Dive into a whirlwind of marketing strategies and personal revelations with Eric Ritter. Discover the essence of blending SEO with top-notch cuisine, unearthing gems from German streets to Colorado’s infamous Casa Bonita. This episode serves a delectable mix of agency insights, cultural anecdotes, and the undeniable charm of nut butters. Don’t miss out on these quirky takes and valuable lessons!
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
- Partnering and understanding clients.
- Rich Dad, Poor Dad SEO makeover.
- Importance of community and connection.
- Integrating German philosophies in business.
Resources:
Connect with Eric Ritter:
Connect with our hosts:
Quotables:
- 38:55 – We work with bigger brands such as Rich Dad, poor Dad came to us, you know, saying, Hey, I’m getting my ass kicked by Dave Ramsey, he’s getting a lot more traffic to his website. Can you help us out? We said absolutely. So we did a full audit of the website, worked with his internal team of developers and marketers to kind of say, Hey, this is what you need to do on your website. You have 12 years of like a lot of great content here, but it’s kind of a house of cards. It needs to completely be restructured. So we helped with that to restructure it, working with them, helping them through kind of building a new website there. So that’s, you know, where we work with people, we work with a lot of creative agencies that don’t have in-house SEO or have in-house digital marketing, but they do a lot of creative work. They might build a website but they don’t know how to market it. They don’t know how to drive traffic there. And my background, right? I got my master’s in advertising. So, and my first job was in traditional advertising. ’cause again, from a very small age, right in that walker, that’s what I’ve cared about like TV ads, right? And kind of making that emotional connection with people. So we’re really good at partnering with those creative agencies because we understand kind of how that works and how SEO kind of fits in with that because you know, you wanna make a a pretty website but you also wanna get traffic to it and you gotta kind of marry those two things
- 27:14 – And so a lot of agencies can deliver results. They know how to do it. We all kind of have similar processes, but what really matters to me is are you a good partner? Are you partnering? Are you understanding your client, right? And so that’s why I say we don’t have clients, we have neighbors, right? Because that philosophy of getting to know someone, you’re not just a number. You know, we’re actually making real human connections here and we’re working together to continue to get better results. And so that’s, you know, been important to me in my personal life. And that’s something that kind of bled over into professional as well through the agency and that philosophy that we give onto our, our clients or neighbors.
- 34:42 – I don’t wanna nickel and dime the client or I always want to do the right thing, you know, talk coming back, you know, Josh said golden rule and that’s like stuck in my head, like the golden rule of like, hey, you know, if it’s gonna take us 15 minutes more to make this kick ass for the client, they’re not paying for those 15 minutes. Let’s do it. Right? That’s the right thing to do. And so at the time I was listening to a lot of Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary V right? And Gary V you gotta take it with a a take it a certain direction, right? Because he’s very over the top sometimes of like, listen, you gotta optimize your day, you gotta be working all the time. You’re sitting at home watching Netflix, you could be using that time making yourself better, right?. And at the time he had the message of if you’re unhappy with your full-time gig, wherever you’re working, find something and make that your side hustle until that side hustle becomes sustainable, then you can make that your main hustle.
- 19:39 – Alex: Have you heard about the Gemba? Does that mean anything to you?
Eric – It doesn’t, no.
Alex: So in Toyota, basically going to the Gemba is going to the place of work and doing, and that’s a huge, in part of Toyota culture and a lot of Japanese culture in general is going to the Gemba to see how work is done so you can understanding of what’s happening on the ground floor. And that’s a core principle of, of theirs.
Eric: Yeah. And I think that’s a practice. Very similar practice. Yeah. Very similar to kind of what, what’s important to me as well is kind of understanding, you know, I call it in the trenches, you know, ’cause you know, I want people to trust me, you know, just like, you know, I’m in the foxhole with them, right. And who you’re gonna trust more than someone who you’ve been into foxhole and been through battle.
Alex: And you’re able to see like root cause there really yourself instead of trying to operate from a high level taking just people’s work for things. - 28:13 – Josh: So I am very much in the same boat of just being kind and whether, you know, it’s karma or whatever it is just like golden rule, a million things that kind of point into like, okay, yes, this is what we should be doing. However, you know, sometimes people can take advantage of that. So has that ever been the case where, you know, you are going in this nice kind approach, but someone tried to take advantage of it?
Eric: Yeah, no, great question Josh. And absolutely 100%. You know, and it’s really a gut punch, right? Because you know, for all of us in life, you’re like, hey, if I follow the golden rule, I should get rewarded, right? Like I never, you know, cross the street when it says don’t walk and then one time I’m running late and I do run across when it says don’t walk and I get caught even though, you know, a million times in my life I’ve always done the right thing. And you know, so people are like, well why’d I even follow the golden rule? You know, if I’m gonna get in trouble? And same thing with us is, you know, when you give just a little bit in the business sense, there’s people out there that can take advantage of that, right? Like, hey, you paid your invoice, you haven’t paid your invoice yet. And like, oh yeah, yeah, we’ll pay it, no problem. And then all of a sudden you’re like 60, 90 days later you’re doing all this work and they’re like, oh, we’re outta business, we can’t pay you. And you’re just like, oh fuck, you know, all that money, all that work we did, we’re not gonna get paid for it. So that’s been a really, I wanna say a hard lesson I guess for me as a founder is, you know, kind of being able to walk that line of wanting to be kind, wanting to help people out, but also it’s a business at the end of the day, you know, and I have a responsibility to my employees, I have a responsibility to the company to make sure you know, that we are to getting paid for our work.