The Secret to Building a High-Performance Lead Gen Agency | Joe Podmore | #10

I'll give you the tools we'll give you the resource I'll give you the platform but the only way you're going to get more people in your team is by you doing a great job not for me no one was actually properly fulltime apart from obviously Tom who was the founder and then Luke's s head of agency I'm very much taking on that more sort of CEO role just overseeing the business quite a few of them we've gone from 50 to1 Spend now they're spending 7 eight grand a day we've been with them on that Journey

from three staff to 30 staff or three stuff to 50 stuff what do you think are the three most important things to ensuring a good lead cost your landing page is got it's interesting I've not seen a lead generation agency at scale of your volume there still needs to be an a bit of fire in our B to make sure that we're still ripping stuff up and changing Stuff and getting better people don't realize their true potential until someone opens that potential up for to them what works for us might not work for you for

example but doesn't mean it doesn't work can you talk me through the thought process behind 90-day initial commitment and 30-day rolling afterwards because we do the opposite so Joe you started off as a media buyer and then in four years became a director of the agency you're now in yeah talk to Me about that it's quite a long story actually I can do Jo want it from the point that I just joined leadle and how that came about yeah it'd be good to understand your entry point at leadley and how you managed to progress to

now being a shareholder in the business so I just started off as a freelan media by because leadley was essentially a business built off Freelancers so there was a handful of us Plus Tom pulling the strings um that's where that's where I come from before just doing the media buying did a bit of account management as well um I think just over time I just grew into that role grew into being more of an account manager and because me and Tom are quite similar in terms of our like attitude towards work a lot of synergies

on personal level as well and the fact it did also help that was close to him In terms of uh location wise we spent a lot more time together I think as the agency just developed I just took on more and more of a role every time that there was an opportunity to take on more of a role I would always use my initiative and just go for it so it's just been a sort of a natural progression really up until the point that the agency can't just rely on Freelancers and it has to become

a more solidified business Tom is your typical entrepreneur very much a Visionary type person hasn't got a massive passion internally for growing an agency I do I really wanted to do that with Le so over the two or three year point there was an opportunity that was going to be available within that three to four year uh Gap like that 12 month period um and he got to the point where he just offered it me he actually acquired so lead actually acquired my Agency which is the sub brand that you see which is non-stop that

was where I come from when I was a freelancer so I did my own stuff on the side as non-stop did some work with Tom but the work that Tom was giving me was just so much and it it was such a a massive opportunity that like 90% of my time was focused there and I could see where I could be within three or four years um so yeah that was in December last year Quite a SLO um so if you've been through like shareholders agreements and just going back and forth and making sure everything's

right because you want to make sure that once that's signed you just never have to think about it ever again but yeah all done and then we've just been head down this year cracking on and it's been been fantastic nice man that's awesome so can you paint a picture of what the business looked like at your entry point so roughly kind of Team size and so on and then to now today where you're at as a business and I don't know mind know if you mind sh Revenue at all or yeah yeah there's I think

there was maybe four of us but of those four there was obviously Tom And Then There Was Myself who was doing my own thing as well with nonstop uh and then there was like three other people one of those people was actually just doing it on the side of a full-time role and the other two were Doing something similar so at that point which was April 2020 there was four people in there no one was actually properly fulltime apart from obviously Tom who was the who was the founder um compare that to now there's myself

there's Luke who's the head of agency so there's me L and Tom at the top and it's great with meuk and Tom because we're all really different Tom as I said is that very much that Visionary person he's always asking the Questions always making sure that you know we're not getting comfortable he's looking at what's next for us getting us into key Partnerships that type of thing I'm very much the people person really sort of in the middle of maybe Tom and Luke um taking on that more sort of CEO role just overseeing the business

I love process as well as the people side and then Luke's our head of agency so he's just a Facebook meta Wizard um below that we've got pod structures now that have been tweaked and tested and we've got some things right we've got some things wrong we're in a place now that is working got pod structures which contain know senior media buyers media buyers designers account managers we've also got an ecrm department so we do email and SMS marketing now we've got an SEO department so we hired an SEO person um other than that we've

got the Creative team as well so within there there is graphic designers videographers script writers ux designers front end devs and I think we're at about 30 people now I think the two people that we've just hired does take us to around 30 with a with a few freelance in there as well um we are looking then we've actually just offered two more people as well so since March Carl who does our HR and people stuff I forgot to mention Carl She is absolutely fantastic we've just been on an absolute role we just seem to

have got the onboarding right in terms of getting those people and what happens from day 1 to three um and yeah just since March I think we've doubled in size I think we've gone from like 15 to 30 I read that on your on on your LinkedIn um that you've doubled in size what do you think the because obviously you have to have the ability to do that from a financial perspective and from a Lead flow perspective of your own business what do you think has been the Catalyst that's allowed you to double agency size

in the last 12 months a healthy margin healthy margin within the that we offer um and I think the guys to be fair to him everyone before March was probably they were overworked and that's something that we've had to address so actually in terms of what we're doing now everyone is at the capacity they Should be at whereas I think in March prior to that everyone was probably everyone was overworked so we've had to use you know now we've got all the onboarding mar and the hirings absolutely bang on we want to bolster that team

because we need to make sure that the guys are happy and their welfare is being taken care of so yeah it's been been quite a journey but I think looking at 2025 now I'm just I can't wait for it ni it's almost like You have been preparing for a big growth period yeah yeah and I think the the massive props to the guys for sticking with us as well if they felt if they ever felt overworked I mean they must feel like they're in a good enough environment and they can see some opportunity moving forward

that they would stick with us I'm not saying like they're overwork like they're all stressed out in the minds of but you know when just I'm conscious of how they Are performing and if they if they're dipping it's not necessarily because they're not good enough it's probably because they just got too much on I kind of feel like in the agency model and certainly what I've experienced in my own agency as well you have to go through those periods where you are intensely squeezed uh it is a really testing business model any service based business

and if anything I those periods are really healthy for the Company because it shows you who really is there for the long run it really isolates those individuals and uh it's completely cool if the people that step out they're like oh that this isn't for me because it is an intense business especially when we're working on deadlines and demands and so on yeah yeah yeah we're in terms of deadlines we're performance-based like I call product is the media buying service so like paid ads mhm when a new client sign Sign up it's 90 days because

we say you commit to us we'll commit to you we need to find out what works what doesn't so in in theory after 90 days you're in a position where you're ringing me up saying Joe how do we Triple A budget that's what that's a perfect scenario but then after that it's 30-day rolling and that just keeps everyone on the toes we don't tie people into long-term contracts we we're fully ingrained into these clients businesses we could be 70 80 sometimes 100% of the wallet share so the pressure is there and when it's bad they're

on to you but when it's good you really feel like you're a part of that which creates quite an interesting Dynamic within the team that's interesting can you talk me through the thought process behind 90-day initial commitment and 30-day rolling afterwards because we do the opposite and we do like a 30-day initial rolling if you don't like it you're out and then we try And tie into longer contract and incentivize that afterwards so I'd be really interested to hear your perspective on that I think me from uh putting my account management hat on that's where

my that's what I've done over the years it's just about managing expectations for us now we could get it right in two weeks and in that scenario we've under promised and overd delivered but that that 90day Period is just something that works and I think the clients like it and it also what it does as well is because we have a minimum spend of say like 6K it also gets rid of some of the clients who maybe just aren't the right fit for us at that time in terms of budget or commitment cuz essentially if

it's 6K commitment and our fee say 2 and a half or three whatever it may be it's best part of a 30k commitment over 3 months and we're very transpiring with That and if that's not right for you at that time that's absolutely fine we can recommend a freelancer we can recommend some other agencies who will take on maybe smaller spends and if they're going to do well we'll normally see them in 12 months and they're ready to go right we're ready for the the full package now with Le um and then after that we

just we put a we put a money our mouth I suppose will commit to that 30-day Rolling I mean we we sort of want that pressure makes sense Keeps Us Keeps Us on it yeah and it's pure Le gen or do you work with e-commerce businesses as well purely lead gen um predominantly Automotive Finance so Tom and myself I worked for an automotive software company for six years prior um Tom has sold cars himself he was also a consultant just before joining just before starting ladly on doing the same thing that we're doing But helping

people generate leads um what does he say qu what did this guy say to him want so a few years ago there was like a a bit of a gold rush with Automotive finance and generating core Finance applications I don't know what the guy's name was but he said to Tom what' you do in a goldbrush and Tom's like I don't know and he says sell shovels so rather than thinking about selling the the Commodities of the car sell him the tool That will help him get the car s him the lead and I thought

that's great and that's always stuck with me that that guy said that to him whoever it was leg gen is obviously a completely different model to your kind of typical direct to Consumer agency and I noce a lot of agencies lean towards direct to consumer in the ad space and at least initially kind of start off in lead generation lead generation's always been something that I've been drawn to myself I I educate a lot of lead generation agencies and and I truly believe it's arguably the superior of the two models because client acquisition is a

is a lot simpler and I think the advertisement the actual fulfillment process is a lot simpler as well there a lot less strain on the team um personal opinion um but being a lead generation agency yourself and running lead gen campaigns for your clients you at your level must have some pretty Superior lead generation Strategies for yourself so what how does your service reflect in your own ability to generate leads for your own business what does client acquisition look like for leadly that's a very good question our strategy um has been it's not even been

a strategy it's just been something that has been the natural course of where we're going has been to scale vertically so in terms of Revenue like last year so say Jan 23 compared to Jan 24 we doubled But our client base in terms of numbers stay the same because of performance because of performance and because additional products like ecrm so other things that we can bolt on to add value to these clients that's one one thing we're always cautious of if we're going to add a product in or a service it has to add value

to their performance because these are performance-based companies they're sales companies essentially so Everything that we do needs to add a benefit to that we're in a place now that again we've had like hybrid roles we had people trying to do a bit of sales bit of account management and we just found out over the last 3 to six months it just doesn't work because account management will always take priority over sales because existing clients if you got an issue I'm not going to tell you to try and Chase a prospect if you Got a client

on the phone who wants something doing um but now we've got these more we've got more Client Services people coming in and we can get the sales people fully back on that to start off where we want to be moving into 2025 and and Beyond really and are we talking cold Outreach are we talking ads to funnel so what we were doing before which is quite an interesting way of doing it is we were finding like 10 Companies a quarter or 10 20 companies a quarter and then we were getting a studio not as nice

as this but we get we were hiring like a studio and we were doing like tailored videos so I would actually do a video directed at their CEO and then we'd run like ads on LinkedIn top of funnel stuff and try and get them through to a landing page it was actually doing okay but then other priorities come in another key partner comes into the into the agent and then It just to takes a backseat we've always done well from referral like in terms of Automotive Finance because me and Tom have a network in there

um we've always done really well from that like I think in in that space it's a very very Niche part of the market it's probably like 5% of the car finance Market but I would I would say we are the biggest in that space um so in terms of people referring us on when they when clients get to a certain size it's mainly other partner Other companies will say you need to go speak to legally now they'll take you to the they'll help get you to the next level interesting so as far as niching down

into car finance is concerned is that something that from a tactical perspective you just want to stay optimized around or you tried to break into other markets and found them not as fruitful as as what you're in at the moment like what's the thought process behind just kind of sticking that one Thing we we tried a couple I mean we are still testing some now and the main thing for us is volume we want volume because we want to be able to scale with them so Car Finance being the biggest volume Financial product in the

in the in the country just makes perfect sense M uh we have tried other ones we tried a couple of insurance uh companies just didn't really work um we thought about going overseas with car finance we've got a couple of Partners that are in Australia and they every time I see them they just say Joe Tom you need to come over here like you guys will clean up in this market so that's one thing that we have considered we still think there's another 20 25% growth we can get out of our car finance Market again

because we got like SEO in there now we're looking at uh we got doing a lot of email marketing so even with our current clientele we can still grow into those With additional products and then the email marketing piece we can expand that out to doesn't have to just be the type of clients we want we could do that for Arnold CL for example makes sense yeah I mean there's we we actually done a small piece of Consulting on a an ad account not too long ago which was in the law space and it was

an accident claim and I don't want to butcher it by because I just I can't recall exactly what it was Joe my business partner would know There's currently spending in the UK UK only budget 1.2 million pound per day on meta per day per day on meta it's with been the top 10 largest ad account spends in the world at the moment and the model is probably something that you've explored yourself so I'm interested in understanding if you have and how that went is start off as an agency generate leads on behalf of clients pay

you're doing rev share and and I want to unpack that As well how you're how you're doing performance models and some of your dos and don'ts there um but then eventually the agency is like why don't I just put spend behind our own landing page and create our own sub brand and then just sell the leads to to other law companies and so on so forth uh which has worked exceptionally well for them in this whatever it's kind of i' suppose the new boom of accident claim which was absolutely huge yeah um and there's been

A few of those over time have you ever explored that in yourselves have you explored generating or starting your own sub brand and generating your own leads and selling them to to companies and how that go yeah yeah yeah we've done that so we've got a brand called Lono which isn't really fully firing but that can be an umbrella term for car finance we've done some we're doing some personal loan stuff as well and that is US basically doing that more affiliate Models we we generate we use our own money generate the leads and then

we just sell them to buyers I.E if it's personal loans it be the lenders if it's Car Finance it' be Brokers or dealerships that just want to buy leads off you interesting and what are the biggest challenges when it comes to that versus just working with clients the the car finance stuff we haven't properly picked up but it's on the cards once we got this more resourc In it's for 2025 that in terms of personal loan the biggest challenge for that for us is was just actually just understanding the market a little bit more it's

been a little bit of a bit on the side whereas it needs because it's a new thing for us to understand that we we need a lot more heads space and resource into it so again one for the start of next year we can see the opportunity with it and we've had some Consulting from people who've done it on Large scale you know 4 500 k a month sort of level revenues from it um they've already highlighted to us two or three key points in there that one of those things is we're only monetizing like

30% of the inquiries at the minute so 70% of that traffic is just going nowhere we're we we're remarketing to it which is good but in terms of the initial lead that comes in 70% of it going elsewhere and then these other people that we've spoke to have given us Like two to three avenues that we could go down to try and actually make the most of all the that we're passing through fine fine yeah makes sense it's uh getting to understand the market on the same level that the clients do who have worked in

that market for tens and tens of different years it's it's one thing advertising the product it's another thing having that deep rooted understanding of the market I suppose that exactly and that's the best thing About was niching into car finance the conversations that we're having our clients will ring us it's it's quite a consultative approach sometimes they will ask us not from a marketing level they will genuinely want to know operationally what should I do with my sales team like we do get that question in terms of how should I split it out how many

approvals should we be having per day per agent how many Finance approvals these are the sort of Conversations that we have on a on a daily basis and we can actually advise withone or you know give them Insight based off what other clients are doing or you know just say some people do it this way some people do it that way they actually feel like they can look to us not just from a how's my what's my cost per leader what's my cost per deal it's you really feel like you're a part of that and

that's only something that really comes from only specializing in One Niche really I noticed you guys have a um a software solution as well um called prove yeah and I wondered or was intrigued as to whether that was built as as as a way to own more of the solution as well within that specific Market does that come into the agency delivery it it yeah I'd say so yeah and that's come from a place again that's one of Tom's um great ideas he's basically he realizes that clients don't necessarily Have full full visibility with pounds

and Pence on how what ad is generating what Revenue so he's he's developed this software that will give him that Insight so rather than it just being in ads manager and all the data is incorrect or rather than it just being in the CRM and it's got no marketing data attached to it it's just a piece of software that pie puts them both together essentially interesting talk to me about um ecrm Um what is it what do you do exactly so the main thing that we do with ecrm is re solicit customers who have been

approved for finance but haven't dealt or maybe decline for finance that and haven't dealt and then say with the with the latter with the declined if they've applied 60 days ago their credit score may have improved so we can start to email them to say good news your credit score could could possibly have improved you know XY Z and then you just getting back into the funnel then the difference with ecrm is we actually charge per deal so there's a small setup cost and then after that all the work we're doing the background if the

if we don't uh get a sale completed we don't actually charge any money um that's just email and SMS that is a very base product is what we do and then once we've got that going for three months then we start to look at building Out more ad hoc campaigns and getting more into the nuts and bolts of so it's a more sophisticated name for database reactivation yeah yeah it always starts off with that res solicit piece but then over time we obviously get more and more in green we start looking at like the transactional

journey so once once someone's actually applied what happens so do they get three text messages in the first day do They get two do they get one do they get three emails like we can actually map that out for them as well so we always start with that reelistic piece and then over time as the account grows we'll basically looked at overhaul their entire email and SMS marketing strategy for the for the client could you break down what your kind of Service delivery looks like for the perspect if you're working with because I think and

just for anyone Who's watching this because of course there's going to be a lot of agency owners watching this and a lot of lead generation agencies as well and I suppose one of the biggest takeaways just for for everyone here if you haven't already got the idea is that you guys your success is is is based on on working with a specific Market incredibly well and then snowballing off the back of that because everybody wants to work with you in that industry or at Least people that know of you yeah and and there's a lot

to be said about that which means you've got really granular and obsessed with service and so you you are three four five six steps ahead from the majority of lead generation agencies out there that don't ever allow themselves the ability to do that because they're always spreading between multiple different Industries it's like oh one moment we're here one minut there and so the service always end up surface Level it's meta ads to a CRM system maybe a bit of appointment setting on the side but it never gets deeper than that it's not it's not it's

not deep nested in an industry so at your level now you have taken the time to really get deep into an industry um what does fulfillment look like for you with the typical client are you working on packages is it produc tizers could you paint a picture how things look well in terms of like our key Partners do we for Them I am exactly I'm a I'm a yes I'm a car finance company I have your average budget to spend and a decent list I've been established in the industry for a long time I just

want to get an idea of how deep you guys are looking at and or how much of the picture you are now involved in within your Niche I suppose he's yeah I don't want to I'll try and give a a rough answer in terms of what you would get on like a daily weekly basis from us yeah I mean Like we run meta ads to generate leads and we will appointment set those leads and are you contacting the lead yourself are you are you getting involved in phone proc yeah what is what does everything so

we we are it is still lead generation so we will advertise on on their behalf to a landing page the lead goes into their CRM and then their fulfillment team their sales team picks it up um have you ever got involved in that Side and dealing with the leads on your end we've never that ourself but we have gone into the depths of looking at if we feel on both sides that there's some inefficiencies we we will look from our side as a marketing perspective but we've got a good enough relationship with our clients where

we can question him on sales performance can you send us your call log for the last 30 days let's see if the average number of calls has gone down because we might find that the Mar the sales team is saying that the the leads are not very good which is always the ongoing battle between sales and marketing but we might ask the question question okay that's fine but let's have a look at the sales FLW sometimes you might find that the sales calls have gone down the average calls has gone down from three per person

to one so the business owner then can easily identify that it might be more of an issue with the sales guys know are They are they having some things going on on the personal life there's been a lot of holidays all these types of things that's the stuff that when issues arrive we won't just look to go well our CER leads good so that's not ours we want let's understand it let's have a meeting let's really get into the nuts and bolts of why it isn't working and then over off the back of that you

just with each other then it's just such a it's such a partnership then at that Point that you never really feel like they will leave and I think since I've worked with leadley and and some of the clients with Ley were actually my clients in my old place as well they're still here so four years on quite a few of them we've gone from when we were small taking them from to 100 spend now they're spending 7even eight grand a day like the same companies we've we've been with them on that Journey from three staff

to 30 staff or three staff to 50 Staff so it's yeah like I say it's just snowball nice nice that's awesome and a problem that a lot of lead generation agencies have which is why asked about you getting involved in the sales process there a a big problem a lot of agencies have in many niches is they can perform written incredibly well they've got a great um cost per book call and cost per lead and all the metrics looking great on the agency level but then the the client just can't convert The lead and then

there's this back and forth about the leads aren't right and sometimes there is a conversation there but most of the time it's actually because the business isn't sophisticated enough to handle that volume of leads and properly and follow up with them in time whilst running the company and you can understand all the pains but I suppose in your industry correct if I'm wrong one of the reasons maybe you haven't had to do that is because you're Working with a niche that is already quite sophisticated from a sales perspective they are sales flaw businesses aren't they

yeah yeah and then we know because we know the industry in that initial Discovery call and sales call and on boarding we know the questions that we should be asking we know that if a client says to us XY Z so for example if there's 20 lenders in the industry they've only got six or they've only got three that's a red flag To us to say we could send them all the leads in the world but none of them are going to get approv for finance right red flag and we'll be transparent with them and

say you need to get X Y and Z on before we'll even look at this that's just an example of the qualification process that we will make sure be transparent with them and we're just all we're doing is saving ourselves a headache after week two week four because we'll be scratching a red saying Why is it not working and so they when really it's because it's they haven't got the the lenders in place for example fine fine and presumably you only know that because you've had a client that's had that issue before and repe exactly

yeah and that's the same thing with everything is it I suppose yeah yeah which is and there'll be many people watching this thinking I just I would love to get to that level and and really the only way you can get to your level Is through repid ition of working with a large volume of clients in the same industry day in day out for years on end and then only then it's I always love the bamboo shoot an allergy that that like you plant bamboo and it it's something crazy like three years the shoots to

stay under ground and nothing loss and nothing comes out and then all of a sudden in like one month you get like meters and meters and meters worth of growth it's kind of like with you Guys for the for the first formation of the company it's like you're there you're growing you're growing and and all of a sudden the last 12 months double the team 2025 it's going to be crazy growth and that's uh it's all that work that's kind of happened under the surface but lots of agencies don't allow themselves to get to that

point in the first place and put in that put in that time yeah yeah it's exciting and we've had a couple of people join Us um recently one of them has been at Mediacom one's been at the hook the hook groups I think it's Ingenuity or something like the agency within there um and she said this feels special which to us is like I think it is and I think we have got a team now and I often say this to people like I walk around the office and I listen to people and I listen

to them sometimes I'm like they are mental in the best possible way like they're having such a laugh but then I'll walk around again let's say 20 minutes later and they're all talking around a project and they all come at it from their own angle and they've all got their own input there's there's a media buy there's an email person there's there's an SEO person for example there's an account manager and they're all collaborating to get the best for that client M and so like us as the leadership team now just looking at it going

I think we've got it Here we could really really kick on next year I think everyone can see that as well everyone feels like the part of something which is yeah you know lovely that's awesome what is the plan to from you to go from where you are now to to scaling company making active decision of okay we want to we want to continue growing but take control of that growth than just wait for the referrals to come you what what's what's the plan ahead yeah so we've got uh um Ashu came in With his

he's like uh does key accounts but does sales as well again like like I said he's been doing more account management and so is the other salesperson that we had in they've been pulled into account management duties so now we've got more Client Services people coming in we can completely separate and focus those roles down and then next year we've got a decent enough pipeline of people that we can still go after in the car finance Space where we could get another Year's growth out of easy and the plans that we've got with our current

clients again if we can scale vertically let's do that let's pour more resource into dealing with our top 10% of our clients and if we can help get them to another 25 30% growth because of our our pricing model works we will scale with them and that's why um that's why we've always done it that way really it is a somewhat of a mindfield At least in the early stages for inexperienced people to do like a performance-based models were you performance-based from right at the start of the business or was it like retainer and then

once you understood the figures you started introducing performance base like what are some of the biggest lessons that you've learned from from and is it is it pay per appointment is it is it what is it payer close like what does it look like just Per lead just payer lead performance model yeah and it's always been like that um and it's just easy easy sums if the cost per lead is £10 and our fee is2 the all encompassing fee for that lead is12 and then at point of Discovery call will work those work those figures

through them so say our Target for you over the first three months is get this to this our fee will be this you need to convert it this and that will give you a Coster deal of this does that work for You oh yeah cuz my cost my revenue is double that brilliant we've got we can work with you and it's a really good exercise that to actually look at it might not work for them for the average revenue is is spitting out what our the costs are and with including our fee we be like

well it's probably not going to work this you might need to look at other avenues before you come to us for example really interesting I find that and it's probably because I'm exposed by So many new agencies everyone's always looking for an edge and it's like oh no cost per lead you can't do CPR lead anymore because no one's interested in cos lead you have to do pay CPR appointment or get involved in the sale and so on and in many cases these are just kind of shiny objects and ways to mask just a just

um a way to try and desperately stand out but actually very unnecessary do you have somewhat of a a formula for and or any advice for anyone Who's watching this who is nearly generation agency right now that has wanted to get into kind of a performance-based or let's say a payer lead model to establish what you should be charging to to to well per lead for an industry like how do you know when working with an industry what that lead should be worth or is worth to a client and then be confident enough to to

ask for that with every client that you work with in the early stages you know yeah I Think early doors it was a lot more ad hoc whereas now we've got a full pricing Matrix and it'll look at if you only take 600 leads offers every month I say take like if we generate you 600 leads the cost per that lead might be say four quid for example if you're taking 10 a th a day then the cost might be one1 pound so it is a is a sliding scale so it will get cheaper per

lead as as you scale up which you think the clients Like um I think you just have to factor in because it's very easy to get carried away and just look at like our revenues as agency owners you have to factor in what it looks like for the client you have to factor in with with your incremental increase on top of that lead price if you rework the figures is that going to be profitable for that client in terms of their industry what do they sort of go for as a percentage is it 20% margin

is it 30% is it 10% if you rewind Your figures and do an average does that still work for them on an average basis if it does and it it works out for you great that's that's something you can that's a starting point I think and that's again ties back to we know the IND and we've got 30 clients across that same industry so we can really just fine tune it over we've really fine tuned over the years 100% that's great so um you doing a retainer as well or is it just the per we've

got some ancillary Products we got like um a data fee we've got like a couple of bits like website monitoring because obviously landing pages and websites are a massive part of us so again that was this is from a a time when we didn't have it and it was an issue because we had ads live all weekend we didn't have coverage of it we found out the landing page was down so we on the Saturday and Sunday the results were saying nil spend £2,000 a day so we're like well we can't let this Happen again

so we just provide a solution where it will track their website make sure it's live so as soon as it goes down within two minutes you get like a notification in slack to say the website's gone down nice um ecrm is paid on deal so that is on completion of a deal so not on lead everything else obviously we got the creative agency so we do like content days we do video production That's all just ad hoc project basis we've got social media Management Services which is just a standard retainer but it's all based around

what is our core offering and that is paid advertising and I think over the years we have had a few that have had a different pricy model but by and large if it hits s Niche then it'll be this is your priceing Matrix because we know it works for you and it works for us what do you what do you think are the the top Three most important parts of ensuring a or most three most important things to ensuring a good lead cost and through let's say a meta campaign um that remains consistent over time

is it volume of of creative into the ad account are you is it the funnel that you're using what are the three most important components to that to you guys your landing page has got your landing page has got to Be number one is it lead magnets or are they what is it direct off we use um we use like an Unbound solution and then it's just an application form on the website so just it's just a full finance application but the actual landing page itself and the form that you use is pivotal we could

have the best ads in the world but we going to a website that's got a sub form it doesn't load quick form itself no the actual application Form is through a third party provider and that's been great because it's been a bit of an industry standard so we know that works so every client that comes on if they don't have this form we will say again part of the discovery call you need to get his form you need to get one that looks or does the same thing as that because if you haven't got that

it's not going to work so the land landing pages I would say the most important Because even if our ads are the absolute best thing in the world you're taking them to a page where they're just they're not going to convert and that just but will just increase your costs straight away and then I think for this answer I probably got the wrong person on here probably would have been um luk our head of agency to give us that um but you you usual stuff like click through eight is is massive in terms of to

know that an Ad's doing well and then just testing different ad formats so video against single image against Carousel all that sort of stuff but nice nice and the the creative agency has that always been ran in tandem to the to the main agency alongside and is is that an instrumental uh part of delivering the service that you you currently have or is it kind of a bit of a side yeah a bit of a side gig it's quite it's quite interesting that because it was two Separate agencies one was mine and then it had

had staff attached to it and then when when the acquisition went through last year and obviously became like more of a group structure we literally just spent a load of money on the website for the creative brand so we like to keep it there and it just changes if we ever need to go to market as something different and not Le an agency for financial services we can be a creative agency you'll KN in yourself like it Just gives you more focus and again we're trying to just create a bit of a niche there by

by doing that and but in terms of how it works now it's it's all one team like the actual creative team the sum of those parts is the creative Agency for nonstop but it's also the creative team for leely it's just basically a shop window to go to market in a slightly different way fine yeah makes sense which you often see quite a lot in the industry yeah Separating the brands um and uh most of the team are based in Manchester yeah and then you still have we spoke off camera you've got you've got team

members kind of scattered around as well um what is your theology around in-person offices versus virtual companies kind of being a bit of a hybrid over the years I can only go off what we're experiencing now in that the Manchester office that we've got and there's like Maybe 16 17 of us it has been amazing it's something that we want to keep going we have obviously got Legacy staff who've been with us for a few years who are offshore who are absolutely fantastic that we want to they're ingredents in the culture but what we found

is trying to get them up to our level of involvement offshore it was quite tough in terms of where we want people to be and um yeah we have like one of our values is is Involved and over that three or four years it's good but when we're growing quick and we need people to slot in and really feel like they're a part of something straight away just having that inperson contact even just be able to shake someone's hand or give them a hug like if me and you were trying to generate a friendship and

we never saw each other we'd be able to do it but I think it would just take a lot longer whereas if we were sat in the same room As each other that same effort is down agreed a lot quicker and there's a lot more Focus so with us growing this quick we just have to make the decision that we will still have that option and we want to hire offshore people because there's amazing talent everywhere but for those key roles and just keeping that focus in the Manchester area if possible or our satellite office

in Kent it just it's just really helped us and I can only go off the last sort of six to Eight months every person that has come in since March has been like this is amazing amaz I am yet to meet an agency owner Beyond a certain Revenue level even Beyond a certain Team level and that Team level I would say is about 30 team members that has that thrives without an office um I was and that goes against what my belief system was even up to like 24 months ago always believed as an agency

you could scale this pretty infin infinitely but actually you then Start feeling the strain of that probably around 25 30 team members which I think is really interesting because a lot of it was quite difficult for us to transition into having our now as I said to you A Creative office in in in Sheffield because we have a handful of people that work there but rest are all over the world and I can only imagine that that'll be something that will transition over time um but it's uh yeah it's a it's very interesting I think

Agencies Thrive of collective collaboration and um if not there it's quite an isolating model and roles can sometimes be a little bit monotonous as well and so if you're not sharing and what the greater vision is of what it what everybody else is working on it's uh it's quite hard just staying in your one lane on your one piece to say you're a media buy just running the ads but not getting that big picture of what your greater impact is Across the whole company yeah and to be fair and this is something that I've been

quite conscious of just me personally when I've like been the direct report for someone who's offshore sometimes you'll have a daily call with them or something for 15 minutes and then because they're not there then it's like out of s out of mind and I'm on to the next thing and I'm in like four or the five of the meetings but that person might be just Sat there really you know feeling down but because I can't see him it's like outside out mind I'm not consciously thinking about that person but it's just the fact that

if I could see that person sitting there I'd be like I can see they're not engaged and I'd do something about it whereas it's just we're so fast-paced and it has sort of shown a few cracks with a few of the offshore people that we've made to try to on board quite quick and Tred to get them Up to a certain level and it just hasn't really worked so I just i' much prefer for by and large to have people there that can see to make sure they're okay not every day which I think the

hybrid is a great model I think that's the best model but so you not everyone's in the office every single day no so we do two days a week Tuesday and the Thursday oh nice only two days in yeah I go in every day and to be fair people Even though we only tell them it's two days they do come in more and it's all the same day or is it alternate days so we say Tuesday and a Thursday to the guys I go in every day and there's a few of us that go in

every day but some people come in like Monday Tuesday Thursday some people come in Tuesday Wednesday Thursday they actually come in more than what we expect them to do which it must be a good sign that if they wanting to travel In um so yeah it works have you tracked efficiency in versus out of office watch have been hybrid like that no I wouldn't say we have and that's because a large obviously the media buying team predominantly was offshore for a period of time um you know across Europe across Asia across the Philippines so we

didn't have a benchmark whereas now we have um got a lot more media buyers on on show as well We've got that really nice blend we haven't done that exercise in terms of efficiencies but we definitely will do yeah it's interesting it would just be very interesting to see whilst people are in that mentality of of they know their hybrid so they they have the the choice of both it'd be interesting to well I suppose we haven't done the exercise but know you're absolutely right you can see actively that the the people that went Mo

about to make some Tough decisions because the actual output isn't good enough and when you look at what they have on as a as a of the team they should be doing those things and they haven't been doing and it's that constant does it do they need more do they need more support from me or they just are they not involved basically are they not not engaged and I can fully understand for me as a person why I wouldn't potentially feel engaged and That again it's not a one-size fit all but I can understand why

if you've never met people and it's quite a distant relationship even if you have a daily call with someone how engaged can you realistically be with that yeah team yeah I know it's difficult you have to have a lot of meetings I'd sayot a lot of meetings and again like the guys who've been with us for a while who've been offshore they've been with us for a while and they've been with us from the Start so they're they're part of it yeah what is the um the collective vision of leadly like what are you guys

working towards um not necessarily as a as a from the business perspective but just what it drives the company and you free Founders in particular we do have a vision our vision is connecting people with a service and well it's actually connecting the entire population with the service that they need so obviously That's like a big blue sky um thought process but in terms of what motivates us it's just that constant grind and just what's next for us and we were talking about this in the Pu the of night actually we're not passionate about car

finance you know we don't if it I wouldn't I don't go home and reload literature on like core Finance but and when I was at my old place I wasn't Passionate about core dealer websites but the fact that I was doing it in an environment where I love my team and everyone had that same feeling towards each other we could be doing anything together I know we could be doing anything and we' we'd make a success out of it so I don't know how you'd put that into an actual sentence Collective being Collective growth I

suppose yeah it's being part of other people's growth and yeah I I say to everyone that comes in And has an interview and they start and I say they always ask about opportunity and what's progression and I always say to them we can bring in sales and we can get people through the door in terms of clients but you guys have to be the ones that grow it I'll give you the tools we'll give you the resource I'll give you the platform but the only way you're going to get more people in your team is

by you doing a great job not for me and That's that makes him think oh wow I can do it and then all we all we've got to do is just keep nudging him along bit a little bit by a bit we we took a guy in um in March the one of the email guys and I love this because when we're having a chat with me him and his line manager at the time and I said to him like where do you want to be standard question he said I don't want to I don't

want to like um don't want this to come across the wrong way but he he addressed It to the line manager and he said I want your job and I was like I love that and I said that in front M and the other guy was like yeah I love that to be fair and we had that same conversation and now within three months after that he got a grad in under him and then again we're looking to high another person now so he's had that conversation he's thought well I can do this and he

he's grown he's grown that team he needs team members now there you go Brilliant I had a similar conversation with someone Rec recently about team progression and the people that progress actually just like yourself really are the people that they you can set a path out for someone but they have to car they have to actively walk down that path or in fact actually it's almost like the team member carves the path and you just facilitate the path for them like the team member has to actively be Pulling themselves into that position cuz if not

especially if we're looking to bring on directors or managers and so on like don't want to be like who I need a director who from my team is actually suitable for we that should be so clear to you who that person is because they are constantly like pick me pick me pick me I'm the guy I'm the guy through repetition of proving to you that they can like I said to you a moment ago one of my team members for last we've been On a on a launch and for the last three days on a

trot she's worked the graveyard gra graveyard shift with me doing first thing in the morning till midnight now I don't recommend any employer doing that and it's I had expectation and this is like a you don't have to do this by the way and she's like I don't think you got understand I'm I've got your back like the company needs this right now and I'm here for it she's the first person I'm looking to When we're looking to progress and she's going to and and know we will reward that we're not going to reward the

person that says I want to grow but then doesn't play a part in What that self-growth looks like because it's then like well as a company we have to spend the time to try and figure out what we can do with you whereas if you actually were the term a player as we as we say if you were an a player whatever that means to you you would you would play an Active role in carving out what your future actively looks like in the same sense that we go to the gym with a vision of

who we're going to be we have the team member has to have the vision of who they want to be in the company in order to tocome that because if not then they are essentially leaving their reality down to fate and the kind of person that leaves their reality down to fate is not really someone with a true active growth mindset that you would Need in those Superior positions yeah and I think to be fair you do you you do need to with some people show them a bit of a road as well in terms

of they might not understand their actual capabilities they might not actually know what they're capable are but actually just showing them the a road somewhat of an a road give them the tools and just get out of the way and we'll just there to be pushing pushing but they got to be willing to go down That ro% they've got they've got to do the work yeah but I know from a place when I before I joined my last company I was an environment that I just really just didn't enjoy it and then I come into

an environment that someone put my arm around me gave me that support and straight away I'm like right I know what I want to do now I want to keep progressing so I hope that our guys can see that and US me Tom and luk they've just got those people there that just go You can do this I'm going to keep pushing you but you've got to do it you've got to drive the car yeah you so people don't realize their TR potential until someone opens that potential up to them that's what one thing that

I'll forever be thankful for my old boss pipper for and now Tom they just keep me on the path somewhat with just they just keep pushing me and every time there's an opportunity just get a little bit better they'll just keep pushing me just Keep testing me and that's what I've love really that's amazing so as a business what would you say is or can you share one of the biggest failures that you've had over the past four years yeah you we spoke about this in the week I genuinely can't think of this massive failure

I think maybe getting the offshore stuff wrong on a couple of occasions in terms of how we how we actually hire offshore I think it's really tough and one thing that Seders and it's really hard to sort of try and quantify how good someone is if they're off show sometimes because if their English language is exceptional mhm it's really we it's that almost skews your brain sometimes to think this person is is the guy you you heard him speak because you wouldn't ever say that about someone if they were just from from this from England

I think yeah just just getting that wrong and that being at the expense Of some people who we've had to make tough decisions with that's obviously not a nice thing for us to do and even though it's the right thing to do I would rather just not put those put those those people through that process of us thinking we know what we want maybe we actually want something slightly different there's still a person behind that who's got a job who's got a family who's got bills to pay so that's probably the one Thing I would

say is a failure but we've learned from it and we're in a place now where all those sort of things are laser focused and we know exactly what we want what a beautiful place to be in an agency if that's your biggest failure yeah the people we we haven't gone through that I mean touch W massively touch W and Tom always says to us and we always have this conversation there will be a big one and he will come yeah and I'm like Bring it on I know we'll we'll get through it and I look

at the team and I go we will 100% get through it so whatever it is Bring it on and it'll get it'll make us better how how just a follow on from that then how out of 10 what would you rate running an agency like from like a a stress perspective like how stressful would you rate running an agency out of 10 broadly speaking looking at kind of everything from a bird's eye View I'm quite a stressy person though so it definitely suits me right you know what I mean I it's definitely up there it's

like eights and above okay now now I feel better about the situation cuz I'm I'm like yeah something something's not right here maybe if you came over to direct consumer eCommerce would be having the different compy no yeah definitely try losing 40% of your client base and re rebuilding no yeah 100% it's it's up there massively Yeah fair fair fair that's awesome but like you said I think you do need that in you need that in the environment of an and the moment that we look to I think I love proess don't get me wrong

but you can add too much in and you become slow and you forget the reason you actually became that really cool agency in the first place because you have the velocity and speed and how quick you get stuff done all these processes that come in in Midle layer management and you slow down you may end up coming this corporate engine that just CHS out like okay work and there's slas for everything I think all that stuff's valuable but there still needs to be a bit of fire in our ballies to make sure that we're still

ripping stuff up and changing stuff and getting better day on day week on week you've mentioned process a few times um obviously kind of a longside process come systemization and I'm interested to Hear being a high performance lead generation agency how you guys have now integrated AI into the business and and and how instrumental that is if at all in the company so far creative is massive when you got clients who wanted to spend 450 Grand a day the creative velocity that you need off the back of that is enormous you know if I think

Luke did a piece of work and he found out that it's maybe between 5 and 10% of our ads that we produce actually hit the Target costs so we can rework those figures to work out if they're spending 10 grand a day 50 Grand a day how many creatives do we need to produce per day to try and hit our targets and then factoring in like creative fatigue and all the rest of it so using AI something like AR ads that can get your AI uh people that can do your videos AI ugc creators using

things like mid Journey from a creative production standpoint it's been huge and obviously chat gbt if You ever want to do like script writing and just giving you a base to work off I use gbt a lot in my workflow just for those times when if I haven't got the heads space for it but I know what I want to do I just use chat gbt as a soundboard to get me started on it and that takes you down a certain path so I'd say it's been massive and that's something that Luke our head of

agency always been massively keen on doing it's just anything that anything that new and That's looks cool it's got a bit of a eye into it you'll always try and Pitch to the end time like should we do this should we get a look at this one yeah I mean with with AI with what lead generation being so data heavy I can imagine that from a data perspective as well there'll be a lot of great Solutions in the future you just just holding that for for a second you just shared something it's a really valuable

ad which is that your Creative between one in 10 and one in 20 essentially creatives hit your kpis that you're looking for with your individual clients for that for that client yeah that for that one client what would you say broadly speaking for most because I think that gives a really valuable perspective on on on what people's output should really be like because I think a lot of agencies night and when I say a lot of agencies lots of I'm I'm talking quite about beginners and and People that are just starting out or maybe a

couple of years in um I think there was a there was a we we we've all seen a massive shift in certainly the media buying space in the last 24 months maybe even a little bit longer than that ever since the iOS 14 thing which is fill a dinosaur talking about iOS 14 now but anyway the C everything shifted towards creative like media bind St all all of the manual bidding and everything like it just kind of stopped Overnight um but a lot of agencies still naively think they can launch free ads in an ad

account and then one if it if none of them convert it's oh something's wrong here and they don't realize that actually it's creative iteration and creative output that's their bottleneck so what would you say is if you were to speculate on average and it's probably a question for for your other partner how many creatives you go Through to find find a winning ad that you actually end up running long term is generally from the work that Luke's done and again that's a very small catchment pool it's like one in 10 interesting but it might that

might vary massively in terms of industry but it's a great excise to do we've only done that sort of quite recently and that's off the back of some of our clients really wanting to go heavy on spend like quick so in order for us to keep up with Creative velocity because we felt like we were lagging behind a bit there he just did he did exact that exact piece of work to say if they're spending this we're going to need two more designers if they're spending this we're going to need three more designers or and

more software know all these things that we can then forecast out for anyone else that comes on yeah fine okay and then again I don't want to get too stuck into service I'm kind of being quite selfish With my questions right now from personal interest but um when you're running ads at at high volume through lead gen are you when you find a winner is that is that ad running and staying long term as in two three months in some cases or is it because at least in our world in in e-commerce an ad might

be incredible and you might get a you might get tens of thousands of spend out of that ad but it might only last seven days in some cases so do the ads lasts Much longer yeah and again that's all based on spend so say if our average spend on an account is one to two grand a day on meta you'll have like your unicorns what we call them in there that will last sort of two to three months it might be one and then that will then could run for 6 Seven 8 months because of

all the social proof that will come on it and all the comments and all the shares off the back of it it's just sort of fueling that engine the one slight Caveat with those is because we're in financial services their compliance that has to go in the video or on the image will change quarterly or could change quarterly so regardless of how good it is the compliance team comes knocking and says you need to take that ad down because the rep representative example on there is incorrect so that a bit of an Achilles heal with

being an our sector but we manage it nice awesome okay um if you were to launch an agency Today knowing what you know now having had an agency in the past and still like now having two different agencies understanding the market what would you do in order to grow as quickly as possible I would definitely do something similar what we've done in terms of Performance Based pricing pick a niche pick a niche that's got a volume because you don't want we we've we've Looked at stuff like financial advisor leads and the revenue off the back

of them could be massive it could be qu of a million pound for the clients but the only want four leads a month so it doesn't really work from a performance model based standpoint and again not even just thinking about from a commercial point of view thinking about the delivery team and who's managing that if you've only got four four leads per month how interesting is That to work on from our point of view we just have to say to that person you just sort of got to get them in and we'll see what happens

because they take 12 months to mature out so we're not going to know if that lead turns into a deal so where our stuff could be 7 Days turnaround so you and load of dates to go at so I think high volume smaller we call maturity windows so if the lead gen process is 1 to s or 1 to 10 days that's a big win cuz it Means means that you can follow the data and not wait a long time I'm basically saying come into our space but don't go into our space well no one

would be able to compete with you in your space because of the bring it on it might make us better so I'm always open to it yeah so just find a large Market which has the ability to take on and hand or a large volume of leads and and if and if it's not a you know there's a lot of lead gen things like Selling bed and stuff doing Le gen for buying products and stuff like that as long as it's just names numbers and emails and there's a volume there it's worth a go yeah

what was your agency doing beforehand your your when you were a freelance what was what were you specifically offering them was it just was it the creative it was the organic so organic and some media buying so when I left my old place I was the only paid social person in that team and there was No one else in the company of like 8090 staff that knew paid social so in my head I was literally Mark Zuckerberg I thought I was mint I thought it was really good and then when I left and started doing

stuff with Tom and he introduced me to some of those guys I quickly realized yeah I've got a lot to learn here which I like that um but yeah so it was organic social and yeah the media B fine and you you don't do organic social now do you in the in the Business we do through the creative brand yeah through non-stop fine fine for the same for the same industry yeah but but that's also open to other stuff because that's part of like the creative agency and how we go to market with that yeah

we will take on any client in that space fine fine how do you find that as a as a service in general I've always found organic social to be quite an unprofitable service it's not it's not unprofitable for us it's more especially With in being in the financial space it's just that it's the added value side of it so when you get to a certain level of client or company a lot of companies look at as like a necessary evil it's something they just need to be doing so we need to make sure that if

they need to be doing it how can we make this the best possible thing that they could have so giving them a videography that comes to the site once a month giving them a ugc creator that comes to the site once A month to actually get video which is what all these platforms are all about now we know doing Tik toks stff doing stuff for reals but the reason we've left it there in terms of it's not industry specific is I think organic social can still work for other Industries and I think Tik Tok with

how quickly you can actually scale personal accounts and Company accounts I still think there's an opportunity there so I noticed that on your website Tik Tok and Actually it's it's I'm glad you brought it up because I remember thinking to myself it's interesting I've not seen a lead generation agency at scale of your volume running Tik Tok ads as a core service yeah so you're running Tik Tok ads for lead generation yeah because I no this something there something Tik Tok are really heavily pushing at the moment we work with Tik Tok quite closely and

they they are support's pretty good is it better than matter Yeah and they can yeah I mean anyone's better anyone's better than mattera and but they I've had many conversation with Tik Tok and they are really trying to push Tik Tok for Leen and to be honest I put it in a box and I was like I'm not sure that I can see Tik Tok being a great lead generation platform but you're kind of you're going a real step further that goes against my thought process which is you're doing that for a professional Service as

well which even More so makes me is interesting to me so how did you figure that out um and uh yeah what are some of the things that you've learned from running Tik Tok lead generation in terms of how we figured it out it's just a ma it just comes down to trying it it's the new thing and we make a decision let's try it it's the same sort of metrics as meta in terms of what you're looking at obviously it's not paperclick it's the impression lad so we just tried it um for a good

period Of time especially in car finance it does seem like it's a bit of a bing to a Google so like we see Tik Tok to meta as like a bing to a Google so there's a Target there and it's good but you're not going to be able to get away two three grand a day consistently every day and rely on it for you know week on week month on month whereas meta and Google you can you know you can bet your put your bets on those two platforms similar B it's got there's a market

there you Can get some volume away but the stuff that we're looking at you can maybe spend a tenth of what you could on Google or 20% of it so it's just factoring that into your strategy because it's still good to diversify and remove your risk because me for us over the years has been an a massive issue with like ad accounts getting blocked Pages getting unpublished Pages getting blocked from advertising all unjustified but trying To get a response out of someone for matter is as you know pretty difficult are you then going down the

rout of paying a backhander to get the ad account reinstated have you had to do that so yeah Luke told us about this recently so we've always um it took us a while to get an agency rep and then we got one um and then you find out that it's still on an Advertiser level in terms of how to get escalated support based on Certain things so it's just a it's an ongoing battle and and to be fair we had a chat with him this week and I feel bad I do feel a little bit

bad for him to be fair but they're in a system that just seems so broken like how they actually there's no CRM there the support just doesn't here or there there is no CRM they said like the inquiries come in by like an email thread and they go I was like this Sounds bonkers crazy it's I mean it's deliberate in in what for for whatever reason but it's crazy it's Tik Tok we said to him our Tik Tok ra is literally coming into Manchester next Wednesday I'm going out for lunch with him oh Tik tok's

completely different yeah it's a completely different world there we've yeah we've had to pay to to get ad accounts reinstated and many of times it's A oh yeah I've got a I've got a couple of good contacts if you ever need one um but yeah it's uh but you got to do what you got to do that's the last thing you want to do it's the last thing you want to do is pay some dodgy bloke on telegram to to get your ad account reinstated but we've yeah tens of different accounts and loads of other

people have had to do the same but when you got a client spending tons and tons and and some and as you Know ad accounts get banned for like no reason and there's nothing provided and and you know that you haven't done anything and but if the computer says no then that's what it says and that that's where whole business yeah because it's it is someone's whole business like for some of our clients and it's not we do we do always try and say to them like can we diversify can we try a bit on

Google can we try you know just something else because you 100% all your Eggs are in Mets basket and that is a great basket to be in when it's working but when that goes down it's tough yeah it's scary how has lead cost differed from like how does how do they rank from like Tik Tok I mean obviously I know Google is different because it's more intent but it's from meta Google Tik Tok and are you charging the same per lead like to all clients regardless of the cost yeah the platform yeah because what and

the reason we sort of do that we Could look to change it and we have sort of spoke about that but we will always start with meta and we always say to people if they've not done it before start with meta we'll get you up to a certain level of spend through meta and then we'll start to look at Google because the reason for that is we're going to focus on one one first then look on to the next one because you if you're getting on to Google you wanted to get getting them up to

a certain Level of spend before you even start looking at Google Google because obviously it's higher entry point M but in terms of the costs yeah Tik Tok and meta are similar m b a little bit more expensive and then Google are you doing Bing ads as well we do some Bing yeah again that might be at a point where for the larger clients that we work with they're still just looking to diversify and maybe get 20 deals a mon through Bing where they get 200 through Google that s what's the most that you're spending

on Bing on a monthly basis upwards of like a grand not much okay I was I was waiting for 100k Bing spend no that' be nice a new Avenue to go that be nice and I what we like to do as well this is just going slightly off track but with with the advertising platforms yes the cost per lead is important yes the cost per deal is important but it's actually Looking at the number of people that have been contacted or handled as an inquiry Source what's the approval what's the deal rate from that point

to deal and what that shows you is the efficiency of the platform as well so if for example meta's cost per lead is one pound for example but you only convert one in a 100 but you've got to ring 100 people that means that your bandwidth for the day might be doing one deal Because you got to ring a 100 people Google might be2 for a lead so 20 times more expensive but you convert one in two for example mhm so you it's actually better from a cost point of view also you're a lot more

efficient so your bandwidth for that day as a salesperson is way higher if you're dealing with that inquiry Source if that makes sense yeah absolutely 100% are you tracking as well as that the qualification rate of the Leads yeah yeah yeah so we'll again for car finance is usually lead approval contacted approval deal and then we we monitor those are the four key stages that we monitor for every client really do you get hold do you get held to like a conditional like approval percentage like based on your ads because and how do the other

I mean the ads have a large influence on the quality of the lead coming in presume at least with a lot of Industries I don't know what it's like Do you get hold accountable for that are there kpis that you have to stick to with your like that are conditional to your cost per lead like charge no not conditional and to be fair some clients do say this to us and quite a few people have said it to me like well what if you just give us a load of rubbish leads and I'm like well

how long you going to stay with us though cuz you're on a 30-day rolling and they're like well yeah good point so it's in our interest to make Sure the leads are good um but yeah there's no there's no there's no condition in the agreement to hit a certain metric it all goes again I'm just all about just managing expectations and being up front from the start so if when I ask him around the lender situation if there's 20 lenders available and you've got 10 I need to manage the expectations to say the qualification or

approval status of the leads that come through might be 50% Less likely because you've only got 50% of the lenders available in the market does that still work for you let's have a look at it if it still works for you then the expectations have just gone from there and and now they're there the goal post have changed basically but they're aware of them so there's been like four three or four clients that we've onboarded since uh well that we onboarded at the start of this year and I'm thinking of these four because They've all

said the similar thing to me that we manage their expectations perfectly and every little niggle that's happened along the way they were like well you told us this so it's been great and it just shows that it's working so important and just the opposite of what most people do because they think they just have to sell sell sell sell and then get the money and then life is hell for the next three months because they're trying to live up to something That's completely unrealistic yeah exactly you can't work you're setting yourself up for an headache

AR you yeah absolutely do you do you factor in actively kind of going Beyond setting their expectation and and actually trying to over deliver on the promises that you've let out or is it kind of just like this is how it's going to go and then it goes that exact way yeah that's good point I think we probably do say it just about right mhm Yeah we don't try and under or over Sal it we just try and give them what it should be and again I don't know if that we do that naturally or

because we're in a focused industry where people it's quite an incestuous industry people a lot of people work in we work at one of our clients and they'll leave and go and work at another um but I think we just like being straight with people and it seems to be working nice nice fine and uh obviously you've get you're getting a Lot of clients from referrals at the moment as like the main acquisition Channel crun if I'm wrong but um do you have a system that you you or like a process that you take people

through to to get referrals is it purely organic yeah is it incentivized like what does the referral system look like yeah we don't have any incentive in there it's weirdly a lot of our clients refer other people AR do the exact same thing as them they might even be based down the Road but they're just like well the Market's that big and there's that much volume available and they have no reason to do so they just do so just to help you guys but obviously when it first starts happening we're like BR thank you very

much yeah but are they not your competitor and base two minutes down the road and they're like yeah but they want a marketing agency marketing partner you guys do a great job the Market's massive they're going to do it anyway so our Driver because I know I'm into ruce them to someone that um think would do a good job for him and all All Leads are National leads anyway for the client presumably are they yeah so if they're broker again I don't want to go too much into the industry stuff um but generally speaking they'll

be National but then you do work with like a a typical core dealership who might be Finance focused they might be in a region of say Manchester then your targeting does Change and then with the targeting changing your cost lead match is going to change because your your pool's a lot smaller so again managing expectations there there in terms of it's not this it's going to be this yeah the reason I asked that question is because lots of agencies will lots of clients will be unhappy with work with you working with other businesses that are

in the local vicinity if you're competing over those Local leads and so some agencies will then do that um exclusivity in a local area for example so it's in tree to know if you guys do that yeah we probably if it was in a local area and it worked for both parties then we would look to we could consider that but it's got to be how big's that area you know if it's in Corall for example and there's only one competitor or there's no competitors then it's a different conversation if you want to do it

in Manchester when There's literally tens of competitors it's like it's got to be a big deal got yeah it's going to be a big deal so if you want to pay that that's fair enough but it's got got to work for both of us 100% awesome okay final question for you J I've love this by the way lots of these I love doing these podcasts because it allows me to ask as many selfish questions as I as I wanted to to to understand the minds of other agents owners just find it it's a such a

Diverse business model and so much is going on on a daily basis and any time that you're dealing with people um it's just it's interesting to hear your take what would your advice be to someone who is watching this who is not yet at the point they want to be in their agency irregardless of time span maybe they've been running their Agency for a couple of years and they're kind of stuck around that 10K a month point for example maybe a couple of team Members or and they can't seem to be able to cement their

play in the market and push through and actually scale what would your advice to be to someone in that position it's got to be sales over everything initially so without without sales going through you're never going to get anywhere with what with sales becomes more opportunity becomes more failures becomes more chances to learn becomes more chances to progress so we Were just Relentless with sales over everything for the first year as long as you got people in house that will roll the sleeves up and get stuck in which is what basically I and the other

people did if you've got stuff coming through the door you will get to a point where you you're finding out your Niche you're finding which Avenue you're going to go down would you say with that in mind then that it is better for people to be completely open to all opportunity when They're first starting out collect data and then hone in on a niche later once they've established what is working for them or what they actually yeah where they're getting results yeah I think like you're choosing I would definitely choose if you want to do

Le gen or do more com based stuff but initially yeah you sales over everything just get some get some clients through the door and just just see what works MH just rip stuff up make sure make get better every Time get better every day every week but if you've got fresh stuff going through the door you're going to find out what's working for you and your team like what works for us might not work for might not work for you for example but of course doesn't mean it doesn't work 100% there are a thousand ways

to to run an agency yeah yeah Amazing Joe thank you so much man