In this episode, Brook Shepard, CEO of Mason Interactive, delves into the role of AI in marketing, emphasizing the need for human oversight. She also discusses the importance of creativity, campaign ideas, diversification of advertising spend, and growth metrics. The episode also highlights the significance of ethical client relationships, goal setting, and key event planning. Additionally, Shepard shares insights on Mason Interactive’s upcoming rebrand and participation in Grow in New York.
Brook Shepard is the CEO and Managing Partner of Mason Interactive, a leading Performance Marketing agency with offices in New York City and Charlotte. With over 14 years of experience, Brook and his team specialize in media buying strategy, SEO, creative development, and email marketing for clients in the Higher Education and D2C brand sectors. Prior to Mason Interactive, Brook held key roles at Yodle, SendTraffic, and Yankee Rose, demonstrating his expertise in search marketing, client services, and web design. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency:
- In the next two years, companies must use AI, or they risk losing out to competitors who do.
- Advertising spend has changed with the introduction of iOS 14, and companies must diversify their mix to be in front of more people.
- Soft goals can be important to clients, and honesty is crucial in distinguishing them from hard goals.
- Red flags to look for when working with clients include a lack of numerical goals or sales targets, not attending meetings, and an overly strong emphasis on ROI.
- They will be participating in the Grow in New York event on July 11th.
- Brook talks about their marketing strategies and how they work closely with their clients.
Resources:
Connect with Brook Shepard:
Connect with the host Josh Hoffman:
Quotables:
- 3:19 – “So I think there’ll be more automation in this industry and not less over time. I think that’s been a truism for a long time. I think that what that will mean is that if I had to guess in the future of this industry, people will have fewer clients, sorry, more clients paying them a lower rate or maybe the same rate, but lower hours on that work because a lot of the work will happen more quickly. And if the real skill set is not going to be doing the work, real skill set will be explaining why you did the work and, and, and reasons why you made those choices along the way.”
- 6:18 – “I think that the human ability to synthesize data and relate to other people through common experiences will still be valuable. I also think that creative will become more important in this industry right now than it, than it’s right now. A lot of clients certainly focus on creative. They’re focused on like, what audience did better today? Why haven’t you uncovered the right audience? Let’s try a new audience that’s important and that’s not going to stop.”
- 19:08 – “I think the biggest issue that new marketers run into is they think, and, and, and any company, right? I do this when I join a new company in sales, I just want to get everything in the door and I don’t really care about quality at this point. So I, I think, you know, it is important that it is okay to turn down a customer even early on based on a lot of signs.”
- 14:27 – Josh: “And I think a lot of people like to pretend that a vanity metric is their key performance indicator, when it not always necessarily is. So I think that was a great point. Take a step back now.” Brook: “But follow up about that. So like, so like the, the, we call those hard goals versus soft goals.”
- 2:32 – Josh: “But you mentioned AI taking jobs, so, you know, what do you see as the future both in the next two years of what that looks like and how AI and chat between all those things take over, and then what do you see it in the next 10 years look like?” Brook: “So for our industry, specifically, clients ask me what I think about it. And my answer is always, you want to use those tools. What do you think about them? I don’t really think I get a vote. Zuckerberg isn’t asking me a thing, isn’t asking me, I don’t get a vote. And whether those things are happening, they just are.”