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Stephen: Welcome to Episode 19. Today our special guest is Jason Zotara, founder of Ten26 Media, an agency with expertise over eight different digital advertising platforms, including Google, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube. 

By the way, this episode was recorded on March 27th where we discuss paid digital marketing importance of diversification and what brands can do in light of covid-19. Can't wait to dive in. I'm your host, Stephen Carl talking to you straight from Brooklyn, New York 

Now let's get on the show. 

I'm thrilled to introduce special guest for this episode. Jason Zotara. Jason is the founder on creative director at Ten26 Media, a Denver, Colorado-based business where he's responsible for leading the overall direction of the agency. And during his 20-year career, he's been fortunate enough to collaborate with hundreds of companies from SMBs to Fortune 500s, including Reebok in verticals, such as eCommerce, Travel, Health/Fitness and Automotive. And recently, I overheard someone even give him the nickname “The King of Ads”. 

Welcome to the show, Jason.

Jason Zotara: Hey, thanks so much for having me. Yes, the king of ad thing is something that I'm thinking about incorporating, but I'm not sure how I feel. 

Stephen: It was so great to have you on the show.

Jason Zotara: Thank you.

Stephen:  Even in light of current events, I was just thinking of experts to bring on to help people navigate this marketing world after Covid-19 and your name popped immediately into my head because it's top of mind for people in eCommerce and digital business. So we'll spend some time on Covid-19 since that's a big topic right now. But before that to start off and learn a little bit more about you. So can you tell us about your journey to starting the digital marketing agent Ten26 Media.

Jason Zotara: Yeah, of course. So Ten26 media is a digital marketing agency, but we focus primarily on paid media, so we also offer other service like email, social media. 

But I started the agency mostly around back in 2012. I have a pretty rich background like my father was in traditional radio that grew up around radio, TV, print, advertising and marketing digital space. And then in 2012 I decided to start my own agency, where we focused primarily working with B2B companies, B2C companies, eCommerce, Travel. Really a vast array of clients, but definitely we enjoy working in the eCommerce side. But yes, it's starting an agency. 

Then we have been able to help some amazing clients as you mentioned some earlier in those spaces. And really, our main goal is an agency is to help our clients either make money or save money. And that recipe has shown some great fruit over the time. And now with the New Year, everything is really exciting. And then, you mentioned Covid-19 came around and we could chat more about that. But yes, that's that's what our agency does. And I found it. I merely to allow myself to be an entrepreneur and help clients.

Stephen: Yeah, it's that motivation to help clients achieve their bottom line. So, let's just get right into it. I think we'll just just want to talk through since you handle a lot of different platforms, I think your experience, your broad experience, you're doing Google, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and you're doing it for a lot of different sectors. So your dashboard, I envy your dashboard because you're seeing this very comprehensive view of things, and that's why your perspective is very good. But let's go into paid marketing and just how, before we go into you know why we can talk through, like paid marketing and how it's changed in 2020 from how it was 2-3 years ago. How has it changed now?

Jason Zotara:  Yeah, of course. So I would say primarily around the paid media marketing side. I mean, as anyone who's listening probably have been already been aware of. I mean, we're living in a pay-to-play world. 

I used to manage a social media account a few years back to where we took them from 6,000 fans to 100,000 fans in less than six months. Primarily, we're still getting some good organic traffic, but over…since then, it's definitely been more of a pay to play world to be able to get the awareness that you need. And so that's where the paid media lends itself, especially on the eCommerce world And so, from a marketing perspective, I think what we're seeing and throughout all the different industries of drama, different verticals and the services that we offer, I think a good message to take away from this session is that… There is not one silver bullet…right?

And as much as we love paid media and we do a lot of media and I think manage for that 10 million and adds been alone just over the last few years. So we do a lot of paid media advertisements, so that's great. But with any media, with any channel or any service, I think it's important to look at it from an integrated approach and having a multifaceted approach right. 

And so, paid media is great on its own but when you couple paid media with a great email campaign. that's where kind of incorporates it more. It makes paid media more powerful.

Stephen: Gotcha. Let me go back to pay-to-play because I'm kind of curious about this. 

With pay-to-play, and that's just the idea that you know, let's just say you have 100,000 followers on Instagram like what percentage of is organic traffic like? If you're just doing, if you have 100,000 followers and you're just relying on organic traffic, what percent of people approximately or roughly, are actually seeing that content. Is it 10%? Is it 5%?

Jason Zotara: It’s 1%. It's starting to become like print media. No offensive to print media. It’s a different industry.

Stephen: I remember managing social and instagram. I remember we were getting probably 10-12% consistently of engagement coming from organic and just over time, with advertising. It's kind of similar…so there’s social, right? So there's that social aspect like you're talking about instagram Facebook, where it's definitely a pay to play world. 

But even Google has become even more in the last 1-2 years of that pay-to-play strategy well, like even you can have a great organic strategy, but someone could bid on a page of paper click, add and they're right above you. See all that time and effort that you spent …

So that's where I get from a Social. But also from a Search perspective, in both of those area there's we've been seeing that over, and it's been over the last 5-10 years. Now again, as you mentioned, I've been marketing for 20 years. I’ve been able to see a lot of different things, a lot of it. So it's hard to kind of encapsulate that into a 30-45 minute conversation. 

But from a pay to play world. That's where we're seeing it, both of the social and a search perspective. So hopefully, that helps a little bit.

Stephen: Got it. So let’s go to the silver bullet. Like with someone say so. It's always the silver bullet is a lot of times that new marketing that people get attracted to so like, would someone sees something like TikTok as a silver bullet? Or chatbots?  Something like that… Like the new, sexy former marketing. Yep, like what people sometimes think of as a silver bullet.

Jason Zotara: Well, I would say that's definitely one, right? So and I want to be negative by any means. but kind of one of those things where someone goes to a conference and they come back and they want to change their entire buying process.

Like you said. when I was in the automotive space, when the mobile apps were like the hot thing, right? and every car dealer, they just wanted a mobile apps so everyone would be on the golf course telling another business…so that kind of thing. There's always that challenge of “this is the newest, greatest shiniest thing. But is it right for your business?” And more importantly, does it match your strategy and from when it comes to brand and communications and all that, right? So I definitely think there's areas for that new, shiny object and that stuff. 

When I mean more silver bullet is, “Hey, we're gonna put all of our investment into email or we're gonna put all our investment into search… paid search or social, right. That's kind of what I was meaning more. Because definitely there’s different ways of thinking about it. 

What I was alluding to more was different services. Sometimes you'll have a Web development company. Some of our clients have a web development company. Great, right …Then, you have other clients who they'll have a social agency. They might have a content marketing agency. In the past, I have come around where you know they have different areas of the business with different vendors and different agencies now and our goal ultimately and we've done it with clients is let us handle that. And let us be that one consistent brand voice, that brand message, and you're not reliant on one service to drive your business. 

Especially when you have 15-20 touchpoints Now, researchers show, before anyone takes you engaged with your brand. And so it is important to have that brand consistency across each of those touch points where that’s instagram, whether it's on your search ads, whether it's on your email marketing… all those different facets, they all have to be consistent. And it's easier to be consistent when you're under one roof, whether that's in house or with one agency.

Stephen: Yeah, totally agree. So, you know, I really like the approach that you're talking about with integrated marketing, where it's just, you know, hand over the reins. And I think the messaging part is so important. It's not just someone who understands the Google Ads dashboard or Facebook's Business Manager. But it’s…I think, with all these outreach that we're seeing just the message that I constantly hear is how much creative drives performance. And this is the thing that drives me nuts sometimes.  when I see Facebook ads where the creative has not been updated for a month. “No, you are not gonna perform well unless you're updating creative and understanding what works.” But I think, going back to integrated marketing. On the agency side. I mean, how do you work with clients to develop that messaging and brand voice?

Jason Zotara:  You're definitely right, and I agree with you on your points that you're just sharing. So for us, it's working with the key stakeholders, the leaders of that organization, of that company and making sure that, for example, we have everything from brand guidelines…to…Sometimes it's not what to say but what not to say. 

So having those conversations upfront with our clients and saying, “Okay, here's your goals. Here’s your objectives Here's our key performance indicators per se.” And then coming up with that, having that agreement from the strategy perspective first before we implement anything. 

That's one of the things we focus on is an agency to is making sure that we have the right strategy. Measure twice. Cut once type of right philosophy. So making sure you have strategy first before you start implementing that. Definitely help from an integrated approaches. 

Stephen: Measure twice, cut once. 

Jason Zotara: Yep. It’s a contractor term. 

Stephen: Is that in terms of measuring your results?

Jason Zotara:  Well, just more of like making sure you have the right strategy before you start spending money, right?

I'll have sometimes people call me as a new prospect, and they say, “I want to get the Facebook ad campaigns. I 

want to get him up tomorrow.” It's like, uh, we're probably not right agency for you, right? 

It's always like, “Hey, there's gonna throw stuff to the wall and hope it sticks.” Right for us, what we do is we take the time to understand our client, their industry, their market, who their competitors are, what they're doing, what they're not doing. That kind of stuff is when I'm sharing so having the right strategy, taking the time up front to put in that work. 

A lot of agencies, to be frank, they either don't know or they don't want to do it. Not a lot but there's agencies out there who don't do that necessary upfront work. They want to just do what the client says and get launched right away. So that's where I was kind of measuring. That's what the measure twice cut once scenario. It’s having our strategy first, then when you launch it, you know, I haven't spent a lot of money trying to figure out the right strategy. 

Stephen: The right time to have a conversation about the creative or the brand voices. Yeah, like before you're doing a lot of ads are very committed, like it rolls out into that product-market fit and that the brand voices really speaking to benefits. 

How that the product is gonna transform the consumer because you're not doing that…I think it's hard, though, sometimes, cause yeah, like even we see this on the agency side where it's the brand is seeing it as someone who's running their ads versus a partner who's going to make their company more attractive to the consumer because you're gonna figure out the competitors, you're gonna figure out how that product matches the consumer and how they're going to really want that product.

Jason Zotara: Well, yeah, for example, eCommerce, right? Anyone could sell anything. And what's really gonna separate your product is going to be your brand story and why you're doing what you're doing. Going going back to the Why aspect. 

So understanding, why are you doing what you're doing? What is your product? Why is your product important for those is someone I can remember who told me this? I wish I could, but someone said, “Nobody gives a crap about who you are or what you do.” until you find a way to relate it.

Stephen: Right. No one gives a shit about you. Stop talking about yourself.

Jason Zotara: Right. Unless you can find a way to relate it right back to

So, for eCommerce, for example. we love to do storyboarding. Where we'll break out the whiteboard and bring out the markers, I should say, and go to a white board to start storyboarding. 

Okay, one or  different sections, but it could start off with “Okay, what's your brand story? What's your mission? What’s you’re why?”

And then that helps us with messaging. But then we also look at it from a journey perspective of “Okay, we're selling X and your customers is Y What’s their typical journey and how do we get to Z concept. 

And so, we’ll storyboard all the different touchpoints, whether it’s, for example, we’re doing Google. Okay, they see your ad, they go to a landing …or a product details page. You have different options…. and so we storyboard that whole thing out to really give our clients the idea… understanding here's how it's going to work. Here's how a typical customer or a potential customer not only sees our brand but engages and interacts with our brand, all the way from start to purchase to re-purchase right to multiple purchases. So that's what we really like to focus on… that creative side, but also taking data and analytics and those type of measurements that we see from all the things I mentioned earlier and combining that with a creative, we say kick after creative that separate yourself from your competitors makes to your customers say, “Well, I'm gonna do business with them instead of your competitors” type of thing? 

That’s kind of what separates ourselves as well from our competitors. And all our clients to separate themselves from their competitors. It’s doing that upfront storyboarding and strategy piece.

Stephen: Process is an evil word because it sounds redundant. But when you talk about storyboarding and planning ahead, I think people always have the impression that great content comes from this all-nighter that a really talented copywriter came up with or everyone sticks themselves in a room for 10 hours at the ad agency. 

But it just seems more and more that the real process on that is just breaking down like what someone's life before they had the product and what's their life after…like tying in that whole transformation and making it? Because it's an emotional process, like people don't people. You need to trigger people's emotion. But you need to know what's going on with that customer to do it.

Jason Zotara: Well, yeah, and I think it's important to know…not stay in your lane per se but knowing who you are. 

Because, for example, we worked with one of our previous clients is a pretty large medical research organization. So their messaging, and their why, their messaging in their brand is gonna be completely different from, say, eCommerce who sells home decor.

And I also think it's important to have somebody, whether it's an agency or somebody in house from that perspective, to know there's a difference.  One-size-doesnt-fit-all in that sense, too. So having that personalization and like you said, treating people as if they're actually people versus just numbers also helps, right…especially social, like when we do audience developments like that stuff is fun for us. You can tell I'm getting excited now.

Like audience development for us. It's like, “It's not just, hey, Susan’s 35 she's a mom and her favorite color is blue”. That's not what it's about.

Stephen: So you're talking about an avatar. Really Building personas of saying, “My customer is these five people” and not just bullshitting it. You don't bullshit and look at Google analytics for a moment. 

You really do surveys. You talk to customers, you talk to your customer service team. And then you got all this information and all this language that your customers use when they're talking about them. 

Okay, So you were talking about the avatar that you were for that client?

Jason Zotara: Yeah, just in general. So, that's understanding the product or service that your client's offering is one component, but also understanding the audience. There's potential buyers, potential customers of that client and in that product or service right, so diving deeper into not only who the person is, but that's the power of social right. Is finding is being able to identify their behaviors, their interests as well as their demographic. And not just having that. Like you said, it's not a kumbaya creative meeting where we're gonna spent 10 hours and we'll come up with 15 personas that just say, “Oh, this is great. It looks good.” 

What we do is we take those personas… we tie, we cross reference those with the Facebook targeting options. And we're okay now we're how that's how we're gonna build our audience for social per se. For example, it could be a 35 year old female who's more affluent, who likes to travel, but also likes wildlife.

They might be a good target, and you have another…So depending on the service or product that client is offering and that company is offering usually dictates how many avatars. We call them buyer personas or audiences.

That would dictate how many you do and how deep you go. But it is really again…It's learning more about…Yeah like you said, if you could do focus groups. But also you just look at previous data that companies which unfortunately not have yet.

Stephen: Yeah, It gives you a radar…

Jason Zotara: It gives you a sense. Also location, right? Like, do you do better in California than you do in New York or Florida or right? But there are also international, the different countries, and looking at how people engaged with your brand that way supports everything that we're talking about from a strategic perspective.

Stephen: How do you get their demographic and psychographic information? You know, when you're trying to build that persona, is that coming from Facebook?

Jason Zotara: Depends. If you're talking about, for example, prospecting. So if we're looking at new customers, so for eCommerce, you know, we're looking for new buyers, right? Looking for more people to buy our products online. And so one way to do that social is using, for example, Facebook, right? 

Since they're the largest, we'll talk through that a little. You could pull two sets right? The data set one is: who's coming to your site? Who's engaging, who's not engaging? What data can you pull from your website? So, Google Analytics gives you some of that demographic. You can also look at any CRM that the clients have for example, Salesforce. So, Salesforce is one of the more popular… obviously…or any other CRM that might collect that data.

So, you just pulling all these different data sets and you're putting them all into one document, per se. And then what you do is you take that and you build a persona off of that and you take that persona and then you cross reference it with the audience targeting options on Facebook, right? And then, that’s how you build your target audience. 

Stephen: Because it's the way that you would build your lookalikes anyway. But now you're just another way to apply it.

Jason Zotara: Yes. So this would be for prospecting. So this would be for brand new. but you can absolutely upload an email list and build lookalikes off of it, but I'm talking about from scratch. And building it from there, But yes, it definitely you could build lookalike audiences, remarketing campaigns. There’s so many things you could do off of that piece. 

But until you know who your audience is, how you gonna sell them? That's kind of the advertising adage, the marketing outages. If you don’t know who you're selling to…. Same thing with competitors. If you don't know who you’re competing against, how are you gonna win? So those are the kind of things that we think and do when we take on new clients. 

As we're constantly working with clients on how to improve their campaigns and how to better…and we test, test a lot, you know, test.  If you're gonna fail, fail fast, right? Like we testing different audiences, testing different age demographic, Right. So here's an example. One of our clients was like, “Hey, our demographic is 35-plus and like, that's our demographic.” 

That's great. I'm sure you do really well on that. But if you looked at the 24-35, we look at conversion rate, right? For example, if you look at GA (Google Analytics), you look at conversion rate and you see that 25-34 demographic is actually converting at an equal… or maybe a higher or lower pace. Then, hey, let's test that audience and see right what type of engagement we can have with that audience even though the client feels like that’s their ideal audience and they could be right. 

Why prevent somebody who's 34 from seeing your ad right if they’re meet other criteria, right? If they're still meeting an income criteria, things like that. Sometimes you have to kind of move clients out of their own way and test different things that may be all that. That's really nice. So, anyways. 

Stephen: I think most brands know their customer pretty well, but it's just like… the more you know, the more you can apply it to your marketing and do it more precisely so… And I think we all make a lot of assumptions. Everyone in the room. So it's hard to. But yeah, I think you just have to embrace that.

Jason Zotara: Yeah, well, you crack me up because I always tell my dad like just because you do it that way doesn't mean the population does it that way, right? And it's similar to that. we have our own bias and we see it through our life. 

Best thing I can say is to separate yourself from the outcome, right? And you could generally be happier and personally and business life…professionally and business in that sense of just… test it if it works. Great. If not, that's okay, too. Like at least we tried it.

Stephen: Right? Like you're not marketing to thousands or millions of people that are you.  It's just marketing to very, very different people. So let's go on to, you know, to the elephant in the room how we apply all this. All this marketing and branding insight. Now everything is has some differences with the coronavirus. 

What advice would you give to eCommerce brands on how to market through this?

Jason Zotara: So I would say this: don't freak out! I think that's the biggest challenge that we all have. This is not gonna be long term, meaning It's not gonna be years and years. And planning for the short term as well as the long term is the best advice that I could give.

Plan for the worst. Hope for the best. And that's kind of what we're doing for our clients as well as our agency. So, don't turn your lights off. Don't sit on your hands. Don't cut your spend right away. 

I think now is a great time if you can…. continue to sell…continue to market. And if you have the cash flow to continue putting towards advertising or marketing….continue to do that. 

If you don’t, if your business is flowing now, maybe is a good time to take a reset and look at what your processes have been.  Look at your customer base. Look at the product service you've been offering. Here's an example. We have clients since we do Paid media. There are some clients who are going to shift some of the paid media budget to have us writing blog posts for them.

I know that’s a weird shift. but hey, now would be a good time to focus on maybe more of that organic traffic… maybe optimizing your website may be optimizing your product listing pages, adding more reviews …. now would be a good time to get some of that stuff if you're an eCommerce business. Some of that…making sure you have great photos, right? Maybe you add more photos. Really. It's just working on your housekeeping items. 

And I think if you do that and you're still able to sell, you're gonna be in a good situation. When this all comes about we don't want to do is be the companies that just sit down to do nothing, right? Because, as I'm sure as you've seen, there's a lot of articles out there that talk about all the great companies that came out of the recession in 2009 recession. 

And so that's kind of the philosophy that I want people who are listening to this is to stay positive and continue to market your business as long as you can… just be more cognizant of where you're spending your money and what those are returning.  

And so maybe it's one of things will be shifted from Google to Facebook. You know, shifting your money versus just stopping would be the best advice that I could provide and just knowing that things can change. 

So give it and let’s bring our clients in and reconnect in two weeks, right? working in two week increments. Okay. Here's what we're gonna do for the next two weeks. Here's our short-term resolution, Really, we're setting ourselves up to be successful once this thing passes because it will pass. It's just a matter of time.

Stephen: Right. It is a collective time out. So that's the whole reset metaphor you were talking about that… fits there.. Arguably I know businesses out there that are really crazy right now because they're adjusting all their marketing plans and their creatives because now they can’t…You can't put the same advertisement up now from what you could put up a month ago, because it just seems tone deaf, or it's applying to a different era, you know? 

So there's a lot of adjustments there for businesses, but I think the headspace is there to what you're talking about, where it's like, Oh! Now's a good time to think about what's my real business model. What's my product-market fit and like, How do I make this stronger? What are the weaknesses? Because every business has blind spots.

Jason Zotara: Right. 

Stephen: With paid marketing, how do you think it changes with covid-19? I know there's a lot of questions right now about acquisition versus retention and where companies should focus.

Jason Zotara: Yeah, so I will say….my heart goes out to all those people who have lost their jobs and all the restaurant industry and all those industries that….

Stephen: Yeah, it’s terrible. 

Jason Zotara: they’ve been deeply affected. We have clients that are in that boat. I have friends and family who are in those boats. So, like that goes without…I just want to mention that, too and that's important. But I would say going back to your question, it really depends on your industry. So there's little silver linings in each of the industries. But we are seeing that, for example, travel has gotten hammered as everyone knows hospitality has gotten hammered. 

So it's interesting because we have a blend of clients. We have some clients like those who were not faring well. You have some that are kind of, they're okay. They're still able to do business, even if it's 50% right, and then the 3rd one is people who are not thriving. That's not the right word, but like who are still able to be successful in this space. 

And so what I would say is, if you are in that boat, like not to double down in a sense. 

So right now, when it comes to paid marketing and media right now we're offering to all of our clients is part of our services is in addition to what we already providing is an audit and a review. 

So we're gonna take a deeper dive, so we optimize our campaign constantly. We’re monitoring daily, we're optimizing weekly, if not more… of that kind of stuff. But I think it's always good. 

This is good time when we can stop and reset and take a look at all that. We're doing that for clients now and looking at okay, which paid media channel….It's a deeper dive that we normally take it then that can allow us to kind of developed an updated strategy with everything going on. That’s something we're doing for customers for clients And so that might be something you want to do to as an eCommerce brand. Is kind of look at…have your internal team or your agency, have them do it a deeper audit deeper dive into the spend, the creative, all these different aspects of that.

I would definitely say so….paid media. It's tough. Because, like you said, got to be careful with messaging because you don't want to come across as tone deaf. And so one of things that I would recommend is that you can increase your paid media absolutely and if you’re in an industry like mortgage. We're seeing success there. You put with the refinance rates and everything other aspects of that, but continue to put your budget there and increase that budget. But I would also say condition of paid media. If you're not doing email marketing, if you're not doing SEO. If you're not spending a lot of resources or budget toward that now might be a time that these especially email marketing.

Stephen: So, diversifying your performance. does that mean getting involved with more channels?

Jason Zotara: Yeah, exactly.  so doing more email marketing, doing more social media maybe doing more advertising, maybe doing advertising if you haven’t done advertising, I still think there's a value there, right? Depends on your industry. But also like, organic like doing blog posts right now would be a great time. You get your next three months worth of blog posts done, right, like type of concept, right? So you’re diversifying, your channels… diversifying your mediums. So going back to paid versus organic vs email marketing, those type of things, Yeah, having all the different channels firing on all cylinders is what's gonna allow you. We’ve seen that with our clients that are doing more of those services are in a better situation than someone who's just relying on one or two services to drive the entire marketing strategy.

Stephen: I see that also from media consumption, and everybody has their own favorite media channel. You know, you could even look at this generationally where our parents are still using the landline and some of us are still using email the way other people would be using text. 

But by doing it integrated, you're covering the brand voice in all the different places so that it's not just you're not missing out on some of these demographics, just in case they don't happen to be on the platform like email marketing. 

Email marketing is amazing, is incredible ROI and I know because I see the results sometimes. And it's just I advise everyone to do email marketing, especially now, because it’s…The ROI is really, really good. But that being said, a lot of times there’s a lot of customers who wouldn't look at that email. So that's why, SMS is something that you know, people are doing more now …by being in more channels and having some presence there, it gives you an opportunity to reach people more. I'm interested about blog posts like Where do you think the blog posts benefit? Like I'm thinking SEO? But I'm wondering if there's other things too.

Jason Zotara: SEO was definitely the first, the organic side. I mean, Google loves fresh, relevant content, right? So having consistent blogs definitely does help. I mean, you have to, but it also goes to SEO, primarily organic traffic. But if you're going to do blog posts, other things you could do is optimizing your website as I was sharing earlier. You know optimizing your product detail pages if you're in eCommerce or maybe optimizing your categories, You know… things like that, Like the little stuff like your page speed. Right? Maybe you could get your page from five seconds to four seconds or things like that that you generally maybe don't work on. That would be it. Now would be a good time to give it some love, you know, and address those things because every little bit helps right now.

Stephen: I guess even like the mobile, like the mobile experience too. I think it gets a little bit lost. And this is where we're still a little desktop centric in the U. S. So people like send out email marketing without even looking to them at mobile and but actually, like, related to what you're talking about in those enhancements, I think when you browse your website where you have a couple of people browse it as a visitors, it can give you a lot of ideas with product pages and like site speed. Like maybe you never noticed that your sight your product page takes seven seconds to load because you haven't tried it from your phone.

Jason Zotara: Oh, yeah, you’re like you're doing it from your T-1 connection, right? Not 3G where some of the country… part of the country might be. Well, believe it or not, or even international, right? So, yeah, you're absolutely right. Those kind of things that a lot of times you don't really think about it. You don't give the time. It's hard, right? Because you're constantly rolling along and maybe things might be going well, but I don’t know we just like to never settle… getting constantly better. And if you're gonna drew one or two things here, here, they're like, it's gonna be the overall experience. You know, better the guy you're after. I mean, all those perfect examples of that is what you’re sharing.

Stephen: I'm thinking about I guess, what customer acquisition. If a company is thriving right now that it's a great time for them to do acquisition because they're in a category that's not as negatively impacted. I think retention is because your customers know you… is a good way to focus because they’re… or like how email marketing is a retention channel? or repeat.

Jason Zotara: I think I left something for you before I forget. So here's an example of what brands should be doing. So we have a home contractor that's in the New Jersey area, and we are talking. So the challenge is, is nobody wants you in their house, right? And so, doing a design consultation in-person. Or like there he goes home, kitchen, kitchen and bath, and painting as well. And so, going inside somebody's home. So we're seeing people coming to the site and they're engaging with to say, but they may not be calling right away, so I think with people, there’s a lot of shopping going on. 

And we decided today after a conversation, we’re going to offer a virtual design consultation...like, how cool is that? Pick up your phone. Call us. And talk with their design expert. Walk him around your house with your phone. You know they can take pictures or whatever you need to do there and you get the design consultation virtually. 

I mean, there you go and they're doing the other part of it is the painting. And so he does a lot of exterior painting and doing a mobile drive-by. Right…an estimate. They’re all estimates.

So it's just the point is, how can you find… if you're an agency listening, or if you’re a brand listening…how can you find something that you could still do what you need to do. You're just kind of twist it a little bit more so where you can still capture leads. You can still capture product revenue. I guess the biggest point is now is the time for our clients are seeing the value of our creativity. And as a brand, you need to have that either internally or with your agency. And if they're not to be frank, you should find another agency. 

Now is really the time from an agency perspective where you're kind of earning your keep if that makes any sense like…you gotta be on it. And so if nothing else. Maybe that's a good takeaway for people: Get Creative. Continuing… like restaurant did takeout and delivery. That's good. If you're a contractor, do the virtual side, anything you can do virtually that you can't do in person is… so again side note,  But just something that I thought was important.

Stephen: I do, yeah, we are seeing now, like an explosion of… now, the new joke is not Netflix and chill. It's Netflix and zoom right we are. I just updated my zoom background and I'm gonna change it again.

But we'll see. But it's now like they're definitely people are using virtual conferencing a lot more than they were now. And I even got, I had someone, Prospect me with a video. So instead of just sending me an email, you know, saying, “Hey, let's collaborate!” They sent me a 50-second video of that person talking to me and wishing me well, and I thought that was a very good approach. 

So we can even use, and I think, in light of this video, I think video is going to explode even more as a result of what's going on with Covid because now everyone in the country around the world is put in these work at home situations and is utilizing these things. And it's, you know, the company you were talking about in New Jersey, you know, having that virtual appointment. It gives people a context, and it gives them more of a relationship than having a phone call or just sending him back an email form. It's more of an engagement and gets them up that ladder to conversion.

Jason Zotara: Absolutely. Yeah, and we're actually coupling that with… so we're gonna buy some…. I’m sharing this because I want other people to think like this … it’s not anything proprietary. And I don't think my client minds me sharing. 

So let me buying gift cards of local restaurant, right? And maybe whatever dollar amount it is and then offering that to anybody who signs up for a consultation, right? Get a $50 gift card or whatever the number is to your local restaurant because we're all in this together community. He’s a local contractor. So, like community is huge to them. And so being able to offer. 

Being able to not only help the restaurant industry… help your local business but you’re also providing an extra value to anybody who wants to reach out to them. So coupled with the video that he's gonna be creating that goes out as well on the website and through email marketing and stuff. So, it's a whole different new strategy that we've been doing. We've been doing some of this stuff a little bit, but like based on covid, like we had to kind of create this strategy. Okay, how do we get people now to take action when we can't go in their house? Right. And how do we also help the local community at the same time. And so it's just, I hate to say, a win-win-win like The Office, but like sounds like Michael Scott, but like that’s a win-win-win, right, win-win- win-win Maybe if you look at that. 

So, just some of that stuff as a brand that you want to be thinking about it and constantly trying to be creative versus just sitting on your hands.

Stephen: And that's a mission driven strategy to because you're tying in the local restaurant into helping them out and bring that relationship together.

Jason Zotara: Exactly, because we are whether end of the matter is you just think doesn't care if you're rich or poor or what part of the country you’re in, right? Like there's no discriminating. Let's help each other. It's just an idea, something that you could do. 

That companies are doing… that kind of get out there and still be able to keep your company going off, giving back and also helping…

Stephen: It does force us to be a little more creative, which can be liberating in many ways because now you have another way to do it. And it’s… and we're seeing many businesses that are capable of doing that.

Jason Zotara: Yep, yeah, after

Stephen: We've always done this through that. That type of adversity.

Jason Zotara: Oh, absolutely. You makes you stronger, right? So that's the one thing that and if nothing else again, we released get it kind of wakes everybody up to what's really important in life as well as I mean, if your brand or an agency. It doesn't really matter. I mean, try to help each other. But also we also all have to pay our bills. And we all have to. Unless you're paying a mortgage that’s being deferred for 90 days kind of thing…. so how can we all help each other during these times and usually.. 

Stephen: I do think if you're not a $100 million company, that faceless corporation, you're in the latter group of that intimacy right now and community… that everyone is seeing each other's faces in an entirely different light than they did a month ago. So, it's  a good way to connect. 

All right, thank you so much for coming on the show. And, um, if people like what you're saying and are interested in finding out more about Ten26 Media, how can people contact you, Jason?

Jason Zotara: Yep. So you can visit the agency website, which is Ten26 media. So it's T-E-N and 2-6 media dot com. You want a little more about myself and my background, you could go to ConsultingbyJason dot com that has more contact information as well as phone numbers, blogs, videos I’ve done in the past. Those would be the quickest, easiest way. If you're on linkedin which I'm sure you are, please send me a connection. Although now you need my email address. So you need that, just send me a quick message through my website. I've been getting so much junk, man. It's been bad.

I won’t get into that tangent. So I've literally had to cap my LinkedIn for the first time ever. You need to know who I am, at least the email. But anyway, check out those web sites, Read it. I just did it in a previous interview a couple weeks ago. It tells more about you know, the agency what we do, who we help that we may not have covered in today's session. 

Yeah, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it between reaching out. It's like we’ll all get through this together. It just kind of stay positive. Yes. Help each other as much possible. 

Stephen: Great. Thanks again. 

Jason Zotara: Hey, Thank you. 

Stephen: Thank you so much for listening. This episode is sponsored by Needle Movement. Needle Movement helps time-starved entrepreneurs and emerging brands. eCommerce can be overwhelming because time has split up among so many initiatives and different responsibilities. A lot of times, brands really want to do vital marketing tasks. They just don't have time to execute them.  For brands, Needle Movement focuses on email marketing services, list growth and digital strategy simply because we know that these are the most profitable initiatives out there.

For our engagements. we execute individual email blasts, set up email automation is and we even have done-for-you email marketing service where we can manage the whole program. That way, you can take care of all your other responsibilities about having to worry about email marketing. Learn more about our affordable packages by visiting needle movement dot com. Book a call today on the site and we could discuss how to make business growth easier. 

Last but not least, be sure to tune in next week for another new episode of the podcast.