Digital Marketing Agencies Are The Worst

Every agency sounds the same:

We analyze each client to determine the strategy that will work best for you—no cookie cutters here. We then deliver creative, engaging campaigns and content, and continually measure results so we can improve and optimize the approach.

Whether it’s search engine marketing, social media management, SEO, content creation, or even offline events, we do whatever makes the most sense for each client.

Every website page, email campaign, blog post and call-to-action in your campaign will be managed specifically to grow your company. And every initiative is monitored and measured, so you can see real, concrete return on your investment.

Through full business and industry immersion, we work closely with clients to drive strategy and create authentically rich brand experiences.

Since 2004, we’ve been providing creative solutions and proven online marketing results that help our clients drive leads, increase sales, increase brand awareness, and retain customers.

We are a full-service digital marketing agency and consultancy, empowering your organization to create and manage Meaningful Connections for the Digital Age.

______ is a digital marketing agency that uses social media and digital content to influence every aspect of the customer life cycle, from awareness to win back.

Pound for pound, we are the best agency of our kind.

We connect brands with their digital selves.

We focus on generating revenue for our clients; that's the goal. Providing value to the user will always trump rankings.

WE TAKE A BUSINESS APPROACH TO MARKETING

We help growth-oriented businesses move further faster™

We drive customer acquisition through multi-channel, content-centric campaigns, and transform our clients into ready challengers that can topple industry titans.

A new era of digital marketing where you don't just get award-winning strategies, but also groundbreaking technology.

The Cure to Overspending Media Budgets

One of the easiest problems to solve, yet a problem that continues to persist with account managers and paid media folks was that clients' budgets generally aren't managed properly. It seems very simple, yet far too often while working at big agencies account managers would discover that 1. a client's credit card was declined and their ads weren't running, 2. budget was blown out, or 3. budget was underspent.

As the person ultimately responsible for breaking the news to the client, those three things creased me to no end. The other problem was assigning responsibility for these errors. Is it the client manager's fault for not knowing how their client is performing? Is it the paid search manager's fault for not actively checking budgets? Truth is, it's both their faults. But, let's not focus on that, let's focus on a fix.

Leaving the larger agency world behind, but not leaving the larger clients behind, meant that my team had to become a lot more efficient in managing campaigns. In addition, leaving the larger agency behind, meant leaving siloed mindset behind. My focus and goal on reimagining a digital agency where the clients actually benefit, meant building a team of digital marketers who can do everything really well. Hiring people that are focused on one area of marketing is not cost effective, slows down the execution process and loses the focus on the overall goals (another blog post for another time).

The reality is, we have paid search ads running in AdWords and Bing ads, Facebook PPC ads, retargeting ads, behavioral ads, direct placements, LinkedIn Ads and so forth. We're writing press releases, managing SEO, social media, blogger and media outreach. We and the client understands that we can't touch the account every single day. Ideally.

The fix to this was simple, and I'm ashamed I didn't think of it sooner. What I did was create a simple excel pacing sheet that allowed me to keep track of client's spend against their budget as the month progresses. Each day I go in, put in the previous day's spend, set pacing goals throughout the month and scale budget up or down depending on where we're at for the month. Der.

Budgets have hit 100% each month, and the couple of client cards that have gotten declined, or campaigns that needed to be restarted, were picked up the next day, instead of the next month. Campaigns that might not be pacing properly get adjusted on the fly, and it forces digital marketers to look at their client's account every day. Everyone is happy. 

Since I believe everyone can benefit from the simplicity of it, here's the link to download it: http://cl.ly/1m3p3F2M1b3V/download/Pacing%20Sheet.xlsx

I hope you use it, and become even more awesome at your jobs. You can thank me with a drink next time we see each other.

Nurture Every Relationship

The most important lesson I've learned is that starting a client relationships only gets you so far. You have to expand beyond just the initial relationship and grow the relationships you've built. See you can get clients and be pretty successful. You meet someone, you get their business card, email back and forth, close the deal then let an employee manage the relationship. Rinse and repeat.

As a business owner, it's not easy to be involved in every client you have. To keep up with what's going on with your clients, successfully run a business and grow a business is not for every business owner. However, it's that ability that separates good from the bad. Business owners that have no idea what is going on with their clients are the business owners that obsess over non-competes. They find themselves stressing when employees leave and doing anything they can to save face with their clients, which actually does more harm than good. And besides, who wants to live like this?

As a business owner you don't have to actively manage each client you have. It's just not possible. But that shouldn't prevent you from having an active knowledge as to what's going on with them. Consider how long it takes to pick up a phone and call a client. A hour? You call one client a day, with twenty days in a month and you're off to a pretty good start. 

Now, if you're dealing with a hundred clients, this isn't nearly as simple a task. In this case you must hire people you trust wholeheartedly to run the business and take care of them at all costs. Interject yourself whenever possible, to again, show that you give a damn. 

Social networks allow us to have a vested interested in our clients lives. I liken it to the '50s when your local pharmacists knew everything about their customers, from the kids names, to their birthday and the dog's name. Social allows us to have that same kind of relationship with our clients. I remember my dad knowing everything about his clients and being able to recall this information at the drop of a hat. This allowed him to hold onto all of his relationships, because the client knew he gave a shit. 

This takes effort, but oh how it pays off in the long run.

The thing is, this doesn't stop at clients. Your employees should be treated the exact same way. Believe me, giving a shit about people goes a long way.

Clients, Say No to Buying Discovery Documents

For some reason it appears as though paid discovery documents are resurfacing as a thing. Clients, for everyone's sake, laugh and say, "No!"

Let's see if I can explain a bit. It was circa 2008 the first time I ever heard someone pitch a client a discovery document with a straight face. We were in the middle of pitching/up selling a social media and content engagement to push some of the cool promotions they were pumping out. The idea was that we would create this document of all of the things they should be doing, what their competitors are doing, who their customers are and where they are online. Then, based on the information gathered, we would execute it. But, all of this is our Strategy Document. I'm not sure if the client was being nice, or was generally interested, but they asked for what it would entail and the cost.

In short: Top 2 competitor research, customer research, network research and strategy equaled. $10,000.

It was pretty embarrassing and thankfully, the client giggled and said no. Yet again, here we are with strategy documents that cost money to complete have started legitimately popping up in the last couple of years with the client saying yes. Oh no!

Think, clients. The thing about discovery documents is that at no reason should an agency pitch a client without first performing a discovery. Without developing a base-level strategy, what exactly is being pitched? We do SEO, we do paid, we do social, but we have no idea what we're going to do for you, or how much it'll cost? Please.

Purchased strategy documents appear to do 2 things. 1. They delay the agency from actually working, or earning business, yet they still get paid. 2. Are ways for an agency to pat themselves on the back for taking 30 days to complete a document that should have been done as part of the relationship.

I am surprised clients would want an agency working with them who, instead of working together to create a well-researched and thought-out strategy together, would be cool with them working in a silo for a month and arriving at this "strategy."

Pros tip: Next time your pitched a strategy document that will cost $x.xx, ask them to define a strategy. It'll just kill them!

Get on retainer, do the research and develop a strategy that will best meet the client's goals and execute. It's a fact that 9 out 10 strategy documents are disregarded within two weeks of delivery. Don't waste your time paying for these up front.

Let's Dive Deeper Into Google Analytics Audience Reporting

On Friday I wrote about how to make Google Analytics Personas work for you and how to create detailed audiences. I want to take a minute to take that just a step further, which is based on my presentation last night at HootUp Dallas.

Part of the presentation was exploring tools like the Demographics Pro for Twitter app for HootSuite to understand your twitter demographics better. I'm a firm believer in that each one of your networks reaches a different audience depending on which network it is. I'm positive that your social networks act like a Venn Diagram. There may be people are in the intersections of your circles (cross-platform audience, we'll call them), they represent a lower percentage of your audience than the ones dedicated to a single network.

We've all heard our own friends saying things that make us sigh and shake our heads in disbelief. "I don't get Twitter." "Facebook is for my mom." "Nobody is on Google+." "Pinterest? I'm not a girl." You can't expect your audience to be on every platform and you also can't expect your audience to be exclusive to one platform.

I thought I'd peak into a client's analytics to see if I could support my theory. For the test, I will be diving into the each social media referrer to determine the demographics of the website visitors from the individual social networks. Note that I'm going to combine desktop, tablet and mobile visitors. Additionally, to make it easy, I've created simple advanced segments by source to group the demographics by network.

Let's start with Facebook:

For the client I'm looking at, Facebook makes up about 5% of the referral visits to the website, with 33% of those being new visitors.

A snapshot of the age and gender reveals that the majority is 35-44 females, followed by 25-34 female, 55-64 females, 45-54 female and rounding out the top 5 45-54 males. Your next step here would be to mapped out the referrals and then include the age/gender segments that you mapped out before. Now you're going to be able see the different affinities, in-markets and "other categories" on a much more granular basis. (But for today, let's stay a little more high level.)

Not that I'd expect you to remember, but for continuity I'm using the same client's data as my last post, which had the highest rate of visits coming from 55-64 females. We're already seeing a variance of the website visitor demos and Facebook referral demos.

Let's hop on over to Twitter:

Twitter makes up a significantly less percentage of visitors, at 2.18%. The age gap in visitors is much greater from Twitter than it was from Facebook. For Twitter the 25-34 age group is 10% higher in visits than the 35-44 group. Interestingly, 45-54 and 55-64 are about even (and 7% lower than 35-44) and are higher than 18-24. Likely due to the product that's being sold and the affordability of the product, but interesting nonetheless. But, again, the gap between 25-34 and 35-44 was much less on Facebook than Twitter. Also interesting is that overall there are slightly more men coming to the site from Twitter than Facebook.

Adding the secondary dimension of age plus gender, the most visits are coming from 25-34 female, 35-44 female, 55-64 female, 45-54 female, 18-24 female. Again, we're skewing younger on Twitter than Facebook. So maybe you're friends are right when saying, "Facebook is for my mom."

And finally, Pinterest:

Well, I'll be damned, your friends are genius. "Pinterest? I'm not a girl." Referrals from Pinterest, while small, was 100% female. Also fascinating is that for this client Pinterest seems to have skipped over the 45-54 female demographic.

As you can see, the graphic, the gap between 25-34 and 18-24 is the widest at 20%. It's also significant to know that while we're not appealing to the 18-24 demographic on Twitter and Facebook, we're definitely hitting them on Pinterest.

So what's our conclusion?

Well, I think it's good I did not tell lies last night and my theory proves correct. Each network, as well as the website in general, attracts different age/gender demographics. Facebook skews older, Twitter slightly younger and Pinterest way younger. Are these similar for your websites and clients? If so, then it's time to start rethinking your content strategy and how you're presenting yourself to each audience you've built.

Gurl, I Wanna Know You (A Story of Personas)

SEO folks have an incredible ability to pivot. It's one of the reasons I am so fascinated and passionate about SEO. It's a giant game of Simon Says. Google says build links. We build links. Google says don't build bad links. We stop building bad links. Google says create content. We create content. Every time Google says something we do it. Of course, there are people playing the game that get knocked out, but, it's the SEO person's ability to pivot that makes the job so fascinating.

It's also fascinating how SEOs are able to take disciplines from other industries and make them their own. One minute replacing link building and moving into media and blogger outreach. Then next minute taking an age old practice of creating suggestive messaging and turning into a buzzword called content marketing.

Now it's time for personas to take center stage.

Are personas new? Hardly. The batter still rages on who exactly came up with personas between Angus Jenkinson of OgilvyOne and Alan Cooper, the super software developer who wrote the book The Inmates are Running the Asylum on personas. But, despite being around for some time, you're now hearing about personas quite a bit around SEO folks. Hell, marketers have been using personas to target TV, print and display ads as I can remember. We just didn't call them personas. Nonetheless, SEOs have arrived and personas are alive and well.

Now that Google Analytics has given us more information into who our user's are, we can create and target to personas much easier than ever before. Now you don't have to sit outside your store and take notes on every person that walks in and out of it. Well, maybe you still do, if your store has a much different online personality and shopper than it does in store. (Sidebar: I had a client dispute their Google Analytics demographics recently. Citing that it's not a true representative of who their customer is and the data must be lying. My argument was that perhaps the client either didn't understand who their customer is, or their online customer is ashamed to walk into their brick and mortar.)

Here's a quick rundown of what we get with the Google Analytics demographics reports for the uninitiated: Age, Gender, Affinities, Categories and In-Market Segments

I'm amazed how many Google Analytics accounts I gain access to that haven't implemented the demographic and affinity capabilities. Here's a quick how to on implementing it located in my Dallas Digital Presentation.

Chances are you're logged into your Google+ account (chances are unknowingly) while you're surfing around the Internet. Meanwhile Google is collecting data on you based on your search queries, the websites you visit and the things you're thinking about buying. This data is now delivered to us in Google Analytics.

We can start creating data-driven personas, which is better than anything we've been able to do before. Don't believe this data is real? Check out your own, here: https://www.google.com/settings/ads

Crazy, huh?

Now that we have it, what should we do with it?

This is the most exciting part for SEOs (or integrated marketers, or holistic marketers, or content marketers, or inbound marketers, or what ever we're calling ourselves today). Based on the information available, we can start crafting our tones to appeal directly to our audiences.

Now, how do you begin?

As always with Analytics, Advanced Segments are your friends. First off, map out your genders plus age combinations as much as you can. This helps make the information more digestible.

Now that you have your segment created, you can layer in their interests into the gender - age map you've created to start learning about them, their behaviors, how they navigate your website, what devices they use, where they live, etc.

For this client, I'm looking at the Female 55-64 segment's Affinity Categories. I can add a secondary dimension here to understand not only what types of websites my customer's are visiting, but also what sort of items they're interested in buying.

In this example, I'm looking at a pretty high ticket item, so the affinities and segments are lining up with the type of product the client is selling. Here I've figured out the people who are visiting the website most and are achieving the highest conversion rate are Females 55-64, who are Avid Investors willing to buy Real Estate, Home Decor Enthusiasts willing to buy Home & Garden Decor and Movie Lovers who are just about willing to buy just about anything.

This allows me to create a more robust persona map, and I can start filling more advanced Google Analytics segments. I'll save you example, but just go back to your advanced segments and start creating more detailed segments (hint: label things exactly!).

With this information, I can start diving into how each segment digests my content. I can look at my site content to distinguish what appeals to the most on my website. What blogs do they tend to read most, what products are most appealing and what pages on my site do they respond to the best. I can drill down and add in a secondary dimension to now see what sources and what medium they're in that drives them to my content.

And now that I know this, I can start crafting my content and targeting to appeal directly to my audience. I can find the differences in how my visitors respond to my content from each social network, paid and organic, email and referrals. (Don't forget, this is also a way to better understand your referral's audiences, too. You can provide your referrals with better content that appeals to their audience better!)

As an SEO (or any of those other buzzword titles we're calling ourselves) to get a deep understanding of who I'm creating content for is priceless. Not to mention having the ability to measure how my audience interacts with it in real-time so I can make tweaks and improves with each piece of content I create. Now start using the data till your fingers fall off!

Speak Loudly, Listen Intently

There are two things that crease me more than I can handle:

1. People who know things and never speak up about them

2. People who don't listen when someone speaks up

Let's discuss each one and figure out how we can avoid ending up in the "I told you so" situations.

I've been thinking about this ever since the JC Penney's Super Bowl tweet debacle. The "tweeting with mittens on" campaign was perhaps the single worst idea ever conceived. Despite how much "engagement" it received, it was terrible. I imagine that in this meeting one of two things had to happen. Either there was a junior staffer that thought to themselves, "WTF, this doesn't make any sense," but said nothing. Or there was a junior staffer who said, "Hey guys, this doesn't make any sense," who was ignored by the social media team lead.

I only say this because I've sat in meetings that have gone this exact way. We come up with a terrible idea, our intern knows it's terrible and then waits till it fails before telling us it was terrible. In my time, I've had one intern who wasn't afraid to speak up about how awful an idea was. That intern has ended up doing pretty damn well for themselves. The ones who hold it in and wait till an idea fails before saying anything... well, just stop it now.

But, the worst people on the planet are the senior and director level (and up!) employees that know all and discount any other ideas. It's remarkable to witness a upper level employee not listen to the people they've hired. I'm baffled when I'm in collaboration meetings and the leader has no intention on collaborating. They have their tactic and the sole purpose of the meeting is for everyone to agree with them. They will often become combative when team members disagree. It's difficult to harvest creativity when you stifle your team's ability to contribute. More importantly, you're going to have to find yourself hiring a new team sooner than you anticipated.

So check yourself before you wreck yourself. If you want collaboration then spark an idea and allow your team to ignite it. You hire employees because you believe in them. If you don't believe in them, then get rid of them and find new ones.

And, if you want to move up in your company, then speak up and contribute.

Think Beyond the Retainer

Before any agency engages in a client relationship they must first discover how much to charge the client. Every agency handles this differently, of course. From throwing a dart at the board, to setting hourly rates and predicting how many hours you'll spend each month on the client to charging a percentage of their overall spends, there's no wrong way to develop your pricing. (Actually, that's a lie. I could spend hours discussing why percentage of spend is the worst way ever to determine pricing. And, there's my next blog post.)

I have always been a big fan of the retainer. Determine your hourly worth, predict the hours you'll be spending on the client each month, discount for an annual contract and get on your way. Easy, right? Well, no.

See, while to you it might be easy, when you have other people in charge of the bottom line there will come a point when they'll want to know just how many hours you're actually spending each month on that client. This will help determine whether that client is profitable or not. This is the point where things get sticky.

Let's do some simple math and hypotheticals to get this going. Your rate is a flat $100/hr across the board. Your client is looking for strategy, SEO, paid media and content development. For strategy, performing researching, creating the goals, developing the strategy, maintaining the strategy and developing new initiatives will take 5 hours a month, or $500/month. For SEO, you have the initial audit, citation building, site health checks, collaborating with social, technical site maintenance, keyword strategy, auditing new copy, etc. Quite a bit each month, so let's assume 20 hours a month, or $2,000/month. Paid media includes the build, ongoing research and optimizations, so let's assume 15 hours a month for $1,500. Then for content development, we'll do 2 hours of research, 2 hours of creation and an hour for editing for 5 hours per content piece, do 3 a month for 15 hours, or $1,500/month. Total that up to $4,500. Now, consider internal and client meetings and reporting, emergencies (plan for this, heed the warning) for 10 hours (because you have all team members on your calls) and we can finish pricing at $5,500/month and 60 hours.

You should know this when you're engaging with a client. But, here's where most agencies and consultants get lost: what do you do when you've reached 60 hours by mid-month and the client needs more attention? Do you tell them you're sorry, wait till next month? Well, yeah, some do. Managing this correctly is the difference between a good agency and an agency responsible for bringing me my next client.

Honestly, I should just start paying commission to some of these agencies who are so poor at managing time and clients. Your number 1 goal is to make the client happy. The level of service you provide your clients should be white glove. Does this mean letting them walk all over you? No, but it means that you should make sure that the ability to increase prices each year is a part of your contract. Track hours and know whether or not a client is profitable, but don't let this rule your business.

Don't prevent yourself from maintaining strong client relations due to going over a few hours each month. Maintain a level of excellence and your clients will recognize this. There's no real way to accurately predict how many hours you'll spend on a client in December, when you're creating the proposal in May.

Always Be The Master

Caution: This might be the most arrogant post I've ever written.

I was in a pitch last week when the person I was pitching said, "I just want to you to know that you're in competition with another agency." I'm still not 100% sure why he brought this up, but I thought I'd explore further. "Mind me asking who I'm in competition with?" After giving me agency, I mentioned that a guy I trained actually went there last year. Turns out the guy that I trained was the guy I was pitching against.

Funny how that works, isn't it? I trained him back in 2005, when admittedly I didn't know shit. "Honestly, he didn't do very well," the guy said, "you must not have trained him very well." I quickly replied, "Actually, I trained him just enough to know that if ever went against him in a pitch, I'd win the business."

I did end up winning the business and they're a great client. Truthfully, they made the right choice.

Training people is one of my favorite things in the world. Though, my biggest struggle with training is trying to determine just how much knowledge to transfer to others. If you're not the owner of your company, then how much do you have to gain from getting their employees at your knowledge level?

The corporate hell yeah guy in me says that you should never hoard knowledge. Imparting what you know onto others makes your entire organization stronger. As someone who is trusted to help better your peers, it is your responsibility to always stay a step above. This is the only true way to remain on top of the internal company competition and still be a top notch trainer.

I'll leave you with one more story.

I'm currently hosting a Google Analytics training class. There is a person in this class that is struggling a bit. This is not unusual, there's a lot on the test that they're never going to use. After the class he approaches me about his struggles. "What do you think I need to do? Everyone is taking the test on Friday and I'm not sure I'm ready." A simple problem, with a simple solution. "Study for the test at home and you'll be more than fine by test time."

He was dumbfounded. Study for the test at home? But, school is over. How could he possibly study for work at home? It's called homework, not workhome. Will he do it? I don't know we'll see how well he does. But, if you don't do everything possible to stay ahead of the curve and your competition, then you're going to struggle mightily in every job situation.

The Best Hire

Today was the last day of the best hire I've ever made. When you see someone you hired as an intern, watched become full-time and then watch as they've excelled, you can't help but become a bit nostalgic when they leave. It's always a difficult position to be in. Obviously you're happy they're moving to the next phase of their career, but you're also a bit let down because you won't be a part of their next round of career growth.

My best hire, well, we had no reason to hire her. She did have some other internship experience and was still in school, but there were other, more qualified applicants. There was just something about this person that made you want to be around her. Her resume had a little picture of a double stick lollipop with the tagline, "good ideas are meant to be shared." Under skills it read, "Big idea thinkin'."

She reminded me of my first real job interview. Here I was a theatre major with no real work experience, unless you count spamming on Myspace. When asked why they should consider me for the job my response was, "because I'm kick ass." The rest is history.

That's what I saw during our interview. She was confident, natural and engaging. If you can manage to combine those 3 in an interview, you might stand a chance to be hired. The interview is as much about who you are as it is about what you've done .

So, after a year and a half of working together, which included 2 promotions, endless laughter and amazing work, I bid thee farewell. Your replacement will have some big shoes to fill. And, the new company is lucky you'll continue to share your big ideas.

The Why and The How

I'm constantly telling my account managers to look beyond the numbers and answer the why and the how for our clients. As marketers, that's our number 1 job to our client. Looking beyond the numbers to answer why and how. Clients can look at the numbers. This is a very simple task, which is why numbers in analytics are there. No one hires someone to recount the numbers. They hire people to make the numbers tell a story.

Being a storyteller is what is going to set you apart from the competition.

The competition of another agency, the competition of your coworkers or the competition of impressing your boss. You absolutely must look beyond the numbers to tell the story.

Let's start with the most basic and work from there. In order to tell a story, you must first know the history. Every good story begins with a "Once upon a time..." Your performance story does the same thing. Once upon a time your visits, your conversions, your metrics were this. Without knowing the history, it makes it difficult to tell a compelling story. What is your starting point? How much of the story do you have and are you missing, and can you go to a person that can teach you the history.

(To go on a side tangent, when I've seen accounts transferred from one person to the next, one of the most difficult hurdles to leap is knowing what happened in the past. Annotate everything in Analytics. After every client call you should make a contact report, send this out to the client and save it in a folder that is accessible by everyone. Make sure your reporting notes are thorough and accurate. If there were discrepancies, then go back and annotate them.)

Now it's time for the plot. The meat of your story lies in the bridge between the opening and the closing. What discoveries have you made? Climb down the rabbit hole and keep unraveling. Discover the why and the how. You must constantly be asking yourself questions as your build your story. Often we get bogged down in the numbers and don't take a second to pull back to discover if there were real world events that affected the numbers. Natural disasters, tourist attractions, airlines now flying direct, PR, competitor going out of business, the list goes on. Was there a website change, code broken, website down time or a social media push? Keep digging to find out what the plot of your story is.

Why is this happening? How is this possible?

Finally, the conclusion. Voldemort has the elder wand, so what are you going to do about it, Potter? Now that you know the history, and you've drawn the line between then and now, what measures are you going to take to fix it? Granted, if your story is positive, then we'll live happily ever after, increasing performance as we feast in the castle. But, if your story is dramatic, it's up to you to provide the happy ending. What did you learn during your story that will help you save the day? Use the story to craft your strategy. Are you heading in the wrong direction? Is there something new you need to try? Do you need to make tweaks? Your conclusion is an action that will lead you to your next story. You'll always have a to be continued, that's the beauty of internet marketing. You can easily create sequels, spinoffs, trilogies, volumes, it's never ending.

If you can become a great data storyteller, well, you'll live like you've created and hidden horcruxes all around.

(For non-Potter fans, all 3 of you, that means forever)

The Art of Discovery

On every pitch I make one of the initial points I bring up is, "Before we can start building your strategy, we'll first begin our discovery." Not once has a potential client asked me, "What's involved with your discovery?"

I don't think it's that they just don't care. No, I think it's that it just sounds like they understand it. Let me do discovery insinuates a bit of a "we got this, don't worry about it" tone. The truth is something that often gets ignored is vital to helping me understand just what our client needs. It's the cornerstone piece of every relationship I'm engaged it. The discovery portion, if not done right, can be the difference between a $2,000 a month client and a $10,000 a month client. Too often I've seen companies lose their asses on clients when the proper discovery session wasn't conducted.

I don't believe my methods for discovery are absolutely correct, but it at least gives me an idea of just how much work needs to be done and what our chances of success are.

Step 1. Your Client's Website.

The first place you want to begin discovery is on your client's website. This is where you want to check for content, how much is there, how well is it written, is there a content strategy, is there an interlinking strategy?

Once you have this established, it's time to look at the technical health of the website. Check for canonical URLs, run a site crawl and look at the structure of the code.

Step 2. Back Links.

This could be a continuation of Step 1, but let's go ahead and separate it out. Depending on what you find while looking at the back links, this could be the difference between a normal client and a needle in the haystack client. If your client has shady back links you could find yourself spending an inordinate amount of time trying to get these cleaned up. Before you engage with a client, you need to know that this could be on your horizon.

Step 3. SEMRush Data.

SEMRush is my favorite tool to use for keyword discovery. Unless you're able to get access to your potential client's Webmaster Tools, Analytics, and AdWords it's the best place to go to get an idea of the keywords your client is ranked on.

Step 4. Social Media Knowledge.

Is your potential client participating in social media? How many followers? How often are they posting? Is it getting any engagement? Do the  posts make sense for what your client is doing? How often are the posting? What could be done improve? Ask yourself these questions as you look through their Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, etc.

Step 5. Analytics Code.

Is their analytics code set up correctly? Check to make sure, because if it's not you need to fix it and prepare to spend the next year reminding them why your numbers look so much worse than their last agency (because they were lying!!).

Step 6. Rinse and Repeat for Their Competitors.

Now that you have an idea about where your potential client is, do the same thing for their top 3 competitors. Once you have this information, you'll be able to know how quickly you can dominate.

Do What You Love

People bitch about work. I bitch about work. My coworkers bitch about work. My friends bitch about work. Work bitches about work. Everyone at some point bitches about work.

The fact is there are aspects of every job that bother you. Whether it's small and insignificant or large and overbearing, there's something that bothers you about your job. This is completely normal. What isn't normal is being stuck in a job that makes you miserable. I know a shocking amount of people who hate their job and as a result are just miserable.

It's amazing the excuses people make for sticking with a job they hate. "I don't have enough experience." "I don't have time to find anything new." "There aren't any cool jobs out there." Really the reason much more simple. "I'm lazy." The fact is it's 2013 and there are a shitton of jobs out there that will make you happy.

Nicole Lapin of Recessionista has been tweeting about surprising jobs that make decent money. Let's hit the highlights:

• Body-part model. Average $55,000/yr, no degree required!
• Ice Cream Taster! Average $56,000/year, start w/listings at local universities or hospitals.
• Embalmer. $45,060 a year, hair/makeup skills needed (and a strong stomach.)
• Land Surveyor. Quickly work your way up to a decent six-figure income
• eBay Seller. "I am a college dropout who makes $70,000 a year selling clothing and shoes from thrift stores and factory outlets on eBay, working from home," says golfkent.

You can make money doing what you love. If you love ice cream, then taste away. There is no reason to live your life in misery. Go out and be awesome.

What Derek Jeter Can Teach Us All

Derek Jeter is my favorite baseball. I'm 32 years old and I have a favorite baseball player. Classify me as you wish.

Let's run down the stats, shall we?

18 years in the Majors

Rookie of the Year

5 Time World Champion

World Series MVP

Yankees All-Time Career Hits leader, Games Played and Stolen Bases (THE FRIGGIN' YANKEES)

13 Time All-Star

5 Time Golden Glove Winner

5 Time Silver Slugger

All-Time Short Stop Hits Leader

Countless Hopes and Dreams Sex Baskets Distributed (2 links there, both well worth a read)

Currently 11th on the All-Time Hits List

Think about that for a moment. Jeets needs 16 hits this year to be #8 on the All-Time Hits list, sitting just 100 hits away from Carl Yastrzemski. Unbelievable.

What impresses me most about Jeter, outside of giving out gift baskets to girls he's "Captain Clutched," is his leadership. Consider what an absolute mess the Yankees have been since bringing A-Rod on ('09 excluded). Yet there's Jeets,being low-key, consistent and awesome around the clock. Upholding the values of his organization even through a heap of horrible decisions. He ends last season, at what 38 years old, by fracturing his left ankle in Game 1 of the ALCS. A year later, today actually, he's back in the lineup as a DH. What 39 year old is able to rehab that quickly? Jeets, that's who.

What's the point of this, outside of going on about how much I love Jeets? I think we could all stand to be a little more like Jeter. Under the spotlight Jeter keeps his cool. On the biggest stage is when he's at his best. And when criticized, he embraces it and sees it as a challenge. We could stand to be more clutch on the biggest stage.

Eh, who am I kidding. The point of this was to talk about how awesome Derek Jeter is.

Greatest fade ever.

Music Appreciation - July

On my old blog, one of my favorite and most well received post was the new music post. In it I would talk about new albums and artists I've discovered one way or another. People enjoyed it and I loved writing it. I'm resurrecting it, because I think talking about amazing things others are doing is important. And, because you might be new to me, it's best I go ahead and give you some of my favorite bands as a frame of reference. If we don't like the same kind of music, you probably won't care much about this series.

Frightened Rabbit

I've had the incredibly lucky pleasure of discovering this band from Glasgow early in their careers, discovered on the Indie Feed podcast. Pedestrian Verse is their 4th studio album and I was concerned considering their move from FatCat records to Atlantic. It did not disappoint. Check out the whole damn catalog. You won't regret it.

Ben Folds

I genuinely feel bad for people who didn't fall in love with Ben Folds Five in the 90s. You've missed some incredible music and some really incredible concerts. Well, guess what, it's not too late. Get on it. Might as well start with the newest album, The Sound of the Life of the Mind.

Gangsta Rap

Yep, when people as me what kind of music I like, my answer is sad, white bastard music and 90s gangsta rap. Fine and the occasional pop song. I love Dre, Snoop, 2Pac, Eazy, Jigga, Biggy, Bone Thugs and Cube. There are actually quite a few post 90s rappers I'm into like Childish Gambino, N.E.R.D., Kendrick Lamar and Kid Cudi. See, I'm evolving.

Alright, now that we're on the same page, let's get to 3 albums you must listen to now.

Alpha Rev

Alpha Rev is a Texas band from Austin. I can't say enough about how amazing they are. Sing Loud would be where I started. Once you're hooked, then go ahead and download the whole album. Dallas folks, they're playing at the Granada on 7/12. And, if you're in LA, check them out at Hotel Cafe on July 17th.

The Oh Hellos

Let's stick to Texas bands for now. The Oh Hellos are friggin excellent. Let' s let them give us their bio, "The Oh Hellos are Maggie and Tyler Heath, intentionally-independent self-produced music-making siblings hailing from the great state of Texas. Their influences range from Los Campesinos! and The Lumineers to Sufjan Stevens and The Middle East, bending and blending styles and genres into a unique mixture of eclectic folk rock." Have a listen to Hello My Old Heart and thank me in the comments.

Youngblood Hawke

Youngblood Hawke is out of LA. By now, you've probably heard of these guys and if you haven't, well, it's time you did. This band is a windows rolled down on a long drive kind of band. So, if you like good, fun music, you'll like Youngblood Hawke. Check out We Come Running and Stars (Hold On), then buy the album Wake Up.

The Speed of News

I found myself fascinated with how news travels today in light of the unfortunate Asiana jetliner from South Korea plane crash at San Francisco International Airport. It appeared as though Twitter was sent into lightening speed with accurate information regarding the accident, while the rest of the possible news outlets struggled to catch up.

At 12:29 CT, there was a tweet from Krista Seiden, @kristaseiden, with an eyewitness account of seeing a plane crash as she boarded her flight at SFO. Then at 12:30 CT, a retweet from Adam Singer, @AdamSinger, is what brought the crash to my attention.

At 12:38 CT, the first traditional news outlet, San Francisco's KTVU Fox2 announced via Twitter that they were gathering news with a story to come.

At 12:48 CT, MSNBC was kicking a soccerball around to each other.

At 1:06 CT, the first major news story was out on the New York Times.

At 1:13 CT, a tweet was sent out by David Eun, @Eunner, who was a passenger aboard the flight.

At 1:22 CT, SFGate's Twitter reported the crash, as reported by the AP. That's right, San Francisco's own newspaper had to quote the AP in order to report on a story that happened in their backyard.

2 minutes later, at 1:24 CT, The Chronicle had its story out on SFGate.

At 1:26 CT, Obama's Twitter was discussing Immigration reform. Coincidentally, as a flight crashes in the US from South Korea.

At 2:00 CT, the first Facebook update using the hashtag #asiana is recorded by Steve Curry, who has 28 followers.

At 2:12 CT, my mom texted me to ask if I knew anyone on the flight. I guess she assumes I know everyone in San Francisco.

At 2:24 CT, the first post happens in my Facebook timeline. This was a link to David Eun's twitter post. A full 2 hours after everyone else had been discussing it.

Yes, this is entirely based off my friends, who I follow and where I get my news. However, a majority of the people I'm friends with are based in San Francisco. Some of these same friends posted something on Twitter and not at all on Facebook. The social networks have always been known to serve different audiences, but it's fascinating that Facebook is becoming so far removed from providing anything relevant outside of baby photos, humblebrags, checkins and sponsored posts.

The 5 Second Rule

I know within the first 5 seconds of an interview whether or not I'm going to hire someone. I'm not 100% sure if this is a good or a bad thing, but it's a thing I'm seemingly stuck with.

I've tried to change this habit by asking those questions that every interviewer asks. Let's do a quick run down:

1. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 2. How do you keep yourself organized? 3. Do you work better alone or in teams? 4. What was your day to day like at such and such job? 5. What do you want to achieve in your time here?

The truth is there isn't an answer in the world to these questions that will make me change my mind. Those questions are shit. Granted, I give everyone the same respect they deserve, but in my head I'm feeling bad that there's no chance I want to work with them. I often bring someone else in the interview with me who can offer those important encouraging looks. Then after the interview is over, they immediately say the inevitable, "Yeah, I didn't like them." "Yep, me either." (Side note: I have some world class encouraging look givers at my side. It's incredible how their looks of affirmation can single-handedly carry a bad interview.)

I'll even do a second interview in some cases, even though my decision was already made. Want to come in to present to us, so we can see how well you do in front of people? Doesn't that sound fun? The interview is your presentation. If you can't present yourself in a way makes me want to hire you at the interview, then you probably can't present on a topic you likely don't know much about anyway.

What is my weird criteria that occurs within the first 5 seconds of an interview? Glad you asked. Here's another list:

1. Stand up: There are few things I dislike more than when someone remains sitting when the people there to interview them walks in. Reaching across the table while seated to shake our hands? You're better than that.

2. The Hand Shake: You're trying to interview for a job and you can't properly shake hands and look someone in the eyes? Why did you even come into the office today? I can't comprehend how parents raise children who can't shake someone's hand. It just creases me so much.

3. Likeability. From the first sentence you speak, I know whether or not we'll work well together and whether or not you'll work well with my clients.

4. Dress for the Part. I'm not a suit guy. Well, that is to say I prefer not to wear suits, but will when the situation calls for it. I had not interviewed for a job in like 6 years when I moved back to Dallas. The agency that I had been working at had a strict no suit policy. Therefore, I didn't own a suit. It's true. I was a Sales Director that didn't own a suit. I received a call on Monday to come interview for an agency in Dallas on Tuesday. I quickly got myself to the mall, bought a suit and expedited the tailoring. The interview went well and I got a call on Wednesday wanting me back again on Thursday. Well, shit. Back to the mall, bought another suit, expedited the tailoring and killed the interview. The point is, and you've heard it a thousand times before, dress for the interview.

So, that's it. 5 seconds into the interview and I'll know whether or not I'm going to hire you. Of course, if someone was ever smart enough to find this article before an interview, 5 seconds in asks if they go they got the job and they didn't meet those 4 criteria? I may have to hire for a newly created 5th reason. They've got balls.

The Blocking and Tackling

As we're pulling up to the offices of one of the biggest pitches I have ever been involved in, I had absolutely no doubt that there was no chance we'd get the business. We could have gone in there, given the greatest presentation we'd ever given (which we did) and I knew we'd not only walk out of there without the business, but they wouldn't even do drinks with us after.

Let's flashback a bit. I get a call from a friend saying that this massive company she knows well is looking for a new marketing agency and that she recommended us. Leads like this don't come around that often and when they do you'd better be ready.

We weren't ready.

At the time of the call, my company had just purchased and merged with another company. Everyone was excited about the merge, but with the merge came a new CMO. A CMO stands for Chief Marketing Officer, not Chief Making-Sales-Happen Officer. As sales director, I had my reservations, but you play the hand you're dealt.

The CMO takes the lead on the account and immediately shoots for the moon. There's no discovery call. The tickets are purchased to fly across country in one week. The major concerns are not about what strategy is best for the client, or how we can help leap the hurdles they had been facing with the last agency. No, the concern was how much money we could charge the client, how many services we could force them into and showing off a brand new state-of-the-art (partnered) reporting system.

The pitch goes according to plan, just how we wanted it. The guys take it all in, just like we wanted it. The VP of Marketing leans back in his chair, then leans forward and in the thickest Georgia accent says, "Guys, this is great. It truly is. You all come highly recommended. Your presentation was excellent. Seems like y'all have a good company. But, guys that presentation was way up here (hands in the sky). I'm looking for something down here (hands at mid chest). You guys are trying to throw touchdowns. That's great, it really is. But, fellas, I'm looking for the blocking and the tackling. Show that to me."

We couldn't show that to him. We had barely worked together for 2 weeks and we damn sure didn't know how our companies were going to work together. We tried to scramble, but it was too late. We didn't listen, or we didn't care to listen in the first place. Instead we threw up our own agenda and tried to fool the client into thinking it was what they wanted. They knew what they wanted, we just didn't ask.

It's that simple. Ask what someone wants and they will tell you.

We ended up eating steak and drinking martinis alone on a Tuesday night in North Carolina talking about how it was remotely possible we had failed.