Episode 242: The Power of Speaking and Marketing Your Business with Mark Wright
Every business needs new leads in order to make a sale and earn income. The best way to get new leads is through marketing, but not all business owners realize the power of speaking and marketing. In this episode, Adam Stott and Mark Wright talk about Mark’s journey in achieving growth and success in such a short period of time.
Mark shares his experience and learnings from The Apprentice show, his mindset, and his attitude towards change and success. He also discusses the different forms of marketing, the power of speaking, and the ways to grow and scale a small business.
Mark Wright is an Australian-born digital marketing specialist, speaker, entrepreneur, and the winner of 2014 The Apprentice show on BBC. He is also the founder and CEO of Climb Online which he launched with Lord Alan Sugar after winning the show. Climb Online is one of the fastest-growing digital marketing agencies in the UK and Mark is known as one of the most successful graduates of the show.
Show Highlights:
- Learn how Mark become an expert in sales and started his own digital marketing business
- The impact of marketing and sales on the overall business success
- How the show Apprentice helped him have the credibility as a business owner
- What are the best marketing strategies you can use as a small business
- How much money do you need to spend on marketing
- The importance of having the right mindset with the different marketing channels; and
- The new opportunities for business marketing in the future
Links Mentioned:
Follow Mark Wright on Instagram at @mwright_10 and visit their website climb.online to know more about their digital marketing agency.
Join the Ultimate Three Day Business Event and learn more Business Growth Secrets
Be part of our Facebook Group Big Business Events Members Network
Connect with me on Instagram @adamstottcoach
Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.
Adam Stott:
Hello, everybody, and welcome to this very, very special episode of Business Growth Secrets show with your host, Adam Stott. I’m really excited to have Mark Wright apprentice winner with me today. Also the CEO, and founder of climb online, which is a digital marketing agency business, which has had some stratospheric growth, it’s been a very, very fast growing company, Mark is known as one of the most successful ever, graduates from the apprentice TV program. He’s a super guy, really looking forward to talking to him.
And today, we’ve kind of decided what we want to talk about prior to coming on. And I think it’s gonna make for a very, very interesting conversation, one that you’re gonna get a lot of value, and it’s why do businesses, small businesses stay small? Why do they not grow? And we’re going to talk from two sides, right, we’re gonna look at the business coaching side, the things that I see. And then also Mark side, which is understanding advertising, marketing and growing businesses. So welcome to Mark, how are you doing, buddy? Good.
Mark Wright:
Hey, thanks, Adam, good to be with you. I know we’ve been threatening to do this for years. So it’s good to finally meet you and have a chat. And like we were talking about before, I think we’ve both got this passion for business and helping businesses scale. I do it through digital marketing, you do it through business coaching, and I was so looking forward to meeting you. Because like I was saying, I think there’s so many common overlaps that I see in businesses everyday that stopped them from growing, and I’m sure you do as well.
Adam Stott:
Yeah, absolutely, I think that, you know, marketing for me, I’ve always said that your business is an engine. And the thing that fires up your engine is the fuel that goes in it. That is marketing. How do you actually get that engine fired up and move in? And of course, we’re gonna talk about that today. But Mark, I want the audience to know you just in case they don’t. I know a lot of them will. Maybe they’ve watched it on TV. I’ve seen you’ve got plenty of different news articles out there. You’re really active on social media. But you want to give us a bit of a background on you, maybe talk to us about what prior to the apprentice you were doing and how the apprentice changed things. running this business has been like.
Mark Wright:
Yeah, well, thanks again for having me. So you can probably tell by my voice, I’m not from this country. I’m from one that’s much better at rugby and cricket, than where we are right now. Yeah, exactly. Now, I came over here as a backpacker, Adam in 2012. And I think the reason I’m a successful businessman, which I’d say is my key skill in business, even greater than marketing is that I started in sales. And I think all great business people have an engine as you call it of being a salesperson. You know, like most entrepreneurs, I wasn’t the greatest at school. But when I left, my dad owned a used car business. So I started washing cars, which is the worst job in the world ever.
So I started as a car detailer slowly progressed up into the into sales working in use car sales, then I went into gym memberships, and that experience of learning how to sell really hone my skills of being able to communicate with people and they say, you know, door to door selling or cold core selling or use car selling is the equivalent of a communications degree once you learn how to cold call and sell something to someone you’ve never met. I think you have very raw skills to go on and be a good business person. But in 2012, I came over here with you know, not a pot to piss in. I had 170 quid when I got to UK after two years of backpacking, and I was living in a backpacking hostel in Victoria in London, and started working
Adam Stott:
Backpack to Australia, Mark.
Mark Wright:
Well, we do it the other way around. The other way around. So we come over here every Australian goes, you know, Canada, America, Europe, and I did the Europe thing and it was probably the best period of my life two years of just being a young, naughty boy. You know, I was a tour guide from Australia and came pretty close to going into festivals in the UK and Europe, and it was great, but I ran out of money. I mean being a backpacker is not good on the waist or the wallet.
So I looked a bit heavier and a bit broke. And when I got here and started working at a massive digital marketing agency, sort of 500 employees started in their cold calling center, just you know, auto dialers go out and you sell Google ads over the phone. It was, it was brutal, absolutely brutal. And then I had a gap for you know, I was working at a place where the ethics and morals were horrendous. And a massive organization I was just a number there. So I put a business plan together, took it to a bank for a business loan, but couldn’t get a loan because of my visa status here in the UK.
So I went an unconventional funding route and went on The Apprentice. And, you know, as I say, the rest is history went on the apprentice in 2014, which was series 10, which had 20 contestants instead of the normal 14, which I say makes me the greatest winner of all time, because I had to beat the most the most people and then I won the show in 2014 founded climb online with Alan Sugar, he still owns 50% today. But the success, the PR from the show.
And the investment from Alan Sugar has allowed me to find I’ve been able to invest in five other companies in PR and property and all of that sort of stuff. But the best thing about it is it’s given me access to people like Alan Sugar, beat the ability to speak on stages, people to meet people like yourself. Over the past 10 years, I’ve been able to hone these amazing business skills through meeting great people and being mentored by great people. I think I’ve got a real passion for business. And I’m a bit of a geek. I watch business documentaries and read about old business structures and stuff from the Industrial Revolution.
And it’s like, it’s a sickness, but that’s great, you know, I found my passion in life, which is, you know, helping companies grow, but also just really understanding what needs to change in a company to make it scale up. And, you know, it’s been helpful for my wallet, which is another good thing. I love what I do, and it’s made me very successful. And now I can help. Yeah, so yeah, that’s a bit about my story. A lot of people get confused with the other mark. Right, you know, we both live in, we might have the same middle name. It’s a bit annoying. You know, I’m known for getting you number one on Google. And I can’t get myself number one on Google because he’s more famous.
Adam Stott:
Absolutely. Oh, I didn’t know you lived six mile. Where’s your area?.
Mark Wright:
I mean, I’d be allowed into the Chartwell area.
Adam Stott:
Lovely. Great introduction there. Fantastic story, the fact that you went on the apprentice with all the right intentions. You know, one thing I’ve noticed I’ve met a lot. I’ve got some good friends from the apprentice series. [00:08:05-00:08:10] And then I met Richard and several others. And certainly the one that was with Sean, I’m not sure he was on the series B. Yeah, I met her a few weeks ago. And you know, the common thing is, Mark, when I asked them, Did you think that you would win? They all typically answered the same thing. So did you think that you were going to win?
Mark Wright:
Of course, yeah. I said to all my friends and family, if I got through round one, I would win the show because I think round one is just Russian roulette. It’s just luck to get through round one because Alan Sugar doesn’t know any of their contestants’ points. If you become project manager, you have a 50% chance of getting fired. So if you avoid the project manager in round one at all costs, and if you can get through that, then you can start to actually show how you’ve got.
Adam Stott:
Yeah. And that’s the common theme. So any of you that are listening to this podcast, if you want to go on The Apprentice, the number one tip that I can say from the apprentice winners that I’ve heard is go in there knowing you’re going to win, because it’s going to, it’s going to help you chances massively.
Well, we mentioned you came on. You asked me a question, you said why do I feel the small businesses stay small? And for me, there’s really five areas of a business that I look at when I look at businesses with clients. And these five areas are marketing, branding, business strategy, the numbers and then of course sales, and in no particular order. I feel that sales is the underpinning skill set if you go into business, I’ve never met a successful business owner of the console so this guy, you know I’ve never ever met like they know they can go. When they sell, that is something I think is really important.
But then why do they stay small? Is that marketing, because until they understand return on investment marketing, they can’t really grow their business, which is why I’m really pleased to have you on because you work in all these different areas of marketing. And for many years, I’ve been teaching social media, helping people with social media, but I’m a believer, like, for me, marketing is I don’t care whether it’s social media, you know, Google Ads. I don’t care if it’s email marketing, I don’t care what you do, as long as you are going out there and getting your message to market. That’s it. So, you know, having said that, are you in agreement? Where do you sit on the topic?
Mark Wright:
Well, I kind of, I’m a bit in awe of what you’ve just said, because it’s, I completely agree. And, it’s hard for me, because I go around telling anyone who listens how important marketing is that they think I’m going to say that because I own a marketing agency. But I fell into marketing, because I understood how important sales and marketing were in overall business success. If you look at the greatest companies of all time are in the world today, the leader of that business is a great marketer, if you think about Steve Jobs, or you think about Elon Musk, or anyone that comes to your mind, Richard Branson, whoever, they are great marketers at their core, and everyone knows that their business and before anyone can buy anything else, you got to know who you are.
Adam Stott:
Absolutely. Best product or service in the world, but no one knows it. Line by line. Right? Exactly. Bottom line, right? So I love it. And that for me, that’s it again, it’s like, if you can get the funny thing is if you can get a small business owner to just test it and get a win. Right?
That’s when the game changes for them. Because they have this absolute game changing moment. Oh, my God, what I can buy a client, I can get somebody to come into my business and be a client. And all I gotta do is pay a little bit of money. And then they pay me a lot. It’s like, I call it, it’s almost like a digital cash machine. You put 100 quid in, you get 500 quid out, you’re winning, right? And for me, that’s what I look to do with clients.
So you know, I’m all in on what you do. Why don’t we talk about it? What do you like in terms of marketing, digital marketing? You’re all different types of areas that you work in? What are the areas that you feel are missed opportunities for a small business owner? Perhaps we’ll start there.
Mark Wright:
There’s so many I mean, firstly, I agree with everything that you’ve said. I mean, I love working with small business owners, when they see that success for the first time, particularly where I’ve had to convince them, you know, just give me 500 quid or a grand, and then they get 11 grand back and you’re like, now imagine if you spent that 11 grand, you’ll get 100,000. Then it’s just exponential growth.
I think it comes back to education. And what you do with business owners is you need to change the way you think about marketing and sales. I’ve sat with so many companies that say, oh, we’ve got no leads, and we’ve got low sales, and you say, how much are you spending on marketing? Nothing? How many people are in your sales team? No one? Well, where are you gonna get leads from, I don’t understand how you can complain about not hitting your targets if you don’t spend money on sales and marketing. But I think there’s key areas which miss opportunities.
First of all, I think every business owner entrepreneur needs to see themselves as the first point of marketing for their business. The reason I’m here with you today doing this is marketing, making myself a key person of influence, doing podcasts, writing a book, speaking on stage, my two biggest customers of all time have come from me speaking on stage, getting my haven’t come from anywhere else, networking events. So first of all, getting myself out there as a marketer has been super important. And the other areas are the ones that most get overlooked, which is writing how to guide and blogging and putting stuff out there like video content, and email marketing.
They’re the cheapest, basically free just talking to your database, but they’re the most effective because you’re speaking to people who already know and like you. So I’d say if I was starting out with a very small budget or no budget, I would start with getting myself out there speaking on stage doing a podcast, whatever it might be, and doing some email marketing, I think you’d get a 20 to 30 times return for no money down. And that’s where I have arguments with people who told me they haven’t got a budget for marketing. We haven’t talked about spending a pound yet.
Adam Stott:
Absolutely. It’s interesting that you speak about speaking as something that you know, because there’s no more when you get up on stage and you’re talking to 100/200/500 people wherever it is. 20 people if it’s five people, right you are the authority on the side. Have a jet that you’re talking about, and people are looking to you for that answer. So they are, you’re already given yourself a massively enhanced opportunity to get the business.
Mark Wright:
Well, there was a bit of a penny drop moment with me where I used to go around, like I said, I was a cold caller, then I went door to door selling Google ads. The first time I spoke on stage, the first time I’ve spoken with four people, there wasn’t a big a big hitter, then you know, then I was getting to 20/30/40 people and the penny drops, I can be in one meeting at a time with one person, or I can speak to 30 people.
So this is the equivalent of 30 meetings, which would take me a month to do. So I could get through the room so quickly and realize who could be a new customer for me, whilst educating people and doing a good thing, refining my communication skills, helping people with their business, even if they don’t become a customer, but also winning new business.
And I was like, as much of this stuff I can do, the better. And as I say, my two biggest customers ever came from public speaking. So I was getting paid to speak on the stage, call it two, three grand, then I got a deal that was worth 1.7 million pounds to me. So, I made like 2 million quid overall for nothing. And I was like, I was like, This is unreal, like this untapped form of, you know, people say that they’re more scared of public speaking than dying. I don’t understand that. I love it. But I think you need to learn it and craft it because it can change your business.
Adam Stott:
Absolutely. And in today’s world, public speaking is now so much more. Right. It’s what we’re doing now. Podcasts, it’s zoom calls, it’s zoom meetings, it’s webinars, as well as your your networking event that you could go to as well as your larger event that you could go. So you’ve got so many different opportunities to get your message out in front of people. And yeah, I was, I remember the same thing. The first time I spoke on stage, it was a shot that people were running up to me saying, hey, you know, how can I do this with you? They’re almost annoyed, and then offer him saying, you know, and that’s, that’s very, very powerful. Because the same people, you have to chase for a year to get him to return your phone call.
Mark Wright:
The dynamic, really, it will. And the same goes for before I went on to the apprentice, I would ring up a carpet shop and say, can I show you Google ads, and they told me to eff off. Basically, I went on a TV show and got that authority from, you know, the publicity of the show, and Alan Sugar and all of that stuff. I can ring up any company and get a meeting now because of the credibility of the show.
And I think that one thing that speaking does writing a book does having a podcast, it gives you credibility. And I think any business owner’s job is to get credibility, because the more people who know you, and like you will buy from you. You know, my good friend, Grant Cardone always says, Starbucks doesn’t make the best coffee, but it’s the most well known, so it sells the most. And just anyone who can hear about you today that didn’t know about yesterday, is a form of marketing, and then you buy credibility. And once you’ve got credibility, it gets a whole lot easier to sell whatever it is that your business does.
Adam Stott:
Absolutely. So of course, we’re moving into that brand and aspect, right? What do you call that brand? And that brand is that perception. So fantastic. Yeah, I completely agree. And some really good tips already, for anybody. And you’ve mentioned that your first thing you would do is, go out as a marketer, you have no budget, zero budget starting off. First thing you’re saying you do would go out, get yourself a little bit more well known. collect the data and start email marketing.
Mark Wright:
That would be and at that point, I’ve spent no money. I’ve not put a fiver into my marketing. And that’s what really drives me crazy with how people say I’ve tried marketing, it doesn’t work. What do you mean, you’ve tried marketing, there’s so many different forms of marketing. And I think marketing starts with you. Sales starts here, marketing starts here. And once you become the face of your business, which every entrepreneur should be, then you can get into we can talk about Google ads or SEO and the stuff that costs money. But that is after you’ve got something worth shouting about.
Adam Stott:
Absolutely. Which brings us to the next point. So now we’re at the stage. We’ve gone out, we’ve done those early bits, we’ve got a little bit more well now we’ve got some email marketing, I’ve done our first sales. Now we’re ready to invest a little bit of money in marketing right?
Now. This is why I say the funny thing is when someone’s mentality when a market exists, is if you went out and you had a meal and you spend I know you went for a nice meal and you spent 100 pounds you go you message your friend, whatever. Imagine a meal, you bet your meal, we’ve asked you why you spent your 100 pounds, 100 pounds gone and you paid a bill you don’t think about it. That’s like oh, I had a nice evening. I’ll go and spend 100 pound as a marketer as a business owner. And they get very weirded out very quickly that it gives them money. Oh my god has it worked yet, as it worked yet?
As they work, yeah, they get really, really stressed very, very, very easily very, very, very quickly. And that’s what I noticed. Now one of the things that we used to do, man, I’ll tell you, you ask what, what we did, we did this for a few years.
So when I first started speaking, we ran an event and this event was called Rockstar social. What we would do is we would sell a two day course, where we bring 50 entrepreneurs into a room. We would get them to run Facebook ads in the room. And these Facebook ads, and we would literally show them on their laptops how to increase their following.
So many people in the room would get 10,000 followers that day. 1000 followers, and I honestly wanted to spend, as many of them would get their first 1020 30 leads, brilliant course. But knowing what Facebook’s like nowadays, you can run that course. Because what would happen if you’d start that one get banned, that one would get restricted, that one would have a problem.
And then you’d spend all day every day all day trying to fix issues rather than and no one would answer the phone, you’d have very rude disgruntled people. So we don’t run that particular event anymore. However, I did run it for a few years. And what I noticed was no matter how much money the business owner had, if it was their first foray into marketing, they got weeded out.
And they got weeded out quickly. Which is why it’s a hard business for small businesses, isn’t it? Yeah, setting up a marketing agency, it’s hard. I know you deal with a lot of bigger businesses a lot of the time and then you know where they get it right. So what do you think if somebody is going to do their first investment market? What would you recommend for them?
Mark Wright:
Well, you just said, there’s so many different things, which is fascinating to me. One of the key things you’ve just said, is ice when I work with a small business, and I talk about marketing budgets, spending money, they get weirded out. Then I work with big businesses who get it. And surely there’s a hint in there.
Exactly, exactly.
Every time I sit with a multi billionaire or a massive company, they say they asked the question, how much can I spend? Yeah, hundreds of small businesses, how, what’s the minimum that you’ll take, and those two sentences are why one is small. And one is, is big, as big business owners, serious entrepreneurs understand, you need to spend money to make money, you need to invest money to make money, you need to spend money on marketing to get sales, and the more money you spend, ultimately, the more that you can get back, then the question becomes, which channel should I spend on?
And, and that’s really where I think small businesses can change their scaling life is if you can, you should be spending on average, successful businesses in the UK spend 11% of their turnover on marketing, and that varies based on industry, etc. But if I’m just taking a broad average, it’s about 11%. If you take a loan from brilliant,.
Adam Stott:
I met with a billionaire furniture guy at a company called Mark David furniture in America. And he said in America, the average is about 10 cents, the same sort of thing. He used to go absolutely mental. If they didn’t spend 20% of the revenue, regardless of the result. On a monthly basis. It was his, he said my main metric was that we spent 20% of turnover on the market, because I know that the turnover grows with the market. Right? And that was his mentality. So it’s really interesting to say the 11%.
Mark Wright:
This is the thing, he gets it. And that’s why he’s because everyone knows his business. And that’s why his company is successful. I always say the day I’ll stop marketing is the day McDonald’s stops. Because, you know, if you look at the top revenue spenders on marketing every year, it’s always the same names. It’s always the same businesses, they know how to push the boundary and get known off.
But I would challenge any business. It’s not scaling Well, at the moment, dedicate, let’s call it even 10%. And throw it out on multiple channels and see what works best. And then once you get a feeling for what works best for your business and your product scales up on that specific channel, but just because you tried Google Ads work once and it didn’t work, or you didn’t get the result you want. It doesn’t mean Google Ads doesn’t work, It means you maybe didn’t do it correctly. It wasn’t the right time in your business. The setup wasn’t correct. There’s so many different ways.
Adam Stott:
You’ll get a business that Google ads is absolutely electric for their trick, they will use a bad marketer. It doesn’t quite work out. And not only have they wasted their money, but they’ve done something even worse than that. They’ve killed that channel for the mentally. Yeah. And if you kill that channel for them mentally, you’re costing our business millions of pounds over the next five years.
Mark Wright:
I have the most brilliant story about this, by the way. So we work with a huge cruise ship company. They do cruise cruises around the world. Anyway, when they first did Google AdWords before coming to us, it was a disaster. The leads that they were getting were garbage, basically. Then the sales team get the leads. And when the sales team, they’ve got a massive sort of 1000 person sales team, and it says on the top of the lead, what channel it’s come from newspaper, PPC, radio, whatever.
Anyway, so the first time they ran PPC, it was a disaster, none of the leads converted. And the whole organization had in its head that PPC leads were garbage. Anyway, we’re running the campaigns, they started working really well, but they still weren’t converting. So that CEO did the most genius thing, he changed on the top of that, he changed.
They started converting at the highest thing and the exact same leads. It was just a great, you know, your mindset, as a business owner or a business, you’ve got to be so careful what the organization thinks about any specific thing, because those leads will wasted money, even though they weren’t great leads just from a previous marketer that had come in and mess that channel up for them.
That was a great lesson for me, it would happen really early on in my career that, you know, that mindset issue that can be something that’s happened in a business task that needs re education was really powerful for me. But I think, you know, to come back to the question, I think, first of all, it’s got to start with the mindset then it’s trial and error based on your type of business.
I always say to any business owner to create every business I think can do better on their financials, knowing their numbers, having a set of management accounts that they review, weekly or monthly, have a budget prescribed for marketing and make sure you hit it or overachieve. And if you find a channel that doesn’t work for you, challenge yourself to still spend the money but spend it somewhere else, because there will be something that works for you.
And you’ve just gotta keep going until you find it. Because you said about Facebook, you used to sit there and get 1000s of followers and likes and engagement and all that stuff, which used to be the way then we know what’s happening with the algorithms and all of that stuff. Today’s theory is that, tiktok right now, tiktok is booming. And their algorithm is allowing you to get millions of views, millions of followers, etc.
Now that will change like everything else, they will realize they want to make money from advertising and people paying to play and all of that stuff, and it goes away. But if you’re an early adopter, Facebook, Instagram, whatever, you can get loads of followers, early sales and low costs, revenue coming in. And it’s about being tangible, knowing that what’s working for you today will not work tomorrow. But as long as you’re open to that change, and challenging yourself and business, you will always be successful. If you think about companies like House of Fraser and all of this, that have died on the vine, they got so used to doing things the old fashioned way, or we’ve always done it this way. And then all of a sudden, you’re at bankruptcy court.
Adam Stott:
Yeah, absolutely. And I love the fact you signed the test, because I’m a big believer, and you know, and we still market old school ways, you know, we still do some direct mail, because we still love it still works for us to open it, you know, and we still get results. For me, you know, it’s a, it’s a business owner, saying, This is my message. This is who the message is for, it’s my job to get my message to this person. And as many times as I can get that message to them, that’s going to result in us getting the result because I know who I want. And what I want to say. Now we’ve just got the marketing that joins that gap. Right.
Mark Wright:
And you know, it doesn’t matter how it gets to them that could be on a billboard. You just want it, you want it in the end. You know, I spend a fortune on radio ads. I own a digital marketing company. I don’t care if they see it on a movie cinema pre commercial, in a magazine on a flier on a cab door. And good companies like Boohoo, Kazoo, all of these people, understand that this premise that when they sponsor the Premier League, a Premier League team, how the hell you track the ROI from that I have no clue. But it’s working for them.
This, you know, the problem with the internet is it gave people too much trackability, too much ROI reporting and everyone started to expect to pound for one pound down. It created a bad mindset where if you go and sponsor the England cricket team today, how do you know what return that’s going to get you but I bet you a lot of people are going to see your logo who didn’t know about your logo yesterday. And there’s value in that.
Adam Stott:
And you can sponsor the England cricket team who you meet in, in the boardroom, right? You know, because that’s because that’s where your 1.7 million pound deal is, right? So you’ve got people thinking that way and that relationships are obviously critically important. So what do you say? This is your slightly different question. What do you see being in it? You’re in the trenches with this stuff every day, dealing with Anthony’s looking at marketing. What do you see as some of the short term future? Where do you see opportunities for business owners on certain channels, certain methods? Or is there anything that you feel, hey, you know, this, this is worth investigating? Right? You should be looking in this area.
Mark Wright:
Well, it’s a crazy time in my world. When I first started, there was just SEO, I was on my old man, you won’t be able to tell, then there was just Google ads. Then there were loads of businesses that Google Ads really worked for. They got addicted to it, it became the crack cocaine of small businesses, Google ads, Google ads, Google ads, and then it got expensive and you know, things happen.
That’s why I say you need to be open to change all the time, then Facebook came along and Facebook really started to work, then it started to die out a bit, then Instagram. Now we’re on to tiktok. tiktok is about the boom. It’s about to be boom, time for what Facebook was a few years ago is going to be tiktok over the next 18 months. And I couldn’t encourage people enough to adopt and use it as much as possible.
Wherever you can, you should be using video creatives, for your business, any video that you create for your social media website should be going on your YouTube channel, you have to have YouTube, no matter what happens to everything else. YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world and is here to stay. So creating even content like we’re doing now can go to wherever it needs to go, but should always be backed up on YouTube, because I think it’ll outlast all sorts of social media trends. And just staying, you know, staying relevant wherever possible, I don’t think, you know, speaking on stage, being on radio, doing a podcast, those things are going to be around for years to come and always be powerful.
So I would have an underlying backing of doing those things, making sure you’re doing your simplest stuff, like having a sales team, I still don’t know a business that doesn’t need a sales team. Making sure you’re doing email marketing, and all of that. Exactly. I’ve never met a business that doesn’t need sales. And that’s it, business is a simple game. If you do the simple things, right. You know, internal systems, having a good CRM system, a good CRM system that prompts you with email flows, all of your stuff like that, like a HubSpot, or whatever it might be, can completely change your business. And again, people don’t want to spend money because HubSpot and Salesforce, these things are expensive. But if you’re going to set yourself up for growth, and for scale, you need the systems and they’ll do a lot of it for you.
Adam Stott:
Yeah, I’ll mention what we do with tiktok ads, just just briefly, when the pandemic first started, we ran lots of lots of Facebook ads, tons of Facebook ads, and this is quite a while back, we got the tiktok Ads Manager account. And it was very early because you couldn’t even set one up yet. So apply for one, as you probably know. And we applied for one that says that we’re going to test this because I’m always looking to test new things. I ran a few ads on tiktok. And we’ve been running the ads for our events on Facebook, spending about six grand per event for a Saturday event on a webinar, right.
I spent 1800 pound on tiktok. Instead of doing the Facebook ads, the leads that we got in the people were more enthusiastic. They were absolutely over the moon. Their show up rate was massively increased. And we spent a third of the money now the first week of using Tiktok ads. I got like a five to one return on investment. First, what is the first one we will ever have since you know and I’ve been doing it for a long, long, long, long time. And it’s been really, really good. The only pain with Titov I found is the intense amount of cravings. So if you don’t change, burn out.
Mark Wright:
You need to be crazy, need to be pretty sharp, and they need to be refreshed constantly. There’s a bit of an upfront cost there. But the thing you did well is one you’re an early adopter, and you understand how these things work. Like we put a video out on TikTok the same video some own that someone else did it and I did a podcast with me I said some stupid thing that I normally say they’ve cut it into a clip they put the same clip on Instagram, what and then on TikTok got 12,000 views on Instagram, it got 1.4 million on TikTok. And it’s because the algorithm is allowing you to go if the content is getting engagement, they let it go where Instagram is holding you back if you don’t pay for the promotion.
And, you know, the users are figuring this out quite quickly because people like you and I, Adam that have been around since the start have noticed slowly that engagement. We’re like we’re not doing anything differently, what’s happening and the algorithm keeps getting tweaked and tweaked. So you’ve got to pay to play. And you know, there are public companies that are going to do returns to shareholders and those shareholders want to see returns like that, which means the money down from the users has to keep going up. But that’s not an infinite game, because that kills the platform at some time.
Adam Stott:
Absolutely, absolutely. And you have to, you know, how you change, how you succeed, especially with marketing? You know, it’s really interesting, you know, the things that you’re picking up on your sign as well, the sales team, I thought we were mentioned, we’re gonna make it about how small businesses, why do they stay small?
And I think we’ve now learned there being the answers are, you know, you’ve got to start working on your marketing, I always say three things that grow our business, marketing, sales, branding, your branding, build the brand, very, very early, make sure you oversee able, and you’ve got the ability to sell your products and services, and make sure you market yourself in the other way. Now the other so what the other two that I mentioned, that’s like the stain on top of it, is your strategy. Going to keep you profitable? Is your strategy to bring the right people to the business?
And obviously, your numbers, your numbers vary? Because if you don’t know your numbers, you can find yourself in trouble. Yeah. So you know, there’s some amazing, amazing stuff there. That’s a couple of bits, I know firsthand how good you are at what you do. One of my clients, a very good client of mine, has been a client for a long time. Tom told me for many years that you’ve done a fantastic job for him. With his PPC is SEO, he’s fantastic at what he does and has grown exponentially. Someone’s working on his brand a lot now as well. And he recommended you to mean years and years ago. So you know, I know that what you do is great. How would somebody what’s the type of people you work with? And how would somebody get in touch with you?
Mark Wright:
Thank you. So our business is called Climb Online. You can search for it on any social media platform, any online platform searching for climb dot online works will come up or me mark right on, verified on all social media platforms. And I can point you in the right direction. But if you’re a business that needs more leads and sales and like Adam, and I was saying I think every business needs more leads and sales. I’ve never met one that doesn’t.
Adam Stott:
Let’s get out of there a bit. So go back a little bit.
Mark Wright:
Yeah, if you’re a business that needs any more leads, or any more sales, look me up or look up Climb Online, because I know sitting with myself or one of my team, we can show you a way to get cheaper leads cheaper sales and more of them to any business from about a million pound turnover upwards on any online platform. We can help you optimize and you know, we will challenge you on your budgets on the way you’re doing things. Can it be done better to show you new things, or just improve what you’re doing as well. But you know, to come back to one thing we’re talking about.
Sometimes I get people who LinkedIn me and they’re really complaining, and they say, I’ve had a person from your company ring me, I’ve seen Facebook ads from you, I’ve heard you on LBC. Then they emailed me three times. And they think I’m gonna go and yell at my sales marketing team. They’re getting a big pat on the back from me when I walk out of that meeting, because I want to keep everyone knowing about who I am, what we do, and why we do it, because I believe we’re doing it for the right reasons and can help people but that tells me we’re doing a good job. If you’re if I’m annoying you because you’re hearing and seeing me too much. That’s no complaint. You’ve just given me
Adam Stott:
You’re having values. Well, you know, add lots of value today. But I think I love the attitude. And I think there’s a business growth secret in that. If you can adopt that attitude and that mentality, the market has said, you’re going to be a hell of a lot more successful. So fair play to you. So what is our big thank you, Mark. It’s been amazing. Any last bits that you want to mention or you know, I think you’ve all good, go and visit Mark at Climb Online or hit him up on social media. Make sure you follow him, he’s doing some amazing things. And I’m sure Mark will give you an event soon to come.
Mark Wright:
I’d love that. And just remember, you know, growth starts within yourself. You’ve got to want your business to be bigger, and you need to be open to trying things you’ve never done before. And if you just accept the lessons that you learn from, but when you hear reading a book or a podcast, whatever it might be, try it. There is no harm in trying it and that analogy about the dinner I’m going to steal that I’m going to be open with you. That is brilliant. When you go out for dinner and you spend 100 quid it does not, never register that 100 quid again, if you did that with marketing for a month, you’d have a completely different business.
Adam Stott:
Love it. Love it. It took off again, because I got stuff now. Thanks Mark for being amazing. I think there’s a brilliant episode, loads of value there. Thank you for coming on. And make sure if you haven’t already, make sure to subscribe to this podcast. I’ve got amazing episodes coming up. loads of great stuff coming up and if you’ve enjoyed it, of course go and give us a lovely five star. Thank you so much for coming on. And I look forward to seeing you in person very, very soon.
Hi, everybody, Adam here. And I hope you love today’s episode. Hope you thought it was fabulous. And if you did, I’d like to ask you a small favor. Could you jump over and go and give the podcast a review? Of course, I’ll be super grateful if that is a five star review with putting our all into this podcast for you, delivering you the content, giving you the secrets, and if you’ve enjoyed it.
Please go and give us a review and talk about what your favorite episode is perhaps every single month, I select someone from that review list to come to one of my exclusive Academy days and have lunch with me on the day meeting hundreds of my clients so you want that to be you, then you’re going to be in with a shout if you go and give us a review on iTunes. Please of course do remember to subscribe so you can get all the up to date episodes. Peace and love and I’ll see you very very soon. Thank you.