May 2, 2025 • 13 mins
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, everybody, welcome to another episode of
the NerdBrand podcast.
We're counting down to our250th episode and guess what?
Nerdbrand's five years old WheeUp next on this episode.
You know, let's talk aboutproject management and
organization and stuff.
Welcome to this episode of theNerdBrand Podcast, where I wish
(00:44):
I had my project manager herewith me because she would
pontificate on this.
But project management, whenyou're working on something for
clients, it's so important.
If you're a marketing directorand you're interacting with your
agency, it's really good tostay on those meetings and meet
with them every week because youknow, or whatever your schedule
is, maybe once a month.
But to kind of stay ahead ofwhat campaigns are you going to
(01:06):
run?
Well, what's a campaign?
Well, hopefully, if you're amarketing director, you know
what a campaign is.
But let's lay out some assetsfor a campaign or deliverables
or whatever.
You're comfortable saying.
Social media posts, not Facebook, that's not a channel.
I mean, it's a highway, butit's really.
You know, social media is achannel.
So, social media, whatevernetwork you are on and no, do
(01:31):
not be on all of them, just bein the ones that matter and you
need to make sure that you haveyour team ready to go to
understand like, okay, I need agraphic designer to make artwork
or I need a photographer totake some photos and then I need
a copywriter to write some copy.
And if you're that person anddoing all of that at once, god
bless you, because I don't seehow you don't jump off a
(01:51):
building into a stream that'smoving, filled with barbed wire,
because it has to be maddening,and I do know I've been there
once upon a time.
You need a team of people andat the helm of that is going to
be a creative director andaccount manager and, of course,
wrangling in all those people isyour project manager, because
they know the deadline, theyknow it's got to get done, they
(02:13):
know it needs to get done, theycare that it gets done and they
care about when it gets done.
They don't really care so muchabout how.
How is probably going to be onthe creative director and the
account manager, because that'sgoing to get into quality and
you should be proofing that workand when things happen, things
slip by.
We've had a few boo-boos andyou just kind of have to fix
them.
In the grand scheme of things,if you have two to three of
(02:35):
those a year, who cares?
It'll be okay.
Your audiences will forgive you.
In case you haven't noticed,the news cycle changes so fast.
The news can't even keep upanymore, so it'll be fine.
One of the primary ways that Ithink it's the best way to kind
of organize all this stuff is toget you a CRM with marketing
and sales tools.
To have a CRM is one thing.
Customer relationshipmanagement If you get one of
(02:57):
those, you can get one of thosefor free.
You got emails, you gotaddresses, you've got all kinds
of things in there.
You've got addresses, you'vegot all kinds of things in there
.
But your marketing team isgoing to know they're going to
be like set up a campaign inthere, they're going to set up a
workflow, they want to segmentlists, they want to be able to
manage social media posts fromit.
They want to be able to sendemails from it.
If you're interested in thesekinds of things and a tool that
(03:17):
can track it, track the revenueon that and see your return on
spend on your investment,contact NerdBrandAgency at
NerdBrandAgencycom and we'll getyou hooked up.
We'll hook you up with HubSpot.
It actually does work.
And, yeah, you know, dependingon what your sales are and your
volume is, yeah, you know you'llprobably not like the price,
(03:38):
it'll be expensive, but you know, if you're going to make 50
grand 60,000 a year, is that$1,000 a month?
If it's that, is it really thatbig of a deal?
Because when you get on anyother email marketing platform
and they're different for areason, hubspot's more for
outreach, b2b, that kind of athing.
It's not really meant forretailers, but on-round
(04:00):
retailers now have an option nowand we actually work with that
as well, that platform, and soif you're interested in that.
But you know, you can't reallyrun an effective campaign if you
just don't have the assets.
You've got to have your socialmedia posts.
You've got three differenttypes of posts, three different
types of copy, and I really hope, if the artwork is the same,
that that's at least the onlything that's similar between all
(04:22):
three, because you are talkingto a different audience.
Facebook is a backyard barbecue.
Linkedin is, you know, yourresume type site, professional
right.
Instagram, of course, it's kindof like everybody looking
through a photo album.
Still, I mean, you know you mayhave a reel here and there on
any one of those, but at the endof the day you kind of have to
understand the mindset of theaudience that's there, so maybe
(04:43):
don't use so many emojis onLinkedIn is what I'm saying.
Landing pages are pages that arewhere people need to go, that
you want them to make onedecision, and one decision only.
Fill out that form, click thatthing, call that number and your
campaign will drive people tothat.
Now, if you've got a crappywebsite, we've got a whole other
conversation we've got to talkabout.
(05:03):
If you've got a crappy logo ora dated logo or anything going
on.
That was done in Canva.
I'm sorry for you people inCanva.
I know you love it, but reallywe really have to talk about,
like, the repetitiveness ofcertain things.
It's starting to look like clipart and you want to be very
careful.
You got to stand out.
There's a local brand that soldenergy drinks and the can was
very messy in its design.
(05:24):
A lot of people liked it buthonestly, studies have shown
that if you clean it up, make ita little bit more tight and
professional.
Um, you know, sales increasecelsius, I'm talking about them.
Check out that.
Google celsius and you'll findout a case study on that.
It's fascinating to read aboutthat and what they had to do and
(05:44):
how their visuals and how theywere perceived and their
creative, improved things.
It can be a major block forconversions, regardless of your
ad spend.
So you have that, all of that tosay how many of those do you
need to run in a month?
So this is where your accountmanager and you have to have a
conversation.
(06:05):
You know, because you're likewell, I don't really know, I
don't know how many campaigns Ineed to do in a month.
Well, this is where theseaccount management meetings
become important to be at,because in those meetings, your
agency is not your CFO.
They don't understand yourmargins as well as you think.
That's not their job.
Their job is to run ads and tomake campaigns.
(06:25):
Now they may be told what themargins are, and that's great.
If you're like, hey, man, 10% ismy margin, okay, well, that
doesn't mean anything to me.
Can you run a 10% off coupon ifyou're a retailer or if you're
an online store, or can you do abuy one, get one?
I mean, if we're in that arena,then I don't really care.
(06:45):
I need to know if can you dothat and what you're able to
absorb and still make money onyour profit margin on that
number.
That's something you've got toprovide to me, unless I charge
you thousands more a month andwe do business development and
that's a whole other mess ofthings I don't want to get into,
but it is out there.
If you need that, then Isuggest that's who you look for.
(07:07):
But you want to make sure thatyou have when you organize a
campaign.
You have a budget.
You have a budget.
Now, if you're on retainer withan agency, it's already there.
That's literally what you'repaying for.
Now.
That doesn't include paid adspend.
Unless you have a really,really high retainer amount and
by that I mean 7, 10, 12, 20,000a month then you're probably
(07:30):
going to be fine.
But at the end of the day, thereare certain campaigns that
could cost hundreds of thousandsof dollars to run and they run
over a 12 month period maybe aslittle as six months, but 12
months and you have to beprepared for how you're going to
be able to cover that versushow much you make on a job.
So ask yourself what is onecustomer of yours worth and how
(07:52):
often do you close an account?
These are important things,believe it or not.
Hubspot tracks this verycleanly and very well in your
CRM because it also puts inthere, your Salesforce people
and not Salesforce, but yourSalesforce people.
And that force is the.
I say force because it justsounds cool, but you want to
have those people definitelytracking like are they closing
(08:15):
people?
Does it take them 60 days toclose a deal?
I mean, how many deals arestalled?
You know this can all affectrevenue.
But the primary thing here tofocus on when you're doing a
campaign to justify your cost,when you want to really get
focused in on does marketingwork?
Well, first of all, yes,otherwise Nike wouldn't spend $4
billion on it a year.
So at the end of the day, youwant to definitely have a tool
(08:38):
that can tell you, like, what'sgoing on and give you that
metric, because now you havesomewhere to start to improve
your revenue stream.
So if one sale is going togenerate $100,000 and you're
paying an agency $5,000 a month,I don't think it should be an
issue, especially if your costsare really low.
I mean, I know places thattheir inventory for the entire
(09:01):
month is less than $4,000 justfor inventory, but they can make
$10,000 just on in-store sales,but they can make $10,000 just
on in-store sales.
So you never really know, untilyou really dig into your
numbers what you're actuallyable to cover and pay for.
Now there are exceptions where,if the business has had a lot of
bad debt, it's had a lot ofmistakes made, then, yes, that
(09:23):
becomes a major problem anddefinitely hinders campaigns in
their ability to be effective.
So, before you get into thislevel of marketing, you really
have to take a step back andlook at the business and say is
it healthy enough for this levelof marketing?
Can I sustain this level ofmarketing based on how many
people can I sell to that wantmy product or want my service
(09:45):
that are here?
Because most businesses failbecause, well, let's be honest,
they just don't have a market.
Nobody wants to buy.
There's nobody there.
Maybe the population's notthere, you know, I mean
demographics matter, you know.
So you need to do some researchbefore you'd really dive in
head first.
But if you kind of, if you havea good idea of what your
numbers are and you know, monthto month, what you're going to
(10:05):
be able to make and what you'regoing to be able to do, it's
totally worth it.
Switching gears a little bit, um, uh, dealing with, you know,
the past.
Oh man, it is May, so fourmonths.
Uh, nerd brand is five yearsold.
Wow, we're five years old.
We're old enough to go tokindergarten.
(10:27):
Um, mitch has been with me forsix years.
You know Michaela going onthree.
We have.
We've grown up in the businessreally together as a team and
you know we are quiet when wegot a lot going on, like a
(10:47):
dinging in the background you'rehearing on this mic is my
project manager saying, hey,where's the things?
And so I'm going to jump offhere and get with her to let her
know that I did my job.
But at the end of the day it'slike it's been amazing five
years.
We're on, I think, two.
This is episode 246.
So the podcast has been goingon for the same amount of time.
(11:09):
When you do one episode a week,that happens.
I know many people have askedme in the past does podcasting
have a return on investment?
It sure does, just not veryquickly.
So there is that.
I hope in the future to haveMitch and Michaela on.
Mitch is dealing with some now.
So, uh, you know silent prayerrequests, I guess, if you want
(11:32):
to be that way about it.
Um, when people usually saythat I always respond with
chainsaws and bones, I don'tknow, I'm just weird, but at the
end of the day, um, we aredoing pretty good.
We're pretty uh solid uh onthis side, but we could always
use more business.
Like anyone else, we wouldalways like to work on nice
projects, cool projects.
I mean, there's there's so manyfascinating brands and so many
(11:54):
fascinating uh products that arein Louisville, kentucky and
Southern Indiana and, uh, youknow, until you get started, you
really don't know how thingsare going to turn out.
So, but if you aren't sure,just ask.
Just ask, I don't mind, uh,just you know.
Just, uh, don't, don't, don'ttake us for a ride.
Just be honest and say like,yeah, I don't think you guys are
(12:16):
a fit for my project.
Well, that's okay, that's cool,and we do project by project
basis.
By the way, um, a lot of peoplethink we only do retainer
monthly billing, but no, we doproject based work as well.
So if you got something in mindyou need some help with whether
that's a print job, digital jobor whatever it may be, call the
nerds.
We're at nerdbrandagencycom andif you like this podcast, go to
(12:37):
nerdbrandagencycom slashpodcast and listen to the latest
episodes.
Sign up for our newsletter.
We are watching that.
We got a few people on there,but I see those people all the
time, so I'm just like, eh, Idon't know.
I'll just let you know how itwent and if you're listening
(12:57):
right now, you know who you are.
Anyhow, that's all we got forthis week.
We'll see you next week.
And remember, keep your nerdbrand strong.
Well, everybody, welcome to another episode of
the NerdBrand podcast.
We're counting down to our250th episode and guess what?
Nerdbrand's five years old WheeUp next on this episode.
You know, let's talk aboutproject management and
organization and stuff.
Welcome to this episode of theNerdBrand Podcast, where I wish
(00:44):
I had my project manager herewith me because she would
pontificate on this.
But project management, whenyou're working on something for
clients, it's so important.
If you're a marketing directorand you're interacting with your
agency, it's really good tostay on those meetings and meet
with them every week because youknow, or whatever your schedule
is, maybe once a month.
But to kind of stay ahead ofwhat campaigns are you going to
(01:06):
run?
Well, what's a campaign?
Well, hopefully, if you're amarketing director, you know
what a campaign is.
But let's lay out some assetsfor a campaign or deliverables
or whatever.
You're comfortable saying.
Social media posts, not Facebook, that's not a channel.
I mean, it's a highway, butit's really.
You know, social media is achannel.
So, social media, whatevernetwork you are on and no, do
(01:31):
not be on all of them, just bein the ones that matter and you
need to make sure that you haveyour team ready to go to
understand like, okay, I need agraphic designer to make artwork
or I need a photographer totake some photos and then I need
a copywriter to write some copy.
And if you're that person anddoing all of that at once, god
bless you, because I don't seehow you don't jump off a
(01:51):
building into a stream that'smoving, filled with barbed wire,
because it has to be maddening,and I do know I've been there
once upon a time.
You need a team of people andat the helm of that is going to
be a creative director andaccount manager and, of course,
wrangling in all those people isyour project manager, because
they know the deadline, theyknow it's got to get done, they
(02:13):
know it needs to get done, theycare that it gets done and they
care about when it gets done.
They don't really care so muchabout how.
How is probably going to be onthe creative director and the
account manager, because that'sgoing to get into quality and
you should be proofing that workand when things happen, things
slip by.
We've had a few boo-boos andyou just kind of have to fix
them.
In the grand scheme of things,if you have two to three of
(02:35):
those a year, who cares?
It'll be okay.
Your audiences will forgive you.
In case you haven't noticed,the news cycle changes so fast.
The news can't even keep upanymore, so it'll be fine.
One of the primary ways that Ithink it's the best way to kind
of organize all this stuff is toget you a CRM with marketing
and sales tools.
To have a CRM is one thing.
Customer relationshipmanagement If you get one of
(02:57):
those, you can get one of thosefor free.
You got emails, you gotaddresses, you've got all kinds
of things in there.
You've got addresses, you'vegot all kinds of things in there
.
But your marketing team isgoing to know they're going to
be like set up a campaign inthere, they're going to set up a
workflow, they want to segmentlists, they want to be able to
manage social media posts fromit.
They want to be able to sendemails from it.
If you're interested in thesekinds of things and a tool that
(03:17):
can track it, track the revenueon that and see your return on
spend on your investment,contact NerdBrandAgency at
NerdBrandAgencycom and we'll getyou hooked up.
We'll hook you up with HubSpot.
It actually does work.
And, yeah, you know, dependingon what your sales are and your
volume is, yeah, you know you'llprobably not like the price,
(03:38):
it'll be expensive, but you know, if you're going to make 50
grand 60,000 a year, is that$1,000 a month?
If it's that, is it really thatbig of a deal?
Because when you get on anyother email marketing platform
and they're different for areason, hubspot's more for
outreach, b2b, that kind of athing.
It's not really meant forretailers, but on-round
(04:00):
retailers now have an option nowand we actually work with that
as well, that platform, and soif you're interested in that.
But you know, you can't reallyrun an effective campaign if you
just don't have the assets.
You've got to have your socialmedia posts.
You've got three differenttypes of posts, three different
types of copy, and I really hope, if the artwork is the same,
that that's at least the onlything that's similar between all
(04:22):
three, because you are talkingto a different audience.
Facebook is a backyard barbecue.
Linkedin is, you know, yourresume type site, professional
right.
Instagram, of course, it's kindof like everybody looking
through a photo album.
Still, I mean, you know you mayhave a reel here and there on
any one of those, but at the endof the day you kind of have to
understand the mindset of theaudience that's there, so maybe
(04:43):
don't use so many emojis onLinkedIn is what I'm saying.
Landing pages are pages that arewhere people need to go, that
you want them to make onedecision, and one decision only.
Fill out that form, click thatthing, call that number and your
campaign will drive people tothat.
Now, if you've got a crappywebsite, we've got a whole other
conversation we've got to talkabout.
(05:03):
If you've got a crappy logo ora dated logo or anything going
on.
That was done in Canva.
I'm sorry for you people inCanva.
I know you love it, but reallywe really have to talk about,
like, the repetitiveness ofcertain things.
It's starting to look like clipart and you want to be very
careful.
You got to stand out.
There's a local brand that soldenergy drinks and the can was
very messy in its design.
(05:24):
A lot of people liked it buthonestly, studies have shown
that if you clean it up, make ita little bit more tight and
professional.
Um, you know, sales increasecelsius, I'm talking about them.
Check out that.
Google celsius and you'll findout a case study on that.
It's fascinating to read aboutthat and what they had to do and
(05:44):
how their visuals and how theywere perceived and their
creative, improved things.
It can be a major block forconversions, regardless of your
ad spend.
So you have that, all of that tosay how many of those do you
need to run in a month?
So this is where your accountmanager and you have to have a
conversation.
(06:05):
You know, because you're likewell, I don't really know, I
don't know how many campaigns Ineed to do in a month.
Well, this is where theseaccount management meetings
become important to be at,because in those meetings, your
agency is not your CFO.
They don't understand yourmargins as well as you think.
That's not their job.
Their job is to run ads and tomake campaigns.
(06:25):
Now they may be told what themargins are, and that's great.
If you're like, hey, man, 10% ismy margin, okay, well, that
doesn't mean anything to me.
Can you run a 10% off coupon ifyou're a retailer or if you're
an online store, or can you do abuy one, get one?
I mean, if we're in that arena,then I don't really care.
(06:45):
I need to know if can you dothat and what you're able to
absorb and still make money onyour profit margin on that
number.
That's something you've got toprovide to me, unless I charge
you thousands more a month andwe do business development and
that's a whole other mess ofthings I don't want to get into,
but it is out there.
If you need that, then Isuggest that's who you look for.
(07:07):
But you want to make sure thatyou have when you organize a
campaign.
You have a budget.
You have a budget.
Now, if you're on retainer withan agency, it's already there.
That's literally what you'repaying for.
Now.
That doesn't include paid adspend.
Unless you have a really,really high retainer amount and
by that I mean 7, 10, 12, 20,000a month then you're probably
(07:30):
going to be fine.
But at the end of the day, thereare certain campaigns that
could cost hundreds of thousandsof dollars to run and they run
over a 12 month period maybe aslittle as six months, but 12
months and you have to beprepared for how you're going to
be able to cover that versushow much you make on a job.
So ask yourself what is onecustomer of yours worth and how
(07:52):
often do you close an account?
These are important things,believe it or not.
Hubspot tracks this verycleanly and very well in your
CRM because it also puts inthere, your Salesforce people
and not Salesforce, but yourSalesforce people.
And that force is the.
I say force because it justsounds cool, but you want to
have those people definitelytracking like are they closing
(08:15):
people?
Does it take them 60 days toclose a deal?
I mean, how many deals arestalled?
You know this can all affectrevenue.
But the primary thing here tofocus on when you're doing a
campaign to justify your cost,when you want to really get
focused in on does marketingwork?
Well, first of all, yes,otherwise Nike wouldn't spend $4
billion on it a year.
So at the end of the day, youwant to definitely have a tool
(08:38):
that can tell you, like, what'sgoing on and give you that
metric, because now you havesomewhere to start to improve
your revenue stream.
So if one sale is going togenerate $100,000 and you're
paying an agency $5,000 a month,I don't think it should be an
issue, especially if your costsare really low.
I mean, I know places thattheir inventory for the entire
(09:01):
month is less than $4,000 justfor inventory, but they can make
$10,000 just on in-store sales,but they can make $10,000 just
on in-store sales.
So you never really know, untilyou really dig into your
numbers what you're actuallyable to cover and pay for.
Now there are exceptions where,if the business has had a lot of
bad debt, it's had a lot ofmistakes made, then, yes, that
(09:23):
becomes a major problem anddefinitely hinders campaigns in
their ability to be effective.
So, before you get into thislevel of marketing, you really
have to take a step back andlook at the business and say is
it healthy enough for this levelof marketing?
Can I sustain this level ofmarketing based on how many
people can I sell to that wantmy product or want my service
(09:45):
that are here?
Because most businesses failbecause, well, let's be honest,
they just don't have a market.
Nobody wants to buy.
There's nobody there.
Maybe the population's notthere, you know, I mean
demographics matter, you know.
So you need to do some researchbefore you'd really dive in
head first.
But if you kind of, if you havea good idea of what your
numbers are and you know, monthto month, what you're going to
(10:05):
be able to make and what you'regoing to be able to do, it's
totally worth it.
Switching gears a little bit, um, uh, dealing with, you know,
the past.
Oh man, it is May, so fourmonths.
Uh, nerd brand is five yearsold.
Wow, we're five years old.
We're old enough to go tokindergarten.
(10:27):
Um, mitch has been with me forsix years.
You know Michaela going onthree.
We have.
We've grown up in the businessreally together as a team and
you know we are quiet when wegot a lot going on, like a
(10:47):
dinging in the background you'rehearing on this mic is my
project manager saying, hey,where's the things?
And so I'm going to jump offhere and get with her to let her
know that I did my job.
But at the end of the day it'slike it's been amazing five
years.
We're on, I think, two.
This is episode 246.
So the podcast has been goingon for the same amount of time.
(11:09):
When you do one episode a week,that happens.
I know many people have askedme in the past does podcasting
have a return on investment?
It sure does, just not veryquickly.
So there is that.
I hope in the future to haveMitch and Michaela on.
Mitch is dealing with some now.
So, uh, you know silent prayerrequests, I guess, if you want
(11:32):
to be that way about it.
Um, when people usually saythat I always respond with
chainsaws and bones, I don'tknow, I'm just weird, but at the
end of the day, um, we aredoing pretty good.
We're pretty uh solid uh onthis side, but we could always
use more business.
Like anyone else, we wouldalways like to work on nice
projects, cool projects.
I mean, there's there's so manyfascinating brands and so many
(11:54):
fascinating uh products that arein Louisville, kentucky and
Southern Indiana and, uh, youknow, until you get started, you
really don't know how thingsare going to turn out.
So, but if you aren't sure,just ask.
Just ask, I don't mind, uh,just you know.
Just, uh, don't, don't, don'ttake us for a ride.
Just be honest and say like,yeah, I don't think you guys are
(12:16):
a fit for my project.
Well, that's okay, that's cool,and we do project by project
basis.
By the way, um, a lot of peoplethink we only do retainer
monthly billing, but no, we doproject based work as well.
So if you got something in mindyou need some help with whether
that's a print job, digital jobor whatever it may be, call the
nerds.
We're at nerdbrandagencycom andif you like this podcast, go to
(12:37):
nerdbrandagencycom slashpodcast and listen to the latest
episodes.
Sign up for our newsletter.
We are watching that.
We got a few people on there,but I see those people all the
time, so I'm just like, eh, Idon't know.
I'll just let you know how itwent and if you're listening
(12:57):
right now, you know who you are.
Anyhow, that's all we got forthis week.
We'll see you next week.
And remember, keep your nerdbrand strong.
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