been listening to tons of books. Love Mel Robbins. Also been binge-watching some shows on Amazon. Have you heard of The Night Agent? What are you binge-watching? Oh, The Night Agent. Have you seen it? No. What is it? So amazing. There's like this black ops group with the FBI and they're all undercover. and it's, it had got this secret phone line of things coming in and it's a great show. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Look at that. Well, I'm going to add this to my queue and check it out. All right. So tell us about the work that you are doing Amber, um, with far beyond marketing. Yeah. So me and my team are passionate about helping entrepreneurs soar and scale their businesses.

2:25I'm a third gen entrepreneur, got a team of 14 that work with me at Far Beyond. And what we do is put strategic marketing in place and we can execute marketing tactics, whatever our clients need. But really our passion is helping entrepreneurs grow their businesses to the next level. If it's going from six figures to seven figures, if they're franchisees, we do a lot of consulting with franchisors, but we're all about implementing smart marketing analysis and data alongside strategy to help businesses grow. Okay. Well, then obviously I got to ask you, what is working right now in marketing? And when we talk about marketing, can you be a little bit more, that's a really broad term.

3:08So if we could kind of, you know, kind of condense that down into specifically what we're talking about. And then I would love for you to talk about what is working right now in 2025. Yeah. So marketing is a broad term. You're absolutely right. Where we really excel is in digital media, what I like to call 3TT. Did you know that 99 % of people are watching television online now, Josh? I don't doubt it. Yeah, 99 % of people. So we really help business owners to get their branded presence online, not get duped by Google when it's not working, not waste money on pay-per-click. Strategic analysis and consumer data leads the way with algorithmic insights these days.

3:48The old way of doing SEO is dead. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It's such a dead way of organic ranking. So we really specialize in digital media and putting those strategic data points into play. All right. Well, what's working then? What is working? By the way, Amber, if you could, like as you're describing, I feel like that was really good high level. What I'm looking for is maybe a little bit more tactical. Sure. Tactical. Okay. So what's working is OTT. What's working is CT. What's OTT? OTT is over the top media. Okay. Explain that a little bit more. I'm not Over the top media is a way of doing branded commercials online through streaming audio and streaming videos where instead of doing traditional TV on cable, you're actually streaming it on the Internet.

4:44Oh, OK. So what would be some examples? Some examples of that would be like ads that you see running on YouTube TV or on Hulu or any of the other ways that you might watch TV online. When you're seeing these commercials pop up for, say, Ford or any other major brands that you're looking at. Okay. Why is that? And give us a little mini TED Talk, if you could, about the opportunity. So the opportunity for that is that whereas when you're doing a commercial on traditional television, you have no idea who that commercial is being played to. It's with anybody who has a TV or a digital satellite, right?

5:21You don't know if they're living in an apartment. You don't know if they're living in a condo. You don't know if they're living in a house. You don't know what their buying habits are. But by contrast, if you are serving an ad on online TV, like streaming, radio, digital, anything like that, you actually have the ability to hyper-target to the people that are most likely to do business with you. So if you know who your target audience is, like say a 35-year-old with a dog in a certain zip code, in a certain house of a certain value, you can only serve your ads to those people. So you get the added benefit of online branding and a commercial, but only to the people that are most likely going to buy your product or service.

6:03Okay. Well, what is what does it look like to produce content in that way? And like, how do we know that it's successful? I mean, in terms of like advantages versus, I mean, there's a lot of ways, obviously, we can get a message out. So I'm kind of curious about, you know, kind of specifically, you know, who this works exceptionally well for, who maybe it wouldn't work out well for. So it's not going to work out well for a small business who doesn't have the budget for actually producing a video or a radio commercial. A business needs to be a certain size in order to do that. And we recognize that.

6:39But who it works really well for is a business who is wanting to grow their brand in a certain geographic area among a target audience. And like, let's say a car dealership, let's say an insurance agency, let's say a plumber, let's say a dentist, anyone like that that wants to grow a brand strategically, understanding who they are trying to target, It works exceptionally well for. Yeah. And then how do they, I mean, like what, what kind of, like in terms of like, you know, the campaigns, what do they look like? What does it cost? Yeah. So a campaign looks just like a regular TV campaign. You're going to get a commercial, you're going to get a voiceover radio.

7:19It looks like traditional media. What does it cost? It's probably going to range anywhere from 2 ,500 to$10 ,000, depending on the value of the production that you want to bring in, whether or not you have existing collateral that can just be edited and turned into a reel. It's much more approachable than a traditional way of advertising a business where you had to drive to a television station, get into a studio in front of a green screen, and have a whole production crew do it for you. We're literally bringing live media to the hands of business owners everywhere. Yeah. Well, Amber, you know, in terms of, you know, the future, you know, if we're looking in our crystal ball, you know, what would you, what would you imagine the future is going to be like, not just today, but, you know, where are we headed?

8:14I mean, Obviously, people consume a ton of video online. And I guess YouTube makes it fairly accessible, right, to advertise there. Yeah, I mean, traditional streaming media, does this also include your other platforms like ad-supported, Disney, Hulu, Max, that sort of thing? Absolutely. Any streaming platform that allows for third-party advertisers, it absolutely encompasses. And there's no limitation as to where we could serve these ads, as long as there is an audience that matches the target that we're trying to go after. In terms of what I think the future looks like, AI, real-time learning algorithms, it's going to change the way that we market forever because it's going to allow us to get past the baseline tactics and really be hyper-targeted in a way that previously was only available for direct mail.

9:09Yeah. If someone, let's say that they, I don't know, they're thinking about this, they're open to the idea of creating a commercial. What are the elements of a well put together commercial as opposed to a really poor one that might be someone's first inclination? We've all seen bad commercials. And I think we've all seen amazing commercials. And for someone that doesn't necessarily have a couple hundred thousand dollars for production budget, how can we still produce a great one? Yeah, so I love to give examples when I'm keynote speaking of great commercials. And I think the most important component of a commercial is that the recipient sees themselves in your brand.

9:55Make sure that you have a clear story, a compelling message that doesn't ram your brand down the throat of the observers, but that rather helps them to see the benefit of doing business with you. And of course, you should always have a call to action. I happen to be one of only a few hundred people globally that holds a story brand certification. So we actually excel at turning your business into a story that is consumable so that people will see themselves through your brand and want to do business with you instead of your competitor. And so what is that process like? I mean, how long does that take?

10:32I mean, like, obviously, you know, creating a story is critical to this. Yeah. You know, because you don't, obviously, you don't, this isn't like the old days. you know, where you could just say four out of five done disagree. No, no, no, no, no, no. You know, it's, you know, today you got to connect, you know, it's like people need to, you got, you got to get help people care about what you're doing. Yeah, for sure. I mean, really a 90 minute session going through the seven part framework of developing your brand story is all it takes. And then compete, excuse me. And then completing that seven part framework and putting it into a 30 second commercial is part of the magic of making sure that those components are relevant, present, and actionable.

11:17And I mean, I've seen whiskey commercials that'll make you cry. Yeah. Okay. So Amber, how could we, how could someone come up with their, what would be an exercise that someone could come up with or start to develop maybe their own story, or they could kind of create some ideas around what their story may be. They might say, you know what? We're pretty boring. We sell washers and nuts. And so their first thought might be, this doesn't apply to me. Yeah. Yeah. Well, people do business with people that they know, like, and trust. So even if your product isn't sexy or appealing, there's something, there's some aspect of your individual story of how you got into business and how you run your business that can be appealing to your audience, right?

12:05And so that's what you have to find. You have to find that personality and that uniqueness in who you are as a company that compels people to appreciate what you do. And this doesn't just happen to be just for B2C. This is absolutely appropriate for B2B as well. I was the CMO for a manufacturing company that had subsidiaries in 10 states, and it was all B2B. But at the end of the day, when we could appeal to the needs of the entrepreneurs who were going to use our product to feed their families, we were able to create a story that was compelling for them and they signed up to be a part of our network.

12:38So really just having to find what makes your story interesting and everyone's story is interesting, right? In some form or fashion. All right. Amber, what is the, when you're talking with someone, what, you know, let's say it's a potential new client or whatever, like what happens in your first conversation or two? So our first consultation is usually 30 to 45 minutes. And what I do is I learn their story and I learn their business objectives and I learn the problems that is going on in their business today. What has not worked for them marketing wise? What has worked for them in the past? What are their goals?

13:15I think one of the biggest struggles that marketing agencies have is in not taking the time to learn the operational insights of their clients, Because there's a life cycle to every business from startup to, you know, roll up and understanding how that business operates and where that intersection occurs between sales and marketing and where it hands off leads to operations is crucial when you talk about developing an ROI. Okay. And then where do you go? And then you put together your strategy and you say, all right, with these things in mind, here's the strategy that we recommend to help you get to the achievement.

13:53of those goals. And then that strategy informs the tactics. Those tactics then get implemented. And then it's all about the transparency, the consistency, and the tracking. Marketing is not a silver bullet. You're not going to get it right the first time. It is a collaborative process that should be tested and retested. And then the analysis and the data speaks for itself and informs you what adjustments you need to make. But without having the controls in place to make adjustments, You're just flushing money down the toilet, Josh. Well, Amber, for a friend that's listening right now, and they may have heard the budget that's involved.

14:34So, whoa, no, I'm way not ready for that. But do you have resources that could be of help if someone wants to at least start this process themselves? Absolutely. On my website, I have a whole toolkit for entrepreneurs that you can download a quiz to understand where your marketing is currently and what next steps you can take to grow your marketing effectively with your business. I've got an annual planner so that you can organize your thoughts, your offers. I've got a chapter of my international bestselling book that's intended to be a back pocket guidebook for entrepreneurs, because as a business owner, you shouldn't have to be a marketing genius.

15:12You should be able to run your business and have systems in place that bring you leads. So yes. And it's okay, by the way, to not be good at all things. Oh, gosh. Who is? I'd like to meet that person. Oh, my goodness. Please. Jack of all trades is a master of none, truly. I'm a big believer. Listen, if you are, be the best in the world at one very specific thing, and then just you and I were kind of talking beforehand, just surround yourself with smart people. And that is honestly, it's just such a more enjoyable. It's like when we're forced to do work that we don't enjoy, So you might not, you know, to our friend that's listening, you might not enjoy sales.

15:51That's okay. You're not, you don't have to enjoy sales. And, but you're probably for growth sakes, probably going to want to fill that role pretty quickly. And otherwise it's going to be bad news for the longevity of your business. So yeah, I love that. And then Amber to our friend that's listening and they say, well, no, no, no, I'm curious. We've considered putting together a legit 15, 30-second commercial. We'd love to have it run in streaming platforms. And things seem to be aligning there potentially. What would they do? So they can reach out to us and have a complimentary consultation. There are so many companies that do what we do.

16:36So find someone that you trust. But here's my insider trading tip, Josh. Always work with a company that will be fully transparent about what you're getting out of the investment. And make sure that you start with the end in mind. Because what you want to do is make sure that you're not tied into something that you can't get out of. And make sure that you are in the driver's seat and in control of all the elements that goes into your campaign from the beginning. So know your story. Carefully choose a vendor partner. And then create the narrative. Launch it. Watch the metrics. Rinse and repeat.

17:11Awesome. Amber Gage, again, your website, farbeyondmarketing.com. You're the founder and CEO and chief marketing advisor. Amber, thank you so much for the conversation. Thanks for having me, Josh.

17:29Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program. Please visit upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders, asking them where their best business comes from.

18:10I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt-in or email required, where I'm going to share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments. Make sure to hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning, that's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed.

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