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Hey, what is up?
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Welcome to this episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.
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As always, I'm your host, brian LoFermento, and I'll tell you what today's podcast guest.
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It almost seems silly to put him into a little hole called marketing, as important as that is, and I know a lot of you will be tuning in to hear really tangible and growth-oriented marketing strategies from today's guest, which he's 100% going to deliver on.
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But the reason why I say it feels silly is because it's so clear to me in looking at his work and the way that this guy operates and the team that he's built and the company that he's built, is that this is someone who obsesses about growth.
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Every single thing he does is not just for the sake of marketing, it's not just for the sake of bringing in more revenue.
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It is about tangible growth.
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So let me tell you all about today's amazing entrepreneur that I'm so excited to chat with.
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His name is Justin Green.
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Justin is an accomplished entrepreneur and digital marketing expert serving as the founder and CEO of Growth Factor, which is a leading digital marketing agency specializing in scaling businesses through innovative paid media, seo and web development strategies.
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With over a decade of experience, justin has built Growth Factor into a trusted partner for companies seeking high-performance marketing solutions that deliver measurable growth.
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That's what I love about it.
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Kind of the spoiler alert is right in the title of his company Growth Factor.
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He does this for a reason.
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Under his leadership, growth Factor has consistently driven outstanding results for its clients, leveraging data-driven insights and cutting-edge digital tools to optimize marketing strategies and enhance brand visibility.
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Now I'm going to let Justin tell you a lot more about his business, but just a few incredible numbers.
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His team if you look at their combined expertise, they have over 71 years of leadership in this field.
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Their clients have generated over $130 million in gross revenue.
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They're managing over $3 million annually in digital ad spend.
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There's a lot we're going to learn from him today, so I'm not going to say anything else.
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Let's dive straight into my interview with Justin Green.
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All right, justin, I am so excited that you're here with us today.
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First things first, welcome to the show.
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Hey, thanks for having me.
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Brian Heck, yes, you have got an amazing story and I know so much of it is fueled by growth, both personally and professionally.
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So take us beyond the bio.
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Who's Justin?
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How'd you start doing all these cool things?
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Yeah.
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So it just kind of came from a place of necessity.
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Years ago I kind of worked in you know the training space, you know working with you know civilians and law enforcement and federal agencies, worked at a company called Sheepdog Response and specifically it kind of led me down this path.
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I started to realize that there was like this really big specifically it kind of led me down this path.
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I started to realize that there was like this really big kind of point of pain between the marketing world and the tech world and you know the tactical and defense space, and I was like you know what?
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I think there's an opportunity here and so, after leaving that space, I kind of went off into the digital marketing space, really focused on serving that community, and have built on that ever since and recently this past year, left with one of my business partners at our old agency, started our own firm called Growth Factor, and it's been a very rapid road to success this year so far.
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Yeah, I love that overview, Justin, especially because I appreciate the intricacies of growing within you and I were talking a little bit off the air about the tactical space, for example.
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There are more limited marketing channels, there's different doors that are open and closed to you, and so you had to navigate those waters, and what I really appreciate about those experiences and what you've brought to Growth Factor is that it also means that you take pride in the process.
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When we talk about growth, it's so clear to me how important the process is to you.
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How do you view growth and the process that comes with it?
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Because I feel like these are words that we throw around a lot in the business and entrepreneurial world, but what do those words mean to you?
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Yeah, so we serve a lot of companies outside the tactical space.
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But one thing I learned driving e-commerce in that space years ago was that there's a lot of red tape, right, so you could, you know, for instance, paid media in that space was very difficult.
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So one thing I learned is that you very much had to take an omni-channel approach to marketing.
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Coming from that space and a huge part of that is, you know, made me realize there's this, there's this thing that was missing in digital marketing.
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Everybody was like, oh, it's all paid media, or it's all your web, or it's all organic and social content.
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The reality is it's no one of those channels, it's all those channels combined, and we learned how to really leverage that and create a holistic experience that allowed you to really accelerate your company's growth, and it also hedged you against certain things that you may not have control of, like social media algorithms that may keep you from being able to reach the ideal audience or a broad audience.
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So when you really figure out how to drive your e-commerce experience through CRO or SEO for a long-term game plan or digital paid media to really grow your short-term audience and reel them in and develop a loyal brand following, you really accelerate your growth, whether you're a $1 to $2 million a year brand or you're $150 million a year brand.
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Yeah, justin, so much to unpack there, even this early on in the conversation, because you're talking about an omni-channel approach, and I love the fact that you so clearly called out.
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If you're operating exclusively on social media, for example, you're at the mercy of social media algorithms changing, and so a lot of those things are out of our control.
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And what's the answer there?
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Diversification.
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We hear it so much in the world of investing and finance, so, of course, course, it makes sense within the context of marketing.
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With that said, though, justin, as busy business owners, there's a million things we need to focus on.
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How do we even start putting together a cohesive plan to be present on all these different platforms?
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Is this something that first we say let's get really good at social or let's get really good at paid ads, and then we expand from there?
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Or does it even start at a much higher level than that, where you put together a blueprint?
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I'd love to hear the beginning building blocks of that roadmap.
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Yeah.
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So I think it really depends on what your brand is, who your end consumer is and what your goal is long term.
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I don't think there's any one right approach for any brand.
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Again, it kind of comes back to that you know who your core audience is and so, while you may have one brand to, it's going to be much easier to reach a very direct consumer online audience where you can run a lot of paid ads to it.
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You may have one brand who has a better on the ground activation approach, maybe through events.
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You know where they can reach and develop that face-to-face interaction with the consumer, really develop that brand loyalty and sell the story.
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I think that's also a lost art today is the ability to sell the story.
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I'll mention one of our clients, iron Oak, for instance.
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They're the original Pearl Snap Performance polo shirt company here in Texas.
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We help manage all their digital paid media.
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They're running a very large paid media program but they got their start doing a very small paid media campaign.
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But they were very heavy boots on the ground, going to a lot of rodeos all over the country and really just that old traditional marketing.
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And that was important, right, because they allowed us to tell a story.
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They were able to connect with the consumer and then we were able to take that story and leverage that into the digital campaign to then spread that in areas they may not necessarily be able to reach and really find that core audience, bring them in, develop that brand loyalty.
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Yeah, hearing you talk about these things, justin, you really take me back to the beginning days of my own entrepreneurial journey, because I feel like we all have built-in biases towards different marketing channels and a lot of it is probably what we've been exposed to as consumers on that side of the equation.
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Hearing you talk about SEO, I remember where my 18-year-old brain went and I was like, oh, it's free, I can do things that Google will reward.
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And then, hearing you talk about paid ads, I often hear that misnomer of, oh, paid ads are too expensive, as if it's an expense rather than an investment that yields rewards.
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Talk to us about those different channels and how you feel that they still play together, because I do feel like too many people are pushing people towards one solution.
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It just sounds to me like you're super open minded with regards to all the platforms and availabilities.
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Yeah, absolutely so.
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Again, like to your point, I think that you do have to look at everything as a holistic, omni-channel approach, right?
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So if you are running paid ads, paid media, if you're not converting at the website level, well, you're wasting a lot of dollars on paid media.
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It's very important that every dollar you're spending to drive a new consumer to your site provides both a good experience and an opportunity to convert them.
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As we've seen over the last year, especially during an election cycle, the cost per acquisition of a new customer has gone up substantially, and so it's very important that your brand understands how to develop customer lifetime value.
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The more that you can get that customer to spend over the lifetime, the better your customer acquisition to LTV or lifetime value of that customer ratio is.
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And when you can improve that ratio, you become more profitable and it's less risky to spend $30, $40, $50, $60 acquiring that customer if you know they're going to spend a you know $1,000, $1,100, $1,200 throughout their lifetime.
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If you only get them once and they spend $100, you may have eaten all your margin on that initial purchase if you don't get them to come back.
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So it's really important that you know the conversion rate and the optimization of the site is there, and that's where we kind of try to tie everything together so that you have this whole approach that from the time you reach that person as an initial potential customer, that from the time you reach that person as an initial potential customer, that you get them through your top of funnel, all the way through your funnel, get them to convert, and then you keep them in the funnel over time and you retarget them and keep them coming back for more.
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Yeah, Justin, incredible insights.
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I wanna go much deeper here because you clearly this is second nature to you.
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You're introducing us to so many important considerations throughout.
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A paid advertising funnel, for example and I've seen it, having been an entrepreneur for 16 years to this point is that the companies and the entrepreneurs, even solopreneurs, are crushing in this regard Is that they recognize that ads are not about the sale I can get today, and I think that's a big mindset difference.
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I think that's a big mindset difference.
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A lot of people who run an ad saying I want to sell this book or this thing that I'm selling, and they view it as that is their marketing campaign.
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Justin, just in that really high level overview that you gave us, it's clear to me you're viewing this as a longer term growth strategy.
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Talk to us about that psyche and the logistics and the strategy behind.
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What is it that we're selling up front?
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You talk about lifetime customer value.
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What are those nurturing sequences look like?
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How do we squeeze all the goodness out of these campaigns, Because you're running millions of dollars of ad spend in this regard?
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How are you maximizing the returns on it?
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Yeah, so when you're managing campaigns, it's very important to bring a customer in.
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You get them in, they get their first purchase, then you continue to like, build the brand history, the brand loyalty, drop them into too.
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That can bring in additional customers and that's really important over time because ultimately it helps kind of give you a hedge against potential changes to the algorithm, increasing cost on customer acquisition and paid ads and a whole host of other things that typically are outside of a business's control.
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So again, that's why the omni-channel approach.
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Really we've seen a big shift in a lot of this in the last four years.
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We went through COVID, we went through an election cycle All things where we saw both like the organic algorithms change so you couldn't just rely on social media.
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Then, if your brand had a large following, only like 8% of your brand may have actually been able to see your content.
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So now you use paid media to try and reach a bigger, newer audience, bring more people in the fold, and then, once you have those people, really what you want to do is get them to your site, capture their data via things like Klaviyo and OpenSend and then be able to put them into your email, because once you have the ability to reach your customers via email or, even better, with an app with push notifications, you really have a captive audience.
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You can keep in that funnel, keep in that sales cycle and really add to the customer lifetime value of your company yeah, justin hearing the way you talk about these things, it's actually it's fascinating because you don't just view it as a hedge.
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You really are talking about that flywheel effective.
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If I can get paid ads working and I can get seo working, all of these good things lead into the other.
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It makes me ask you this question, just knowing that you've built an amazing team along the way of growing growth factor as well as timeline wise, do you focus on one or the other?
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Do we have to nail the on-page seo elements before we start tackling paid ads, or vice versa?
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How, the heck, from a timeline perspective, do you manage?
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So, honestly, I think it depends on the company, their strategy.
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So in our company we have brands that are doing you know 5 million a year in revenue.
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We have large clients that are doing you know 150 to 200 million a year in revenue.
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And then we have some companies that we work with that are doing no direct consumer sales at all.
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They sell to the government and some other entities like that, and so the strategy for them is going to be very different.
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And so it all kind of comes back to understanding the company, their goals, really listening to them.
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There's a lot of companies now that will go out.
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They'll take your paid media dollars, they'll go out run campaigns without really understanding your brand or your end consumer.
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We really try to make an effort to understand our clients, who their consumer is, who their avatar is, and really listen to them, what their goals are and try to help them achieve their goals so their dollars are best spent and that we really take that fiduciary responsibility with their dollars very seriously.
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Yeah, justin, I'll transparently say this to you on the air.
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It's a little bit of a big praise for you, and the way that we view what you're doing with Growth Factor is that too many marketers fall into that old cliche of when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
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It seems to me like you guys don't view yourselves as a hammer.
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You're very open to saying we'll figure out solutions based on whatever growth path.
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It is that you want to go on.
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With that in mind, I can already see some of the way that you think when you go into a new business is you're looking at lifetime customer value You've already talked to us about.
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You've talked about who is it that they want to reach and where the heck are we going to reach those people?
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What are those considerations that you're looking at when you assess a new business?
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Is it metrics?
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Is it positioning in the marketplace?
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You've worked across all different verticals, all different industries and business sizes.
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What are those things that you assess in a new business that you work with?
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Yeah, it's kind of funny.
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You'll see a lot of the same things occur from businesses that are doing, you know, again, $5 million a year.
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We've got a client that we recently onboarded, right before the holidays.
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They do about $60 million a year.
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Those companies, ironically, have a lot of the same issues.
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So when we bring a client on, we first try to understand what they've been doing, what's worked well, what has not worked well, Try to understand who they are targeting.
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Are they truly targeting the right audience?
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Who they are targeting.
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Are they truly targeting the right audience?
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What channels are they marketing to and is their audience active in those channels?
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And we try and understand how they've been telling the brand story and what kind of offer they've been putting out there.
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And then we try to reverse engineer that.
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We try to look at how the site is currently converting, try to understand how that user experience and that journey is on their site to ensure that if we run a marketing campaign on their behalf, that when they get the customer to the site that they have the best opportunity to get a return on investment.
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And that's again kind of our whole approach is really understanding that holistic, omni-channel approach, because that's become, I think ever more important as the cost of advertising Social used to be fairly inexpensive to reach an end user.
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The cost, customer acquisition cost, has gone up quite a bit the last few years across all these different solutions and so really bringing them all together to create a cohesive marketing plan and effort and strategy I think yields the best result over the long term.
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Yeah, Justin, talking about results, I've never asked a marketer this and I'm really excited to put you on the spot here on the air together.
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And that is that delicate balance between results but also patience, Because I would imagine that when you launch an ad campaign, it's not a home run from the get-go.
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Nobody on planet Earth is capable of a home run their first time at bat, every single time at bat.
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So what does that process look like?
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Just knowing how much you and your team love the process behind the work that you do paint that realistic picture for listeners and for business owners, who probably haven't had the patience in the past to ever see those results that would be awaiting for them.
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How do you balance results and patience, see?
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those results that would be awaiting for them.
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How do you balance results and patience?
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A lot of that is balancing expectations.
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You know, balancing clients, client expectations is a very, very important part of teaching the client what they can expect from a campaign, especially paid media, and getting them to realize that, you know, one company's conversion rate may not line up with yours, depending on the industry, the product.
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You know it's much easier to get a customer to buy a $50, $60 shirt than it is to get them to buy a, you know, $500 thing.
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That may not necessarily be a necessity, it's a want but not a necessity.
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And so understanding what that looks like, understanding who the end consumer is, what their appetite for budget is, and then kind of managing and facilitating that, and then it's really utilizing data to tell the story.
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So when you have really good, solid data and you're able to come back and work with the team who's your client and work with your team to tell a story or utilize that data to plan how to best approach the next campaign or the next ad set or how we can improve ad creative, I think that goes a long way because you're able to then provide useful insights and you have some clients where a two to three ROAS on ad spend might be fantastic and, based on their margin, that may be all they need, and you have some that may need five to six, and so it's understanding where they're coming from, how much they need to make and how you kind of get them there and then get them to buy into the plan.
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When you get them to buy into the plan, usually you'll have a real good win-win situation between the client and the agency.
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Yeah, super important considerations.
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I love the fact that now we're not just talking marketing.
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We're, of course, talking about the realities of a service-based agency which is going to pertain to so many different businesses and listeners who are tuning in today.
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Along those lines, justin, you've mentioned conversions a few times in our conversation already, and I think that too many people mistake their website as their conversion vehicle, whereas it sounds like you go much deeper than that.
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You know, the way that you view your paid ad strategy sounds like it's a bit different than the way that you view your SEO strategy.
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And, of course, we need different strategies for different channels.
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Talk to us about the importance there.
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When you talk about conversions, how does that differ across channels?
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How does it differ across campaigns or the strategy that you've laid out for each of these?
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Yeah, I think conversion is hugely important, along with the rest of your marketing plan.
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Had the opportunity years ago to bring a consultant in who's now a very famous CEO.
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His name is Noah Kagan.
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Fantastic guy Created AppSumo here in Austin and I remember him one time saying just because you build it doesn't mean they'll come right.
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And so that's really important to understand because, yes, you've built the website, but now how does the user experience the website?
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How does their journey look?
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How are we bringing them to the website and what does that look like once they get to the website?
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And understanding the different industries will convert differently.
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Understanding the different price points and products will convert differently, and understanding what that looks like from start to finish allows you to create a campaign that is going to best reach your end goals or your clients end goals, and and that really starts at top of funnel looking when they come to the site, what that looks like, how easy are they able to navigate to the site?
00:20:24.346 --> 00:20:26.753
How easy are they able to get to the point of checkout?
00:20:26.753 --> 00:20:29.260
Are there any points of friction with the customer?
00:20:29.260 --> 00:20:29.561
They may.
00:20:29.561 --> 00:20:46.616
That you may not realize, and so that's really important to understand that process too, because if you can drive all the ad dollars, all the traffic to a site you wanted, but if they're not able to easily find what they want, able to easily check out, they're not gonna convert and you're just gonna waste dollars in the long run.
00:20:47.230 --> 00:20:56.151
Yeah, justin, I wanna go there with you in our conversation here today for everybody is traffic, because it's already very apparent that you don't believe that all traffic is created equally.
00:20:56.151 --> 00:21:03.817
There's certain segments of traffic that you'd prefer, what makes good traffic and what's bad traffic, so we can diagnose that in our own businesses.
00:21:04.740 --> 00:21:12.682
So I think good traffic is finding people who have intention to engage with your business or your brand.
00:21:12.682 --> 00:21:15.191
I think intention speaks heavily.
00:21:15.191 --> 00:21:31.122
I think intention is everything, and if they're coming to your site without an intention to possibly buy your services or your product, you've probably lost appetite and dollars there and your client may become frustrated over time.
00:21:31.122 --> 00:21:34.999
And so it's very important to understand the traffic that's coming to your site.
00:21:34.999 --> 00:21:38.640
There's lots of brands out there, or I should say, lots of agencies out there.
00:21:38.660 --> 00:22:03.104
I've seen, and we've seen this personally, coming in and been taking over accounts that, in my opinion, have been maliciously abused, where there's been agencies that have come in, promised a lot and just grabbed ad dollars, collected their cut, not produced results, and they just cut and run, go find the next client that they can grab dollars from, burn and take off.
00:22:03.104 --> 00:22:05.075
And so did they deliver traffic?
00:22:05.075 --> 00:22:13.455
Yes, but when you go back and look at the data, they didn't understand the avatar, they didn't understand the campaign and they frankly didn't do right at all by the client.
00:22:13.455 --> 00:22:25.400
And so I think not all traffic is created equal, and I think it's very understand that you want traffic in your pipeline that is very, very well intentioned on engaging with the client's business.
00:22:26.250 --> 00:22:33.452
Yeah, I love those insights, Justin because, it gives us an insight into the way that you work as well, Even hearing the way that you talk about.
00:22:33.452 --> 00:22:38.821
You acknowledge and you appreciate what people have gone through with other marketing agencies.
00:22:38.821 --> 00:22:40.265
You're very aware of your space.
00:22:40.265 --> 00:22:52.175
I'd love a little bit of a behind the scenes look into what makes Growth Factor so special, because when you're onboarding with someone, it sounds like you've got different team members that are super intimate and you are not afraid to look at it.
00:22:52.175 --> 00:22:54.680
I mean, you've said the word top down and I'm a visual person.
00:22:54.680 --> 00:23:02.195
I very much view it as you look at their website, you look at their ecosystem, you look at their products, their services, the way they offer it, all of those different channels.
00:23:02.195 --> 00:23:09.875
What's that onboarding look like, especially with, with, to consider the fact that a lot of people probably have never worked with a marketing agency like yours?
00:23:10.597 --> 00:23:12.411
Yours, yeah.
00:23:12.411 --> 00:23:24.509
So when we bring a client on, what we really like to do is we like to listen to what their goals and objectives are and from there we really go back in and we try to do an audit understand, like what their previous campaigns have looked like, if they've worked with an agency.
00:23:24.509 --> 00:23:30.633
If they've never worked with an agency, we try to get all the branding, understand the story, get as much content as we can.
00:23:30.633 --> 00:23:52.438
If they've struggled to convert, we typically will recommend like a CRO audit, and then we try to build a picture of everything that's been there previously and then we try to pave a path forward that goes from where they're at to where their goals are and then how do we get them from here to here in the most profitable, executable way possible.
00:23:52.438 --> 00:23:59.701
And that I think is part of the onboarding is creating again expectations and being real with them.
00:23:59.701 --> 00:24:00.022
I think.
00:24:00.484 --> 00:24:01.589
I think there's a lot of companies.
00:24:01.690 --> 00:24:07.222
I think we've seen a lot during COVID where there was a lot of people creating businesses.
00:24:07.730 --> 00:24:26.484
They were trying to take dollars really fast or a lot, of, a lot of small businesses that were struggling, and so there was a lot of people really going after them and did a disservice to marketing agencies that didn't really have the manpower or the experience to provide proper structure and proper planning and proper implementation.
00:24:27.528 --> 00:24:43.435
And so what happened is you had a lot of people kind of get a bad taste in their mouth, and that's because these agencies were not being upfront and honest with here's how long it's going to take, here's what we need to implement first, here's what it's going to cost you and here's what you can expect in return.
00:24:43.435 --> 00:24:53.455
If we do all these things that we are suggesting, and I think being very professional, upfront and just being very truthful with your client is going to yield the best long-term relationship.
00:24:53.455 --> 00:24:56.342
When we onboard a client, we don't want to just take their money.
00:24:56.342 --> 00:25:18.296
Yes, we're in the business of making profit, but we only profit if they profit, and so building a partnership where we're trusted, they trust us to advise them, goes a long way, and not only that you will reduce your churn rate as an agency and you will keep clients on longer because they have developed trust and respect in a working relationship with you.
00:25:18.957 --> 00:25:28.297
Yeah, I really appreciate those insights as well as, of course, the attitude that you bring to this conversation, justin, again to lay some more public appreciation on the way that you operate.
00:25:28.297 --> 00:25:29.640
You practice what you preach.
00:25:29.640 --> 00:25:37.821
Even in our conversation today, it just feels like there's no holds back, which is why I'm going to ask you a tricky question that, again, I've never asked a marketer, especially on air here before.
00:25:37.821 --> 00:25:39.664
And that is what.
00:25:39.664 --> 00:25:40.632
What do you do?
00:25:40.632 --> 00:25:52.314
Part of this question is managing client expectations, but part of it is also a strategic question of what do you do in those cases where a campaign or a funnel or something that you've mapped out isn't working.
00:25:52.314 --> 00:25:58.757
And, of course, you pivot and you adapt to those conditions and you, of course, love data as well to make those strategic decisions.
00:25:58.869 --> 00:26:06.619
But what does it look like if maybe an ad campaign just straight up doesn't work, or maybe a targeted keyword as part of an SEO strategy isn't working?
00:26:06.619 --> 00:26:16.592
I'd love to hear about how you manage those conversations and then how you know when it's time to pull the plug versus when it's time to double down and say, hey, results are around the corner.
00:26:16.592 --> 00:26:18.940
You know you can't expect SEO results in two weeks.
00:26:18.940 --> 00:26:20.394
We need to stay the course.
00:26:20.394 --> 00:26:28.099
How do you know strategically when to stay that course, versus make that strategic pivot and say, ok, let's, let's target something that we feel is going to work.
00:26:28.549 --> 00:26:29.131
It's going to work.
00:26:29.131 --> 00:26:38.744
I think it highly depends on how close you are to the objective and it's going to depend on what direction you want to go.
00:26:38.744 --> 00:26:47.192
Do we want to risk maybe completely pulling a campaign, pivoting, getting new content and creative together and getting that pushed out quickly?
00:26:47.192 --> 00:26:57.854
Or do we want to modify what we're doing and either increase or decrease budget cut, cut bottom of campaign ad sets and reallocate funds to the ones that are performing?
00:26:57.854 --> 00:27:06.357
I don't think there's any one right answer, but I think again, it goes back to that client relationship having an honest conversation with the client.
00:27:07.299 --> 00:27:13.942
Very specific story example from over the Black Friday holiday weekend I was out in the middle of the woods.
00:27:13.942 --> 00:27:16.196
It was right after Black Friday.
00:27:16.196 --> 00:27:17.641
The weekend had been going really well.
00:27:17.641 --> 00:27:26.167
I was out getting a hunt and that weekend was like 25 feet up in a tree and we had this like client that reached out to us.
00:27:26.167 --> 00:27:28.734
The campaign wasn't necessarily performing as expected.
