Transcription – [Fully Managed] Cory Botti Ep. 78 – Podcast Highlights and Transcript

Shannon: Hello, everyone and welcome to the Fully Managed Podcast, the podcast where we discuss marketing and business tips to help assist you on your business journey. I’m your host Shannon, Penji’s partnership coordinator, and I’m joined here today with a very special guest, Cory Botti from Lockhern Digital. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Cory: Thank you, Shannon. Great to be here.

Cory’s Professional Background

Shannon: I’m happy to have you. Could you start by introducing yourself a little bit? I know I just did an introduction, but you might do it a little better than me. Can you just tell us a little bit about yourself, anything in your professional journey that you think is relevant and how you became the founder?

Cory: Sure, absolutely. I have been in the digital marketing space for about 12 or 13 years now. I started in the agency world working for some big agencies out there and then back in 2019, I kind of just took a look in the mirror and thought maybe I could do it myself. I found that a lot of big agencies were complacent and there’s a lot of bureaucracy and red tape at these big agencies.

I felt like I would be on an account and it wouldn’t matter if I saved that account $50,000 or overspent that account by $50,000, at the end of the day, it didn’t really matter. I thought if I created an agency where we would have more empathy and more integrity towards our clients and not really hide behind data, that we could actually really perform well and then that success for myself would come naturally.

So that’s what I did in 2019. I quit my job and I started the company Lockhern Digital. Lockhern is just the street I grew up on. There’s nothing really special about the meaning other than it’s my parents’ house. You can see the street sign right behind me. I just thought it sounded strong and powerful and people like that personal touch when I tell them that it’s where I grew up.

Lockhern Digital’s Services

Cory: So that’s how the company started. We specialize in paid media, paid ads across Google, Meta, Bing, TikTok, Reddit, pretty much the whole gamut of media platforms. We also specialize in email marketing, CTV, and a little bit of landing page development just because at the end of the day, if you’re going to be doing a lot of marketing for your clients, they need good robust landing pages to drive that traffic to.

We’ve been around for five years now. We probably have about 30 or 35 clients. We’ve had our challenges throughout the years, but also lots of success. The fact that I’m still standing here today after five years, I think is a testament to something. It’s been a great journey so far and I wouldn’t really trade anything for the world right now.

The Five-Year Milestone

Shannon: Congratulations, and I think that it’s really great to get to the five-year mark. It’s amazing because I think that every agency is looking for that five-year mark and that 10-year mark. So that is a testament that you’re still here today. Congratulations on that.

Cory: Thank you. You told me once in passing that your business doesn’t start until you hit your five years, and I said, “I just hit my five years” and they’re like, “Congratulations, your business just started.” It’s funny, but at the same time, I feel like there’s a lot of truth in that because it takes a long time to just find out who you are, where your strengths are, your weaknesses, your pitfalls, where you can see more future growth. It feels interesting to say that I feel like I really am just getting started, even though it has been five years.

Lessons Learned

Shannon: That’s incredible. And that must be a really great learning experience. What do you think was something that you would tell other people that are starting out that you wish you’d known?

Cory: That’s a good question. I would say the biggest challenge has been the macro factors that you can’t control. I started the business thinking that everything was going to be in my control – what clients I bring on, the employees that I work with, the people that I interact with. And there’s just so many factors that are outside of my control that in the past I’ve been very disheartened by that.

Now I’ve become almost jaded to it or desensitized to it where, for example, if a company goes bankrupt, what am I supposed to do? They’re bankrupt now and that’s the end of it. Or if I have a real estate client and the housing market’s not doing well and interest rates are really high and they can’t close houses, many clients tell me I’m an amazing agency and we’re great at what we do, but the results are just not translating because of economic headwinds or business headwinds.

There are so many different macro factors that play into things that I don’t really have control over. So the advice I would give is to kind of bake that into your forecasting and understand that there are things that are just out of your control. At the end of the day, you gotta just focus on things that you can control – the industries maybe that you go after, or the type of services that you do, or the people that you interact with. Those are the things you can control and I think that’s much more important than lamenting about the things that you can’t control.

Planning for Attrition

Shannon: It’s nice to be able to adjust to those things as well. Is there anything that you think people should look out for or anticipate when in those situations? You touched on a little bit about implementing some kind of procedures in your process to adjust for that. What would you recommend doing?

Cory: I think it could be as simple as just baking in attrition. So if you think that you have 20 clients to start the year, I think it’d be naive to think that you’re going to retain all 20 clients by the end of the year. You could automatically forecast some attrition, which is losing some clients, whether it’s because you just couldn’t perform for them or because of those macroeconomic factors I mentioned prior.

If you can bake that into your forecasting, I think you’ll be better positioned to understand where your numbers are, how your business is growing, where your pitfalls are, and what you need to do to maintain that level of revenue that you’re accustomed to. Because in the past, I thought I was doing really well from a retention standpoint, and then the end of the year comes and three clients leave for whatever reason. It really messes up your forecasting. So I think a good piece of advice is to bake that attrition into the forecasting.

Ideal Client Profile

Shannon: That makes a lot of sense. Do you then take in more clients than you would have as your normal goal, just in case that happens?

Cory: That used to be a big selling point for us in the past where we would kind of work with anybody because we figured, “Hey, we’re skilled marketers and they’re skilled at their position. If we just collaborate, we’re going to have good success.”

We’ve taken a step back from that approach this year. We’re trying to look at things a little bit differently and go after clients that fit a certain ICP, which is an ideal customer profile. Rather than going after everybody, we’re really focusing on people that hit certain criteria, which falls into three different categories:

1. They’ve worked with an agency in the past. I find that it’s much easier to work with a client who has some perspective of what it’s like to work with an agency rather than someone who’s doing it for the very first time.
2. They’ve run digital marketing in the past, so it’s not a brand new thing for them.
3. They have sizable revenue. I don’t think it makes sense to work with companies only doing a hundred thousand dollars in revenue. It’s just not going to be a good fit. If somebody’s at that million-dollar mark, it makes sense to start thinking about digital marketing and working with an agency like myself.

But the big takeaway is that they have to have worked with an agency in the past. It feels good when you win business from a prior agency.

Auditing Previous Agency Work

Shannon: I can definitely understand that. And it’s also something that you can analyze and adjust for, like asking what they didn’t like about their previous experience.

Cory: Exactly. We’ll also do some audits as well. It’s easier to audit an account that already had an agency because we can see what they did right and what they did wrong. I’m not trying to throw that agency under the bus, but it’s a good opportunity for us to pinpoint some inefficiencies, areas of opportunity, and room for growth. And once we start working with that client, they have perspective because they can either say, “Wow, you’re a lot better than my other agency,” or “You’re a lot worse.”

Common Issues with Previous Agencies

Shannon: What is the thing that you see most that previous agencies have done incorrectly?

Cory: That’s a good question. I would say the actual optimizations within the ad account. I can’t tell you how many times I can go into an ad account and look at the change history and see that the current agency is only in there once a week or once a month. And if they are in there more frequently, they’re making very superficial changes, like just raising a budget cap.

I don’t really think it’s an optimization tactic to go into Google Ads and just change a budget from $50 to $75. That’s just adhering to budget pacing. So I would say that a lot of agencies probably kind of “set it and forget it” where they’ll just build an account that’s in good standing, it’s running, it’s performing nicely, and then they just let it run by itself and check in on it once every so often.

I believe that it requires constant optimizations, pivoting, analyses, whether it’s adding search terms, looking at negatives, adjusting bid strategies, adding new keywords, changing ad copy. There’s always something that you could be doing. I believe that it’s a very proactive industry to be in. If you’re just sitting around waiting for your client to ask you a question, you’re not really going to get the results that you want. Being very proactive on the account and constantly bringing new ideas to the client is another way for them to believe that they picked the right agency and they’re not going to just get up and leave because they think they can do it themselves now.

Staying Current with Digital Marketing

Shannon: I completely understand that. I think that a lot of agencies might be complacent, like they created a good strategy and that’s all they believe that they have to do. There are definitely companies that only want that because they want to take it from there. But I think that for smaller businesses or medium-sized businesses, and even large businesses that aren’t those huge corporations, they will need a long-term strategy that’s constantly adjusting. Even very large corporations are susceptible to being complacent and then lose revenue because they’re so satisfied with their approach that they don’t account for the market that’s constantly fluctuating.

Cory: It’s an ever-changing landscape. I feel that marketing is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. It never ends. It’s always evolving, constantly growing and changing. Google themselves are releasing new products and betas and initiatives all the time. Things are getting sunsetted, things go away. P-max didn’t exist two years ago and now this year, enhanced CPCs are going away, or call ads.

If you’re running these old things and you’re stuck in the past, you’re not really going to get that benefit anymore. In fact, one of the accounts I recently audited was still on expanded text ads with an agency, and expanded text ads haven’t existed for like two or three years. So their agency either just isn’t looking at this anymore or they’re just stuck in the past and not changing with the times.

Account Manager Consistency

Cory: Another issue, not as prolific as the previous one but still impactful, is account managers. A lot of agencies or clients that I’ve worked with will have an agency and they put a junior person on the account, and then six months later it’s a new junior person, and then six months after that, it’s another junior person. They don’t have that longevity and rapport with one account manager that they feel they can trust and have peace of mind with.

In fact, one of the clients that we just won a couple months ago, I asked, “What can we do differently than your previous agency?” And he said, “Don’t change the person on my account every four months.” And I said, “That I can do.”

The Importance of Consistency

Shannon: I think that when someone is hiring someone else to do a service for them, they have to trust them, and it’s very difficult to trust something that is ever-changing. To have a different person that they’re speaking to every time they have a concern is a very difficult thing to navigate. Most people would prefer to go to one person for most services because they understand their situation. To have someone come in and have to re-understand all of these factors that go into a company doesn’t feel like an extension of their company, which I think is the ideal service that people want from an agency – to feel like they’re an extension of their company and they care about it as much as they do.

Being a Partner, Not Just an Agency

Cory: Exactly. I try to be their partner, not just another agency. I’m trying to be your collaborative partner. I’m trying to help you think outside the box. It does backfire a little bit sometimes when clients think I’m a business consultant and I’m here to save their business. I like to say that I’m not really the wood to make a fire. I would consider myself the lighter fluid to make the fire bigger. You need to have your own fire first, and I’m here to just make that fire bigger. But if you have no smoke and no flame, it’s really hard for me to come in and just save your business. I’m not a business consultant, I’m a marketing expert.

Shannon: Even a business consultant isn’t there to save it – they’re there to give you advice on how to help you. I think that a lot of people are really looking for miracles sometimes.

Cory: I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve had clients that just have bad products, bad services, bad customer support, or broken sales cycles. If I drag a hundred leads and they’re not closing any of the business, and I find out that they don’t even have sales reps calling these leads, you’re obviously not going to perform well.

So a lot of times businesses look at us in a different light, and I think it causes some friction in the relationship. But clients that have had agencies in the past, have run marketing in the past, and understand the basic fundamentals are not going to fall into those pitfalls. They’re not going to fall into those traps of thinking “Cory has to save the business.” It’s like, no, Cory’s here to supplement and support my business, which I think is a big differentiation.

Product Conviction

Shannon: Exactly. I think that you need to have a good service most first and foremost. So you also need to be confident in your work. I think that you can have something great, but if you’re not selling it well then it doesn’t really matter. Putting everything in the right way and getting to the right people is only part of that process. They need to be able to convert them.

Cory: You need to have product and service conviction. And I think when clients have that, it rubs off onto us. I’m excited because I believe in the product or service, and now I’m feeling more empowered and passionate about marketing that person’s product or service because I believe in it myself. Maybe I’m even a customer at that point. I use my own client’s products because I believe in the product, and I’m going to do better marketing that product. It’s exciting.

Shannon: I’ve seen marketing agencies focus on businesses that objectively seem boring, but then you see the unique ways in which they’re inspired by it. I love seeing that because it’s so interesting. If I’m not interested in a product, I don’t see myself being able to market it well.

Cory: Exactly, because how are you going to create unique and creative ways to sell something 

that you don’t even like? You can create baseline structural plans that objectively work for every business in general, but that is not what’s going to really create results that people want.

Growing Together

Cory: And that’s how you build a partnership as well, because now we’re both excited about the same thing. We have like-minded goals. We want to grow together. I think that’s one of the benefits of working with a small agency like myself – my goals are already inherently aligned because I want to grow as an agency too. So I know that if my clients grow, I’m growing also. I get to hire more people, maybe I get to charge them more money, I get to offer more services.

There are so many parallels there that I know if my clients are successful, my success follows suit versus a big agency that might have a client like Coca-Cola or Weight Watchers, where their growth isn’t really going to reflect the agency’s growth because they’re already such a big Fortune 500 conglomerate. Versus a small business who grows from 1 million to 2 million – everyone’s going to feel that growth, the agency included.

Shannon: And everyone’s going to be excited about it because they can see that they’re directly correlated with that growth. It’s very palpable. It’s nice to see your work pay off, whereas if you’re working with such a major corporation, then you sometimes don’t even know it.

Small Business vs. Large Corporation Clients

Cory: There is a trade-off because those big corporations also aren’t looking at data like under the microscope. They’re really just caring more about the budget. “Hey, spend that budget, hit these certain metrics and that’s it.” Small businesses and medium-sized businesses, they are watching it like a hawk. They are looking at the data, they are looking at every dollar accounted for.

Sometimes, I feel that working with a small business is actually harder just because everything is so set up and you’re looking at the data with such granular focus. Nine times out of ten, I’m also working with the actual business owner – the person who actually runs the company versus maybe just a marketing manager at a giant corporation where they’re just another cog in a wheel. But that also creates a better relationship because now it’s business owner to business owner. I want their business to succeed, just like I want my own business to succeed.

Making a Difference

Cory: A great story I’ll tell you is when I was first starting my career, I remember doing something extra for one of my clients and just getting a pat on the back. The client didn’t even care. And then I start my own business and do the exact same type of thing, and I remember the client telling me at the end of the year, “Cory, because of your hard work this year, I was able to put more Christmas gifts under my kids’ Christmas tree this year. I was able to go on another vacation with my husband.”

To me, that was more rewarding than anything I’ve ever done for these big Fortune 500 companies. Saving a big company $50,000 doesn’t matter compared to helping a small business owner buy their kids more Christmas gifts. I’m not curing cancer or saving lives here, but I am helping a small business grow in the state of Texas. That is super rewarding and that is something that I cling onto and keep doing what I’m doing because those types of situations are more rewarding than anything I’ve experienced in my prior career.

The Pressure of Working with Small Businesses

Shannon: I think that’s wonderful. And to add on to the difficulty of analyzing data so closely, I think there’s also a lot more risk in dealing with smaller and medium-sized businesses because there’s more to lose when a campaign fails. When you care, which I hope most agencies do, you have more on the line. You want to see success, not only because it’s great to have a happy client and get a referral, but to know that they’re good because of you – they’re going to continue to gain revenue and be happy, and they’re not going to lose their business.

To create a campaign that epically fails for a small business that really depended on it is awful. And because of the constantly changing marketing landscape, you can create a great plan and it still fail. Everyone is susceptible to it. No one’s perfect even if they have a great plan. So there’s so much more accountability to working with a small business, if you’re not the worst person in the world that doesn’t care if they succeed or not. Working with small businesses has a good payoff, but it’s also more pressure because you see a real person in front of you and not just a company that, if this marketing campaign fails, they’re still making millions or billions of dollars.

Learning from Failures

Cory: It’s a hundred percent more pressure. You’re absolutely right. I kind of believe that it’s actually more important to know what is failing than what is succeeding. Because that campaign that failed means we need to pivot, adjust, re-strategize, go back to the drawing board. The things that work are easy – you just keep the lights on. Campaign A is running great, no changes. Campaign B is failing. Let’s figure this out and why. So it’s actually more important, in my opinion, to know what’s not working than what is working.

Team Culture and Values

Cory: And just to address your point on the pressure and the attitude that I have versus maybe someone at a big agency – I had an employee who was supposed to launch a campaign and didn’t. There were challenges, it wasn’t necessarily his fault. But about 10 or 15 days went by and I asked this employee, “Did we launch this campaign yet?” The answer was no, and then the employee said, “Well, we put in the hours so the client got their money’s worth.”

I just looked at the employee and said, “Do you want me to tell the client that? Do you want me to go back to them and say, ‘Sorry this campaign didn’t launch, but we did put in the hours so you still owe us money’?” That might be the right mindset at a big agency, but at a small agency, that’s not the culture I’m trying to create.

I want my employees and my team to have a personal care for their clients, really push the envelope, be passionate about what they’re doing, and take pride in what they’re doing. It’s very easy to get assets on a Friday and then tell the client this won’t launch on Monday because they don’t want to work on the weekend. But if that client has a big anniversary sale and that sale really matters to them, I want my team to have their own pride and passion to do this without me even asking.

I’m not going to say, “Hey, you need to work on a Sunday.” I want them out of their own volition to work for 20 minutes on a Sunday, traffic the campaign, get it ready for a Monday launch. That will create such a good relationship with that client moving forward. That doesn’t mean you can’t tell the client, “Next time, please make sure you get me these assets on Wednesday so that I don’t have to work on the weekend.” But for that one scenario, we’re going to do this for you, and it’s going to separate us from the rest because now that client knows that we have their best interest at heart and when push comes to shove, we’re going to get the job done.

The Three Ts: Lockhern Digital’s Core Values

Cory: That’s a good segue into one of my core values, which anybody can see on my website – we call them the three Ts. And the three Ts are our mission statement. It’s what we embody when we make decisions here at Lockhern. Those three Ts are:

• Technology
• Transparency
• Tenacity

What I’ve been describing for the last 10 minutes is really following those other two Ts – the transparency and the tenacity. To work on the weekend, to be transparent with the client, to let them know what’s wrong and what’s not working. I think that’s what really separates me from the other agencies out there.

Setting Boundaries

Shannon: I think that’s something that’s really important to keep in mind. It’s really great to see how much you care about your clients – that’s very obvious, and I like to see that. The more agencies I talk to where I can see the genuine care oozing out of them while they’re talking about their clients – I really enjoy seeing that and I’m happy to see it more. I think that there was maybe a time where it wasn’t as common.

I also think it’s really important to note that you touched on it a little bit ago about still being transparent with a client – saying “Maybe get these to me on time so that we don’t have to work on the weekend.” I think that even if you’re willing to go the extra mile for the client, it’s very important to establish boundaries. That’s another thing that especially agencies that care have a very difficult time grappling with.

Especially if it’s your baby that you’ve created, and you’re so heavily involved with accounts, I think it’s very difficult for people to actually stop working when they’re supposed to and devote time to other things. Otherwise they get overloaded and burnt out and not be inspired and passionate about what they’re doing.

Cory: Absolutely. You don’t want to set a precedent either. So if I do this on the weekend, now the client’s thinking, “Oh, Cory will work on every Sunday. Who cares if the assets are late” or they take advantage of me. So you don’t want to set those precedents, but you want to set some clear expectations and boundaries. That doesn’t mean that you still can’t go that extra mile for the client when you need to.

When push comes to shove, we’re tenacious. We’ll get the job done. It’s kind of like work hard, play hard. I know that’s cliché, but it really does matter here. My team could be having fun and goofing off, but when it’s time to work, we get to work. We get the job done and we make sure that our clients are happy and satisfied.

Setting Realistic Expectations

Cory: I also believe that performance is kind of uncontrollable. Performance comes and goes. We’re going to have good months, we’re going to have bad months. It’s inevitable. If clients think that they’re going to come on board with me and it’s just going to be up, up, up indefinitely, then they’re going to be disappointed at some point. That’s impossible. We’re going to have down months, we could even have a down quarter.

But I think the reason why clients stay is because of all the other factors – the integrity, the passion, the genuineness, the fact that we care, the fact that we feel like a partner. I want to feel like an extension of their team.

Managing Client Expectations

Shannon: I definitely agree with that. I think that’s so important. There is definitely a line that you have to make sure that you don’t cross in how you’re dealing with a client and how you communicate with them. Make sure that both of you are on the same page and satisfied.

There are some clients that may be pushy and expect more of you than what you should be giving. There’s going the extra mile, but then there’s going the extra several miles where you’re out of breath at that point. So you just have to be able to manage things so that both people are happy, but you also have to set expectations of what’s possible and what you can actually do.

Some clients are expecting the impossible, and that’s something that needs to be clarified probably as early as possible in order to not disappoint. Or maybe disappoint in the beginning and maybe you lose that client, but at least you’re not running yourself rampant trying to please someone that is never going to be pleased.

Cory: Exactly. It’s so important to set those expectations. We set them right on day one on the kickoff call. We’ll say, “This is what you can expect for the next three to four weeks,” because some clients might think, “Why are my ads not up in three days?” or “Why am I not seeing results after a couple of days?” And I’m like, “Well, that’s not how it works.”

There are learning periods, there’s getting the ads up. We also don’t like to do anything without client’s approval. So I’ll never launch a campaign without them seeing it first – seeing the ad copy, seeing the keyword strategy. That stuff takes time. But at the same time, I also want to reassure them that we’re not dragging our feet and it’s not going to take 30 days to get a campaign up. It’s just that you’ve got to give us some patience as we first get started.

Conclusion

Shannon: I think this is a perfect note to end on because I think that everyone should be able to get advice about setting boundaries. I think that is one of the most important things in all workspaces with a client base – that you need to understand and set clear expectations that are realistic.

Thank you so much for sharing all your thoughts about this. I really appreciate you joining me today in general, and all the advice that you shared. I think that a lot of people will gain a lot of knowledge from this. It’s really great to talk to someone who is earlier on, but you’ve succeeded in your five-year mark. I really appreciate that perspective for a lot of people who are even just the average business owner, maybe not even owning an agency. Thank you so much.

Cory: No problem. And if anybody listening to this podcast wants to reach out to me, they can find me on LinkedIn, Cory Botti, and also my website, lockherndigital.com. They’re more than happy to reach out to me there as well.

Shannon: Thank you so much. And that’ll also be included in the bio. So thank you so much, everyone watching or listening, and you can definitely find Cory below if you click any of the links. Thank you so much and I hope you have a great day, and thank you for watching or listening.

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