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My Experience in Digital Marketing

Marketing, social media, advertising

Mason Welds

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***DISCLAIMER*** While i have only been doing this for a short while, here is what I have discovered.

Its so over-saturated, its almost comical.

A few months back (October maybe?), i decided to accept the challenge of @seanmarshall and start an agency and hit $5k in 3 months, so I could afford to marry my girlfriend. Here is my experience this far after about 3 months.

After a bumpy road of getting the legal papers in, and opening the bank account, my business was open for business, so to speak. I decided to cater to the home services niche simply because I am in contact with anywhere from 2-15 business owners on a daily basis, it only made sense to cater to them. As i talked to these business owners, my motivation and enthusiasm for my new business, slowly trailed off to oblivion. Every. Single. Business OWNER I talked to (for a solid week and a half), not only did they already do marketing, but they OWNED their own digital marketing company. Yes, thats right. All but maybe 5 (out of a solid 16/17) owned and operated a fully functioning digital marketing company for, not only home services, but several other niches.

It was at this point that the reality of "Digital Marketing Company" came into focus. So i hit up every single networking and entrepreneurial meeting in my city. Venture Cafes to Mixxers, job fairs and everything in between. And guess what. Same story. The first man i ever talked to at one of these networking meetings, was an older fellow with a stack of papers in his hand. We greeted each other, and i explained what i was in business as. His eyes widened, and he proclaimed "How interesting! I do the exact same thing!". My heart sank. And as the night went on, i met 3 other people who currently operate Marketing Companies for several niches in my area, and one for the home services industry.

Sometimes its good to take a step back and look at whats really going on. See the whole picture. And again, while my experience is pretty limited, that fact should only make what little experience have, more powerful. If ive only been pursuing this for 3 months, and ive met a solid dozen and a half people just in my city, who are actively engaged in my business, what about everywhere else? I dont live in New York. I live in a small town.

After its all said and done, im not quitting. Not yet. However, I have a deadline. To save $20k by June of this year. Saying that out loud on this forum almost makes me embarrassed. Some guys on here make that while they shower in the morning. But it seems as though digital marketing is dead.
 
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The Abundant Man

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Right...I go to a local coffee and on the job posting boards on top of the usual Real Estate or Chriopractic business or lost puppy cards I also digital marketing business cards. I stare at them for a good 10 seconds and I think to myself, "Get the f**k out of here! They stole my idea. I'm going to beat these people. I'm going to work twice as hard. I'm motivated!"
 

Divine_Joker

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I am on the same ocean with different boat. I have decided that I will open the Digital Marketing agency. I am working on myself right now before diving in this ocean.

I want to prove to myself first. I want to play with small things first. I already started and its 2nd Day and yet in my mind I have impression that though most people told that this idea is dead but still I want to achieve my goal. No matter what people are thinking. But I want to give my honest and 100% shot to my dream of having Digital Marketing Agency which provides great value to the customers as well as the deep satisfaction to myself also.

Dont give up. I knew that its tough market but I can only say that Value matters a lot. I will start a small experiment soon and will share my result after some days here.

Remember one thing : Before you judge other, make sure that you are perfect. :) And I think we are on the path to become perfect and yet waiting for destination to be arrived.
 

Mason Welds

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Why in the world are you promoting to other marketing agencies?
I'm not. The niche I am focused on, which is the home service industry, I get to talk to the owners almost daily. I have no way of knowing they own a marketing agency other than when they tell me, after the fact.

I'm friends with one guy (still can't pronounce his name and he knows it. So I call him J), he is the owner of a commercial remodeling company. We visit alot and talk alot more. So a couple weeks ago I asked him about his marketing efforts and he quickly responded with the fact that he owns a marketing agency already.

My point was simply that it's comical how many people own marketing companies as a side hustle. And you'd never even know it.
 

Mason Welds

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I am on the same ocean with different boat. I have decided that I will open the Digital Marketing agency. I am working on myself right now before diving in this ocean.

I want to prove to myself first. I want to play with small things first. I already started and its 2nd Day and yet in my mind I have impression that though most people told that this idea is dead but still I want to achieve my goal. No matter what people are thinking. But I want to give my honest and 100% shot to my dream of having Digital Marketing Agency which provides great value to the customers as well as the deep satisfaction to myself also.

Dont give up. I knew that its tough market but I can only say that Value matters a lot. I will start a small experiment soon and will share my result after some days here.

Remember one thing : Before you judge other, make sure that you are perfect. :) And I think we are on the path to become perfect and yet waiting for destination to be arrived.

You're absolutely right! I believe MJ even has a thread about how digital marketing is the new Podcasting. They all go back and forth but the main point is basically that, yes. It's overcrowded and saturated. But it's still a viable business to start, to get your feet wet in the ocean of entrepreneurship. However you're going to have to WORK. And add massive VALUE to people.
 

jpanarra

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I started my digital marketing a few years ago..

I think the space is still wide open. Too many people are taking the social media angle because they're still young and know more about the internet than older generations. So there is the issue of too many people labeling themselves "digital marketers" just like the "I'm an entrepreneur" buzz that went around last year.

The difference is in the details, people that prove and provide consistent results will have no problem finding more customers because they're making things happen for their clients, when you give value.. people will seek you out.

"MASSIVE" value is arbitrary and can flame out, Its all the same in the end.. who persists and does so patiently will do well as long they provide REAL value on a consistent pace and that will deliver results.
 
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Tom.V

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All of these digital marketing is dead threads are making me want to start a digital marketing sales agency. Once I move to PR, I might just do it. The need is more than verified in the market, I literally hear it being screamed from the rooftops day in and day out.

End of the day it comes down to the following:

  • What do you offer?
  • Are you F*cking amazing at it?
  • Can you succinctly relay that value providing, need solving goodness to prospective customers?
  • Can you put that message in front of people that would be able to benefit from what you do?
If you can't compete in a given market, get creative with your approach. Stand out. Be different than the other guys. I'm in NC too, get out of that small town mindset.

Anyone can say they have a digital marketing agency. You don't even need clients to do so. Half of them are probably network marketers (AKA MLM LOLOL).
 

100k

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If you know digital marketing, sign up to ClickBank or a CPA network and prove it.

Put your money where your mouth is, you don't need clients if you REALLY know how to do digital marketing, you just sign up to CPA company as an affiliate and you make your $$$.

I challenge you to that. I don't even mess with customers, its a pain in the butt and I can make more just promoting a decent offer and dealing with one or two affiliate managers.
 

RazorCut

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It certainly seems the current buzz word. Someone has been selling a LOT of shovels.

I'm surprised there are not more Digital Nomads with Digital Marketing Companies offering to Coach Amazon FBA sellers in extra ways of selling their hardback and Digital Author'd books in Social Media niches via automated Webinars.

Oh wait, there are, I just couldn't see them as my PC had gone into sleep mode.

Seriously though I'll bet the vast majority of these so called digital marketing companies are a one man band that hasn't got a clue. At most they have gone through some vanilla online course that probably concentrated more on getting clients than marketing.

Then they built their Squarespace or Wix web site right after they shelled out for some high gloss business cards from vistaprint. Their only experience of marketing is trying desperately to get clients for themselves via Facebook and Instagram.

In fact some of the stunts played by these desperate people would be truly laughable if they weren't so sad. I'm on several Facebook marketing forums. These in the main are professional marketeers who actually have paying clients, or work directly as employees for medium to large companies. The rest are made up of affiliate marketers and entrepreneurs marketing their own products and services.

Some of the latter will end up hiring one of the forum members to handle their marketing when they find they can't get a positive return on their ad spend doing it themselves.

The latest stunt I seen was one guy posting up screenshots of his 5x or 10x return on investment for one of his clients with a write up of how it was achieved. Several people were very interested until he was called out by the person he had actually stolen the screen shots from.

This is how desperate some of these people are to try and get a paying client. They know so little about marketing that they can't even legitimately sell themselves.

No wonder there are so many business owners out there that think online marketing is a waste of time as it doesn't work for their business.

So if the standard is so poor it should be easy to stand out from the crowd BUT why bother? It's like the old days when everyone had a niece or nephew that built web sites.

CENTS - Barriers to entry. Blue Ocean and all that.

If I wanted to get in to this space I would scour my town or city and look for businesses that had something worth marketing online. Something with good margins. Then I would do a deal with them based on leads, direct margin or profit sharing basis. Become a direct affiliate marketer. If you are good then you will earn far more than the $300, $500 or $1000 a month from a client.
 
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Charnell

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If you know digital marketing, sign up to ClickBank or a CPA network and prove it.

Put your money where your mouth is, you don't need clients if you REALLY know how to do digital marketing, you just sign up to CPA company as an affiliate and you make your $$$.

I challenge you to that. I don't even mess with customers, its a pain in the butt and I can make more just promoting a decent offer and dealing with one or two affiliate managers.
Massive facts. Affiliate marketing, drop shipping, print on demand, etc aren't "fastlane", but the business is being a media buyer and marketer. Start making a 4x+ ROAS and you'll be turning down clients.
 

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