Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Brent: I'm Brent Weaver and you're watching uGurus TV, the must watch web series to become
a more profitable and in demand web professional. Today I'm really excited to welcome a
special guest to our program. Our guest is somebody that I've followed on social media
for a long time. He's pretty much the foremost leader
when it comes to social media marketing and how businesses should be telling their story
on the Internet. If you haven't caught one of his
keynotes or read one of his books or seen one of his presentations or his blog, then
you're definitely really, really missing out. And
with that I'm really excited; I can't say that enough, to
welcome Gary Vaynerchuk to uGurus.com. I appreciate you taking the time to join us this
morning. Gary: No worry, it's good to be here.
Brent: So our audience is primarily web professionals. They're web designers, they're online
marketers; small one to five person creative agencies. And social media is definitely something
that they're all trying to bring to their customers, but I'd say across the board they're
struggling to do that. What do you think the role is
of small business online marketers with small businesses?
Gary: That's a good cross section of relevancy in the world we actually live in right? And
so, social media unlike digital media ten years
ago is a much more patient game. When SEO came
out in search engines and banner ads and email marketing it was all instant gratification.
Social media isn't, and that's why so many people
are struggling with it. The reason so many don't get
it is they're not willing to put in the two years of eating crow to get the results, the
end. I mean, it's just social media is a more human
play, and it takes a hell of a lot more effort and
just a far majority of people are not willing to put in the time and effort to get the results
out of it. They're looking for something that converts
quicker, is a more efficient use of their time, and
gives them instant results to based world. And so Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr,
Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, SnapChat, these things don't necessarily appease the people
that grew up with email marketing and SEO, and that's the problem.
Brent: So how do you think that works with small businesses that are trying to outsource
that work to online marketers, web professionals?
I mean, is that a service that can be offered by another small business coming in to help
a restaurateur or something like that? Gary: Yes, the answer's yes, but the problem
is too many of these small businesses don't tell
those clients the truth when they start with them. They promise bigger results upfront
than they can actually deliver.
Brent: And is that why you think so many small businesses are currently kind of failing with
social media? I mean, when I got to Facebook profiles, for instance, for the majority of
small businesses out there they barely have any
fans, and are doing complete push marketing. Why
are they struggling so much with social media? Gary: Because they're lacking the benefit
of the two things that matter, either money or time.
And both of them are tough for small businesses, right? It's funny, small business should really
win in social, but they're caught between a rock and a hard place. Growing up in a small
business I know the problem here for so many, and obviously so many people at this point
know my backstory growing up in a small business, that I've spoken to so many conferences and
consulted very close to the scene. Here's the problem; one, most small business
just can't afford to hire a company that really knows what they're doing, like VaynerMedia,
for example, like us, because they're not going to
spend $50,000 a month on a company like that, right? We can all agree to that.
Number two, they don't have the time in their mind to do it, right? To really do social
well you need three, four, five, six, seven, eight
hours of good work a day. Most small businesses if they
try to do it themselves can't do that, don't do that, or don't make the allocation of people
with the organization to do that.
And then finally, when they're working with other agencies that are charging them less
money, I think a lot of times those smaller agencies
have done a bad job in articulating, hey, listen, pizza
shop or restaurateur, or auto body shop, this is a three year play. They get caught into
the small business saying if I don't see results in
90 days, 120 days, I'm getting out. And then to get the
business a lot of times the agents will say, yeah, we'll get you results, and then it ends
up being a bad situation.
Brent: Very interesting. And with these different platforms I'm seeing a larger play, a larger
prevalence of paid advertising. So take Twitter for example; paid advertising wasn't really
a big thing on Twitter a year or two ago, but they're
trying to monetize that platform further. Do you
see businesses kind of starting to pull back their authentic engagement and try to push
up the amount of paid advertising they're doing on
these platforms, potentially diminishing their effect?
Gary: No, actually I think it's enhancing, but I think your question is leading me in
the right direction and your innuendo is the right thing.
If people that grew up in the web 10 world, they
see Facebook and Twitter ads as a scalable automatic way to be able to get results. So
you're right in the way you're asking your question.
Where the real answer lies though is if you do paid properly with organic community
management and organic native quality valued driven content well then it amplifies it.
I mean I love paid for Facebook and Twitter, because
I actually know how to put out good content and
then when it's doing well I know how to amplify it in reaction to it doing well, using paid.
And that's the way to really do it.
Brent: Gotcha for sure. Now I've been to a handful of social media conferences and a
lot of these gurus will promote kind of content formulas
for instance. They'll give you equal parts of
thought leadership and culture and this and that as kind of ways to do turnkey social
media. And after following you for several years
it doesn't seem like you are engaged in any kind of
content formula for social media. How do you approach marketers that try to promote those
types of behavior? Gary: I don't agree with them. And the silence
was there for a reason. I just telling you, and I
think that even the way you said "gurus" and the way you set up the question I think you
intuitively and DNA-wise realize that they're not right.
Brent: Yeah. I try to participate on social media as authentically as possible. I don't
have like a checklist of things I'm trying to do every
week, but the people that are teaching a lot of
businesses out there how to do social media, they just seem like they're trying for the
formula; they're not trying to do it authentically.
Like, why is authenticity so difficult to achieve?
Gary: Because it takes time, and nobody wants to do that. The reason I over index is because
I've allocated the time. I valued that engagement higher than other things I could be doing.
Brent: So our audience, primarily we build sites, and integrating social media platforms
into websites is something that a lot of business
owners try to achieve. Now I've been to the website
where you hit the home page and there's just these giant Facebook and Twitter icons and
they're trying to get you to somehow go between one page over to Twitter and then back. How
do you see websites and social media platforms playing well together? Like, where is the
perfect scenario? Gary: For me the perfect scenario is social
being a gateway to drive towards sites. I'm less
excited about sites with heavy Twitter integration, their Twitter screen there. I think you should
make people aware that you're on other platforms and maybe have links to the icons, because
that's awareness, right? If you land on the website, okay, wait there on social as well.
Obviously the content or the things that you put out,
the product pages you can integrate with social. But
to me the ultimate Holy Grail still is that social media is a gateway driver to the landing
page of a website. I still think that's the flow.
Brent: Gotcha. Now recently in your Elevate NYC Keynote you have a phrase; you said,
"Marketers ruin everything," which I find quite entertaining considering that VaynerMedia
seems to be a marketing company. But one of the . . .
Gary: Let me make it even more entertaining. I would tell you that I'm a marketer.
Brent: Okay. So obviously you see marketers having some type of role within the business
spaces. It's just that every time we get our hands on a scalable platform we basically
just ruin it to the point where consumers are no longer
paying attention there, and then they move to the
next hot thing. Gary: Yeah, or we ruin it to a point where
the returns are diminished. I don't think it's
necessarily an absolute statement of it's ruined forever, and that's that. But we pay
attention less to the television commercials today than
we did in the 1960s and 1970s. We pay attention less to banner ads today than we did 15 years
ago; the click ratios prove it. We pay less attention to AdWords than we used to, Google
AdWords are down 15% click through. We listen to email marketing less, right? I built my
library on email marketing, right? We used to open our
emails and actually convert; we do that less. And so, it's what we do. Social media I would
say in the last six years I'm starting to see diminishing
returns from Twitter because the fire hose is
bigger. And so it's what marketers do. Brent: Now one of the things you definitely
said was that email returns are diminishing. I still
find email highly effective; I find most businesses aren't using it right, and they're not using
enough of it. Does email have a place in the future of marketing or are these things just
kind of diminishing so much from most businesses that
they might not be worth it in five years? Gary: Yeah, and I mean, I think that's right.
I think that they're worth it, and direct mail might be
worth it for somebody still, or for some companies. But eventually these things become less
effective, right? Like, I have this argument about Yellow Pages 15 years ago; we finally
got to the place where for the most part if you have
half a brain you're not advertising in the Yellow
Pages. Right? And so, they're still doing it, out of like habit for a $200 ad. But it
really makes no sense. And so, email marketing is going to
make sense for a long, long time, but there's a big
difference between the effectiveness of email today than there was in 1999. And there's
a substantial difference.
Brent: Sure, in 1999 though, I mean, for our business our customer wasn't really even on
email. There was a little bit of it, but . . .
Gary: I think you're right, and so, let me paraphrase. I think every industry's different
and has nuances; for me they were, and that's why
it worked. But there's a big difference between Open Reach from 2006 and today. Now maybe
you've gotten better at it; maybe it's the specific
business has gotten better at it, but over all data shows that Open Reach and click through
rates on email marketing are down. And those things
happen, right? I mean, look; do you think Google with Gmail now having promotions at
a regular tell; that's in response to that reaction.
Brent: Yeah, for sure. In 2006 Wine Library TV you had the foresight to say look, video's
going to be where it's at; the social platforms were
just starting to scratch the surface at that time. You
saw where the puck was moving, you went for it, you went all in on that. There are tons
of shiny objects in the space now. I think your new
book kind of covers some of this, or at least the
summary of it says that you're going to talk about Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest,
Tumblr, all that kind of stuff. So is the puck moving to these new platforms or is it
moving off line? Where do you see, where are you going
all in for two years from now? Gary: I think Facebook and Twitter are going
to continue to matter for the next two years. But I
also think that what's going to be really interesting is to watch where Snapshot, Vine,
Pinterest, Wanelo is another site I'm paying a lot of
attention to. So there are a lot of things emerging. I
don't know; I'm not a Nostradamus; I'm more of a reactionary guy than a prediction guy,
right? Like I had no idea when Wanelo or Vine were
going to come out this year, but they did, and
now I mention them. Brent: Yeah, and I mean, everybody's seeing
the prevalence of Vine. I'm still not quite sure how
that may be relates to the average small business, I mean. I guess I see that shorter videos
is easily sharable; I'm not seeing a huge amount
of businesses on main street that are taking it up,
but definitely interested to see how that plays out.
Gary: Well you know what's funny? That's exactly how everything was; that was how Facebook
and Twitter. Like, if I'm having this interview with you in 2007 you just basically said the
same thing about Facebook and Twitter.
Brent: Very true, very true; I'll definitely take that one. So now you've got your own
media company, VaynerMedia, which you know, I won't
lie, your website's a little bit elusive as to
what you guys do. I assume you've got a million keynotes out there. People pretty much know
what they're going to get with Gary Vaynerchuk. But what does VaynerMedia do?
Gary: We're basically a modern day creative agency, a strategy agency. So what Bain and
McKenzie do for businesses, we do for businesses is social very focused on what they should
be doing strategy- wise. And number two, what
RGA and all the creative agencies in New York City
do, which is the commercials, and that's what we do. We create the pictures, videos
infographics, animated gifts, the Pins on Pinterest, the Facebook pictures, the tweets.
We do the creative on social media for them.
Brent: Okay, and how big of an operation do you guys have right now?
Gary: We're up to 280 people, with about 50 clients.
Brent: Wow! That's a pretty good employee to client ratio.
Gary: Yeah, but we're going for it, so I'm not even worried about employee to client
ratio; I'm not even worried about profit to honest with
you right now. Right now what I'm most worried about is being the leader in this space.
Brent: And so I think your ideal customer is big name brands. Am I correct there?
Gary: Yes, for Vayner we're very premium, so to spend $50,000 a month minimum you're
going to have to be a pretty big company to afford
that for your social media budget. Brent: Sure. But I think a lot of small timers
can learn a lot from how you operate. I mean, your
website pretty much says nothing, but you're out there participating getting in front of
your ideal customer all the time. So I mean, is
that the primary way you guys market, is Gary travels
the country, speaks, writes books, interacts with people, and then you guys just attract
and lead through that method?
Gary: Yeah, I think you're right. But that was what we did four years ago when we started.
And then that gave us our base. Now where we're
actually attracting leads from is using the sizzle to
get the first five people to buy the steak, which is what you just said, right? And after
that just serving the best steak. I mean most of our
clients now come for the fact that we're doing the
best work out there, and people are talking. Right? People in the industry.
So yes, the initial part was me, back when we got our initial customers. And our initial
customers got such great work they started talking; they started talking about our work
at conferences. Some of them left and went to
other clients, and that became clients because they
knew our work was the best. So I think that it's sexy to think about how I'd done it to
attract the bees with my honey; but the truth is once
they come into the door and see what the work is it's
actually having the goods to deliver and be great at your work. That's been the biggest
gateway to new business.
Brent: And I think a lot of people can learn from that. So you've got a new book.
Gary: I think, real quick on that. I think a lot of people focus on hunting and not enough
people focus on farming.
Brent: And that's just purely on wowing somebody with great delivery, great project putting
the time and effort into making every single project
a win. Gary: And whatever the KPI is, right? Like
whatever the business objective is. If you're delivering
on it you have a funny way of sticking around. If you're losing a customer after a year it's
much worse than gaining a new customer. You know,
like it's devastating. You've put in so much work
to get the customer, to lose them makes no sense.
Brent: Yeah, and it's interesting in the web game, which I've been building websites since
2000, but a lot of times web designers go and they
build a site and they literally like walk away from
the customer and they go to the next customer to build a site. And it's something that they
don't understand the follow on, and it's something that's very difficult to teach, but it sounds
like that's a core part of VaynerMedia. Gary: 100%. For attention it's much more important.
Brent: So you've got a new book coming out, "Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook". Do you want to
tell us a little bit about that book? It's not coming
out until November. Gary: Yeah, so it's coming out November 26th
and it's going to be about what we've been talking about here. How do you natively story
tell on the social networks that are relevant. I've
basically turned this book into a utility; 86 case studies of status updates on Facebook,
Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, going deep into
like what they did wrong, what they did well, and
try to paint pictures for people on how to actually story tell in these platforms.
Brent: So it sounds like from some of your recent presentations and from the descriptions
of this book that you're really getting more
into the story telling aspect versus the platform aspect.
And I kind of mentioned it earlier, which is the shiny object problem. There are new
platforms coming out all the time; I attend a lot of
startup conferences. I know there's a ton on the
horizon. How do you deal with the shiny objects of the platforms, like it just seems so
overwhelming for any business owner to try to figure out just how to learn to use Facebook,
let alone tell you a story on ten different platforms
natively? Gary: For me I'm all in, I mean. I look at
all the shiny objects and try to figure them out and put
out the effort, and it's seven out of ten of them fail and don't become anything a year
later on. I don't care; it's like a living. It's what
I do; it's why I wrote this book. Yeah, it's hard, but I think
it's a hell of a lot better than what people are doing with their time as an alternative.
People go like, oh, it's a waste of time. And I'm like,
what do you do during your ten-hour day? And then
when they start talking about it they start getting devastated, because they're doing
five hours of dumb s**t.
Brent: Yeah. I'm definitely looking forward to the . . .
Gary: There's always a yen to the beginning. Brent: Yeah, I mean, listening to you early
days of pushing one library; you weren't working eight-hour days. You were dominating social
media and you were working like the 18 to 20-
hour days, which I mean, I'm definitely a fan of some parts of the year, but that seems
like not necessarily scalable for every single business
out there. Gary: That's right, I think that's right.
But you get what you give, like I don't workout four hours
a day either, and the people who do get results in those abs, right? So like that's fine.
I agree. Like, people have different priorities, work-life
balance, I spend less time working at some level
today than I used to because I have two children now. It evolves, but it still doesn't take
out the fact that if you put in less hours you're
going to get results, especially if you're putting in good
hours. Brent: For sure. So I think your . . .
Gary: I mean, you're just far more likely to get a base hit if you can have six at bat
instead of three. Right?
Brent: Sure. I mean, I think dedication obviously to any business, I mean, the passion, if you're
able to dedicate the hours, I mean, it's going to come out in the storytelling. I mean, I
feel like the authenticity is almost when you're totally
dry on sleep is when some of the real stuff comes
out about my business, at least. Like, when I'm up at 2:00 a.m. working on a blog post
that's when my most interesting stuff comes out.
But that's just me, and not every business owner is
like that. Gary: For sure. Well, thanks so much for having
me, man. Brent: Yeah, I appreciate it. So what's next
for Gary Vaynerchuk? A statue in Times Square? What have you got in the works?
Gary: All head down, build Vayner, sell the book, and look for startup investment opportunities.
It's very much the same as I've had this year and very focused.
Brent: Very cool. Well, thanks for joining us this morning. I hear you're on vacation;
I appreciate your time. And we will definitely link up
to your new books and are looking forward to that.
Gary: Thanks fellow, take care of yourself. Brent: All right, thanks, Gary.
Gary: Bye. Brent: So there you have it folks, from Gary
Vaynerchuk himself, where social media is moving,
what you should be focusing on within your business, how you can help leverage social
media for your customers, and there's no better
person to talk about social media than with Gary
Vaynerchuk. If you enjoyed today's interview with Gary
Vaynerchuk, feel free to share it with your friends on
Facebook or Twitter, and of course, subscribe to our YouTube Channel to get instant updates
when we upload new videos. And if you want exclusive tips, insights, and deals, subscribe
to our email list. Stay tuned for more great content
from uGurus.com.