Single Grain was a struggling digital marketing agency before Eric Siu took over. In this episode, he shares how he took them from unprofitable to working with clients like Uber, Amazon, and Salesforce, last year generating $2M in revenue.

Topics Discussed in this Episode:

• [02:38] What Eric learned from his experience working at Treehouse
• [04:03] What kind of shape Single Grain was in when Eric first got involved with it
• [07:25] How things got worse for Single Grain
• [09:11] What they did to keep Single Grain from going out of business and turn things around
• [11:36] How they got their clients to stick for 12 to 18 months
• [12:46] What helped Single Grain the most in terms of marketing
• [18:06] How they figured out what actually works for SEO
• [20:20] How they started doing a podcast and growing it substantially
• [23:35] The strategies that they used to grow the Marketing School Podcast
• [29:40] How to set and manage client expectations

 

Key Takeaways:

• Whatever you do in your life, as long as you’re constantly trying to make yourself and grow, you will earn people’s respect.
• You can see a lot of instability happen when sales aren’t going well.
• Everything that you want to get done in a company is all based on people. Whatever you’re trying to accomplish, you have to be good with people.
• If you’re starting an agency, paid advertising is fantastic. And it’s a nice gateway into other services down the road.
• When the client thinks of you more as the extended arm of their marketing team versus just a vendor, that’s when your relationship with them last a lot longer.

Action Steps:

• Build a relationship capital with people.
• Vet every single one of your hires, no matter how senior they are.
• Write evergreen content and then use Brian Dean’s Skyscraper Technique.
• If you decide to do a podcast, publish an episode every single day.
• Constantly bring new ideas to the table for your clients.

Eric said:

“As long as you’re constantly trying to grow yourself, people are going to respect that.”

“When sales are happening, things are fine; but when things aren’t going well, that’s when you start to see a lot of instability.”

More from Eric Siu:

Eric’s Instagram
Single Grain
Growth Everywhere Podcast
Marketing School Podcast

Resources mentioned:

The Skyscraper Technique by Brian Dean
Mixergy Podcast
Redpoint Ventures
Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman
Tim Ferriss Podcast
Treehouse

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