The Virtual CMO
The Virtual CMO podcast discusses growth marketing strategies for SMBs and how new technologies are improving marketing effectiveness. Hosted by Eric Dickmann, founder of The Five Echelon Group and a fractional CMO, the podcast focuses on building strategic marketing plans and executing successful growth marketing programs. It includes interviews with industry thought leaders who share their experiences and insights. The show highlights new marketing automation platforms, AI-enabled tools, and other cutting-edge technologies that can enhance marketing campaigns.
The Virtual CMO
Scaling Your Marketing Team with a Digital Marketing Agency with Jack Elias
In episode 97, host Eric Dickmann interviews Jack Elias. Jack is an entrepreneur, digital marketer, and Co-Founder and Vice President of Empower Social, the world’s first digital marketing assistant. He and his co-founder, Daniel recognized the need for change, and for that change to happen, the market had to be shaken up to evolve. The product is a digital marketing assistant, powered by the best available AI technologies, supported by local experts in your market, and backed by a global digital marketing force. Empower Social knows your business objectives, your competitors, and your industry; it knows the marketing world inside and out and learns new strategies and tactics daily. Their services truly empower business marketing.
Since 2011, Empower has helped small business owners from over 40 industry verticals drive digital marketing campaign results to new heights. Jack’s goal is to transform the way marketing for small businesses is serviced making it simple, efficient, and affordable.
For more information and access to the resources mentioned in this episode, visit: https://fiveechelon.com/scaling-marketing-team-digital-marketing-agency-s6ep16/
A fractional CMO can help build out a comprehensive marketing strategy and execute targeted campaigns designed to increase awareness and generate demand for your business...without the expense of a full-time hire.
The Five Echelon Group - Fractional CMO and strategic marketing advisory services designed for SMBs looking to grow. Learn more at:
Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm your host, Eric Dickmann. In this podcast, we have conversations with marketing professionals who share the strategies, tactics, and mindset you can use to improve the effectiveness of your marketing activities and grow your business. Jack, welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm so glad you could join us today.
Jack Elias:Thanks for having me, Eric. I'm really happy to be here. Thank you so much.
Eric Dickmann:Oh absolutely. I'm excited to talk to you because both of our companies serve a similar market where we're helping out small and mid-sized businesses primarily. And really helping them with their marketing. And I was so interested when we first got introduced because you've really taken marketing in a different direction, and I think you've capitalized on some of the big trends that are happening in the marketplace today. You know, we've seen things like Robin Hood as an investing platform for younger people and millennials, and some of the gamification that's happening in there. And you've tried to do something a little bit similar with Empower in terms of putting marketing in people's hands. I wonder if you could just take a few minutes and sort of explain what the concept is behind it for our audience.
Jack Elias:Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for this opportunity. So to kind of give some context into how did we get mean, we didn't just have a bottle of wine and drew this on a napkin, and decided the next day we're going to create a digital marketing assistant for business. That's not what happened. But what did happen is in 2011, we had started a digital marketing agency that focused primarily on social media, offered in French and in English because we're based here in Montreal in Canada. And around 2015, 2016, we sat down with the engineers of IBM Watson to consult them on building a digital marketing assistant for a business that would be powered by AI and machine learning, right? To really offer something more simple, efficient, and affordable for a small business. Fast forward to today, we've built this system and we continue to obviously improve it as we go along. But officially today, what we've done is we've been able to catalog and secure all marketing intelligence of any business into one portal. And these clients, they would download Empower, they subscribe, and then download the application. And then they basically engage with us per item basis if they need, let's say newsletters or advertising for social. They can ask for those things, we'll quote them and they'll get accepted. But further than that, we brought the gamification side to it to make marketing fun. And you know, marketing is one of those things you're damned if you do, you're damned, if you don't. You kind of have to pay for it, you kind of have to do it if you have a business. But it's never fun spending money on it, right? So we made sure that that experience was very simple. It was very efficient and very affordable for our clients. And then we brought the whole gamification aspect of it so they can swipe through cards and recommendations that help educate them along the way, right? So it's not just like we recommend installing the Facebook Pixel or LinkedIn Insight Tag Manager, for example, on your website. But we explained to them why, why it's important, what's the risk of doing so, what will they benefit, how long does it take? Stuff like that. So when a client accepts a recommendation, literally by swiping, right? Like exactly likethese applications that you know, we've seen them in dating apps and all these other platforms. Just by swiping they can take a decision with their marketing. So we make it super easy for them and really fun. You know, they get offers from some of our partners and stuff like that in there. So it's just a great tool for an entrepreneur today who's looking for marketing, but doesn't have the big budgets and doesn't want to kind of sign up to a contract, a long-term commitment. They can just sign up to Empower, and that way we've democratized all professional services and marketing through the app.
Eric Dickmann:Well, one of the things that I really like about the concept is for many small businesses, marketing is hugely complicated. And like you said, it's one of these necessary evils, right? It is an expense, it is costing money. But the problem is when you spend money indiscriminately, or you don't really understand what needs to be done. So you mentioned advertising. For example, let's say you wanted to run a Facebook ad. It's complicated, right? Do you have to build your audience? You have to build the creatives. You have to test things, do some testing to see what's going to work. You have to have a place where these people are going to go once they click on the ad. There's a lot of steps that have to go into that and sometimes businesses just don't know what to do, and therefore ended up spending money needlessly. And so it sounds like that's one of the things that this app can help with is really guiding people through a process.
Jack Elias:Yeah. And that's definitely what it is. And you know, most companies I would say who use Empower or who use our technology are companies that see the value of being present online today. I mean, we are in a low touch digital economy today, anyways, right? With what's happened in the last year and a half, it's kind of forced people to go online for those who weren't there. And then for those who are so-so there now, they are very much so there. Right? So all businesses that simply don't have the time, the right resources, or the know-how. I would say those three pain points is a little bit of why we exist. That's like our. As they would say in French RFAs on diet. So if a business entrepreneur has these three pain points, they would lean towards Empower, so that they can get whatever it is they need. And as often as they need it right, for sure.
Eric Dickmann:I'm curious, you know, you probably are getting some great metrics internally just based on what people are requesting, but what are some of the more common areas that you see businesses really needing help in?
Jack Elias:It would be definitely on the advertising side. And it's something that you just touched on a few seconds ago. I mean, I think all entrepreneurs today know that social media is not new. It's been around for a while, you know? And even Google, you know, it's been longer, around longer than Facebook and Instagram. So I would say that clients, the content part of things, although they struggle with it, they can still do it themselves to a certain extent. The areas that they need the most help is usually like you said, setting up their ads, building landing pages if we have to go there, their audiences doing their AB testing. That's something that, they don't even have that time and some of them don't even have the interest to learn about. So of course we're conscious of that and we want it to be easy for them. We want them to be able to have a conversation with us, to ask for things in natural language, so that they can exchange with a human being and not a robot. They have dedicated account managers on our side, so they could speak to human beings. And I would say that the main area is definitely anything tied to how do they leverage that paid functions of these platforms. So whether you're talking to Google, Facebook, and Instagram, name it. That side tends to be a little bit more something that is intimidating and they won't venture off alone. And if they do, some of them lose a lot of money just discovering as they're learning, cause that's what it is. Until they resort to, for example, a company like ours or yours, where they could get professional guidance.
Eric Dickmann:Yeah, it's an interesting perspective because I would agree with what you're saying, especially around some of the content pieces that you would create for organic marketing. You know, if you're going to do a blog post or you're going to do some sort of a downloadable asset, there's no time crunch, right? You can edit it today and edit it again tomorrow, publish it next week. You can have multiple people look at it; there isn't that same kind of pressure. But when you turn on a Facebook ad or you're paying for some Google keywords, Right? All of a sudden, you've set up a budget, you push go and that budget starts to diminish very quickly. And if you've done it wrong, it's like you know, placing a bet on the crap table, right?If you don't know what you're doing, you know, that dealer's going to take that money pretty quickly. So I can understand why the advertising would be a major aspect of what your company does.
Jack Elias:Yeah, and don't get me wrong. There's a lot of smart, curious entrepreneurs out there and you know, it's also part of the reasons why they're successful. So they can go discover this stuff on their own and they really can. And a lot of people do actually. You know, a lot of people go and they start fiddling around. I guess when you deal with companies like ours, you know, Eric, what we ended up doing for them is we end up reducing the risk of every dollar invested, at least in that space, right? In ads, right? So we can crush that curve a little bit quicker for them, which is a learning curve and the success curve. So I would say that that's definitely the value that we would bring to them, should they wish to farm out the advertising portion, which I feel that they struggle with the most.
Eric Dickmann:Yeah. Why do you think that a model like this is a little bit more appealing to a certain size business rather than the old sort of dedicated agency model?
Jack Elias:Why our model is a bit flexible?
Eric Dickmann:I mean obviously you saw an opportunity in the marketplace. Something that wasn't being served by traditional agencies. What really was there that you saw that provided this opening?
Jack Elias:Well, basically we saw that it was a very much an underserved market, like a lot of these little companies when they would go to any agency, if you didn't have the minimum retainer and you didn't have a contract that you were willing to sign, they sometimes wouldn't look at you or they would offer you up to their like C and D team. You know, like they have their juniors and interns, and stuff like that. And no company really wants that. So we just found a way to build a beautiful technology, a system that allows for a lot of automation to occur. Okay. So when a client accepts a recommendation or a task, it goes to the right person, right place, uh, right department, I should say. Right language, right skill set for execution. So I would say that we saw the opportunity being these people are not well-served, and sometimes neglected altogether. But it is, they are the businesses that are really I would say, you know, moving our economies in terms of creating jobs and getting. You know, it is the small entrepreneur today that's making a very big difference in the workforce and we just saw an opportunity to kind of go there and help that market. And, seeing that that market was extremely massive. It bodes really well for us in how we tackle our growth going forward. Mind you, some of the partners that we're also working with, they have, I mean, tens of thousands of SMBs that reach out to them for a number of needs. Sometimes, payment processing and stuff like that. So yeah, it's an underserved market altogether. They need the most help, I would say in this digital economy. And they don't have the same means, knowledge, budget, et cetera as these bigger institutions may have. So at least with Empower, we help level the playing field for them a bit. You know we really give them access to the same tools, same resources that like maybe some bigger companies would have access to.
Eric Dickmann:So I'm curious if you switch hats a little bit, you put on your founders hat, and now you're an entrepreneur. You're somebody who's going and developing a company from scratch. So you've got to go through all the same things that your clients are going through, right? You've got to go through that branding step, you've got to build your website, you've got to get the publicity so that people know about you. What has been your journey there personally for the company as you sort of gone from a startup to actually having a client base.
Jack Elias:It's really interesting. I mean you put importance on branding. I mean you put different types of importance on branding I think at different stages of your business. You know like I think when we had our digital marketing agency, we knew that was important. So obviously we did a good job with branding the agency. But moving forward into going into a tech company, we did like a clear pivot from a service company to a marketing technology. And yeah, we did a formal branding. Like we didn't do our own branding. We hired a company, independent third-party to come in, we paid the big bucks for it, but it was important for us to kind of like to be credible, right? I mean you could come up with the best technology, but if it doesn't present well, if it's not credible, even just upon coming across it or reading more upon it, that doesn't help your cause, right? So I mean like any entrepreneur, we start with the basics, you start with your business card online, your website, you definitely need a logo, right? You need to have like some sort of visual identity.And you know, for some clients they'll have the business cards done with us as well. Some people are moving towards digital today and they're kind of shying away from all that, the old way of someone with some contact info. But definitely the basics would be to get your business card online set up, your website, even if it's as simple as a landing page, if you're strapped for cash and you can't afford something sophisticated, you really don't have to go there. And then apply the best practices that are available, install your pixels, make your website a little bit stickier, right? Cause there's a lot of traffic that comes to it and they don't take action. So like 9 out of 10 visits actually on your site, my site, any site, they come, they look and we're all like that too, right? We go, we browse, and then we're done. So we just want to make sure that all businesses are doing the right things at the onset, and these are things that we've done also. Just being a little bit more marketing savvy than the average entrepreneur who starts, for example, the pizzeria or has a car dealership, or has a professional services, like a clinic, a dental clinic or stuff like that. They don't come in with that same mindset. So, I mean that's what we ended up doing for them, we align that for them and just let them know. You know, if you're on a tight budget, let's start with the essentials, let's get the essentials out of the way, and then we'll scale our way into advertising and creating more content and growing your platforms, whether it be starting just with, let's say Facebook, Instagram, if that's the case and then slowly moving on to other platforms for them as we grow through Pinterest and all these other very popular platforms that you're very familiar with.
Eric Dickmann:I love that you said that, even an expert hires an expert. All right. You know, we talk a lot about coaching, or if you are a business owner, it's good to have a mentor or somebody who can challenge you and help get you on the right course, or even validate some of your thinking. But I'm also a huge believer in hiring the right people to do the right job. And yeah, maybe even though you have a specific skillset and can do something, that doesn't necessarily mean you're an expert in it. And if you're spending money, why not hire people who are really talented in their field to be able to do that for you you rather than settling for something middle of the road.
Jack Elias:And, you know, at the end of the day, it boils down to what you, to kind of summarize what you're saying here, we don't know what we don't know, Eric. Do you know what I mean? Like at the end of the day, that applies to all of us, right? Whether you're a big business, big CEO, or like just a marketing manager, like we don't know what we don't know. So it is important to keep that open mind and to invite other talents and other groups to the table when tackling these big things and branding is a big thing.
Eric Dickmann:Oh, yeah.
Jack Elias:I mean, you look at a lot of these companies today, like, you know, these multi-nationals- Coca-Cola Pepsi, IBM. There's so many in the list, it's a long list. But you know, you look at their logo at any country, everyone knows right away who that is, you know? And that speaks volumes, right? So that doesn't mean that doesn't mean that a pizzeria is going to create a logo and everyone all over the world is going to know it. But you to just have to understand that your logo has to have a longevity to it and has to stand credible. It depends on your sector and all that stuff. So yeah, branding is super important, you know? Your mission, your values, all the way down to the fonts that we use and the colors, and the color codes, and what is that, right? I mean, that's very specific. So we took that pretty seriously. I mean we want to build an international platform, we didn't want to limit ourselves to just being Canadian even North American for all that matters. So, branding is important for us and it should be for all businesses I think.
Eric Dickmann:You know, the analogy I always use is if you go into a place like a Home Depot, and you go into the paint department, they've got these wall of. paint chips, right? You know, every little variation of the color, white or red, or blue, or whatever. And you can look at that and it becomes almost mind numbing after a while. If you have to put together three colors to decorate a house or a room or something, which three do you pick? And then usually at the bottom of the paint stand, they have these brochures where the paint company has taken those chips and put them together in a room for you. And they say, look at this example of a living room or look at this example of a bedroom, you just need these three colors. I always gravitate toward the bottom because the experts pick those, the experts found the combination of these three colors that work together. Why do I want to look at this wall of paint chips when I can go right to the expert and get something that's truly going to work together?
Jack Elias:Yeah and I think that's it's a fair approach. I mean you just got to stay humble to the game if we can call it that, right? I mean know what you know, and be comfortable with what you don't know. And like you just said, lean on the experts when it comes to that. It's probably gonna save you a lot of time, headache, money, and all that other stuff, you know?
Eric Dickmann:Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to the podcast. But first, are you ready to grow, scale, and take your marketing to the next level? If so, The Five Echelon Group's Virtual CMO consulting service may be a great fit for you. We can help build a strategic marketing plan for your business and manage its execution, step-by-step. We'll focus on areas like how to attract more leads. How to create compelling messaging that resonates with your ideal customers. How to strategically package and position your products and services. How to increase lead conversion, improve your margins, and scale your business. To find out more about our consulting offerings and schedule a consultation, go to fiveechelon.com and click on Services. Now back to the podcast. When you also went down this path of having an app, right? And I hear so many businesses that say, we need to have an app, and app development is tricky, and hard, and expensive, right? And I'm curious as to what your experience has been you know, delving into the world of app development and having this as a critical part of your business.
Jack Elias:I would say that it was crucial and my partner, Daniel, had this forward vision of how do we protect? Uh, I mean besides what I said earlier about cataloging data, zero marketing, intelligence loss, he had this vision of ensuring that we also protect our industry and like what we're doing. I'll talk to you about like where we are in Quebec, there's over a thousand agencies doing similar or offering similar services to us. We firmly believe with technology, machine learning, and AI, that that market is going to drastically reduce itself over time. It might consolidate in a material way. So in the spirit of protecting our portfolio of businesses, our clients, our revenues, our growth, and everything, and also seeing what tomorrow could look like for business, you know considering that everybody has a computer in their pocket now, it's called a telephone, right? Their smartphone is, we have a computer in our pocket. So we felt it would be important for us to convert our business into the technology that it is today. So it's like the evolution a little bit of digital marketing agencies, and I think that all of them, there's posters you'd see that everywhere. You're seeing them online, innovate or die? And it's kind of the truth, you know? It's without trying to sound like a doom and gloom kind of guy. You definitely have to innovate or you're going to be non-relevant. It's hard to keep up with technology, the pace of technology. And you know it and I know it. If you look at a MarTech chart, they're just like thousands and thousands of thousands of companies. If you want to give an entrepreneur a mild seizure, let them look at that. And tell him find your applications that you're going to run your business. It's gonna be like, no, I'm going to pay and you guys are gonna find it for me. So yeah, I definitely, I would say that's what we did. We look forward and we saw that the market is going to change, and when it's going to change, it's going to change fast because technology doesn't wait for you, right? It's either you adapt, innovate, or you're non-relevant. So what we did, like we said, we sat down with experts, we don't know what we don't know, right? I mean we don't code anything my partner and I, right? It's not what we do. So we sat down with those engineers at IBM Watson and they gave us some great insight. And then that allowed us to come back home, strategize, and initially work with a team at a company that did the initial dev on our platform, and then we started slowly adding our own dev team, and here we are today with about 10 developers with a Chief Technology Officer on board spearheading the whole thing. And now we have full control of everything and yeah, we feel that the future is going to be bright and we're really excited about it. That's all I could say, you know?
Eric Dickmann:While I, can we talk a lot on this podcast about meeting your customers where they are, and if you are doing work where you're going to be dealing with a lot of customers that are used to interacting on their phone, they like apps, then that's where you want to be, you want to have an app. If you're an enterprise customer and people are used to dealing with portals and websites and things like that, then maybe an app isn't something that you need. The important thing is to understand how your customers are interacting with your organization today and then where the trends are going, where people are moving to, so you can stay a little bit ahead of that. I'm sure we've all experienced, you know, downloading that app from the company that has an app and looking at it and say- This isn't really an app, this is just a website in a square, It's just not really anything that's of value. And that's that mindset is we've got to have an app, we've got to have an app and no, you probably don't if that's all the effort you're going to put into it.
Jack Elias:No for sure. And at the end of the day, I mean, it was really important for us to work again with professionals, some in-house some not, to help us design something that would be fun to use, right? Like, what if marketing was fun, Eric? Like, I mean would that change the game? For like most entrepreneurs, like to wake up and wanna learn, wanna tackle it, and want to grow your business? Well, that's what we tried to bring to the table, right? So it's not just, I need Facebook ads or I need a blog. We've gamified the app by let it letting our clients swipe and learn at the same time, we give them information cards also where they can download or buy these great books that we recommend that they read to improve their knowledge, improve their marketing skillset. And sometimes, they'll find offers from our clients and our partners in there, in that deck. So I know an entrepreneur with Empower, who's subscribed to our system, he'll wake up and of course he'll be able to exchange on his last discussions on maybe the changes we're doing on his website, he's going to jump over to his card section to see what recommendations we have for him that week, and then within that, he'll get, let's say a sponsored offer from one of our partners that's maybe going to lower his payment processing fees in his restaurant. You know, like why not get a free consultation for that? So it becomes a marketplace where all the marketing can be done, but where they can really get a lot of insight and a lot of help with other things that touch their business. So it's lovely in that way, right? It makes it more pleasant to come back to.
Eric Dickmann:Well, you knew you talked about that MarTech eye chart that we've shown several times on this podcast, and there are so many solutions out there, so many things that do very similar functions. And you know, we are bombarded by sales messages all the time. And I think as a business owner, it's hard to know what direction to look at because there are just so many choices. So I think one of the benefits that a company like yours can provide is cultivating that information a little bit more and say, Hey, these are trusted partners. These are people we know that can help you out of that sea of noise that's out there. Here are some things that maybe you might want to pay attention to. I think that's good, yeah. It's a sponsor, yeah. It's an advertisement in a way, but if it can be cultivated in such a way that it's a value to the audience, I think there's real value in them.
Jack Elias:Well at the end of the day, it boils down to what you just said. It's about the value. Okay? It's not about, we're not throwing packs of gum at them. We're trying to help them save money, whether it's lowering their processing fees, if it's with a financial partner that wants to offer them a discount on a line of credit for business, all these things really move the needle. For any entrepreneur today, who's super strapped for cash, time, these people dive. They put their whole life, their energy into their businesses, and by coming to Empower, sure, we'll definitely help you first with your marketing, but I'd love to be able to help him or her with any other thing they may need that really helps their business overall, right? And that's really the notion of being empowered together as we call it. It's in our logo, that's what that is. It's really coming together to help each other genuinely, and like intrinsically helping each other.
Eric Dickmann:I think that's great. You know we talk often about adding value, whether or not you're going to get anything out of it, it doesn't really matter. If you're adding value over time, that will be a win for you because people will see that you're adding value, they will recognize that, and they will reward you for it. It doesn't always have to be transactional in nature. So I love that. You know, Jack, I think it's a really interesting concept that you guys have put together. I know you're just up in Canada right now, but hoping to expand down the road. So I'd love it if you could just tell people a little bit more about the company, where they could find out additional information, where they could kind of keep an eye on you.
Jack Elias:Well, that's lovely. Thank you for that. Basically, if they want to follow us, they can definitely follow us on socials, on all social channels we have presence. But I'd encourage any of the viewers, listeners to visit our website at empower.social, the social replaces the dot com. A lot of people ask me to explain that. So, www.empower.social. They can ask for a free demo, and they'll speak to one of our qualified reps. They more than happy to jump on a call with them. And once you subscribe to our platform, we'll send you your login information. You'll be able to download the accompanying apps that's available on Google Play and the App Store. And yeah, then you get to get your swipe, get your swipe on, you know? Let the system learn. The more you swipe, the more you use Empower, actually the smarter it gets over time. So that's a key component that we probably didn't mention at the beginning of the call, but it makes it worth it for a business to invest their time and their requests through it. But if you want to stay on top of what we're doing, obviously, we update our blog regularly. You can follow us on LinkedIn, on Facebook, and on Instagram. A little bit more active there. And definitely maybe ping me myself on LinkedIn if you want to have a discussion with me. Let's connect on LinkedIn and have these one-on-ones together. I mean, I speak to entrepreneurs VCs, so many different, I would call them institutional partners on a daily basis. And even when I'm done this call and I'm talking to other VCs that are looking at us, some in the States, some in Canada. But I'd invite people to connect with me. I love connecting with new people. That's how I met you, Eric, we just ping each other on LinkedIn, and then all sudden, I meet this super friendly guy that has got a great podcast going on, is excellent at what you do, I really like the way you moderate. I've listened to many of your podcasts. I think you're really good at what you do, and I want to thank you again for just making time to have me on the call and to just share this insight with you guys. It's really been a pleasure for me, Eric. I appreciate it.
Eric Dickmann:Well, hey, thanks. I've enjoyed having you on the show. Love talking marketing, love seeing innovative new concepts going out into the marketplace there. Yeah. And I'm excited about what you're doing and I'm really looking forward to the expansion and hopefully your arrival here in the US. So Jack, thanks so much. We'll make sure to have all that linked up in the show notes so that people can find you.
Jack Elias:That's excellent. I think we put out also just for the viewers and those who are going to listen to this on a separate note, on another time, I think anyone who contacts us and mentions your podcast, The Virtual CMO podcast, they're going to get 250 credits on their signing. So we'll give them a special offer that way for all those who want to try Empower.
Eric Dickmann:Hey, that's awesome, I really appreciate that. And we'll make sure to note that in the notes as well. So that's great.
Jack Elias:That's awesome.
Eric Dickmann:All right. Thank you so much, Jack. I really appreciate your time today.
Jack Elias:No. Thank you, Eric. It's been a pleasure.
Eric Dickmann:Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Virtual CMO podcast. For more episodes, go to fiveechelon.com/podcast to subscribe through your podcast player of choice. And if you'd like to develop consistent lead flow and a highly effective marketing strategy, visit fiveechelon.com to learn more about our Virtual CMO consulting services.
