Journey To $100 Million

Have you ever been in a situation where you feel like a train wreck is about to happen? Today on The Journey to $100 Million Podcast, listen in as Erik revisits a situation in which we had to make a game-time decision, and had to decide whether or not to take a big risk. One of our clients that had an e-commerce site had been having some issues. Black Friday was right around the corner, and we had to decide whether or not to try and improve the site before their biggest day of the year, or just to cross our fingers and hope for the best. This client had been having problems with the site all through the fall of 2018, and we had made a big change in October in order to improve the site overall. As we were watching this site throughout the month, we started to see that some performance issues were creeping back in. Because of this, we anticipated a problem with the site on Black Friday, knowing how many visitors there were going to be due to the promotions being implemented for the holiday. We debated if we s

When you are thinking about your company and its goals - are you doing your job as a lifestyle? Are you working to live or living to work? Are trying to build something bigger than yourself? Or, are you just getting by? Today on Journey to $100 Million, listen in as Erik explains the importance of going the extra mile while trying to grow a business. It is not easy to build a company, and it is going to require a little bit of extra work. If you want to build a company, a 9-5 work week just isn’t going to cut it. How do you expect to get ahead if you are just putting in the minimum amount of work that is required just to keep a job? If you want to get ahead, and if u want more than average results, you have to put in more than average work. No need to brag, don’t get lazy, just put in the work and you will see results. — 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

Do you have certain services that you wish every client had? Today on The Journey to $100 Million Podcast, listen in as Kevin talks about requiring fundamental professional services for each of your clients. We started requiring fundamental professional services about 6-8 months ago here at Array Digital. These professional services are ones that we include in every single contract or proposal that we send to a customer regardless of what other services that they may get from us. We do not do this to make extra money. Instead, we do this to price ourselves out of the small work we don’t want to do, as well as we feel that these services are something we have to provide in order to have a successful relationship with the client. These services include things like the digital agency of record, reporting & reviews, website optimization, advertising optimization, dedicated project managers, as well as other services. This may sound like a lot of stuff, and may not apply to you, but as a digital marketing age

On a regular basis, we evaluate the services we provide to our clients. Around 6 months ago, we added a service which we called call-tracking. On today's episode of Journey to $100 Million, listen in as Erik explains why we recently stopped offering this service to our clients and prospects. Call-tracking is when you list a specific phone number that goes through a third party system on an ad/site page in order to understand where certain calls are coming from. Even though this number is different from the office number (so you understand where these calls are coming from), your office number is still the number that rings. The reason for this is because as a marketer, you want to be able to show that there are calls stemming specifically from your ads or other work you may be providing. The problem with this is that you must verify these calls that are coming in to ensure they are leads, and not just spam or a returning customer. In doing this, it takes an army of employees/interns to do this and listen to

When dealing with an unhappy client, how do you remedy the situation? On today's episode of Journey to $100 Million, listen in as Kevin explains the difference in responding to a client that is unhappy via email vs. picking up the phone. When a conflict arises, it is easy to default to a simple email. An email is easy to shoot back, you are able to "take care" of the situation more quickly, and you are able to avoid the possibility of getting talked to in a not-so-nice manner. But, when you send emails back and forth, especially in conflict situations, sometimes the situation can worsen. When receiving or sending an email, it is possible for the tone to sound mean or angry depending on how you read it. Recently, there was a situation with an unhappy client, and we emailed back a response in order to quickly assist this client. Although the response was intended to be nice and we actually even granted a favor, it escalated the situation. Instead, this email was translated by the client in the wrong tone - an

Do you ever go live on social media? Today on Journey to $100 Million, listen in as Erik shares how and why he has just started going live on his social media platforms. Recently, Erik has been going live on Twitter and Instagram when he records episodes for this podcast. One big reason for this is due to the fact that when you go live, the algorithms allow you to get maximized exposure. That is what is so cool about going live: you get that big bang right off the bat. The algorithm rewards you, and sends all of your followers a notification if they are currently in the platform, or it can even pop up on their phone if they have certain notifications turned on in their settings. Not only that, but after you go live, you can even share it on your feed and share it like a normal post or story as well (depending on the platform you are using.) The more often you go live, the more confident you get, and the more comfortable your audience gets seeing this content and interacting with you. We currently live in a

In the past, Array Digital was involved with software development, web development, and even created mobile apps. Digital marketing has always been a part of what we do, but over the past couple of years we have switched to digital marketing 100%. Because of our previous work, we still have past clients calling us today to ask for services that we may no longer provide. Today on The Journey to $100 Million Podcast, listen in as Kevin shares the importance of helping out these past clients that are no longer a good fit. Kevin recently had a previous client reach out that wanted a new website, with support and hosting as well. After putting together a full digital marketing review (as we do for every prospect) - we realized that they do not have a need for any of the digital marketing services that we have to offer. We came to the conclusion that all we could do to help them was to build a website. Because of this, Kevin was up front and told them he did not want to waste their time, so he would listen to wha

As you may already know, we recently hired a sales manager here at Array Digital. Because of this, Glen (our new sales manager) and Kevin are now doing the bulk of the day-to-day selling, freeing up a lot of Erik's time. Today on Journey to $100 Million, listen in as Erik shares with you what he plans to do with this free time. Erik figured this time would be best utilized by focusing on our marketing efforts for Array Digital. We are a digital marketing agency, but do not have a team member focused on the marketing specifically for ourselves. We do market for Array Digital, but sometimes we find that since we prioritize client work, Array Digital does not get as much love from the staff as they should. In increasing our marketing efforts, one of the objectives is to increase the SEO value of our website. But, we don’t want to just rank well on Google, we want to ensure that consumers are clicking on our links as well. Most people only focus on coming up in Google search results, but do not focus on the seco

What are you watching on Netflix? You may think this is the most ridiculous question to be asking, but when you go to a networking event and meet someone for the first time, what do they ask you? Listen in on today’s special edition episode of Journey to $100 Million where guest host Zack Miller explains how you can stand out from the crowd! At these networking events you are most likely being asked “What do you do for a living?” or “What company do you work for?” and then you have to belt out your perfectly choreographed elevator pitch, and go with the motions. Instead, you should be trying to build relationships with these individuals you are meeting. Now, how does asking them what they are watching on Netflix have to do with anything? Well, there are over 139 million subscribers to Netflix currently. So, if you go up to someone at a networking event, ask them what they are watching on Netflix, and you happen to be watching the same thing (often times people are due to the amount of people that watch Net

Today on Journey to $100 Million, listen in as Kevin talks about a situation that comes up every now and then at Array Digital, and has always gotten us in trouble depending on which way we go. At Array Digital, we consider ourselves digital marketing experts. We spend a lot of time coming up with strategies for each client as we prepare to onboard them. But, every now and then, a client will insist on their own strategy that they have developed in-house. Typically, the problem with this is that these strategies our clients come up with on their own, are not strategies we recommend. Our strategy is comprised of in-depth research, and is reviewed very thoroughly with our team members. If we have already prepared our strategy, and have a clear reason why we do not feel like the client's strategy is going to work, we need to say something. We can either implement the strategy this client has come up with, and give them a transparent warning on how we feel about the strategy. Or, on the other hand, we can stick

At our office space here at Array Digital, there are very few open parking spots. We have 3 reserved spots that say they are reserved for Array Digital and our guests, but that's it. Listen in to Erik on today’s episode of Journey to $100 Million to learn why none of these spots are reserved specifically for Erik or Kevin. At the start of working at our current office space, Erik would park in the same spot every day. Because of this, some employees were passing on that parking spot even if they got to the office before Erik, although the spot was not reserved specifically for him. This was not how Erik wanted it to be, so he put the message out that if you get to the office first, you get to park in the best spot. Erik has never been a fan of entitlement for a CEO, C-Suite, or any executive at all. He feels that everything in business should be based on merit. If he does not get to the office first, he does not get the premier parking spot - if he doesn’t chime into where we are going for company lunch, th

Today on The Journey to $100 Million Podcast, listen in as Kevin shares the final step in his 11 step process on how you can foster growth in your organization through investing in customer experience. Whenever you are dealing with clients, it is essential to understand how you are doing from their perspective. In step 11 of the customer experience process, you are able to track how you have been performing for your clients. To do this, we use a tool called net promoter score. This management tool is used to gauge the loyalty of the firm's customer relationship. To use this tool, we send out a one question survey to a client asking how likely they are to refer us to a client or colleague. The key here is to send this out to every single one of your clients - even the ones you know may give you a negative score. You want to be as honest and transparent as you can with this NPS score you are receiving. Depending on the score you receive, there are different ways you should handle this feedback. Listen in on to

Not too long ago, we lost a client because we were not properly tracking our deliverables with a set timeline. What we mean by a deliverable, is when we form a contract with a client, we say we are going to do a certain number of services, for a certain amount of money. Today on Journey to $100 Million, listen in as Erik explains the importance of tracking your deliverables, and streamlining communication. In this case, for a number of reasons, we were pushing our deliverables back until everything lined up. What we did not realize in doing this, is that we missed the very first month of sending out a newsletter for this client; we lost track of the fact we had to do this. Because we missed this deliverable, we are now working through the process steps on how we can track our deliverables to ensure that this never happens again. We now have a known onboarding period for our client, with a specific section in the contract stating these terms. We state specifically to not expect any deliverables for the first

Today on Journey to $100 Million, listen in as Kevin shares the tenth step in his 11 step process on how you can foster growth in your organization through investing in customer experience. When at step 10, it is time to have a 90 day check-in with your client. At this step, the business owner or account manager should schedule a lunch with the client. Although it is a lunch, you do not want to just have lunch and chit-chat, but instead ensure that you accomplish the goal of having a productive meeting. At this meeting, you should review the progress and accomplishments thus far in your process. It is important to get back up to date and discuss your client's business goals, as well as talk about any changes that may arise. You want to ask how their sales are going, how’s growth, and if there are any issues. If there are any issues or changes, see if there is anything you can do to help with those. As entrepreneurs and business owners, there are not a lot of people able to vent or talk to about what is goin

Here at Array Digital we have several core values, with the first core value being honesty. The importance of honesty is that it is the foundation for everything else that is layered on top of it. Today on Journey to $100 Million, listen in as Erik explains the importance of honesty in the workplace, and shares a lesson learned of his own dealing with honesty. If you cannot trust an employee to be honest, everything else is going to fall a part. An employee that cannot be trusted, cannot be given responsibilities. And if that employee cannot be given any responsibilities, they will not be able to do their job, and you must get rid of them - quick! Listen in on today’s episode to hear a real-life experience Erik once dealt with in college, and why honesty is the first core value here at Array Digital. — Erik 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 organi

After you have done a good job for your client, it is time to trigger yourself to now ask them for something. Today on The Journey to $100 Million Podcast, listen in as Kevin shares the ninth step in his 11 step process on how you can foster growth in your organization through investing in customer experience. At this point, we now know the client is happy, had a check in, gotten them a referral and so forth. If the client is not happy, you may not get to this step, or should skip this step as a whole. If they are happy, it is time to get them a referral When asking a client for a referral, do not ask for a referral from just anyone - doing this will not allow your client to pull it out of their mind quickly. Instead, ask for one specific referral, and sit down and talk to them about how they can best refer you. You may want to send over a sheet of the different kinds of people/organizations you like to work with, as well as a list of your services. This will allow you to kick off the process where a client

Have you ever had a client try to get out of a service contract? Today on Journey to $100 Million, listen in as Erik explains how we handle clients that try to bail on their contracts. Currently when we sign new clients, they are signed on as a monthly client, and are required to make a 12-month minimum commitment. There have been some instances where clients have wanted to stop their service with us before their contract was over - and are looking for new ways to take care of these situations. In the past, we used to enforce a clause that demanded payment if a client tried to bail, but that is no longer a part of our process. If a client is not happy, we want to give them the opportunity to get out of their contract - our goal is never to put handcuffs on our clients. Erik is even debating getting rid of the minimum 12-month commitment for this reason. Since we are brainstorming new ways to handle these situations, we would love to learn more about different types of models that you all may use in your orga

On today’s episode of Journey to $100 Million, Kevin shares the eighth step in his 11 step process on how you can foster growth in your organization through investing in customer experience. At step 8, you have been servicing this client for a while. They’ve gotten to feel out your team (and vise versa), everyone knows the progress being made, and they are beginning to become more of a promoter. If everything is going smoothly, it is time to offer them some business by getting this client a referral. If you have a referral to offer, that’s great - but ensure that it is quality. You never want to refer business to someone you wouldn’t do business with yourself. If you do not have a referral, learn the best ways to refer this client, and give your best effort to gain them at least one quality referral. If you put effort into this step, it will put you on the fast track to gaining a new client promoter. Listen in on today’s episode to learn why getting your clients referrals can boost your business relationshi

Happy Friday everyone! Today on the Journey to $100 Million Podcast, we have a special treat for you. Erik AND Kevin on the same episode! In this episode, Erik and Kevin recorded a recent trip they took to Richmond, Virginia to visit some of our clients. On this drive, there was a lot of discussion on SEO and how it continually changes. Not only that, but they mention the SEO capabilities of YouTube and how Array Digital has continued to push into the media realm. Array Digital has morphed and changed over the years, so listen into today's episode to hear what Array Digital has planned for the future! — Erik 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

Do you want to understand how you are performing for your newly signed clients? A 30-day check-in makes this possible! Today on Journey to $100 Million, listen in as Kevin shares the seventh step in his 11 step process on how you can foster growth in your organization through investing in customer experience. A 30-day check-in could entail a stop into the client's office, a phone call, or even just grabbing lunch. This check-in will assist your organization in understanding what you may be doing well, what you may be doing poorly, and shows the client that you care about their performance and well-being. You are able to relay this better understanding you have just gained back to your team, and adjustments can be made. Listen in on today's episode to learn how to implement a 30-day check-in process! — Erik 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 organi