Why you should NOT rely on referrals to grow (and what to do instead)
Predictable B2B Success
November 29, 2020
“You’ve got to be committed to relentlessly investing in your business to get it to work.” On this episode of The Predictable B2B Success Podcast, I talk to Vinay Koshy about niching down … but not just in terms of the services you offer and the clients you serve. It’s important to niche down your marketing as well, whether it’s for your business or a business you are managing ads for. You have to fight the “paradox of choice.” If you list every service you offer, visitors will be confused. If you list only the service they need, visitors will trust you and assume you have the solution to their problem
Bene also quotes a former guest as saying that if you don’t have a referral-based business, you don’t have a business. I totally disagree with that. Referrals are nice, but they are more of the icing on the cake. For me, they are way too unreliable a source of growth … and I share my much more reliable strategy for growing my business.
We also talk about...
- How to stand out in a crowded field of competitors.
- The three biggest advantages of niching down.
- Why I write Google ads to get people not to click on them.
- Why I’m not a fan of partnerships.
About the Show: Vinay Koshy is the host of Predictable B2B Success.
Full Transcript
Dylan Ogline: You got to get a little bit more slim and more focused with your niche. And then take it again another step and look at possibly can you go niche not just with your service offering, but particular verticals or industries that you’re working in. So say, this is an example I always use, is you’re a digital marketing agency that specializes in helping plumbing and heating companies or specializes in helping plastic surgeons. See if you can even take it one step further than that. What about you are a digital agency that specializes in direct response digital marketing for plastic surgeons in Florida. Just keep going more and more specific. That’s what it means when it comes to an agency.
Vinay Koshy: Hi, and welcome to “Predictable B2B Success” podcast. I’m Vinay Koshy. On this podcast, we interview people behind B2B brands who aren’t necessarily famous but do work in the trenches and share their strategies and secrets as they progress along their journey of expanding their influence and making their businesses grow predictably. Now, let’s dive into the podcast.
You probably heard that going niche is a good idea. In this episode, we’ll be examining what niche marketing is, and looking at certain examples of niche marketing. Look, if you’re in an industry that feels oversaturated with other businesses and competitors, standing out can sometimes seem impossible. But differentiating your brand in a crowded market is achievable with niche marketing. Unlike some marketing strategies that target a broad range of potential customers, niche marketing focuses on a specific segment of customers that are most likely to connect with your business.
Our guest has built a successful business around this concept and then teaches others about it. He is the CEO of Ogline Digital. In 2016 he scrapped over ten business projects and started focusing on one single thing: digital marketing. Tired from struggling and making no progress while working from his freezing basement, not to mention nearly a million dollars in debt, it was an uphill climb. They key to his success was focus. For years later, he built Ogline Digital into a seven-figure agency generating over a million in sales three years running. He’s now a leading expert in direct response advertising and business growth, and has turned his focus to helping other people start and grow their own hyper profitable digital agency. Dylan Ogline, welcome to the podcast.
Dylan Ogline: Thank you for having me. Glad to be here.
Vinay Koshy: Pleasure. Dylan, you’ve had quite an experience, but focus you said was a key thing to your success. But I’m curious, what would you say is your personal area of strength?
Dylan Ogline: Personal area of strength. Ooh, you’re throwing me a curveball here at the beginning. Personal area of strength. Gosh, this is going to sound like self-serving almost. But I would just say this is going to sound egotistical. Oh man, I feel bad. I’m going to go with it, I’m going to say just relentless determination. Which let me add the little context there. I think most business owners you have to have that, you have to just be a little bit crazy and just have that little bit of just relentless determination. And again, you threw me a curveball here at the beginning. I was not expecting that. That’s a great question. But yeah, I would say my personal area of strength is just I don’t give up, I guess.
Vinay Koshy: Determination.
Dylan Ogline: Yup. Let me come back to that and see if I can come up with a better one by the end of the show.
Vinay Koshy: No worries. But from a business point of view, would you say that there’s anything that businesses don’t know in that area of personal strength that they should?
Dylan Ogline: With like the determination?
Vinay Koshy: Yeah.
Dylan Ogline: You know what? This is actually a very good question. I did not expect starting the show off this way, and no, I think this is great stuff. I think that especially like small business owners, and I’ve seen this a lot because I work now with students who are starting their own businesses. And they view the element of that kind of badge of honor of working hard. I mentioned before like I think that’s something that’s a strength I have, but I think a lot of business owners have that.
And I think that that is like kind of built into the allure. The kind of mystical vision of being an entrepreneur, a lot of people are like, “Oh yeah, of course I can do the work.” So like then they come in like doing the work is not hard for them. But there’s also a determination element of not work ethic, but you got to be willing to invest in your business. And that one I see a lot of people they don’t necessarily have that one. You got to be committed to just relentlessly investing in the business until you get it to work. I could probably talk an hour on that one. Again, I apologize, I didn’t expect that one coming up. Very good question. But no, that would be my answer.
Vinay Koshy: You’re very focused on this idea of going niche and building up an agency in particular in a niche market. Can you elaborate on that? I mean, what does it really mean to go niche? It’s talked about quite widely, but what does it really mean, whether it be from an agency perspective or even a marketing perspective?
Dylan Ogline: Sure. So I’m a big fan of going as niched as possible. So let’s use that digital agency example. Some people will say, “Well, I’m just I’m building a digital agency. Like that’s my niche.” Well, I would say go a little bit further, go one step further. And I would even argue go several steps further. So, okay, so you have a digital agency. Well what all services do you have? And then they’ll be like, “Well, I have this service, and I have this service.” So they’re a full-service agency. Okay, well it’s like there’s no way you’re going to get really good at anything because you’re doing everything for everybody. You’re full-service.
So slim down your offerings. Just become the best, it could be the best logo design agency. It could be just, in my case, it’s just direct response digital marketing. It could be the best web design agency. You got to get a little bit more slim and more focused with your niche. And then take it again another step and look at possibly can you go niche not just with your service offerings, but particular verticals or industries that you’re working in.
So say this is an example I always use is you’re a digital marketing agency that specializes in helping plumbing and heating companies or specializes in helping plastic surgeons. See if you can even take it one step further than that. What about you are a digital agency that specializes in direct response digital marketing for plastic surgeons in Florida? Just keep going more and more specific. That’s what it means when it comes to an agency. With other businesses, they could go in a million different directions. It’s a little it more you have to kind of evaluate what your specific situation is to properly answer that.
Vinay Koshy: So the drawback of going full-service you say you can’t really get known or differentiate in the market. Why is that given there are some pretty big names out there.
Dylan Ogline: Well, I would say that there’s three benefits, again specifically with an agency, and these benefits would probably apply to a lot of other businesses. But this could be a little bit different. But specifically if you’re running an agency, there’s really three main benefits. The first is that you simply get better at what you’re doing. If you’re a full-service agency, you’re doing everything for everybody everywhere, you’re never going to be the best at everything for everybody everywhere. That’s not going to happen. But if you are specifically helping plastic surgeons in Florida with their direct response digital marketing, pretty quickly you could probably get to be the best in the world at that.
Again, this can apply in many different industries and many different markets, many different niches. But that is the first benefit is that you get better. Because you’re only helping one specific type of client on one specific type of service. Beyond that, the other two benefits really are it makes your operations easier. Again, from an agency perspective, if you’re doing everything for everybody, you’re reinventing the wheel. Every time you’re doing a new project or offering a new service, you have to learn more about that industry to properly provide the service. And if you’re doing all these different services your operations become clunky because everybody’s bouncing around doing all these different things.
The third benefit, which for me is probably the best, is that it makes client attraction or client acquisition easier. If you go to a plastic surgeon and you say, “Hey, we are a full-service marketing agency. We can help you with everything and we help everybody.” Okay, like kind of sounds appealing. But if you go to a plastic surgeon and you say, “We specifically help plastic surgeons in Florida grow their practice and get more”-- I don’t know what plastic surgeons want more-- patients, I guess. “We specifically help plastic surgeons in Florida grow their practice and get more patients with direct response digital marketing.” That sounds a little bit more appealing to that plastic surgeon.
Vinay Koshy: Okay.
Dylan Ogline: So those are the three benefits I would say.
Vinay Koshy: Excellent. And points worth noting. Again, with this idea of niche marketing, could you give us an example of what it looks like if someone’s wanting to start out or say, “Okay, I’m full-service currently and it’s not working very well. How do I optimize things?” How would you work your way through a process or a framework in order to find an area that you can niche into?
Dylan Ogline: So you’re asking how would you determine what niche to go after. This is a great question. Probably the most common question I get from students is, “Okay, I get your point here about this whole niching thing, but I don’t know a lot about plastic surgeons.” The first thing you want to do, I always recommend going for low-hanging fruit. And what this means is if you already have experience as an agency owner or doing similar type of work, just look at your previous clients. Maybe they are plastic surgeons, maybe they are plumbing and heating companies. Maybe there’s a common similarity between previous clients that you have worked with and just look at that and be like, “Who is the client that I got the best results with? Or that I had the best relationship with? Or that I made the most money with?” Just look for those kinds of markers on your previous clients.
But maybe you don’t have that option. Maybe you’re starting from scratch, you have no experience in marketing, you have no experience in this business model. You’re starting from scratch. Just look at your personal life. Maybe you have parents. Maybe your dad’s an accountant. Okay, well, maybe you could ask him some questions about what are accounting firms looking for. Maybe you have a good friend who, in my particular case, one of the niches that I target is plumbing and heating companies. That’s an example I always use.
I simply made friends with somebody who was in that industry. And you don’t need to know a lot. This is key. People think that you need to know everything about a niche. All you need is just a little bit of knowledge to give you that edge when you’re reaching out to those potential people. So I’ll give you an example. The plumbing and heating companies.
Vinay Koshy: Yup.
Dylan Ogline: Because I knew a friend who was in that industry, just over beers I think it was. I was like, “Hey man, you want to go grab a burger and beers?” And we just started talking about work, and he mentioned that he hated doing repair projects. He preferred to do new installs. So somebody is getting a new furnace installed, or a new air conditioning HVAC system in their house. Those projects are a lot simpler. The profit margin is a lot higher. You go out and you’re not trying to diagnose a problem. It’s just like, “Hey, here’s the solution. Boom. It’s really easy.”
So all I knew going into that was plumbing and heating companies, they prefer install projects not repairs. So I simply created a landing page that said, “We specifically help plumbing and heating companies grow and get more install projects with direct response digital marketing.” That was it. That’s all I needed to know is just that little bit of information.
So when I spoke to plumbing and heating companies, it was like, “Wow, this guy actually knows something about my industry. Like okay, he actually knows what he’s talking about.” That’s all it took. And most of the time that is it. That’s just knowing that little bit of informational advantage and customizing your message to your potential client, that’s it, that’s all it takes.
Vinay Koshy: Okay. So in terms of getting the message out there, you certainly refined your message with the chat with your friend to help create the copy that was required and the landing page, of course. You did a bit of research through that conversation as well. In terms of service delivery, are you going to use techniques and methodology that you’re familiar with? Or would you recommend going with learning a new skillset?
Dylan Ogline: In the beginning, I think, everything is going to be new to you. But in my particular case, I knew I had experience with Facebook ads, I had experience with Google ads. So I reached out to these clients and it was, “Hey, I’m going to help you with your direct response digital marketing.” And this is where I mention the first benefit is that you get better. So I got really, really good at helping plumbing and heating companies with Google ads and with Facebook ads. Now we do a little bit of YouTube, but I really recommend to just try to stick to just a few select offerings and just get better, and better, and better at that and just keeping it and hitting it and you build your skillset. Does that answer your question I think?
Vinay Koshy: Yeah. So start with something that you feel comfortable with and then build out from there would be my takeaway.
Dylan Ogline: If you have the ability to. If you’re, again building the digital agency, and you have no experience with Google ads and Facebook ads, you are going to have to step outside of your comfort zone.
Vinay Koshy: Sure.
Dylan Ogline: But if you stick to things that you know work, and you know that you can get your potential clients results with, then just stick with that.
Vinay Koshy: Sure. Getting to know your customers. I mean, part of it is outreach. But how would you go about developing a system that allows you to get customers on a regular basis? And so let’s take the plumbing and HVAC example.
Dylan Ogline: Yes.
Vinay Koshy: You could potentially reach out to a few people to get your initial few clients. Where do you go from there? Because I had another guest on the podcast who said that “If you do not have a referral business, you have no business.” Would you agree with that or not?
Dylan Ogline: I like to refer to referrals as icing on the cake. If your entire business is based off of referrals, you don’t know when if you’re looking to expand, or if you lose a client, a client gets bought out, I’ve had that happen or anything like that. You don’t know when the next client’s coming. It could just whenever. So it doesn’t give you confidence in your business. So referrals are great, but I don’t think that that is a reliable and predictable path to growth. I think it’s very unreliable.
So, for me, it’s very simple. It’s not a great answer because it’s so simple, but just Google ads. Google ads simply work. Especially because in my particular case, I have a high margin business, so when we get a client we’re providing an ongoing service so we have recurring revenue from them. If we continue to grow for them and we’re getting them results, the amount of income we’re going to get from them is going to grow and grow. So onboarding a client is once we get them onboard and we get them success, typically it’s a very profitable long term.
So spending a couple hundred bucks to get leads and get conversations going with people on Google ads is very worth it. And it’s predictable, it’s extremely scalable. If you have the ability to use Google versus Facebook-- I recommend Google first and foremost because it’s so scalable, easy, and simple.
Vinay Koshy: How do you begin to differentiate with your various clients? Because at some point each plumbing and HVAC company could potentially be offering the same kinds of services or be chasing the same kind of business. As in we would prefer to do installs as opposed to repairs.
Dylan Ogline: Sure. Each client is different. Like we do have clients who are looking to grow nationwide so that makes it a little bit more difficult. I don’t only work in the plumbing and heating vertical, but typically those kinds of companies are regional-based. So you might have a company that’s working in, say, I live in Orlando but I don’t have any clients in Orlando. But they might just be in the Orlando or Central Florida area. They’re not really competing with a company that’s in, say, Miami. Or they’re certainly not competing with a company that’s in, say, Atlanta, or Charlotte, or something like that.
So that kind of regional separation really helps. And again, because in this particular industry, the profit margins are very high for just a few clients. So I don’t need several hundred clients to have a profitable agency. It’s just a few.
Vinay Koshy: Okay. But would you actually spend time with the client in order to refine their value proposition and use that as a key differentiator in their ongoing campaigns?
Dylan Ogline: No. In my particular case, we don’t really have to. Because we get really specific with their marketing. I practice what I preach with the client as well. So I tell them like, “Get very specific.” They’re used to doing, say, billboard ads. And they’ll have a billboard ad, and it says, “We do this. And we do this. And we do that. And we do this.” And we service all these areas, and we do repairs, and we do installs. We recommend like just have a Facebook ad that’s just talking about new HVAC systems, just new air conditioning. And that’s it, just run your ads for that and just run those potential customers to a landing page that’s just talking about a new, energy efficient boiler, or a heater, or a furnace, or something like that. It’s niching down. I’m helping my clients niche down to help them get customers as well. So again, I practice what I preach.
Vinay Koshy: Okay. I’m assuming that because you’re running ads there is an element of testing and adjustment and rinse and repeat. How does that play out from a niching perspective?
Dylan Ogline: To dive in a little bit more there. What do you mean exactly?
Vinay Koshy: So how intensive does the testing and adjustment process need to be? Because it’s one thing to say, for example, you have this landing page specifically targeting people in the HVAC industry that wanted installs as opposed to repairs. Great, you’ve got a few clients, it’s probably working well. Could we do better? Is there something new to be tweaked? How do you go about working through all of that?
Dylan Ogline: So typically if you’re using Facebook, the tweaking process is more just it’s getting to the point, it’s taken years for Facebook to get to this level, but it’s gotten to the point where it’s just about the algorithm now. So when most people are thinking in marketing, and tweaking, and getting better results, they’re thinking about making the copy a little bit better. And if you’re doing Adwords and things like that, there’s certainly a few elements there. You need to get a little bit better with your landing page. You need to get a little bit better with the keywords you’re targeting. With what your title of your ads is. All that good stuff.
There was certainly a large element there. The fact that I helped my clients niche down so they have a landing page that’s only talking about, say, installs or just talking about one product or service, that’s 90% of the game. Right there that’s 10% of the effort that’s getting them 90% of the result. So that already is a huge element. When it comes to Facebook, the quick 20-second explanation of what we do is essentially we create multiple variations of the image, the ad copy itself, and then different audiences and we throw up like 500, 600 different ads. Again, this is the 20-second, really quick explanation. And you have all these different ads, multiple different ad sets, et cetera, et cetera. And you’re just testing which one works the best.
Vinay Koshy: Right. Okay.
Dylan Ogline: And you let the algorithm figure out which one works the best. And then once you figure out the top 50, okay, then you create multiple variations of that and you just keep tweaking it. And just that level, it is the 90% with Facebook. Does that 20-second explanation make sense?
Vinay Koshy: Yes. And I’m assuming there’s a level of automation in order to throw up that kind of volume of ads and things, at least with Facebook.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah.
Vinay Koshy: But with Google ads, correct me if I’m wrong, because it’s been a little while since I’ve delved into Adwords. I believe it’s more about the quality score in order to keep your overall cost per acquisition down and insure conversions.
Dylan Ogline: Correct.
Vinay Koshy: Yup. So I’m assuming that you may have to do some work on the landing page of your client sites or is it just primarily throw up an ad, along with a phone number, and then track calls into the customer’s office?
Dylan Ogline: So I would say, this is a good question. I ruthlessly practice the 80/20 method with everything. I’m always looking for that 80/20. What’s the secret there? With Google, the quality score matters. And I think that stuff, like getting your quality score really high, which you need to at least have a-- I don’t even know what the numbers are off the top of my head. I don’t know what they need to be. But yeah, I mean you don’t want to write an ad that has nothing to do with the keyword, and the landing page has nothing to do with the keyword. You need a little bit there.
But there are people who they want to get a perfect. They want to get all that stuff perfect. To me, that’s the 80% of the effort that’s going to give you 20% of the results. Me, the 80/20 when it comes to Google, what’s going to get you the best results for the least amount of effort. The kind of hack that I use is writing ads that purposely get people to not click on them. I want to push away people from clicking on the ad and only get the right kind of people to click on the ad.
So let’s use the plastic surgeon because this one would probably work better. I don’t actually know what plastic surgeons charge, but you would write an ad that would say-- presuming that you’re working with a high end plastic surgeon, which is probably the kind that’s going to be paying for Google ads. You would write an ad that says, “Minimum patient spend is”-- which is not the correct term. I don’t know what the actual term would be. But “Minimum spend is $5,000. Or $10,000.” You would want to push away the people that are looking for like $20 Botox injections.
You’re a plumbing and heating company. You want to push away the people that are looking for the $50 an hour repairs. Or the quick, $100 new AC units. You want to write ads specifically targeting the kind of clients that you want and specifically pushing away the people that you don’t want. I see with Google, for some reason-- and I think it’s probably because they’re thinking in terms of Facebook-- people will write ads trying to get people to click on them. I don’t want people to click on my ads unless they are the right kind of person. Does that make sense?
Vinay Koshy: Yeah. So correct me if I’m wrong, my takeaway would be you’re really targeting people who are at the buying stage-- at least for Google ads. And really want to ignore the education, all those segments, and just really focus in on buying stage. Would that be correct?
Dylan Ogline: So you’re referring to kind of like the buying pyramid?
Vinay Koshy: Yeah. So if you think about your traditional sales funnel, whether it be a plastic surgeon or…
Dylan Ogline: Yeah, the people who are looking to buy now. So yes, yeah, you certainly want to push away the people that are just looking for like brief education. For the type of marketing that we’re doing, we’re typically not working with the low end solution. Because the low end, low margin businesses probably can’t afford to do Google ads, Facebook ads. We’re working with the mid to high tier.
So the person that’s going to be willing to pay $5,000 for a new furnace, $10,000 for a new furnace in their house. A plastic surgeon who’s looking, their average client or patient is spending $10,000 or something like that. So it’s kind of going two stages there. Yes, we want the people who are looking to buy now or who are considering to buy within like the next month maybe. And then we’re also looking for that mid to high tier of the market.
Vinay Koshy: That certainly helps. What about competition? Because, let’s say you’re running an agency that’s targeting these plastic surgeons in the Orlando area primarily. But you do a bit of a Google search and you discover, “Oh, there’s another three who are pretty much wanting the same kind of client.” What do you do then? How do you handle competition?
Dylan Ogline: So I mentioned earlier regionally. We wouldn’t accept a client. If we knew that, say that plastic surgeons only working in the Orlando area, we wouldn’t accept any other plastic surgeons in say the Central Florida area. But let’s say that, going a step further, let’s say that there also other plastic surgeons working with other agencies. That goes down to helping the client themselves try to niche down and get more specific.
Because it’s most likely-- using that plumbing and heating example-- most of the plumbing and heating companies that are, say, in Orlando, their ads, their copy, their landing pages are probably mentioning all of these different services that they provide. Whereas we’ll create an ad that just differentiates itself by simply just saying it’s only talking about installing new AC units. Very few people are practicing that right now.
Most billboards for plumbing and heating companies mentions all kinds of services that they do. So again, it comes down to I practice what I teach is I want my clients to also create-- which we write the ads for them, we write the ads, and then we create the landing page. Well, we work with them, we talk to them about what they need and whatnot. But we’ll talk to them, we’ll be like, “We’re going to create a landing page that’s only going to talk about this one thing. We know that you offer other stuff, but we just want to focus on this one thing, and that’ll help it convert better.”
Because simply in the minds of end consumer, the end customer, just simply that landing page or that ad that’s just talking about what your specific problem is, just makes it seem like you have the solution because you’re only talking about that one problem.
Vinay Koshy: Right.
Dylan Ogline: Like most plumbing and heating companies, they do a bunch of different service. But if your ad is just talking about one single thing, in the mind of the consumer, it just makes it seem like because this person’s only talking about one thing, they probably have the solution I’m looking for.
Vinay Koshy: Certainly. Removing the paradox of choice.
Dylan Ogline: Yes! Yes.
Vinay Koshy: Certainly. With that in mind, we’ve talked about handling competition, advertising, but I’m thinking if let’s say you run a content marketing business. You obviously want to eat your own dog food, so to speak, by investing in content marketing. Not just for your client, but for yourself as well.
Dylan Ogline: Sure.
Vinay Koshy: What you’re suggesting by way of advertising is obviously a fairly quick process of gaining some traction and some inquiries coming through. For someone else who is probably dealing with SEO, or content, or something of that nature should we expect a longer lead time to acquire clients as they build their own portfolio that attracts the niche that they’re going after? Or would you recommend using your method-- get some ads up there and play the content game over time?
Dylan Ogline: So you’re saying let’s say you’re an SEO agency, you’re just doing SEO. Should you also do Google ads or should you just be trying to get clients via SEO? Is that what you’re asking?
Vinay Koshy: Yeah. Because if you’re doing SEO and most instances it does take a bit of time to get it.
Dylan Ogline: Oh, 100%, yes.
Vinay Koshy: And being an agency it’s even harder.
Dylan Ogline: Yeah. Yes, I would practice both. Those are actually two really good example there. Let’s say you’re a content creation agency or you’re an SEO agency. I’m from Orlando, so let’s say that you’re an SEO agency in Orlando, and like your home page is like, “SEO Agency Orlando.” If you are not in the top results for your keyword for what your business is, that’s probably going to look bad on your part. If you have a content creation agency, you’re doing content creation for your clients, and you’re not putting out any content, that probably looks bad. You still can probably get success and you can probably still get clients with Google ads in both cases. But I don’t think you necessarily have to just use that method to be getting clients. If you had a content creation agency, and you’re doing billboard ads, or TV ads, I don’t think that matters. You just have to kind of be doing what you’re selling to a certain extent.
Vinay Koshy: What about new opportunities and partnerships to increase your leads that are coming in?
Dylan Ogline: So I’m not particularly the best person to answer this because I don’t like partnerships. So I’ll mention that, I don’t like partnerships. For me, if you understand just a little bit about my story, I wasted a lot of time doing too many different things and I’d gotten nowhere. Like I wasted approximately 12 years of my life making very little, not sleeping, not knowing what a vacation was, getting absolutely nowhere because I was doing way too many things.
So I probably go a little bit too far to the other side of keeping things ridiculously simple. Just ruthlessly cutting 80/20 to every single element of my life. I believe that the only way to do more is to do less. So I practice that. So again, I would not be a great person to answer this question because now I’ve gotten to the point where like I don’t want to look at any opportunities, I don’t want to look at any partnerships, which is probably not the best thing.
I would add this is don’t be looking for new opportunities unless you have maxed out what you’re already doing. I think that’s probably a good filter right there. If you can’t grow your agency anymore, or grow your business anymore in your current vertical, your current industry, your current service or offering then maybe consider partnerships and opportunities. But if you still have a lot of room to grow, you haven’t ramped your marketing up to 100% yet. Then I think it’s probably not a good idea to be considering new opportunities, new partnerships, et cetera. That’s probably a very good filter to have.
Vinay Koshy: That makes a lot of sense. Certainly. Is there an aspect of niche marketing that we haven’t covered as yet but you feel is important?
Dylan Ogline: No. I would add this, that I know what I am describing when I talk about my business, when I talk about how I view marketing, all that stuff. A lot of people I get feedback that they’re like, “It can’t be that simple. You got to be kidding me, right?” I believe in practicing the basics and the fundamentals and just getting better, and better, and better at that stuff. And that’s the best way to get far. And not trying to make it complicated.
I talked about like the 80/20 with trying to get your ad copy to be perfect, and your quality score. And again, I don’t even know if they still do that on Google ads anymore because I don’t look at that stuff. That’s the really trying to get the advanced, really complicated stuff. And I just I’m really against that. I teach people really stick to the fundamentals, and again, I know it sounds simple, but if you practice just a few basic rules, and you get really good at the fundamentals, you’ll go really far. And it’s really complicated and really difficult to get good at the advanced stuff when it’s only going to move the needle a little bit.
Vinay Koshy: Certainly.
Dylan Ogline: I think that makes sense.
Vinay Koshy: Yeah. Certainly. So if you were listening to this episode, what would you say is your top takeaway?
Dylan Ogline: Oh, this is a good question. Wow. I really need to keep my marketing simple.
Vinay Koshy: Okay.
Dylan Ogline: I really need to niche down. That would be my takeaway. I think that would be it.
Vinay Koshy: Excellent. Dylan, this has been really insightful in terms of getting really focused in on just the specific thing that you want to do. So I think that’s a value too both myself and to listeners as well. But if listeners are curious and do want to find out more, and connect with you, where would you recommend they head to?
Dylan Ogline: Just to my website: dylanogline.com. And, yeah, that’s it.
Vinay Koshy: Okay. We’ll include a link to that in the show notes. Dylan, thanks so much for this.
Dylan Ogline: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
Vinay Koshy: If you enjoyed this episode of the “Predictable B2B Success” podcast, I would love your support. Head on over to the Apple Podcast app and give us a rating. And as always, you can catch every episode of the “Predictable B2B Success” podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for tuning in.