Journey to $100 Million: Entrepreneurship & Digital Marketing

Whenever we sign a new client we have an on-boarding process that we stick to. In the past, before we implemented a formal onboarding process, we would often forget things or things would be left out. We learned that a few onboarding steps were crucial to our client’s success and now they make up an important part of our process.

One of those steps is a kickoff meeting. This is a meeting that takes place between our new client’s primary stakeholders, our operations team, and the account executive who sold the client on our services. The main purpose of this meeting is to formally introduce the new client to the operations team and properly hand them off. The account executive is present at this meeting, but they are really just there to fill in any gaps and make the introductions. The operations team is who the clients work with on a day-to-day basis, and the account executive is there for support.

Before the client kickoff meeting our team has an internal kickoff meeting, during which the account executive brings the operations team up to speed on the new client we will be on boarding. This is an important meeting as well, so that our operations team goes into the client kickoff meeting knowledgeable about their vision.

If you don't currently hold kick-off meetings or onboarding meetings for new clients consider doing so. It's a great way to get everyone up to speed and it ensures nothing is forgotten.

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Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

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Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

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For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!

Sometimes a client will ask us to do something they want even if it's not something they need. For instance, a client may ask us to add a press release to their website or social media sites when someone within their company gets a promotion. It may get them some attention, it may create some buzz on the employee’s social media sites, but more than likely that will not turn into any new business for them or any new leads. If they want us to create the press release or article for them, and they are using one of their paid deliverables to do so, we believe we should at least let them know that may not be working towards the strategy we put together for them. If they insist they want to do it anyway then we will gladly do that for them, but we want to make sure they are at least aware.

Not everything your client asks you for will always align with your strategies to get them to their goals. When that happens it's important to remind them what the strategy is so they can at least make an informed decision.

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Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

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Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

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For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!

Contrary to what you might think, you should not always be creating new content. It takes a lot of time and effort to always create new content. You have to think of a topic, research it, create the content, and edit it. It's a much better use of time to constantly find ways to repurpose existing content.

This podcast episode is an example of that. Erik is recording it as an audio file, and it will air on the podcast. It will then be written up as a summary of the episode (the one you’re reading). It will also be added to our website and various social media sites as written content. We will find many ways to reuse it.

One platform Erik has been using to reuse content is a website called quora.com. People go on this website to ask questions about all kinds of things. If you have a question, Quora more than likely has an answer.

Erik has been reusing some of our content to answer questions people ask on there about digital marketing. Oftentimes all he has to do is cut and paste some of these written summaries and make minor changes. He then adds a link back to our website for the reader to learn more about the question they asked. This creates a backlink and Google loves backlinks. It helps you move up in online search rankings.

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Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

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Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

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For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!

Three years ago when Erik started working with Kevin, Erik was doing custom software development while Kevin was building websites. There wasn’t much overlap between the two but both realized they could benefit from having the other’s service. They were going to join and do this but have digital marketing as an add-on service by hiring a digital marketing manager.

Then Erik started learning absolutely everything he could about digital marketing for a solid year so they started to transition more into digital marketing than custom software before realizing this is where they wanted to be.

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Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

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Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

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For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!

Every Wednesday we go over company KPIs. That stands for Key Performance Indicators. When Erik first came up with the idea to track KPIs he did so by himself, for numbers he felt reflected the health of the business. Over time those KPIs have changed, and the way we track them has changed as well. We now track high level data every week, like:

-Monthly recurring revenue

-Lost revenue

-New revenue

-New deals

-Deliverables

-Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Lower level data, like SEO, social media, and advertising KPIs, are tracked on a monthly basis and now everyone in the company has a KPI they are accountable for. It makes KPIs a lot more meaningful when a person is assigned to them. We find they want to hit their KPI, and if they're not hitting it they can explain the reasons why and what they can do to get there. They often volunteer to take on a KPI so they have something to work toward.

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Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

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Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

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For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!

Whenever we get a new lead or a referral one of the first things we do is qualify them. This entails doing a little research on their company to find things out like how long they've been in business, how big or small they are, and if they are in a good position to grow their business. A lot of these things come to light during the 15-minute call that we schedule with every new prospect, but we also do our own due diligence. Not everyone is a good fit; we want to go after the clients that are looking to grow and we believe will be with us for a long time.

So, think about how you can qualify your prospects. The sooner you figure out if your goals align with their vision the better you’ll be.

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Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

—

Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

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For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!

Every day, Erik receives multiple connection requests on LinkedIn by business people who help agency owners get more clients. He also often gets invited out to lunch or coffee by some of them. In the past he used to accept many of these invitations. When he was just getting started in business he had no real network and he needed a way to meet as many business people in the area.

These days he accepts much fewer requests. With the years he came to realize how much time he was spending at these meetings, usually getting pitched to buy products or services he wasn't really interested in. At this point in business we have most of the tools and services we need to operate. It isn't necessary to spend one to two hours commuting and meeting with people who want to sell us something.

Erik’s approach is different these days. Before the COVID pandemic he would suggest he and the other person meet at Marketers Anonymous - the monthly networking Meetup hosted by Array Digital. It’s a good way to meet in person and also get them to our Meetup. He’s also a fan of scheduling a short phone call instead. Not everything requires an hour-long meeting. Sometimes a quick call is all you need.

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Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

—

Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

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For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!

This happens all the time: We do something whether it be making a document or writing down processes and ideas. Then we get sidetracked with new sales, new initiatives, new clients and time goes by before we start doing the same task again. Then we stumble across that old document where we’d already done all the work but we failed to put it into action.

We are working towards ways to mitigate this issue that we’ve run into over and over again.

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Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

—

Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

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For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!

We have a set of core values here that change on a somewhat regular basis. We used to have a core value ‘client obsession’ which Erik lifted straight from Amazon. We had that core value and would talk about it a lot but he realized it wasn’t exactly right.

We do a lot for our clients but we don’t obsess over them to the point that we’ll let them step on us. We take pride in our work but we won’t let people step on us. We’ve resigned accounts in the past that weren’t quite a fit for us. Therefore, that core value of client obsession doesn’t make sense for us because we wanted a winning partnership with our clients and we wanted them to win. So we changed it to ‘winning.’ It wasn’t client obsession at all costs but that we are going to be winning at all costs.

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Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

—

Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

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For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!

With COVID-19 and with most people being at home, there should be some extra time in your schedule. It’s the perfect time to work on your business if you’re still in business. Whether it’s new processes, pivots you’re making, things you’ve adapted to, new industries you want to target, now is the time to figure out how you’re going to make that work.

Rather than getting down and worrying or sitting back and waiting for the worst to happen, it’s up to you to determine how you are going to make this work for your business and do the best with what you have.

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Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

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Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

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For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!