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Reading Time: 2 minutes

From Intern to CEO: Lessons Learned in Marketing with Ethic Advertising Agency’s Jeff Swartz

In this episode, Founder & CEO of Ethic Advertising Agency Jeff Swartz talks about the best education marketers can get, the benefits of working for someone else before you work for yourself, and how to stand out in a marketing or advertising interview.

Jeff Swartz always knew he was fascinated by solving problems, and after an internship at a marketing agency found his love for advertising.
 
Nearly a decade ago, he turned his passion into a career and founded Ethic Advertising Agency, a company that specializes in hyper-targeted visual advertising and creative services. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency:
 
  • What majors can help you start an advertising agency.
  • How an MBA can help you with advertising.
  • The benefits of working for someone else before you work for yourself.
  • How to get your second customer.
  • The average customer retention rate for marketing agencies.
  • Hyper-targeted marketing through geofencing.
  • How to find a qualified business advisor.
  • How to stand out in a marketing or advertising interview.
 
Resources:
 
Connecting with Jeff Swartz:
 
Connecting with the host:

Quotables:

  • 6:12 – “I had no money, I didn’t have the skillsets built up and who’s going to listen to a 22-year-old kid, so my methodology was actually to build up capital and build up skill sets so I can mitigate my risks and be as successful as possible.”
  • 11:13 – “Average client retention for an ad agency is anywhere between 3 and 5 years roughly so at some point whether it’s good bad or different, whatever the reason they might want to do a switch that ends up taking money out of your pocket so you have to make sure that your funnel is constantly full your constantly doing the sales process for yourself and not just trying to focus on your own clients but you have to give the attention, the dedication, the service in order to make sure you have a good retention rate as well.”
  • 25:41 – “Treat yourself like a brand. I get a lot of the same resumes, I get a lot of the blandness, I don’t get much that wows me which is really disappointing in the marketing and advertising space, bring more to the table, submit a cover letter, I would say 95 percent of people don’t submit cover letters anymore.”