Episode 2 - Moby Siddique
(Founder & CEO of Red Pandas)

George: Hi, Moby welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you here.

Moby: Hey, George, how are you? Good to be here.

George: Yeah, very well, thanks. Listen, I think we've got to talk about what everyone's talking about briefly. COVID-19 it's affected everyone. All the guests on the podcast have had a bit of a story. You know, tell us a little bit Is everyone okay, at red pandas and how you guys are doing?

Moby: Yeah, we're doing well. It's one of those things. I think, everyone, it was exactly the same. The start sort of March came around, they're like, what does this mean for business? You know, a lot of projects that we're working on, you know, a lot of bigger projects, longer term commitment projects. You know, so everyone, you know, hit pause on them, understandably, we hit pause on projects as well. But then a funny sort of thing happened. Like, we found that, like, everyone, we're not immune at all, like a lot of clients. A lot of people in the business industry. We definitely lost some business, but we made up for it in small business. And I think really, that's sort of the key thing around COVID like how can you sort of pivot? How can you reposition to what the market needs right now? So a lot of smaller projects That's really funny, like people who probably should have gone online probably should have, you know, digitise their products. A lot of them like, oh, shoot, we got to do this now. So a lot of that short term project work happened. And we talked about this later as well. Like, you know, obviously we're HubSpot Platinum partner. So the automation side of things, the idea of automating a lot of manual processes, the idea of digitising a lot of your marketing that's definitely been invoked. So HubSpot is definitely making money right now. So we definitely felt bad. But yeah, I think now you know, things are sort of, you know, by the time this goes live, you know, things will normalise a little bit more. So yeah, we're doing pretty well right now.

George: That's great to hear. And yeah, it really has accelerated the digital revolution, working from home, more live streaming, you know, it's a complete disrupter. So anyway, great to hear you guys are doing well and some have made that pivot so just for the audience. So they understand a little bit more about red pandas. You know, could you give us a little bit of a history on the agency itself? And what kind of clients do you cater towards? And what sort of services do you offer?

Moby: Yeah, sure. So, um, you know, me personally, I, you know, I come from a client background, a client side and agency side background, worked at a couple of agencies and sort of, you know, very high level roles there. And then I thought, well, you know, what, I could go out and do this myself. That was about five years ago. But it is pretty easy. You know, it's pretty easy doing this at another business and then a bit of Humble Pie like, oh, gee, that was a bit harder than I thought it was gonna be. And then to be honest, see, we sort of started like a traditional digital marketing agency, just very tactical, you know, doing whole but like, my background was always strategy and I kind of fell into digital at the right time. But when we started, it was still quite tactical, you know, SEO content marketing video. in AdWords, pay per click Media Management, you know, put paid performance management. But then where we sort of quickly pivoted is on the automation side. So one of the things that I think that really sort of, you know, sets us out or sets us apart, or they're a bunch of other agencies that do this as well. But we really like to focus on the customer value journey. So sort of understanding you know, you have a business and a business, we'll have a number of personas, what those personas are, and then specifically understanding that value journey. So the call of the buyer's journey, call the customer journey, call it whatever you want, I like to call the value journey. The idea is, you know, a customer comes in, they don't know you, at some point that becomes friends with you, at some point they become customer view customers and an advocate. So if you actually break down and distil each of those levels, you realise that there are different problems at different stages. And when you do that, it keeps you away from shiny object syndrome. So you know, sometimes it's like, oh, you know, we need to do something, let's throw some ads, let's, you know, build some reviews, but it's and often people have an inkling, but what they haven't actually done They haven't looked at all the personas because you have to have the value journey for different for each persona, and then understand where the bottlenecks are. And the only way you can do that is by kind of breaking it down isn't an awareness problem is an engaged problem. So along with that comes the automation side of things. So we're HubSpot Platinum partner. And HubSpot was a very good horse for us to hitch our waggon onto because people who can usually afford HubSpot, usually within you know, the remit of, you know, being able to afford an agency like us. And automation, it's very, very easy once you actually have those stages, to then figure out what those stages are digitally. And automations jobs are purely really the main reason is to move people through those buying stages with really good content, you know, with really good business Intel, so um, yeah, that's sort of a summary.

George: I think that has been one of the major themes of this podcast already, with all the guests talking to the audience and specifically at that stage in the buyer's journey, or value, was it a value journey?

Moby: Call it the buyer's journey? Yep, same thing. Yeah.

George: And that's what automation and, you know, email marketing really allows you to have all these data points that you can gather and really speak to them, are they? Well, knowledge in this space? Are they fresh? Are they new? So that's obviously one of the manager points and some of the major trends we're seeing in digital marketing. Are you seeing that sort of personalization just becoming more and more and more critical for your clients and get people through that customer journey?

Moby: Yeah, it's personalization. And also, it's also about, you know, it's it's a couple of things as well. It's about how you sort of engage with them. How do you make it contextual as well? So and it's about being engaged to them. So sure, personalization when you say personalization, and you ask people do you personalise? Because we speak to a bunch of businesses every day right? Some that I've never spoken to before every single day and you ask them Do you personalise? Like Yep, yeah, we've got a high name How are you sort of thing like hi name, my first name. That's not personalization. So it is barely two points when you understand the buyer's journey, the customer value journey you personalise to that step. And it's I always kind of go back to something one of my lecturers at uni told me what's in it for me. She said, Why FM? You know, WIIFM what's in it for me? She you know, she said it was corny, but I've never forgotten it. So it's work. Why FM with everyone's favourite radio station, so you're personalising for them? But also, what is it for them? It's not about cool. Yeah, sure. You've pivoted because of COVID-19 and now you're offering this product like Hey, now we offer this No, no, like you have to sort of understand their their problems you have to understand that like to give you a really quick example, we're working with a company who they used to sell tries and they used to sell they still do fees and now they pivoted to selling hand sanitizer. So one of the creators we're working on for them is the idea of, you know, if you think of an ad, right, you think of, you know, you do a few ways you could say, Yeah, cool. We've got hand sanitizer, and it's, you know, 70%, ethanol and alcohol and data and you need these and technically, you can say that's personalised, you can say, Yep, cool. We used to work in the hospitality industry. We're there for you. And that sort of works as well. But a better angle would be showing a video of people opening door handles, people going to you know, it's like a point of view type video, the opening door handles, door handle, door handle handle, they take they go to all these they push the trolley, they keep adding, right they exchanging cash. So that is showing the interest in the pain point right now. Like it's a pain point for people going out touching doorknobs, doing all this sort of stuff. So you're not only personalising, you're really sort of jumping in their shoes and feeling and understanding their pain points. That type of stuff works.

George: Yeah, no, they I see you guys are doing video content as one of your services. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Because that's a keen interest of mine, you know, seeing how that's evolving, particularly with all these different platforms coming out, you know, we had Instagram Stories a couple years ago, we've got tik tok coming through now, you know, where do you see video heading? And the importance of video at this particular time?

Moby: It's been your video for the last five years. Right? And it's often to finally because often people sort of speak to us because they've seen a trend or they've seen something and they want to get into it. But honestly, George, one of the key fundamentals that a lot of businesses don't have is the hygiene content. So yep, cool, you know, and we'll talk about that in Second, the future video and tech talk and all that, but often they don't even have the hygiene content. So by that I mean, in my opinion, every business should have you know, three types of video right like from the bathroom. Before you even start doing some other types of video and you do keep talking on Instagram, social media, you just have these three types of videos. And the first is a Why is video. So that is what you stand for. It's your value proposition, it's your answer to what's in it for me for your customers, like why would people engage with you? Right? So you've got your wife's video, then your process video. So this is probably more applicable to b2b but I think it can also be applied to be to see like, you know, dentists and doctors and physios or whatever, but what's the process one would engage with you to procure your services, and I'll give an example in a second, excuse me in a second as well. And the third one is case study with social proof. Right? And all these videos actually work at different stages of the buyer's journey and you have different places for them. So the wireless video, you probably guess that should be on your homepage. It should be on your about page when you have autoresponder emails when someone's you know, sends you I mean, firstly, make sure you have an autoresponder if someone sends you an inquiry, but on top of that, one of the big kind of tips I give people is have your wireless video there. So You know, might you might sort of say, look, we'll get back to you as soon as we can, you know, you know, in the meantime, check out his wireless video about us and learn a bit about, you know what we do so well, that's really, really compelling. So that's kind of top of the funnel. But see if you can approach this video is more like a middle of funnel bottom of funnel, it's someone who I've already spoken to, maybe they've visited the website a few times, maybe I can remark it to them, Hey, this is the process one would engage to procure services. And there's obviously for b2b, there's, there's more stages, it's more more of a consultative process is very, very important. And then the social proof video that just that's for everyone, right? People want to say that people like they may not articulate it like this, but really, the psychology you know, tells us what they want to see is people like me have taken this path with you before. So why should I take it so often, George, the hygiene content, those basic kinds of pillars, they don't really sort of have and I recommend look if you can't do all three or because you know you don't want to try to have one video that does all three as well. That could be a long video. At least have a wireless video at least have some social proof videos. And then from there, of course, and we can talk about that in a second if you like, then it's sort of like, okay, what's your content mix? What's your video mix look like? What channels should you be on?

George: Yeah, I think the interesting thing about everything you said that with those hygiene pieces of content is it's almost like digitally inviting them into a meeting with you. You know, it's like he is, you know, he's a very brief snapshot. You know, we could do this in a blog, we could do this as like a three stage little infographic. We could do this as a little Instagram post, but the ability to convey information in a concise way through video through audio and video in the hybrid on that particular channel. It's just more convenient, more consumable, ready to go.

Moby: Absolutely. And just before we kind of skip off that video into sort of social videos, because I think we should talk about that in a second. That's marketing videos are not typically infused with sales videos. So Americans are very good at this right? Americans are very good at creating, you know, video sales letters. And it's like, hey, so check that video and like personalised videos, right? So an example would be, you know, say, George, you've visited our website, you've asked for, quote, I've sent your quote, sure, I can send you an email. But how compelling would it be to, for me to send your video sales letter to say, hey, George, notice you checked out our services page. And in marketing, you can get away with sort of saying, I noticed you checked out this page, right? Because not, it's not as freaky as we'd write. But you know, you can say, look, you know, so you sent an inquiry and you know, you're from ABC Company. I just want you to know that, you know, we've worked with businesses like yourself, and you know, when you check out our proposal, be sure to look out for ABCD. You know, one of the things I've articulated there and look forward to hearing from you. So, video and I think, correct that. I think you touched on this earlier, it's just forced a transformation of change like Coronavirus, has forced people to digitise products. Forced, you know, people to start doing virtual selling, they've forced that. So now more than ever sales videos are very, very, very important. Like one of the things we do is we train our clients to do virtual sales. So get a bunch of, you know, we did this the other day, a bunch of traditional salespeople are very good at what they do. They've been around for years, and easily, some of them will be older as well, just teaching them how to take those skills from an offline capacity, nothing beats offline, nothing beats a handshake, right? But how can we get close in a virtual capacity? So I think get you got the hygiene piece of content, you know, if you're gonna take anything away from this interview, think about those and also think about video in a sales capacity as well. But those two things are very, very important. And for some brands, more important than video, social, you know, type of videos as well.

George: That's really fascinating. So could you talk a little bit more about just piggybacking off that? What are some of the things that you normally do you know, let's say an old school sales, sales person, you know, they've got the chops, they've got the lingo, they're great face to face, you know, how are you translating those into a video? And what are some of the key takeaways that you or key pieces of advice that you generally give in those sort of strategy sessions?

Moby: Yeah, I mean, it ultimately depends on where they are in the journey in a lot of businesses, I would imagine. They're not anywhere in the journey. So it makes it easy in a way but so just to kind of give you an example, the workshop that we did, because there are different policies down down nuances to this, it was a whole bunch of territory managers around the country. And we didn't have to fly them in as All right, because all virtual, we jumped on and one of the key things as well is particularly when like, let's This is cool that when it is right, like when you're dealing with salespeople, salespeople are good because they're opinionated salespeople are good because sometimes they're stubborn, right? Salespeople don't like to be told how to sell. So you also have to be, I mean, kind of goes without saying every roles like this. You can't have to be you know, it'd be emotionally intelligent and insensitive. Give to that as well. So I, you know, tactically, it helps anyone you know, one of the things that I did, one of the first things I did is I sort of said, Guys, look, listen, I cannot hold a candle to what you guys do, I would never try to, you know, as the saying is, you know, never teach you how to suck eggs, right? I never tell you how to do the job. But one thing we can offer you is obviously, you know, we're in the world of digital, we've been selling digitally for a long time. You know, let's give you some Firstly, you have to sort of sell the idea of why you want to do this. And we showed some statistics from there , a couple of solar power companies in the US who they've transitioned a third of their workforce to actually do because you can't get into homes Not right now. Right? So they've transitioned a third of their workforce on doing these virtual meetings with people. Yeah, so like really sort of showing them up the opportunity, showing them that this has been coming all along. And this is the new normal now. And the beauty is people know that like it's actually not a hard sell for the business case. They last year it was not now and then from there actually just sort of a role playing so then we sort of roleplay Couple of situations sales etiquette as well. So the idea of looking into the camera, you know, making sure you know, the lights facing you, making sure you smile because, you know, like on video, and this is this applies for sales videos and applies for normal videos, videos have a tendency to bring out interesting, you know, be face, right? They have a tendency to do that. So you kind of have to over exaggerate your smiles and your expressions and it comes out normal for some weird reason. So just really sort of basic stuff and then kind of role playing. And then it's kind of funny, like in that session as well, people sort of realised that, hey, I can actually just quickly turn on my camera doesn't have to be hard production, just my webcam on my laptop can record something on, you know, just on my camera or send it through WhatsApp, send it by email, and then I can actually start building a library those things. So there's a few pillars to it. But that's always a good place to start. Absolutely.

George: Yeah, nice. We're at an interesting stage with video content where it's sort of YouTube 10 years ago, there was not as much production. And now like some of the YouTube shows, I mean, it's just end to end amazing stuff. But as you said, there is a place for that, you know, just chuck your phone and deliver great pieces of content, you know, where do you go? How do you guide your clients here? Is it really just about the value in the content itself? Or is there any sort of advice you give between the you know, the really produced stuff versus the you know, it doesn't look great but if you know, we have some valuable content in here or advice.

Moby: Yeah, great question. Read the question. So often I sort of say you got to break videos up into sort of high production and then also content marketing videos. So high productions, the hygiene stuff we spoke about, the right wireless video, the case study process video, then you've got I call them content marketing for a reason, because video is the new blog now. Right? You're better off doing a video and honestly, once you start doing this clients realise, oh my god, it's so much easier to create a video that actually works. Thousand word essay, right? It's so much easier. And then of course, you create the transcript. So video now businesses need to have a culture of video internally, internally. So even though we do, you know, full service marking retainers, and we'll do high production videos for clients, and then we'll go out. And people can do these internally, of course, but we might go out to a club once every two, three months, batch shoots a bunch of commonly asked questions and shoots in half a day. And then that lasts you for a couple of months, you syndicate that and then you come back a couple months after, right? But even when we do that, even for our clients, we also recommend and I do a lot of video coaching, like coach brands to do with themselves if you need to do that internally as well. You have to have a culture of video internally, you have to have, you know, you can just sort of set up a camera straight point to shoot, set up an iPhone with some lights, and you just sort of get started. So where we sort of often help is just in that initial phase as well. You know, like how to do how you would sort of frame the video so starting with the pain point first Right. So if I was, for example, doing a recruitment video, I would sort of say, you know, things like, you know, it is pertinent now more than ever is in 75% of employees. And now now expect flexible working solutions. In this video, we're going to talk about how you go about doing that. And then you talk about the content. And then you make sure you have a call to action. So we come up with a structure video, start with a pain point or tension point, because that's going to be linked to the person does sort of start with Hi, you know, we're red pandas. And we're awesome. We do this, we do this, don't have a 15 second intro, either. No one has time for that stuff anymore. Straight, hit the tension point, hit the pain point, and then kind of get into your content, and then have a call to action as an example, as an example, right. But yeah, so great question that the whole point is, you know, having a series of high production videos, which you can get out and you might not need to do them again for a couple of years. And then having a culture of content in your workplace is absolutely vital.

George: So yeah, I mean, that's what Gary Vee has been harping on about for years is sort of the idea of your brand as a media company. And I think you guys are doing an amazing job at that. I mean, there's a red pandas podcast, you guys putting out video content, you know, and other forms of content, well, quote unquote, content, you know, workshops and other other elements, you know, could you talk us a little bit about, you know, taking that idea of, you know, the internal culture of video, and and how you guys approach that, because I'm very impressed with the amount of channels and whatnot, you guys are on.

Moby: I think the key thing is, and it's really good too, I think talk about strategy and processes and frameworks before we talk about channels. The key thing is and honestly, like, you know, we try to do a good job, but also, yeah, what I'm trying to get at is content repurposing, right. What brands don't do enough is content. Repurpose. So obviously, you know, you and I spoke before, you know, the start of the show, you know, you're going to have these kinds of long form pieces of content. It's going to be a podcast, probably on YouTube, but also, you're gonna cut it up, you're gonna get cut up into bite sized pieces of content. Not enough right? Do that, like even me, you know, I do a lot of speaking, you know, way HubSpot user group, Sydney leaders. And I've been doing it for years and I've never caught up, you know, once in a blue moon you will take you know the video and do it. But just last week I was sitting at home. I'm like, man, there's at least four or five one minute videos just in some of my answers, like people just don't cut it up. And the problem is, and it's funny, it's the case of the, you know, the, the shoemakers, you know, the cobbler's kids don't have any shoes, but you need a repurposing framework. So one of the things we recommend we do for clients, we recommend they do it themselves as well, if they don't have an agency they have a framework to understand that you can almost sort of see it as a spreadsheet, right? So column one would be what is that content when it first comes out when it's when it's born? Once a newborn baby? What does that content look like? Is a podcast an article? Is it a post on LinkedIn right? Then how can you repurpose that? So an article for example, or let's start with video, a video could obviously be on your blog. He could obviously be on YouTube. But the key is don't just on Facebook, sometimes people think, you know, when I say or repurpose it to social share a link, those days are done. You don't do that anymore. It has to be made for that platform. So on Instagram, so you know, we put out a video not too long ago about you know, the four best features of HubSpot. Sure. That's a long form video. It goes on our blog, but on Instagram, it should be a carousel, you know, Instagram has those carousels and I think they have, you know, I don't know, it's quite low, but you know, 3.17% more engagement than normal posts. So one slide would be, you know, one good feature slide two would be another good feature. It's like, like, it's snackable. Like, I've taken a four minute video, and I can digest the four features of HubSpot in a carousel. But you can't do that in one day. And you shouldn't try to do that in one day. So that's where the framework comes in. You're like, okay, day one, the video, day two, the blog post day three, it goes on LinkedIn. Therefore it goes into EDM, day five, it's cut up into an Instagram carousel. You know, like day six, we take out a quote and we use it on Facebook or Whatever, like just cutting, chopping, changing, that is probably one of the biggest, I think low hanging fruit, you know, bits of advice I can give to people, and they could they could do already, then they'll find that they have content. They're just not repurposing.

George: Yeah, I'm completely aligned with you. And that's exactly if everyone listens, that's exactly what we're doing with these podcasts. We're breaking them into three to five minute YouTube clips 45 second, Facebook, Instagram clips, quotes, you know, so out of one podcast, you know, we're going to get maybe 20 pieces of content that we can throw out there. So I completely completely agree with you. Let's talk a little bit about Tick Tock because I've been following you on Tick Tock for a while, and I think you were putting out some great content. I mentioned this on one of my other podcasts that I've been having a play with it, not to the level you have but one of my videos went viral of my cat's tail just went wiggling around and got four On over 400,000 views, and it's just like the level of just just it's a different type of platform. I'm totally glued to it. I can spend hours on Tick Tock and keep scrolling. Can you talk a little bit about you know how when you first discovered the platform and a little bit about your experience with it and some general thoughts about Tick Tock

Moby: See, I think one thing I just thought to say out of the gate, you know, whether you like it or not Tick Tock is going to affect your business directly or not. This it's setting the biggest macro trend in social media we've seen it's Instagram like Gary Vee talks about these like Tick Tock is Instagram in 2011. And you know, to expand on that what I mean by that is it's either going to affect you directly because your markets there you know, you already have physios advertising there you have marketers like me advertising there, you have car networks advertising there, so either your markets gonna directly be there, or the macro trend that it's creating. Right. So Uber For example has destroyed everyone's patience levels, right? So even if you're not using Uber, you destroy your patient levels Netflix as set these macro trends were these big things come out every once in a while that change your behaviour and show you guys the changes in paradigms.

Moby: Exactly. And what I'm getting to a Tick Tok is the idea of snackable content. Because we're Tick tock, you're enough for those who haven't used it. You can create 15 second videos or up to you know, 62nd videos, in my experience, especially if you're starting out the shorter ones, the algorithm, the algorithm doesn't really trust you yet to put out a 62nd video, a 62nd video on Tick Tock feels like about five minutes on YouTube. Sure. So shorter is better and what you will find and like, you know, you've seen my content, George, it is amazing. I've surprised myself how much you can communicate in 15 seconds. There's no fluff. There's no Hi, in this video. We're going to do this and there's no logo opener. There's no Intro music. It's just bang, bang, bang, bang. It's like you know, literally, you know, one of my popular teak talks and I think he's had close to a million views is how to create a really cool LinkedIn photo with no background and a ring around it. Right? I did it in 15 seconds, it's like step one, do this step two do that and you know, kind of jump cuts. So, you know, people need to realise that whether you like it or not too bad, I'm sorry. Like, it's gonna affect your business. Like it's gonna affect the way you do marketing. So either you, you look at it now you get onto it anyway. So you understand the changing nature of content, it will actually help you be a better content creator on other networks and other platforms because on tik tok, like, you're not gonna find a profile like a profile that's doing really, really well. And you look at sort of, you know, this is this a test I'll give you right? Find a really good Tick Tock like, if you look at my Tick tock, right, it's very easy to find Moby Dick. And then you look at the grid of the nine, the first nine videos, they all what's in it for me for the consumer, how to do these in the latest Facebook, you know, hacky, the latest Google hacky or LinkedIn TP. It's all For them, then do that on Instagram, right? And on Instagram, you look at the grid of nine and see out of those nine, how many are what's in it for me and how many are for you. It's like a cool, you know, just show you won an award, you're doing this, you did a project, he did a project there, he did this and then the other. Like, you may think you're doing what's in it for me on Instagram. But if you look at the grid, if 50% of that isn't for your consumer and helping them do that, if it's not informing, educating, entertaining them, then maybe that's why you're not doing well on those platforms, or you're not getting traction anymore. So just out of the gate, it's that macro trend we need to be across as marketers as business owners. It's not about like, I'm not that funny, and I can't shake my booty, right? So it's not about that, you know, so against you. You're already against me, right? I'm not that good looking either, right? So all my content is informative educational content, it's business content, and I've got I don't know close to 30,000 followers right now. And I'm Not saying that to gloat I'm saying like, look at the type of content I'm putting out. It's all business content. It's all content directed to marketers, like I know my persona. I know what I'm trying to communicate. And I've been able to get 30,000 so sure consumer brand, that's a no brainer. Like you got to be there. But yeah, it's just just reframing that lens and understanding that this is an old stat to By the way, this is about a month old, but last time I checked 33% of all tik tok follow users are actually over 30. Actually, they're not tweens. They're not working. They're actually over 30. Right. So this is just one of those platforms. You know, you should get onto before you sort of say, oh, man, damn, like, how nice would it be to go back on Instagram just started right. You have the opportunity now to talk.

George: Yeah, I've even noticed I've only been on it, maybe six months to a year but I've already noticed the Saturation levels and the ability to go viral is already kind of getting saturated. The organic reach is already getting reduced. And I think that's that's something for me. At least that Talk has definitely sort of crystallised a little bit more than the social media life cycle. You know, grandma's now on Facebook, mom's on Instagram and the kids are on tik tok roundabouts. But, you know, as you said, and something that one of our other guests Taryn Williams said is that maybe a year ago, you know, if we had a tween product, you know, tick tock was our channel, like we need to go double down, but it's really diversified now. We've got a lot more players in here. So Tick Tock has kind of accelerated in a really different interesting way. And I think the opportunities there are massive.

Moby: Yeah, you're absolutely right, you'll find on tik tok just on that negative, these macro quick trends that just sort of be there and they're gone today and they're gone, they're gone. But I'd sort of say any advice I give to anyone I talk on my phone with advice is don't don't worry too much about chasing trends. And I don't necessarily recommend everyone do this, but just to share what I did. I posted one to four times a day. I had a calendar. So I understand like the different buckets of content that I want to do, I'm going to do a tip, I'm going to do a tool, I'm going to do some advice. And I did some sort of, like very, very low, but like a little bit like mindset sort of stuff as well. I kept it positive, I changed up my background a little bit. And that's what I did. And I've dropped off that frequency now like now, I'd sort of say, if you're trying to work on that platform, I'd say, look, minimum, you know, Gary Vee talks about 41 day, I know that's not possible when I did it. There's some nights I didn't go to the gym. Like it almost destroyed me, but I had to do this social experiment. But that's not to say it's very easy to one a day, like at least one a day to finish off on Tick Tock and move into a few other areas. You know, where do you see the platform going if it's done, you know, the audience is diversifying a lot.

George: I think I think that, again, something interesting that Taryn Williams brought to the forefront was like you know, normally you have a, you know, a six week campaign or a two month campaign. And this is how we're going to run it. And as you said, the life cycle these trends come and go with Tick tock, you kind of can't really plan it out you kind of just gotta ride the algorithm and you know, if you're going down that path and you want to leverage some of those trend opportunities, you have to be really fast and much more agile and ready to put your faith in the influence at hand or the one that you're working with.

Moby: There are there are ways to pre plan pre programme trends as well so like I said, you know, I've worked on my frequency I worked on my content plan I mixed our backgrounds I kept it positive, but the other thing too I did was I looked out for trends that I knew I'd have a marketing slanting so you know with Valentine's Day and it's so funny like my wife was so surprised cuz she's like, you are the like one of the most unromantic people I know. How did you know I was trending number one for Valentine's right? And how I did my valentine or whatever. I did. The full best songs according to Google Trends on Valentine's Day. And then when Superbowl came I reviewed like, you know, the winners and the losers of Superbowl, you know from an advertising perspective. So these sometimes you know, these things that you're you will have a slant on. But the really George the key answer he is and this is not an issue for smaller organisations more for bigger organisations, you have to give your team some rope, you have to give them some rope, right, like, you have to have some high level guidelines and you can't make them too stringent because the, you know, like that just kills creativity. You can sort of have and I know a lot of businesses and it pains me to tease. It's like okay as to be sent to the manager, and the manager has to send it to the comms person and the consciousness, whatever. And by that time the trains are gone, like don't worry about it, like don't that platform is not for you. Just you're gonna fail on it, just let it go, right. But just give them a little bit of rope like you might have some high level constraints. We never slander, we never, you know, talk negatively, we never like to just face high level, you know constraints, and then the people in charge empower them, and that Naturally picks up on those trends and plays around with the trends. Like just to kind of give you an idea or I saw a stat the other day, it's not about going viral as well like the red hot chilli peppers. They've had, I think Carmen Botha as they've released hundreds and hundreds of songs, right. And I think that 13 you know, top number one hits, that's 4% that's 4.9% or something. So like even the red hot chilli peppers, like 5% of their content actually goes viral according to their standards. Who you and I go viral every time there's a trend. You don't worry about the things like the trends are cool, you jump on them, but you have to have a sort of plan like I wouldn't do tik tok if I couldn't use that content for something else. Like I almost don't touch a platform anymore. If I can't use that content for something else. So my tic tocs I put them on LinkedIn, my tic tocs I share on Instagram. I obviously my podcasts like you know we have a monologue And usually, or interview guests like yourself and often in the month Look, I'm talking about news. So what do I talk about now in my podcasts? Well, if I'm posting seven days or five days Business Week, I'm going to focus on what the consumers told me was popular. So I put out five to 10 bits of content, or for some reason, the LinkedIn image thing was really important. I'm going to talk about that because chances are I worked for my persona that's going to work for my persona there. So I'm not touching that platform if I can't turn it into something else.

George: Yeah, I think that's a great great piece of advice recycling repurposing. So can we circle back to HubSpot, because I think that's a you know, you guys are a platinum partner. Why should agencies adopt HubSpot? You know, you're so you guys have taken that on as one of your key services. But more generally, you know, if an agency owner is listening to this, you know, do you have any advice for them there or any insight to share?

Moby: So, like I sort of said in the intro, you know, very, very realised very early I realised it was a good horse for us to teach. Cow waggon on to you know, being around for five years it's not a long time like it's it's gonna you know if there's one industry that's hard to rank number one for its its digital marketing because they will know how to do it. So like to try to rank for digital marketing Sydney Did you know SEO PPC Don't worry but like forget it like it's gonna be problematic it's gonna take you. I'm not saying don't do it, but it's gonna take you time, right? It's gonna take you years. So for us, we realise you know what, let's kind of niche down. And this is what every startup needs to do is nail down and go after the HubSpot market. And if you consider a Venn diagram, you have digital marketers, and you go to HubSpot. There is a bit of an overlap there. But it means, you know, from our SEO strategy, from our content strategy, from our expertise to the people we hire, right, that's important. It has been institutionalised. They have to hit that kind of overlapping that little Venn diagram there. So, you know, for agencies, it's really, really powerful. It's because the thing is HubSpot. Everyone knows about HubSpot. If you're a marketer, and you don't know about HubSpot. I don't know, like you'd be living on a rock. Everyone knows that not everyone knows what they do. That's a different story. And everyone knows about HubSpot. I downloaded a blog post. I did these because they do very, very well. And even if you're not on HubSpot, they're one of those brands you mimic to become a thought leader in your own industry. Right. So the point is they've generated such end level demand, it behoves agencies, it's smart for an agency to piggyback off that demand, and be an expert in that domain. And for us, I mean, this is not for every single agency, you know, we do full service retainers, you know, the average around, you know, $6,000 or so a month that that's not for startups, and it's not for enterprise either, you know, there's a certain segment of the market that that's good for, but that market can afford $1,000 per month on HubSpot, and usually, that means they have a marketing requirement as well. So, yeah, it's literally leveraging off that demand. And the idea of a system that's very, very easy to use. So you set it up, you know, you pal that that client, he can walk away and that clients fine and you have that With the comfort that security in your head that they're actually going to be okay. And I'm happy with that, or, you know, they can pay for services as well either or, but they have such good support 24 seven support guide resources. So you have that confidence as an agency that you're, you know, like putting your client in someone in good hands. It's a system that's future proofed. Honestly, from, you know, maybe not startup HubSpot will say great on startup, I'd probably challenge that a little bit, I'd say pure startup, probably not, in my opinion, but small business all the way to enterprise. They've got something for everyone.

George: And how does HubSpot help you guys, you know, what sort of support angle do they give you? And then maybe just a little bit about the overall relationship as well.

Moby: Yeah, I mean, obviously, we're Platinum partner. But I think even when we were sort of lower teed, you know, we were assigned to an account manager at HubSpot. Obviously, you have to go through some onboarding. You know, they don't want just anyone to be a partner, you have to know what you're talking about. So you got the HubSpot certification. You go to the inbound certification, you got to do the agency certification. I mean, between everyone, repentance is probably about, you know, 1516 certifications we have. You don't need all those, but the more you know, the better it is for you. And then sort of once you sort of start selling HubSpot, obviously, you got to, it's a give and take relationship, they're going to help you out. They're not just gonna give you leads, right. You have to understand. Like for HubSpot, the value proposition is as well like all agencies have access to our people who want to use HubSpot as well. Right It goes both ways. So, yeah, that once you sort of do that you get assigned account manager. And like I'll be honest, like I don't think it's a secret like the the higher you move up, the more support you get, but they've helped us out a bunch, you know, whether it's sort of speaking opportunities, which I which I love doing a training, they gave us a little sales training. Once in a while they'll be the lead who actually needs an agency and they can't buy it directly and then they'll know, they'll share it with us and we'll collaborate with them But it's a give and take. You have to invest in the relationship like any. But yeah, it's definitely well worth it. If that's your fit. That's your remit and you're interested in automation.

George: Yeah, fantastic. So where are you seeing, you know, this automation thing going over the next few years, it's becoming more and more important and the features that all these platforms have. It's quite staggering. And that's only I guess, going to compound so where do you see the monocle marketing automation heading? And do you see, you know, previously, you know, you mentioned just then, you know, maybe a smaller startup might not be able to afford HubSpot. Do you think that you know in a few years time that it's going to be a necessity for the startup to be on maybe a lower tier automation or you know, what are your general thoughts about where this space is heading?

Moby: My advice, and my opinion is, and that's already here, by the way, that's it's already ubiquitous, it's not later you need it now. Like if you're a small business and you don't have automation, like man, like why are you making your job hard? You know, it's, do you know like, when it comes to a lead, you have to get back to a lead almost immediately. And it's also from the sales side, it's the bubble, the warmest leads to the top. So I have a bunch of people coming to my website, and you know, they will download a catalogue. They're not all equal. You know, the guy who visited my website four times after that and visited my pricing page and visited my case study page, and you know, visited my services page is a lot more valuable to me than someone who just downloaded it. Lead Magnet, right? Both those things, why don't both of those users might have downloaded that lead magnet. But one is obviously more important than the other, I need to know that that's important for me. So from an automation point of view, just because you can't afford HubSpot that shouldn't exclude you from using automation, you need to use automation. And there's a whole bunch out there. ontraport is quite cost effective. Active Campaign is quite effective. There's a couple of open source ones out there as well. A lot of them do the same type of stuff. But where it helps what's really, really powerful is its ease of use. So in terms of answering the first part of your question, where automation is sort of moving, there's sort of two parts of that one, anything that's going to make the experience frictionless, right, so anything that's going to make the experience frictionless for the consumer and user is paramount. That's, that's important. So, with HubSpot, you have all these features that make it frictionless. Of course you have forms and if someone fills out that form and now you've connected your web, your database to your website, that's powerful. Now you can see the pages they visit. Now the sales team have been Awesome, but also the live chat feature, right there live chat feature or in your evolving from live chat to bots, their actual bot builder is actually a form and you don't even know it. You know, it might say, Hey, what's your name? You say my name is George, you know, Can I grab an email address? You give me your email address? And it's like, what are you interested in today? Every time you answer that's actually saved as a field. And that's either paying someone to say, hey, look, this person now qualified because I've asked him five questions, or it's actually sent them an email. It's made it frictionless. So from a consumer point of view, a system like HubSpot and any other system out there that makes it frictionless. That's, that should be you know, the Paramount, I guess, factor there. From a, I guess more from an internal business point of view, single customer view is Nirvana. Right? The idea of having a single customer view. So your sales team is looking at the same database. The marketing team isn't sending something out of MailChimp, that's not integrated to the CRM system. The operations team. You know, they're not From their own system, they may use their own systems. That's fine, right? They may use their own inventory management system and sales. You know, sometimes, you know, for some industries HubSpot, as a CRM and why not work, they need to use an industry wide for most industries, it's fine. But there are reasons. And sometimes that happens. That's why you have integrations that you have. Either you're using everything in HubSpot, you're integrating it in a way where you have a single customer view. And I know people listening to this thinking, Man, that is Nirvana. The idea that marketing is working from the sales service support, everyone's working from the same database. Everyone else in the organisation can see all the other interactions with that person. That's that's sort of their mind. And that should be the goal of automation.

George: Yeah, it's super powerful. everyone's on the same page. I mean, you know, communication internally is one of the most critical things so it makes complete sense, Moby. It's been a pleasure. I just have a couple more questions for you. You know, we've talked a lot about channels and whatnot, and I just wanted to touch upon Little bit more about, you know, any advice you had to somebody starting an agency? You know, you started five years ago. You know, are there any mistakes or things that you could go back and tell yourself or would tell somebody? Hey, listen, here's a road bump that many people along the way go through. Any, anything you would say to somebody in that sort of boat?

Moby: Yeah. I mean, it's interesting, right? Like, you know, people talk about niching. And sometimes it's consternation, right, like one thing that Coronavirus says, you know, kind of made evident is, if you wouldn't, like we have, you know, clients in the childcare sector, for example, right. If you just niched on that sector, you're going now, like, you know, you need to pivot a hard right so, you know, we we sort of like understand, like, what, what you're really good at, like, whether it's sort of ecommerce or like we sort of say we're good at any industry where it's a long buying cycle, there's a long customer journey, you know, if someone's selling Skittles or, or whatever, I can't really help them but I can identify them That works. So of course, I can say nation and find what you're good at. But there's honestly joy, the matter of fact is, when you are pure, pure startup, you take anyone and everything and there's no harm in that. There's nothing to frown upon it. There's nothing wrong with that, right? So sometimes you kind of need to do that, to understand what you're good at and what you like. So, I'm going to give you some real, more realistic advice, as opposed to just doing one thing. But one thing I sort of would say is, you know, process of, it's not a real word, but like, let's call it that process of fi systemize. As much as you can, right. So have your systems in early. So we use teamwork. You know, people use Monday, people use a whole bunch of stuff. We love teamwork, because you can track your hours you know, your profitability, you know, on accounts, because you should know they're paying something, you're going to give them x. So you're able to go over sometimes, but at least you have a line in the sand. Everyone works out of that, that system tasks don't get lost. Nothing's sort of relying on someone's post, a note here or an email. All the work is happening within the system. Then that a system like teamwork is also really, really good because I mean, forget the tactic. The strategy behind it is you can systemize things. So once you've built a Facebook campaign once and you did it really, really well, turn I know it takes a bit of time to do this, but systemize it. We know items that are things that we have to do. You know, you're doing websites, okay, cool. We need first to do the wireframe. We need these and when we go live, we have to abcdefg systemize that so when as you grow, you can hire people that can follow your system and your processes. So I think that's the most important piece of advice I've learned.

George: Great piece of advice. Great piece of advice, Moby. It's been an absolute pleasure. Just to finish off what's next for red pandas. And is there anything you would like to let the audience know?

Moby: Yeah, look, I mean, I mean, really, I think we've we're doubling down on, you know, the customer journey side of things. So you know, if anyone's listening, whether you're an agency partner, just sort of you know, want to collaborate or whatever. Someone's listening and you can see the merits of using someone like us to identify your personas. And honestly for your personas, you need a third eye sometimes to identify the buyer's journey and understand how to plug those gaps whether it's lead generation issue or conversion issue or whatever. We're kind of doubling down on that. And the only other thing I'd say is looking at you know, check us out as well obviously, I've got a podcast called inbound buzz which I'm sure you saw a link to connect with me on LinkedIn and yeah, that's pretty much it.

George: Fantastic. mobi great advice. Fantastic to hear your thoughts on video Tick tock, HubSpot, and where the industries are going all the best with red pandas and I hope we can speak again soon.

Moby: Awesome, George. Thanks for having me.

George: Cheers. Bye.