969: Twibi Agency: Digital Marketing, Lead Generation, SEO and AI Strategies with Brenton Thomas

Robert Plank 00:04 Hey welcome back to the podcast. We're here with Brenton Thomas from Twibi agency.com and Brenton has seven plus years of paid search paid social, organic social media and SEO experience in corporate and agency roles. So we're gonna find out today about Google, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, AI, PPC, content marketing and so many exciting things. So Brenton glad to be talking to you. Hey, thanks for having me. Glad to have you. And so someone says alright, who is this Brenton? Thomas sky? And why should I pay attention? How do I know if he's a good connection for me and my company to get to where we need to go? Who are you? What's the elevator pitch?

Brenton Thomas 00:43 Yeah, so I'm Brunson digital marketing expert, seven plus years of digital marketing experience. I spoke all around the world. To be honest, England, I have a presentation coming up in Milan, Italy. And I've helped quite a few different clients from the mom and pop shop. All the two companies valued at over a billion dollars, like magic Eden for entities. So that's my elevator pitch.

Robert Plank 01:12 Fantastic. And which are the most fun? Do you prefer? The huge ones, the small ones? Or is it like they're just different experiences?

Brenton Thomas 01:20 Yeah, very, excuse me, very, very different experiences, I would actually prefer somewhere in the middle. Sometimes the mom and pop shop needs the instant results. And they kind of need the world to happen within a short amount of time. And then the large corporations, sometimes there's a lot of people to talk to. And there's quite a few decision makers, and there's just a lot of tape in the way. But I prefer someone in the middle. But not to say that I don't dislike mom and pop or large. I love it all. But somewhere in the middle, whatever.

Robert Plank 01:55 Oh, cool. Good to know. You're very you're varied. And so what is your focus? Like? We talked in your bio, a little bit how you do the ads, you do the content? If a company says what problem do you solve? And how do we get it solved? What is it that you do?

Brenton Thomas 02:08 Yeah, so so if you're looking for leads or revenue, that's, that tends to be our focus, highly focused on that. Even if a client says, hey, you know, we want brand awareness. And so usually I'll position the conversation to say, well, if in this process, we get you a lot of brand awareness, but zero leads, how do you feel about that? And usually, it's, well, well, we need leads, really. So it always comes back to leads. And that's where we put our attention into is leads and revenue.

Robert Plank 02:38 Oh, cool. And that's awesome that you, you talk to them about their goals. And you may get on the same page, like, alright, we're lead generation. And so can you tell us some fun stories like you know, everyone has fun case, study success stories where some brand came to you and they were stuck, they had a problem, and then you worked your magic worked your secret sauce, and then you ended up at a fun conclusion. So what do you have as far as the sort of success stories? Yeah, great

Brenton Thomas 03:03 question. So we've been working with, this is one of our current clients. It's a winery in Yorkville, California. And so so they brought us on board for revenue, they want to drive purchases of E commerce, sales of wine. And so we launched ads, and we just weren't seeing any purchases. But in the background, we could see that both reservations were taking place, right, so people were signing up for an experience, and they would show up to the winery, have a great experience, then from there. Hopefully they purchase a bottle of wine and then join the wine club. And so that's kind of running in the background, we can kind of see some of the numbers are kind of working sort of, but we hadn't put a lot of budget into it. And so as time has gone on, we've we've kind of repositioned away from ecommerce sales and into booked reservations. And so they're they're getting massive amount of people showing up for wine tasting experiences, so much that they had to pull help from other locations, just support the need that digital marketing has driven. So it's this, it's all a pivoting of strategy. And it's really worked out for our client.

Robert Plank 04:17 Well, awesome. And I can tell that you love what you do. And you have a lot of fun, and you know, all these different ways to go about and solving the problem. And so if some company out there says, Okay, it's cool that I need to be focusing, sing better on some of this internet stuff. And here are some of the services that you do. There's so many like platforms to choose from, right? There's Google, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn. And so if someone says, which channel do I use? Or what should my focus be? What's the answer?

Brenton Thomas 04:45 Yeah, so it depends on your your time horizon to meet your goal. So let's say your goal is, let's say a million dollars in revenue, then it's the start of the year by the end of that year, you want a million dollars. Will At what point do you need to see At least half a million dollars, you want to see that by six months, and you really start to ramp it up from there. If that's the case, and SEO might be a better match for you, if you need to see it within the first month, and you have to be on track for that, then SEO can't do that for you, at least the white hat SEO way the the legal way, I guess you quote unquote. So then you need to do paid ads. So it really depends on like, what what's your time horizon? And what speed Do you want to reach your goal?

Robert Plank 05:28 Oh, great. So you start with the goal, start with the money goal factor in that time, and then that kind of decides at what speed of growth and what sort of risk and then that strip gives you the vehicle to use. And so we when we started off this call, we promised we would talk about AI. And that's such a mixed bag, because it's it seems like, there's like just all these little like fun case studies too, or just, you know, little tiny uses for it like here and there. And I mean, I use it a lot for like rewriting text and sometimes for things like strategizing and then using copy, and then I augment it. But as far as what you do, what excites you, as far as AI goes? Like, what are your kind of favorite uses for it? And why do you think it's so special?

Brenton Thomas 06:11 Yeah, so we, we don't use it as much for client work. We want to keep the like the personality of the specific brand that we're writing for. You know, maybe for emails, you might get like a starting point. But then by the time we edit it, it's it's pretty much we've made it our own, for like clients specifically, before ourselves, we'll use it for social media posts, rewrites to like to your point, we are using it for blog writing, it looks like the results are pretty solid inside of Google search console, we can see the impressions are drastically going up, clicks are going up, looks really solid, there are a couple of things that we're trying to work through. It looks like aI content kind of has like a boost. So it ranks and then it kind of like falls off after. And so I'm not sure if Google is penalizing the AI content. They said as long as it's written to provide value to a human, it's supposed to work. But I'm kind of seeing a couple of things that looks a little weird. It's like Google Search Console. So we're still doing some testing and some troubleshooting.

Robert Plank 07:18 Interesting how it behaves differently that for whatever reason, and because it's the AI content or not. So like you so speaking of like things that are in the future and uncertain. Have you struggled? Or have you had any sort of problems with like getting clients or building your agency or just in your entrepreneurial journey? Do you have any kind of those moments where you are unsure about the future? Like Like, panic scared and anything fun like that?

Brenton Thomas 07:46 Anything fun? Yeah. Yeah, that's a special type of fun. Yeah,

Robert Plank 07:51 it's fun. It's fun in hindsight, not while you're going through it. Right?

Brenton Thomas 07:55 Yeah, for sure. Yeah, once you make it through, exactly. So I would say specifically, with like lead generation, me and my team, we had a pretty smooth transition, like, so I was just for cash flow, and just to pay like the people on my team. So I actually signed up for these, like consulting network platforms. So it's kind of like me separated away from my agency. And then those platforms, like, for example, like Mark or hire is one of them, anyone can sign up and you can make a great salary as a as like a consultant, marketing consultant. And so those platforms have since fallen off for whatever reasons, they don't, didn't have leads anymore. But by the time they fell off a year ago, the agency has picked up quite a few clients, and it's all based on like relationships, and referrals. So I think we're kind of out of the scary point. But so far, so good.

Robert Plank 08:52 And that's just like one of those, those really basic lessons that it's easy to forget, like, if you're, if your business is still in the growing stage, it's okay to like, get some get some clients, right, you don't have to necessarily like like, build all this presence, and then get clients you can get, you can get the work first and then kind of work your team that way. And like generate the revenue and fill the hours and all that sort of fun stuff. And so, uh, what's ahead for you like, we talked a little bit about AI, but is there anything that excites you about the future as far as like, what you're building what you're looking forward to?

Brenton Thomas 09:26 Yeah, there's quite a bit. Yeah, just I would say my team, I just really enjoy working with them. And, you know, just the things that's going on in their lives, it's just really interesting to me, so I want to keep working with them and develop them. And, and I am interested in AI, you know, I want to see like work in this scope. We can figure out this whole AI blog posting thing. A lot of our time and focus like of the entire team is going into this. So if we can figure that out. I mean, sky's the limit, essentially. But those are probably the main things. And then we're doing a lot of business networking groups, me specifically. So those are all some things I'm looking forward to,

Robert Plank 10:13 well, awesome. Those are good things to learn from, because that whole thing about AI making the blog post that has me excited to I mean, being able to record a podcast like you and I are doing and getting five or 10, blog posts out of that, but it would take a person just like so many, like a person could do it. But it would take them like, you know, a few days for each of the posts to like, go through the content and come up with like a different way of attacking that. And I mean, you, you record some videos for your YouTube channel, you speak in a phone app, and it just generates all this content for you. If it's useful, and it gets you the clicks and the results. And it's indistinguishable from a human and it sounds like you I mean, all, that's amazing, and all that sort of thing as we really excited. And then also, what I sort of absorbed from what you said there was you were mentioning about being curious, and of meaning curious, in all sorts of ways, right? Because there is kind of the keeping up to date with with my agency and the services we do and so new AI tools, but you're also saying just being curious about your team and their personality and their problems and, and loving learning and loving problems. I mean, that's just one of those like entrepreneurial factors. That's, I think it's helpful to point out because it's easy to fall away from the learning and fall away from being social and saying, Oh, I don't need to go to all these networking events. And next thing, you know, you're on the downhill or you just don't at your best. And so there's just some some good lessons I'm picking up from you. And so as far as the networking side of things, what what are you doing there? Like, do you do like, do you go to like local meetups, or like the Zoom rooms are like, what, what do you think works really well for you as far as networking?

Brenton Thomas 11:53 Yeah, so someone on my team, we will not just for networking, but we'll build like these massive lists like so if we need like some type of like skill set added to our team, we'll build a massive list of people who can provide that skill set. So in this case, we built a massive list of potential networking groups, for me specifically to go into. So we put like 400 forger lists a list of 400 of those business networking groups into like a spreadsheet. And then we reached out to all of them. And usually most, it's surprising, but when you fill out a contact us form, only about 10% of the businesses get back to you. And so we're left with like 40 businesses, and then out of the 40, I would speak to all of them. But we narrowed it down to a business or, excuse me, we narrowed it down to a business networking group called BNI. Business Networking International, I believe it is. And it's super organized, it's a weekly meeting hour and a half, they have a couple, like monthly meetings sprinkled in there as well. Already, like pulled a client out of it from the referral network. So highly recommend it for any entrepreneur.

Robert Plank 13:01 Amazing. And so that's just another good kind of reminder there of like, as far as your networking, you're approaching it like lead generation, you're kind of I imagine you're approaching it like you do for your your ad see, right? It's like you, you build the list, right? You do the lead generation, and then you do your outreach, and then you do your your follow up, because a lot of people don't get back right away. And then you kind of just work towards the end goal, as far as whatever a conversion is. And that's something that it's a really good idea to be doing right. So we deliver it with our networking or being delivered with our speaking gigs. Because who knows how many people just expect the leads and the clients and the speaking gigs to just come to them just because it's all listed. It's like, we kind of have to do any which we can, including doing the list building and the outreach and building the massive list, as you said, so if someone has been listening to our conversation, and they say, Man, this guy, Brent, and he's got this agency, he's got all this team, he can do the travel, they can do the lead generation, someone says, Man, I need to reach out to him and learn more from him. How does somebody know if their company is the right fit for your agency to help? And if they are then what's the next step?

Brenton Thomas 14:09 Yeah, so so definitely reach out to us, you can go to our website, Twiggy agency.com. TW Ibi agency.com, go to our contact us page. And then also for the show notes. I'll give you a link, Robert. And you can put that in there. That'll take you right into my personal account only. And we can have a conversation to figure out if we're a good match for each other.

Robert Plank 14:32 Exciting. It's very simple, right? There's the next step, you go over there, and then you book back consultation. So you're again getting on that micro commitment train and getting forward to seeing about what the Twiggy agency can do for you. And if you're right fit, and if not, there's some good information for you to learn on your own. If they are right fit then they will give you what you need to help you and to get you where you need to go. And so as we're wrapping up our conversation here Brenton what's a Twiggy? Anyway?

Brenton Thomas 15:00 Hi. So, Toby. Okay, so being in the digital marketing space, I wanted a brand term that I could rank for. Right. So my last name was Thomas. So if I said Thomas marketing, there's there's quite a few agencies called Thomas marketing, right. And so I had to compete with those other businesses that had the same name. There'd be some confusion, you might lose a couple clients, potentially, over a year. So they thought they're working with another Thomas agency. That was you was another one. So that's the first reason we use Twiggy. And then my name is Brenton Warren, Thomas. So be WT and then just couple random eyes in there. And it gives you 20. So

Robert Plank 15:42 and you've achieved what a lot of people want is just the one singular name, you have the the Google the Yahoo, it's just like, it's a Twitter, right? It's just it's a name. It's self contained. It's short, but then it's also catchy and memorable, even though it's like completely made up. But that's also part of the the appeal to it. Right that you made something from nothing.

Brenton Thomas 16:01 Exactly, yeah, start from zero and see what we can build it into.

Robert Plank 16:05 Oh, fantastic. Well, you've given us so much to think about as far as moving forward and scaling and taking your business seriously. So the next step, the next place to go is twigby agency.com. That's twiviagncy.com. And as we wrap up our conversation here, Brenton, do you think we left anything out that we can sneak back in? Or did you do you have any just like favorite, like, quote, lesson moral parting words?

Brenton Thomas 16:32 Yeah, so I would say, sometimes in life, what seems to be the worst moments. So like, I lost my job, two and a half years ago, and me losing my job actually led to the best parts of what I perceive of my current life so far up to this point. And so just you just have to, you know, dust yourself off, stand back up and just keep working at it. And it will get better no matter where you're going through. And everything's a season in life.

Robert Plank 17:02 You're on the path, right? That you couldn't have gotten to that really good place if the if you hadn't taken the path that took that weird, windy route through the bad stuff. But then that's the only way into the good outcome that you want.

Brenton Thomas 17:15 Yeah, sometimes the downs can actually slingshot you higher up. So in a weird way, it's kind of kind of strange, but But yeah, it just for anyone listening it, whatever you're going through, or whatever you're about to go through. It's just a season. And if you work hard, you can uplift yourself a lot of

Robert Plank 17:33 it. Amazing, very motivating and inspiring. So the next place to go is Twilley agency.com. And thank you very much Brenton for stopping by.

Brenton Thomas 17:43 Thanks for having me.

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