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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 am so very excited for today's episode and particularly today's guest, because this is someone who not only is a brilliant entrepreneur and marketer, but he's so generous about uplifting others and helping other people grow their businesses, and what I really love is that he does it in some very innovative and different ways, because he operates in a very difficult world, which is the franchise world, among others, where you have to really stand out from the millions of other options that consumers have.
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So let me introduce you to today's guest.
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His name is Marcus Slater.
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Marcus is a growth marketing and technology leader with over 13 years of experience driving customer acquisition and revenue growth for some of the largest franchise brands and emerging startups in the US.
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As the founder and CEO of AdCloud, marcus specializes in tailored digital marketing solutions for franchise businesses, helping brands like Beamlight, sauna, frenchies, f45 Training and so many more achieve significant growth.
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And, trust me, as someone who's researched his business and his work, his clients love him.
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We're going to get a little bit of his secret sauce here in today's episode.
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His work has been recognized by Entrepreneur Magazine, forbes and the New York Times, and he was named Marketing Icon of the Year by OnCon20.
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That is, I've looked deep into the history of that award and they recognize so many incredible entrepreneurs throughout the years, so Marcus is someone who he's also going to shed a few insights.
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This is what I'm really excited about.
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I'm going to tease it at the top of this episode about how he's using AI in very different ways when it comes to engaging with leads.
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This is an episode that's going to help all of our businesses.
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I'm excited about it, so I'm not going to say anything else.
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Let's dive straight into my interview with Marcus Slater.
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All right, marcus, I am so very excited that you're here with us today.
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First things first.
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Welcome to the show.
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Thanks, I'm excited to be here.
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Heck.
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Yes, you've got a lot to live up to from the intro that I've primed our audience with about you.
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So, first things first, take us beyond the bio.
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Who's Marcus?
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How'd you start doing all these cool things?
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Yeah?
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man, you know, for me, I just really, you know, I came from a world of just figuring it out.
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I, you know, came up just in different industry, found mentors and things in that nature, and I've always just had a knack for just, you know, kind of get it done, figure it out, how do we get to the next step, how do we become better?
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How do we growth?
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Hack different things Really across it.
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There wasn't anything you could put in front of me, whether that was as a child, growing up into my adult years, of like that.
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I wouldn't try to just figure it out and just say there's got to be a way.
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You can't tell me no, right, figure it out and just say there's got to be a way.
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You can't tell me no.
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And so naturally that just started to lead into I've always been an entrepreneur at heart.
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I always wanted to grow things, build things, and I got into doing that personally my own companies, things in that nature.
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But then that expanded into franchising and figuring out okay, how do we help other people grow, how do we make other people's dreams come true, right, especially in the world of franchising?
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When we look at you know, you have all of these people that are, you know, emptying out their 401ks to invest in this business because they're looking forward for retirement and all of these types of things, and they get into it and they're like man, marketing is really hard Like I thought it was buying into something that was just going to work and now they've risked their 401k and they're like I've got to figure this out.
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And we really wanted to build a company that was true to itself, true to its clients and was solely focused on making sure that every franchisee business owner has the opportunity to experience that dream of having that ongoing revenue, that safety net, so that they can move into retirement and do those things and exit corporate America.
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And that's really what's at the heart and soul of AdCloud and what we do and what we try to live up to daily.
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Yeah, I love that overview, marcus, especially because right there, right here, off the bat, you've already exposed the fact that you are a builder.
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You have that entrepreneurial DNA all the way down to your bones.
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You used a term there that I don't think I've heard in about 10 years, marcus.
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It was all the rage 10 years ago, and that is growth hacking.
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People used to always brag about being growth hackers, but I feel like, because people realize it's not as easy as they once thought, it has then splintered into so many other ways.
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People have become obsessed with marketing funnels and traffic generation and paid advertising all of these things that go into growth hacking.
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But you are someone who truly is obsessed with growth.
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So what the heck does growth hacking mean to you?
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Because you're clearly a growth hacker by nature.
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Yeah, I mean, I think naturally right.
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I'll say for me personally, I think, as our kind of motto in the night cloud is just never giving up, we're always looking for the edge, always looking for the next thing.
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Everyone in the office will tell you.
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I always say there's no silver bullet in marketing.
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You can build a funnel and fail, and I've done it.
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I've built thousands of funnels and they failed, but I had one that worked.
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All of those things, and so when I look really into the core of what growth hacking is, it's not one in particular, like I am the, I think, for everyone.
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Right?
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I'll give you the secret To be the best growth hacker ever in the world, whatever you want to call it.
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All you have to do is keep testing and trying and understand data.
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If you can understand data, it will guide you and give you this kind of visual pathway of what you should be doing, how you should pivot, what your next test should be.
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And you should always be testing.
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You shouldn't say, hey, I've got test one here and test two.
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You should have test one through 100.
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And you know down the line how you're going to test those things.
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Rather than being reactive, we try to be extremely proactive and plan out 6, 8, 12 months in advance of what we're going to do, what we're going to try, the good ideas and the bad ideas and, most importantly, being open and being okay to fail, because if you fail, you've now learned what not to do and now you can fix that.
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And I think so many marketers in the field feel like they have to deliver the perfect result upfront, and I don't think marketers in the field feel like they have to deliver the perfect result up front, and I don't think that's the case.
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We're very transparent with our clients.
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We may come in and maybe not deliver the perfect result in 7 days, but what we are going to do is help you figure out how to find it where it is.
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And then how do we amplify that?
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Through testing, because they're in the same boat.
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They're just as confused.
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They're sitting there and they're like I have no idea what to do, I don't know where to get clients from or, more often than not, where are they coming from, and so we really try to dive into the basics of it.
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Sometimes it's going back to the basics of marketing, because everyone sees all the flashiness of marketing and all the people that are out there doing videos and all of those types of things, and sometimes you just have to reset and go back to the basics and say, okay, it's one to one, this platform drives X, this platform drives this, and then how do we figure out how to amplify that?
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And so, for growth hacking, it's really just that assurance of like, hey, every day that we clock in, we are going to try something new, try something different, test it.
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We're going to look at the data and we're going to figure out does this work, does this not?
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And what is our next step?
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Yeah, gosh, marcus, I love that attitude towards marketing.
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There's two things I really want to call out for listeners, the first of which is you made me think of that old chess adage of you either win or you learn.
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You don't view failure as one of those things.
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And the second thing is I really love and admire your acknowledgement for the fact that you don't have the answers.
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You're just willing to put enough things out there that you will find the answers, and to me, the more entrepreneurs that I talk to and the longer that I've been in business myself, that's what I realize is the smartest, the most successful entrepreneurs are the ones that don't believe that they have the answers.
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So huge kudos to you, yeah.
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Yeah, one, yeah, 1000%.
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One thing I always say, like I've been blessed to sit at the table with many great minds and great people and people at the top of their game and all of those things.
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But I always say, like, especially up and comers is like, listen, everyone at that same table, right, like, as great as you think they are, there are some really smart people there.
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And then there are some people who just got lucky, and then there's some people who just tried and tried and tried and they made it work.
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And so I always say it's all a matter of perspective.
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It's all a matter of perspective and where you are continuing to try that and not always feeling like, oh, you've got to figure that out.
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And that goes for the business owner side too.
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As a business owner, right, like you feel like you've got to come in and know all of these things and that, hey, you've got to be, you've got to be all of these things and and just to be at that level.
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And it's not always true and the grass is not always greener on the other side.
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But you know, the same applies to marketing and just really fine-tuning and figuring out where you are the best in what you can do.
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And also I think it's okay to admit to yourself hey, we're not great at everything, maybe we don't do it.
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It's a big reason why we focus in franchising, because I had a career in franchising and so it's an industry that I know really, really well the insides and outs and especially membership revenue, and so it's why we don't venture outside of that, because I may not be the best at marketing, uh, you know, uh, an e-commerce brand, a t-shirt brand, something in that nature.
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So just finding that industry that really drives you to continue growth and I think most people find success in that and growing their businesses.
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Yeah, really well said, and I do want to go there with you because I love the fact that you gave that illustration of what we view typical franchise owners as someone who dumps their life savings, their 401ks.
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Maybe they've had a great career and they think well, I'm smart, I've been competent in my job, I'm just going to start a franchise and collect my money every single month.
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You talk about that silver bullet that people expect in business, in marketing, and, I would imagine, a lot in franchising.
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It seems to me, marcus, the more that I looked into the work that you do, that you actually do help people recognize that successful view of what they hope franchising will be.
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I read one of your client testimonials.
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It was a guy who owns an F45 gym and he raves about the fact that you achieve real growth for them.
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What's so hard about that franchise model?
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Why is it not the silver bullet that people expect when they get into it?
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Yeah, I mean F45, you know it's fitness, right, and that is fitness.
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The fitness industry is just tough in the sense of every corner that you go to, right, there's a gym and there's a gym of different tiers.
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Right, you have the Planet Fitness of the world.
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You have the F45, a higher tier.
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You have what we call like mixed hit, right, so you have boxing and hit workouts.
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There's all of these different options.
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And it's funny I was just having this conversation the other day with a brand and just saying, like, in fitness, you have to think like everyone who's interested, think about yourself, I'll put myself on the line here, right, and be vulnerable a little bit.
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Right, when you're like, hey, I'm going to, it's Sunday, monday's my day, right, I'm starting the diet, I'm doing all these things.
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It's such an instantaneous like I am starting this, I want to work out now, and so when you're looking for that gym, right, and you're looking for these things, you have to be as the brand and as your the business owner and f45, whatever that is, you have to be at the forefront of them, being able to find, you, understand what you do, what you offer, what it costs and how to join really quickly, because how many times have we all said I'm starting tomorrow, right, I'm starting my diet, fitness journey, all of these things?
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Tomorrow something bad happens and we can't at all.
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So you know, within like three minutes, you have to be able to attract that and that's what we talk about, like brand awareness and making sure that the first thing that someone thinks about when they think fitness, we want them to think F45, gallatin or F45 wherever you are, and it's that simple thing.
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I mean, fitness is is just one of those those things where it's it's just constant turn and you're trying to figure out.
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Um, you know, and obviously you can find a little bit better baselines across other industries we, you know, we focus primarily in the kind of beauty, health, wellness, fitness industries, but in in beauty, it averages out a little better.
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But in fitness, yeah, it's a tough one and it's constant changing and testing Everything from.
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You'll see every gym do 7-day intro offers or things like that.
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We test everything from 3-day, 7-day, 13-day, 15-day, all of those things, because it's a mental game with the consumer and really figuring out at this point in time, what is it that's connecting with them, what is that unique filler that's going to get them to come in and try a class, all of those things.
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And then you have to get over hurdles, like, hey, the first week you're going to be really sore, you're probably not going to like us that much, but the second week you're going to start to see results and you're going to feel a little better.
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So you have to make it into that what we call, like, the addictive week, and that's when that workout starts to become a little bit more addictive and you've made some friends in the studio.
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Um, so there is a long play game when it was especially in the fitness world.
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Yeah, marcus, hearing you talk about that, we've all been there where we convince ourselves.
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This Monday we're going to start doing X, y, z.
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I want to know about that catalyst and that spark for these business owners and franchise owners that you help.
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What's that catalyst?
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Because I would imagine I'm not a franchise owner myself, but I would imagine a lot of them, when they open their franchise location, they think, oh, the franchise is going to back me with all the marketing initiatives that I need and I'm not going to need any of that external help.
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Obviously you have plugged that gap for so many franchise businesses across those industries.
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Where's that gap?
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What?
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What is the point at which they realize, hold on, we need a marcus in ad cloud to step in and really help us achieve that growth.
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You know.
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Unfortunately, a lot of times it's um, it's, it's a little too, too late, not in a bad way, but it's at the end.
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It's like they've tried all of these things.
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They've tried to diy it.
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Maybe corporates tried to help and fill in the gap.
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I think what's important to understand about corporate franchise entities is they're managing 100, 200 locations and they're not on the ground locally.
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They may not understand the local market.
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Their marketing teams are 3 to 10 people.
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That's hard, naturally right to balance that out and say hey, we're going to have the best results across the board when we have this limited manpower and team and all of those types of things.
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And so a lot of times when clients come to us, they're like hey.
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Or they're referred to us like hey, we've been struggling for six months, we're at the end of our rope, our cash flow is burning really quickly, we need someone to save us or we've got to close up shop, and I've heard that story too many times.
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And again, it's one of those things that we really try to educate, because we want to change that, we want to transition that mindset.
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Franchising is fun, it can be fun, it can change your life.
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I have many friends who have gone into franchising and it has completely changed their life for the better.
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They end up owning 50, 60 different units, things in that nature, but I would say that's about 10% of them.
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For the rest of them, there is this natural struggle because they think that, hey, if I go in and I buy this brand that exists, it should almost run itself.
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It should.
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People I always say the old notion build it and they will come.
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That is long gone.
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It doesn't exist anymore.
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With social media and your exposure rate, that stuff just doesn't exist anymore.
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So they get into it and they're like gosh, this is a lot harder than I thought.
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So they get into it and they're like gosh, this is a lot harder than I thought.
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And so they start to reach out once the wick is burned and they're like okay, someone's got to either save us or we've got to close up shop.
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And that's usually when we step in.
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No, not all the time.
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There's a lot of referrals that come in.
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The people that join iCloud from the very beginning Like, hey, we're launching, we want to launch strong.
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They understand the importance of having strong marketing but, to be honest, there's a mindset that I haven't quite landed and understood.
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Yet I always say, like in businesses, the first thing when things go south, the first thing they always cut is marketing.
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Right Now, the first.
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Why would you cut the first thing, the first thing, the only thing that's probably driving in growth, that should be driving in growth, that is creating that exposure.
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But I think it's just that there's a mentality in the business world of like, oh, we're not growing, we should cut the one thing that is actually maybe bringing in a few, maybe it's not bringing in enough, and you can pivot.
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But I've seen so many people say, oh, we're not going to spend this month because we need to see some type of ROI and not have ad spend going out.
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And so again, I think there's just an educational gap in business ownership.
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And, like I said, you have to think about who franchises.
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It's normally people who have been 9 to 5 in corporate America, which is fantastic, but they've never been in the nitty gritty of being an entrepreneur and having to fight day in and day out with every fire and everything you have to put out, and it's exhausting.
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Not everyone is built for that life.
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And then at the end of the day when you think everything's done but what's the one thing you have to think about how do I grow more tomorrow?
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And so that becomes really, really difficult and you have to have some endurance to be able to get through that.
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And I would say a fair amount don't.
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But the ones who are learning are shipping it out to AdCloud and other agencies and things in that nature and they're finding that success and that that investment is far worth it.
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And I think at AdCloud we obviously do things a little differently and we have AI integrated and we have leveraged technology to maximize what we can do for the clients, and so there's a huge benefit there and we're just getting started.
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We're just getting started, but our goal is just to really educate every franchise unit that hey, there is a way to do this and to do it right and to not be playing catch up every month of the year.
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Yeah, marcus, you call out something there that I think is so important for every single business owner to understand, which is that point you made about the fact that a lot of people cut marketing, and what I have found is that people really struggle to understand the difference between marketing tactics and having an overarching marketing strategy, and so what a lot of them do is they jump straight to tactics and they say, okay, I've heard that Facebook ads works, I'm going to throw money at Facebook ads and they don't get instant results and of course, they they throw in the towel.
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And so I want to ask you about that delicate balance, because to me, looking at your business and the type of marketing mind that you have, that's something that I think really separates the way that you think and the way that you operate, and that is that blend of strategy and tactics.
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Talk to us about the important difference there and how you start to install a strategy that will help the tactics actually work for your clients.
00:18:40.635 --> 00:18:57.119
Yeah, I mean, I think market research is, you know, at the very top right, there's so many people that it'll go and, just like you said, they'll dump cash into Facebook ads or the worst thing I've ever heard boosting posts Right and like the there, there's no strategy behind it, there's no like.
00:18:57.119 --> 00:19:01.134
It's just like, hey, let's just publish this and let's hope that something happens, right.
00:19:01.134 --> 00:19:11.395
And so many times I hear, well, we, we spent $500 a month boosting posts, but and you know, and we had some people come in, but we're not sure if that's where they came from or where they came from.
00:19:11.395 --> 00:19:16.237
And I always say, if you can't measure it, you shouldn't be running it, because then you have no way to amplify.
00:19:16.237 --> 00:19:21.662
Maybe it did work, but you have no way to amplify that and make it successful over the next 12 months.
00:19:21.662 --> 00:19:24.810
And so for us, it's always market research.
00:19:24.810 --> 00:19:26.556
What are the competitors doing?
00:19:26.556 --> 00:19:27.278
Where are they?
00:19:27.278 --> 00:19:28.981
Where are they advertising?
00:19:28.981 --> 00:19:33.801
And you've probably heard this right, you don't have to reinvent the wheel 90% of the time.
00:19:33.801 --> 00:19:42.401
If you have a competitor that's much larger than you in your space, go and research where they are, what they're doing, what platforms they're spending on.
00:19:42.401 --> 00:19:50.096
With recent changes on social media, you can go and see what any brand at any moment is running for ads.
00:19:50.096 --> 00:19:54.080
Now, this is not to say, hey, go and copy what they're doing.
00:19:54.080 --> 00:20:05.320
This is just to give you an idea of like hey, this is what they're running, this is the type of offer they're running All of these types of things and it can help guide your strategy for your brand and where you market.
00:20:05.320 --> 00:20:10.859
So we do a lot of market research to understand placement and where budgets should be.
00:20:10.859 --> 00:20:21.295
And if we see someone spending higher on Google, then we naturally float that way because that tells us that more than likely, that's where we're going to get a better return from.
00:20:21.654 --> 00:20:24.260
Again, we're testers at heart.
00:20:24.260 --> 00:20:29.855
We will test everything, the good ideas and the bad ideas, because I've had many bad ideas actually end up working.
00:20:29.855 --> 00:20:35.044
So we try to keep our opinions out of it.
00:20:35.044 --> 00:20:42.018
Like you know, like in the sense of like I have a lot of things where I'm like I think this will work and this is probably what will work, just for my historical.
00:20:42.018 --> 00:20:45.569
But I never skip over the basics of strategy.
00:20:45.569 --> 00:20:50.321
To jump straight to my opinion of well, this is how it should be done.
00:20:50.321 --> 00:20:51.795
I always keep it open.
00:20:51.795 --> 00:20:53.021
I say let's test everything.
00:20:53.021 --> 00:20:57.159
It's fine if we lose a few dollars, because then we at least have solid answers.
00:20:57.579 --> 00:21:03.337
I see too many times where people will be stuck on this one idea and they're like this is the only way it works.
00:21:03.337 --> 00:21:07.214
And they get 6 months down the road and they're like, oh, I wish we would have tested that.
00:21:07.214 --> 00:21:17.219
And what I say is the one thing you can never get back is time right In the business world and in your personal life, but you can't make up for a lost six months.
00:21:17.219 --> 00:21:25.038
It's really, really difficult, and unless you have a really good cash flow archive, you're going to run into trouble.
00:21:25.038 --> 00:21:35.563
And so we try to test everything up front so we can learn fast, act faster and build more and really create scalable growth, hyper growth.
00:21:35.563 --> 00:21:48.310
All of these things are great, but we want scalable, long-term branding, marketing growth so that'll last that brand for 5, 10, 15 years down the road, until they can get acquired or sell, whatever that thing may be.
00:21:48.310 --> 00:21:55.373
That their end goal in life, versus the quick pickup of this month was great, but next month is really terrible.
00:21:55.472 --> 00:22:18.319
So, again, I think it's just more so diving in and understanding the market, understanding the needs and removing your own personal preference as the business owner too, your own personal preference as the business owner too, to say, like you know, here's a perfect example you have a house that you grew up in and you remodeled it and you did all those things and you think this house is worth $2 million.
00:22:18.319 --> 00:22:20.788
Your agent says this house is worth.
00:22:20.788 --> 00:22:24.698
Or the market says this house is worth $500,000, right, that is a.
00:22:24.698 --> 00:22:26.241
And we see that in business owners.
00:22:26.241 --> 00:22:39.460
They come in and they're so passionate about this and the product and the service and all these things and they think that everyone should pay $200, you know for this specific service and that just isn't always the case.
00:22:39.460 --> 00:22:50.431
You have to look at where the market is and build from there, and so that sometimes can be their Achilles heel of not recognizing and saying, okay, this is where the market actually is and so.
00:22:50.431 --> 00:22:55.563
But market research answers a lot of those questions for us and for the owner.
00:22:56.111 --> 00:23:08.518
And again, we spend a lot of time just educating and really making sure that they understand everything we're doing as an agency every step of the way, how we can help them, what we can do to continue to grow that.
00:23:08.518 --> 00:23:10.233
But we want them right alongside us.
00:23:10.233 --> 00:23:11.617
I don't want them in the dark.
00:23:11.617 --> 00:23:13.491
We never want them in the dark of like.
00:23:13.491 --> 00:23:15.578
Well, I don't know why it's working, I don't know what they're doing.
00:23:15.578 --> 00:23:16.653
I think they're doing something.
00:23:16.653 --> 00:23:24.297
We want to make sure that they're growing with us and understanding this is what we're doing, why we're doing it, how we're doing it and this is why it works.
00:23:24.297 --> 00:23:41.855
And this is when we should amplify that specific thing, because we just we want them to become smarter in the marketing world and not to be tactical and not to go do it on their own, but so that they can wake up in the morning and in 60 seconds say we're winning or we're losing, and if we're losing, we have to do X.
00:23:41.855 --> 00:23:44.602
And that is our number one goal with every client.
00:23:45.250 --> 00:23:46.934
Yes, test everything.
00:23:46.934 --> 00:23:49.371
Mark is kind of that invisible force that I'm seeing.
00:23:49.371 --> 00:23:54.393
That is another thing that makes you a little bit different is that ability to put the ego to the side.
00:23:54.393 --> 00:24:01.127
Probably a lot of people are convinced, coming back all the way to what we started this conversation out, as they're convincing themselves that they have the answers.
00:24:01.127 --> 00:24:03.031
You're just super willing to say I don't know.
00:24:03.031 --> 00:24:07.155
Let's test everything, literally everything from square one, so I love that approach.
00:24:07.675 --> 00:24:11.881
All right, we need to go here, because I know that listeners are going to be super excited to hear your thoughts on this.
00:24:11.881 --> 00:24:16.705
I tease it at the very top, and that is, of course, ai powered lead engagement.
00:24:16.705 --> 00:24:22.809
Marcus, let us in on your secrets.
00:24:22.809 --> 00:24:25.271
It sounds to me like you're doing some really cool things there.
00:24:25.311 --> 00:24:26.272
So what is AI powered lead engagement?
