Latest / Talk Commerce / The Top 3 Things You Will Learn About Scaling Your Marketing Agency with Strategic Partnerships
Transcript
- Brent Peterson (00:03.626) Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Brian Gerstner. Brian, go ahead and do an introduction for yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and maybe one of your passions in life. Brian Gerstner (00:15.255) Yeah, my name's Brian Gershner and I'm with White Label IQ and the president of White Label IQ. And a lot of my day-to-day role is really focused on client relationship, sales, marketing. I've been part of the organization since its inception and kind of really been able to kind of carry and bring that vision forward and just trying to bring that forward with all of our clients, making sure that we're delivering a lot of relative. services every day. Brent Peterson (00:47.81) That's awesome. Any passions in life? Brian Gerstner (00:51.888) My son, unfortunately, if I'm not working, I'm spending time with my family. I shouldn't say unfortunately, but I've not found a lot of hobbies outside of that area. Brent Peterson (01:03.958) That's awesome. My kids are all grown and out of the house. So when I do get an opportunity to do something fun with them, I take it. Brian, thanks for that. You know, I think before we get into content, you have so graciously volunteered to be part of the Free Joke Project. So what I'm going to do is tell you a joke. And all you have to do is say, should this joke be free? Or do you think we should charge for it? And today is a moving joke. You're really going to enjoy it. Here we go. Brian Gerstner (01:29.74) Okay. Brent Peterson (01:31.682) Did you hear about what happened to the wooden car? It wouldn't go. Brian Gerstner (01:38.531) Should this joke be free or should we charge for it? Brent Peterson (01:41.622) Yeah, that's the question. Brent Peterson (01:48.604) All right, so today we're going to start talking about strategic partnerships. And as a side note, I am the strategic alliance partnership chair for Entrepreneurs Organization Minnesota. So that's part of my free or my volunteer role right now as a board position. But in business, it's even more important. And I've learned in the past how important those partnerships are. So thank you. Brian Gerstner (02:01.111) Wow, nice. Brent Peterson (02:14.818) Tell us a little bit about what you do and how you offer value to your clients. Brian Gerstner (02:20.015) Well, our core audience is working with other marketing agencies. And that comes from the fact that we're born from an agency. So in doing that, we kind of grew on even in, in many ways, solved a problem in our agency that grew into a business of its own. But through that, we understand agencies incredibly well, and we're able to really provide a lot of highly skilled, specialized, digital talent to agencies in the background. so that we can really kind of deliver a lot of high quality and also kind of unique talent sets that agencies often can't keep on staff or really have a lot of bandwidth. Or sometimes it's just not part of your focus, you know? So by being a partner, we're really able to be best in class at what we do and bring that level of quality to other agencies. Brent Peterson (03:17.61) Yeah, and I think a lot of times, maybe, well, especially technical agencies are not very deep in the marketing department. And there's a lot of different roles, right? So just as a development agency, you would have different roles that would provide different functions, back end developer, front end developer. Talk a little bit about how you can offer value for specific roles that maybe an agency couldn't afford to hire a full-time person for. Brian Gerstner (03:46.299) A lot of times, and even my experience in work with agencies, we have a lot of unicorns, depending upon the size of the agency, especially if you're in the zero to five, or if you're in the five to 15, you're wearing a lot of hats. And you've gotta know a little bit about everything. But there are times where the requests from clients are just getting a lot more complicated, and even the areas that we're looking in are just getting... to the point where you really need to know what you're doing to break out of mediocre deliveries. And as an agency, you're really acting on behalf of your client, you know? And you need to be able to have that kind of confidence. You need to be able to sleep well at night. So a lot of our ability to bring specialized services is just to be able to have that confidence. to let your agency kind of do what it does best and not have to worry about us. So if you are an agency and you have, or even an in-house team, and you have somebody who has like background in design, they might have some background in development, they've done marketing automation, it's really easy to work with partners because those individuals in your agency can rise up. They come from like a doer to a delegator. And it allows you to really kind of flex when you need to, not to have to then add a lot of fixed costs into your department or your agency, but just to bring in those specialized skills when you need them with your partners. And if you have a good partner, they're there to consult a lot of times too. They're there to help kind of bring a lot of that background information and that kind of innovation in that particular area that allows you to kind of come up with better, more kind of Just solutions that are really going to get it done. Provide options. Be able to, you know, not just deliver a cookie cutter type thing because you're used to delivering it that way, but really know like if you can present the business option to your partner and they're specialized in what they do, they're going to have more ideas for you. And it's the same reason clients come to marketing agencies or even as an in-house department, you go to a marketing agency Brian Gerstner (06:12.203) Sometimes you just need someone who's focused in that area to really help you take it a little bit farther, take it from good to great. And also, things are just changing so fast. The ability to innovate, it's almost becoming tiring for a lot of companies. So it's one way we serve too, just hoping to just deliver a little more confidence. We're in it. This is how we innovate. This is how we deliver. This is what we do. You know? Um, and I think a lot of other agencies have that kind of position and that's how they present themselves. And I think having that authority is essential nowadays, um, particularly with AI coming out. Brent Peterson (06:59.594) Yeah, talk a little bit about AI and how that has affected the marketing business. And if you see agencies thinking that they don't need as many people, or where are people important in that role? Brian Gerstner (07:17.187) So a lot of the way AI I see affecting us is, in essence, is just going to beat the mediocrity out of all of us. There's not a lot of room for just checking off tasks or just getting things done, because I do believe we're still very much in the honeymoon period of what's changing. And progressively, we are going to have know what we want. We're gonna have to really understand what best in class delivery looks like because a lot of the production of it is just becoming automated faster and faster every day. So it's another reason to focus down and to niche down. And through this need to like... be a real authority about something, to be known for something, it allows you to bring a level of expertise that AI is not going to. I mean, at the end of the day, for AI to work, you have to articulate your problem. You need to be able to tell it what you want. And that's not easy. It's not as easy as it sounds. And that's why any company or any agency is going to be able to really demonstrate what they're worth. And if you're just getting things done and checking out boxes, like I said earlier, AI is going to not be your friend. Brent Peterson (08:56.138) Yeah, I think the experience I've had is that in the very beginning, anyways, AI did give you a whole bunch of garbage, but it also is not consistent in its results. So maybe talk a little bit about how humans are important when having the involvement of using AI tools. And whether you go to Jasper or chat GPT. how a marketing agency still offers a lot of value to the client in terms of usage of AI and how to use it or where to use it. Brian Gerstner (09:33.227) Key way to think about it is AI is your personal companion. To some degree, mathematicians are not considered bad mathematicians because they use a calculator. And I think that type of approach is really important because AI is just going to allow us to move faster. It's gonna allow us to iterate faster. It's going to allow us to just move a lot quicker than we ever have before. And that on its own is really difficult. The degree of change is, it's not slowing down. So inside of an agency, whether it be in-house, out-house, or even just in your own companies, AI is very much a tool. You need people to curate it. You need people to help it understand who it's talking to. You need someone to really understand your audience and to be able to guide it and direct the AI. It's really smart, but it doesn't know what you know. And it doesn't know it's not emotional and people are emotional. So there's the need for you to walk side by side, hand in hand with AI. And I really do think that we're just all going to be walking around with our own personal assistance to some degree. Brent Peterson (11:08.862) Yeah, I think... Brian Gerstner (11:09.92) For agencies in creative, sorry, it's the ability to iterate fast, I think is one of the things right now that's just really evident. Brent Peterson (11:19.722) Right, I think that handholding is probably the most important thing that you mentioned earlier. And some guidance, too. Talk a little bit also about the fact that AI doesn't necessarily help you to get that content onto a live area. It may help you produce it, but scheduling it, things like that, it also theoretically could do that. But then, If you don't have any oversight, it's really just AI generation for the sake of AI generation without a human looking at it. And really at the end of the day, humans need to consume it, right? Whatever content you've created, it's usually for a human to read, not an AI bot to read. Brian Gerstner (12:05.419) Right? What we're seeing is that AI is great at creating the pieces at this point, but it's not really great at bringing the pieces together. Or once they're together, it's not really great at maintaining them and just making sure that things are fine tuned in that way. So that's a general statement, but... Even when we look in our area specialty, where we're doing a lot of code generation, AI is helping us improve the quality. It's allowing us to do a lot of the bug fixes, okay? But it didn't necessarily put together that strategic map and telling us what we needed, what the business objectives are, how we were gonna solve it. It might've advised us in the tech stacks that we're gonna use or some of the solutions. but we still had to choose the right option and we had to understand where we were going. And if the decisions we were making today were going to affect us tomorrow. And those are all considerations that humans need to be a part of. And AI is gonna help us make those decisions faster, but it's not gonna take all those pieces and put them together into something that's really gonna work for us. As... As much as a lot of what we do has some degree of step and repeat, there are very unique elements to how people want to execute things, to how people want them to learn, to the messaging they're going to say when they want to relaunch it, how they want to coordinate multiple things together. And AI is not able to do that kind of personal touch. Humans are emotional. We make emotional decisions. And that, there's still a lot of room for humans at the table. It sounds crazy to say that, but I think it needs to be said. We're still here making the decisions. It's just that we're able to do it faster and we're gonna have to make a lot of the decisions faster. We're gonna have to be able to see a little further in the future because we're making decisions so quickly. Brent Peterson (14:29.93) Yeah, I like what you said about emotions because I think when some of these, when Microsoft's model first came out, it was, it had some negative effects. It got actually got mad at people or thought it, it thought it got mad at people. So I mean, it is sort of like a, you know, a newborn or a toddler in terms of Brian Gerstner (14:46.551) Yes. Brent Peterson (14:53.702) if you don't put some guardrails around those emotions, then the AI thinks it should act some way, which is completely inappropriate. So where do you see the biggest value then from somebody that is white labeling your services? Brian Gerstner (14:56.365) Uh huh. Brian Gerstner (15:11.047) Um, a lot of it has to do with just scaling sometimes. I think a lot of the benefit is that, um, Agencies don't or in-house departments don't want to like bring on fixed costs. They don't want to invest in a place where, um, there's a lot of fluctuation. You might have a large project and you have to move through it and you need someone's help. Um, you might, um, just be exploring an area and you want a partner to really kind of learn if you can build a book of business against this. And it's just really good to have a partner in those because you can reduce a lot of risks going forward. Strategic partnerships, I think are, it's really critical to think how they just mitigate risk for a business. And we're in business, right? So it's not like there's any... you know, false understanding that we're not putting on wedding rings. It's not a merger. We're just aligning. And it aligns today. But as businesses grow, the needs change. And I think we all recognize that. So white label partnerships. No matter. Even if it's in the forefront, I think they're very common, they're a lot more common than anybody realizes. And I think. The key thing is it reduces risks and it allows you to provide higher quality. And if you're an agency or you're working with clients, they want results. They don't necessarily care how you get there. Brent Peterson (16:53.286) And so you tell us who's your ideal customer for this? Is it another agency that doesn't have a marketing team? Or is it customer or is it end users? Brian Gerstner (17:01.283) So, white labels are unique in the fact that we work with marketing agencies as our qualified prospects, because it's where we came from. We really understand how agencies work and pain points and how you feel and the problems that you're having. So in working with agencies too, the partnership's different because Agencies understand the strategies. They understand the clients. They understand what the business objectives are. And it really allows us to then just be that digital production arm. Because once again, you have to know what you want. So an ideal partner for White Label IQ would be a marketing department, an agency. So that we can just kind of help you get things done. Brent Peterson (18:01.087) Yeah, that's awesome. So if you had a piece of advice or a nugget to give somebody, I mean, we're really close to Black Friday. So what could somebody do right now if you had some advice to get to a merchant or even another agency that's listening that they could still accomplish before Black Friday? But I think there's a lot of things to be done after Black Friday Cyber Monday from a marketing standpoint. Brian Gerstner (18:10.083) Yeah. Brian Gerstner (18:28.783) From a marketing standpoint in those areas, it's plan ahead for next year. With us coming up close, you want to be able to follow through after those calls. You want to be able to leverage all the data that you're getting. I would say, particularly with the need for first party data, collect the information so that you can follow up with people so that you can grow your audience. Black Friday opportunities are great. great ways to reach out to new clients that you haven't before. And then that first party data really allows you to stay in contact with people. When you have an audience, you can market into that. You have people who are qualified. You can grow and run a business from that. So take that information, take those relationships you build through these sales, and really focus on nurturing. Brent Peterson (19:22.766) That's awesome. So Brian, as we close out the podcast, I give the guests an opportunity to do a shameless plug. What would you like to plug today? Brian Gerstner (19:35.171) I mean, I'd love to plug white label IQ. What I'd really like to say about us is we are different than a lot of development teams or digital productions. A lot of people say it, but we spend a lot of time and we invest a lot of energy in truly being partners and coming to the table with the people we work with. We don't expect to come to the table for a free meal. We know what it takes to win. We know what it takes to really deliver high quality work. So. We invest in those partnerships because we want to work with like-minded people who enjoy what they're doing. Brent Peterson (20:10.146) That's awesome and how can people get in touch with you? Brian Gerstner (20:15.127) White label IQ calm but um follow us on LinkedIn too. We put out a lot of content and we really do try to put out helpful content Brent Peterson (20:24.426) Brian, thank you so much for being here. It's been a pleasure to speak with you today. And I wish everybody a super busy Black Friday and a post-holiday rush of extra business. Thank you. Brian Gerstner (20:43.839) Absolutely. Thank you, bro.