Jeremy Weisz 12:42
I want to talk about the change of landscape because you mentioned obviously we talked about Kevin being since 1995. And even in the past year, there’s been a lot of changes. Talk about some of the changes that you are seeing you’re innovating and evolving because of those changes?
Ben Dankiw 13:03
Absolutely. I mean, I would say there’s two different ones, I would really zone in on as big changes over the last year, I’ll start with paid media and Google ads and Meta ads, anyone who’s running an ad campaign would know about the changes in the importance of first-party data. People have probably talked about cookieless futures. And you’ve seen first-party like GDPR different, California has their own data concerns, they just launched a few other ones, every state is launching their own data management system. And then just the changes inside the platforms from lawsuits Google’s having and whatnot, right?
There’s a lot of changes in data and the importance of it. And nowadays, over the last few years, Google has experimented and I’ve gone into this in some of my own content, but experimented through something called performance Max, which is all about machine learning and automation on your ad programs. Facebook has grown a type of product like this. So these ad platforms are leaning into automation, they’re leaning into machine learning, and they’re leaning into removing your controls as advertisers. So the only real areas that you have is understanding how to target and strategize, build a plan of who to go after, and the data that you have.
So some of our most successful things in that area have really been around building for final valuation programs like what’s a qualified lead worth versus a just a standard lead versus a sales qualified lead. And those milestones can map over to an ad platform. That’s an example. So not to get too far in the weeds there but being able to properly map the value of your customer. And that’s more on the lead gen side versus e-commerce where you might say, how can I expand the value of my cart? Or how can I upsell a secondary product to a client If your ad costs are rising and your data availability from the platform’s and your ability to change, your targeting is decreasing, the only way you can really lead into that increase in return is by getting smarter with how you’re leveraging your valuation and going after the right customers, right.
So that change over the last year has been quite significant. And it’s led us to have to learn more about CRMs. us to learn more about our GT, Google Tag Manager implementations, our annual GA four, of course, migrated. So learning more about the data, and then learning how to leverage it in ads, there’s been a massive change on the ad ecosystem. On the SEO side of things, if you haven’t heard about ChatGPT and AI content, you will not leave it on his plan if you’re a marketer. So that has been a wild change in the space. But more importantly to anyone who is making a business out of it is the repercussions of it.
So content agencies have been struggling, I know several content agency owners, and not to say they’re all going out of business, they have struggling in the sense of “we need to pivot and figure out how we’re going to fit into this market.” But that lower market, like cheap content space, that’s being wiped out pretty much. But on top of that, it’s like okay, so now brands have way more accessibility to create content. So how do you stand out and Google is really closely monitoring this by looking at you need to have helpful content and you need to make sure that you’re trustworthy?
How do we know you didn’t just spit this out from ChatGPT. All that stuff that like I used to, we used to have this playbook for how we build amazing topical clusters and content calendars for SEO focus, we still do, but now it’s much easier to build that. So that’s not the value anymore. It’s more about how that fits into your clients, resources, the product and etc. And how you can stand out. So it’s been a lot of changes around AI content, and the change in how Google was reacting to AI content.
Jeremy Weisz 17:14
So what are some things you’ve had to shift? You mentioned before we hit record, the helpful content update? And that’s like an official from Google, right?
Ben Dankiw 17:23
Yeah, this is official. So it’s been a wild ride. So anyone who’s in the content space. I’m part of a community called Rhodium, where it’s online business owners, who are typically growing some sort of online site content, business, e-commerce business, great group, gives me access to a lot of really smart content marketers, and I have a strong community in the content space. And there has just been shifts. So not only from an agency perspective, but that I have NAV43. But we also launched our own brands as well. So I have a brand that focuses on Morning motivation.
I have a brand that does finances, sorry, investment decisions. And I know lots of different content creators in the gaming world and all these different types of niches. The whole content landscape has changed Google has put out, I think they put out six algorithm updates and an algorithm update for anyone who’s not really an SEO person are really aware is when Google like rewrites some of the rules. And it’s not like when Meta ads or Google Ads comes out with an update, they have to tell you because you’re spending money on their platform, you’re their customer, they’re gonna guide you a certain way. When Google as an organic platform puts out an algorithm update, they’re typically trying to fight against something being taken advantage of.
Now, that leads a lot of gray in the area of what’s right, what’s wrong. And what really is the best results. So to kind of make a longer story a little bit shorter. Over the past year and a half ever since September 2022, when they launched their first helpful content update, there’s been major shifts every quarter in Google, and where the Google results page is now where there’s billions of searches every single day. There’s a lot of bad content being ranked. There’s a lot of, I don’t know, if anyone’s seen how much Reddit has blown up in the past few months. And there’s a lot of opportunity for what used to be called Blackhat, like spam SEO, where you could just create poor content on Reddit and medium or whatnot, and blast a bunch of links on it and get that content to the first page of Google. So they’re experimenting because they are trying to fight this wave of AI.
And they made some really radical changes. And my opinion and the opinion of many other industry experts is that they’re going to shift back this year. So anyone who’s in the content space, or watching some of these results, See saw a little bit and trying to keep our clients’ interests in mind I hit the panic button on some of them. I haven’t had any clients like get penalized or crushed. But at the same time, they’re like, where is this going to land especially with the changes in, I guess, not to go too far. But search generative experience is like Google’s version of AI content on their Google search results. So they’re also experimenting with this, which is a whole new thing. So all these innovations, all these changes, or ways that Google is like, we’re trying to make good content stand out and to be determined. If they succeed in that.
Jeremy Weisz 20:46
Ben thanks for sharing that. And in general, I have these conversations that you do, too, with clients or potential clients, and everything Ben just said, it’s like, that’s one of the reasons you hire an agency. They actually keep track of this stuff and actually stay on top of the stuff and because there’s constant conversation of, Well, should I just do this in-house? Or should I hire an agency to do this? And whatever Ben just said, If doesn’t convince you should probably hire someone who’s an expert at this stuff. I don’t know what will. Talk about Morning Motivation for a second. And that brand and what are you doing with it?
Ben Dankiw 21:21
Oh, yeah, that’s an interesting one. So we built it’s called Own Mornings. It’s still a pretty small brand. At this point. I’m kind of wondering where to go with it. You know, how much time you want to invest in building this because investing in content niches right now is a little bit of a tricky one. So I launched the brand prior to ChatGPT. But the whole concept of this is sharing stories and that everyone, there’s lots of advice on the internet, you can follow Andrew Yurman, to find out his morning routine. And you can here on YouTube, go on YouTube. And you can find out all these different types of perfect your morning. But this is really built on the idea of like, you can own your own morning, and whatever works for you and your flexibility. And here are some tools that you can use to help build the morning that works for you. So it’s a resource club. And it’s meant to, it’s going to evolve. And my kind of vision for this brand as we grow is going to be actually getting stories from certain kinds of individuals.
So for example, if you’re a doctor, and you’re living as a resident, or aspiring doctor, I should say, and you’re living as a resident in healthcare, your morning routine is not going to be the same as a digital marketer working nine to five, it’s just not and to say that you can have the perfect morning might be tricky, but if you hear of how other physicians who’ve been in the space where spending their mornings, I’ve really believe in the power of community, I think that’s something that’s going to stand above I mean, not just with social media, but building brands and building community, I think is where we have to move forward to as marketers. So my vision for our mornings is building a resource and tools hub, and then rolling it through a community of like-minded people who want to also share their stories and build people up in the mornings.
Jeremy Weisz 23:09
So there’s a community aspect to it, I like it. So it’s like niche version of Own Morning, because someone who’s single, it’s like a joke, because like, my business partner has four kids, right under 12. So someone who’s single waking on the beach, and doing a three-hour morning routine, is gonna be different from him when he’s trying to pack lunches, get kids off to school. So maybe there’s like a niche Own Morning. If you have seven kids and your two businesses, and you have to wake up as opposed to you’re single, you’re a digital nomad, and you can meditate for three hours on the beach if you want, right.
Ben Dankiw 23:50
Maybe it’s just find time to eat a protein bar. Exactly. Just hang on.
Jeremy Weisz 23:59
What has been a helpful tool that you have found through that brand and through the content just for anyone or like something that you’ve found that people should think about implementing in the morning. I mean, I’m always thinking about this too, because I’ve tried, I’m more of a night person. And so I went through a span. Last year, I was like, okay, I’m gonna just try this morning. I’m gonna try and wake up at like 5:30 and see what happens. What have you found are some, maybe one or two tools that people can think about with their morning.
Ben Dankiw 24:31
It’s a little bit of a mental tool, and I’m just kind of thinking off the top of my head right now. But acceptance and being open to change. Don’t feel like this is more advice, and I’ll have some tools but no one’s morning. Unless you are a billionaire entrepreneur who has already set his life like don’t think you’re gonna compare with Jeff Bezos’ morning routine. So go into it with realistic — I’m being like the realistic aspect and it might change your mornings are not gonna be the same throughout the entire year different parts of your career, different parts of your life, things are going to change.
But the way I kind of like to approach it is just being mindful that if you’re continuously being mindful of your morning, and understanding what’s working, what’s not working, and trying to, it’s not always actually trying to improve it. Because sometimes people think that anytime it’s performance, it’s like this. And it’s often like this, and then it comes back here. And then you’re like, wow, I sucked into this time where I went out four times this week, because I had for a conference.
And I did this and my morning routine is shot. And it’s just like fitness. It’s just like any of these different areas where you’re gonna have those peaks and valleys. And I just find it’s important to be realistic, not be overly critical on yourself, and try to find just that balance of where you can get back to it. And anyone who consistently does this over a longer period of time, will always just improve naturally. So I tell people not to be overly critical, and be mindful of what’s working for them. And in terms of tool, there’s lots I love, I’m a big fan of an app called Calm and no affiliation here. So I love like meditation, mindfulness moments, but also a fan of simple journals.
And you don’t need to have the performance productivity 3.0 journal that has everything built for how here’s your first three priority items for the day. Those are great. And those were wonderful for some people, but simply writing down your some of your thoughts and tracking your sleep and track and like taking steps to be more like to help you be mindful in a written format. And if you’d like to journal on an app journal on an app, but that’s either like, do it online or do it in a journal book, I just think that’s simple tool helps a lot of people.
Jeremy Weisz 27:00
Do you have a regular time that you wake up?
Ben Dankiw 27:06
So I fluctuate up here, in Canada it gets dark a lot. So in the wintertime, usually up at 7 a.m. I went through a surgery recently, and I’m at a point where for my shoulder where I had to it’s a pretty invasive surgery to change my detail, but dislocated a lot. Wow, anyways…
Jeremy Weisz 27:27
People get that to have that happen. It just becomes a chronic dislocation. My brother had that too. So yeah, exactly. So this has been, like reach for some, I mean, some people they reach for something and like dislocates is just terribly, and then the ligaments loosen etc.
Ben Dankiw 27:47
So I got that fixed. So right, like, for example, right now, my body is in a state of healing, I don’t judge myself by sleep until 7:30. Because sleep you should judge yourself. But right now waking up anywhere from seven to 7:30. Because it’s dark out, and I’m bored. Normal, my typical routine is wake up around 6:00-6:15. I like to work out in the morning, I like to have at least 30 minutes to 45 minutes to take in some sort of personal content, whether it’s hockey, podcasting, or just literally watching some sports highlights. But either way, I usually have that kind of period of time for myself to enjoy something. And then I like to get my day started. But right now, like I said, it’s about those valleys, and I’m gonna say to heal, so I’m like, don’t be overly critical and change it up.
Jeremy Weisz 28:35
What’s the website so people could check it out?
Ben Dankiw 28:36
That’s our ownmornings.com.
Jeremy Weisz 28:41
Yeah, yeah, it was I’m fascinated by the self to check it out and encourage other people to check it out ownmornings.com. I was talking to one agency owner, and he wakes up at 3:30. He goes to bed early. But he talk about mornings. It was fascinating just to hear how his routine is right. He’s like, 3:30. To me, I’m like, wow, that’s the middle of the night. And I’m sometimes going to bed at like midnight, or one or two. So I’d have to change things around drastically, but to hear what he gets done between 3:30 and 8:00 already is phenomenal. So everyone has a different routine. So I’ll check it out. I’d encourage everyone to check it out. Talk Ben, a little bit about you mentioned you’re going to jump back in to more of customer success. Talk about that decision. And what does that look like for you?
Ben Dankiw 29:37
Yeah, so we’re still a small team at NAV43. There’s 10 of us full-time. I think we were talking before about we went to the drawing board last year and realize that where we need to stand out as an agency in performance this year is being digital navigators because there’s so much change, where can we be positioning our agency as the at, not just launching keywords and putting out blog posts and all these things that are important for an SEO strategy tactfully.
But to be the ones to navigate a brand through all these changes. And with that decision, it makes a lot of sense for me having the most experience in the agency to be involved from a strategic level, we are still in an area. And just like you started the beginning of the podcast about SOP building, and we had all our SOPs built that way, beautiful process, we had all these different proven things that are working, and then all these changes happen, it’s okay, we got to re-address this process that re-address this process, you got to hire for these new roles that are now much more important than they used to be five years ago. So in this state of change, I find that I’ve always been a lead by example kind of person. And we don’t have a huge accounts team, we invest pretty strongly into our strategists.
They work directly with their brands, and they take accountability for the growth of their brands. So people who are really strong in one area of SEO and understand the content marketing and that, they might not have as much experience in developing a relationship from an Accounts perspective and understanding the overall business. So as an entrepreneur business owner, I have a little bit more insight into how some of these other owners think, have a little more insight into how stakeholders might evaluate marketing programs. And I tried to impart some of that insight with my team who are very bright and really good at what they do. So building that kind of relationship, where they can lean into me for advice on how to approach business decisions that a brand is making, not just marketing decisions, because they typically know a lot more than me about SEO these days, let me tell you.
Jeremy Weisz 31:57
So the rebrand that you are thinking about in going to do whenever someone is actually listening to this, it may already be out, but is around the digital navigators.
Ben Dankiw 32:12
That’s exactly it. My business partner, Peter, who’s been with me since we’ve been partners since 2012. Were the two owners of NAV43. He comes from a brand background. And this is his little bit his brainchild. I mean, it’s a joint decision. We’ve been working on this together for over the last year. But he’s wanting to bring this to life, which I’m super excited about. And it is all about positioning that navigation. So it’s not only going to look way better, which is awesome. Because we don’t love our current site. It was kind of a little bit of anyways, but it’s…
Jeremy Weisz 32:48
I feel like many people say that.
Ben Dankiw 32:50
Yeah. Right. Like, especially when you’re looking at it all the time, you find like a little detail and you’re just.
Jeremy Weisz 32:58
How did that manifest on the site, with the new brand digital navigators? Well, I mean, maybe you don’t know a full yet, but what would that look like?
Ben Dankiw 33:06
Yeah, it’s a great question. I am not fully I don’t know yet exactly. Get a nice presentation next week from him, where he’s going to take me through his full vision of it. But the way we’ve kind of positioned it is it is actually very navigational, like you’re at the helm. And there’s going to be kind of travel but more, I think more aquatic ships related so the visuals will be kind of like steering and exploring adventurous new areas. But where it’s going to be a lot more helpful is we got away from being too technical. Our current site really breaks down like it’s like we’re talking to another SEO whereas I’ve realized our main target market is people who are experienced digital marketers who have a really strong grasp on growing a brand but need someone to be technical for them. And they don’t need to know all the details.
Jeremy Weisz 34:09
Talk about Quark for a second, then what you do with them.
Ben Dankiw 34:16
Yes, Quark — they’re a very fun brand we worked with for several years. I believe we worked with them for four years. And through that time, we really evolved our entire program that spending, when we first start working with them, I think they, I don’t want to share specific numbers the moment because off top my head but we at least 5x to their spend and improve the return on investment even higher than that. They are a brand that focuses on polar expeditions. So they have these giant trips where they be bringing people to the Arctic, to the Antarctic to Greenland and these are 20 to $30,000 trips that people are investing in per person. And you can imagine having a travel ban through COVID.
So we were with them before COVID happened, we had to pivot. And honestly, they kind of thrive at the end of the day, of course, COVID year was a little bit of a write-off, that was just somebody who might have wanted to escape to the Arctic, but it wasn’t necessary. COVID can’t survive there. Let’s go there. Yeah, there you go. Right. So not to go into the whole COVID thing. But at the end of the day, a travel brand through COVID was a wild time. And the fact that we brought their traffic up by over 100% on organic, we merged their a lot of their properties together, which was a huge project. And we helped expand their ad program to actually, it is an e-commerce program, you can technically go on there right now and spend $30,000 on a trip to Greenland.
But for the most part, you’re going to research, you’re going to ask for a guide, you’re going to want to get on a call, you’re going to determine if the trip is right for you. And it might take you six months to actually decide or a year or two years to decide to pull the trigger on such a cool journey. So with that being said, we built an ad program for them where we really built up their entire sales force milestone in integrating Salesforce with their ad platforms. And our results were phenomenal. We scaled their spend, we scaled their return 5x. And they were very happy with what we’re doing for several years. Yeah, and it was a big success.
Jeremy Weisz 36:41
A little bit more to play with in a restaurant, I imagine. Just got them.
Ben Dankiw 36:47
Yeah, exactly. We got to build really cool content on polar bears and photography and build all these audience funnels. It was actually a very fun brand to work with.
Jeremy Weisz 36:59
If you’re looking at the video version, you can see where I’m the Quark expeditions website here. And you can see some really cool footage from this from this video. It’s really pretty remarkable. I’ve gone to the Arctic, I was gonna say, have you gone on one of these trips?
Ben Dankiw 37:17
My partner and I talked about it. We’re like, we have a lot of travel goals. I’m a big traveler. And this is probably one I’ll do in the next 10 years. Not next few years.
Jeremy Weisz 37:26
There was another one Ben Transformer Table. What kind of work did you do with them?
Ben Dankiw 37:32
This has been, they’re a client of ours still. And I’m actually flying to Montreal to see them next week. Excited to see Alex and the crew if they listen to this, they’re a great brand. They are an ambitious brand. We’ve been working with them for about two years now. And what’s really exciting about them is they found a very niche product. This is them right there. And they are marketers at heart. Their founders, they mate? No, they’ve been around for several years, this brand has been growing. I think they started in 2013 or 14. But a very good…
Jeremy Weisz 38:14
They’re good because this is not a typical furniture site. Right?
Ben Dankiw 38:20
Exactly. They sell tables they sell, they are exciting. They build content, they have a full YouTube studio in their office in Montreal, it’s all awesome. They are such a fun brand to work with. So they had this upward trajectory where they were scaling as a brand. But what they could never crack was the SEO side of things. And as a brand who moves quickly and two does massive site-wide changes to the site that is not a recipe for SEO success. Stability, strategic keyword targeting brand building through links through PR, all these different things.
So we had to do a major infrastructure change to their entire website to get them technically up to date. We had to shift how they focused and how they treated their site because they expanded to 15 new countries. And when we did that, they had to basically target individual GEOs with SEO right. So how Google works from a international SEO perspective is like google.ca is a different algorithm than google.com. So if you launch in two countries, you’re actually trying to solve two different problems. And you’re serving two different audiences.
And Google knows that so you have to have a plan for how you’re going to internationalize. So we help them internationalize. We help them migrate some of their brands, their traffic has gone up exponentially. It’s at least doubled and as well as their revenue. I think they 3x in revenue last year, which was really significant for them, and they have even grander goals this year which we’ll be talking with them next week. So yeah, just some exciting things. Their product that was one thing that was really cool is their product is essentially an expandable table, as well as other furniture. But their flagship product is the expandable table. They do like modular couches and seating and benches and all that kind of stuff. But the table is where they started. And we’ve actually ranked them in the States for expandable dining table.
First overall, and we’ve beat brands like Wayfair, IKEA, Costco, major brands, and we did that through leaning into very niche, very helpful creative content, as well as an authority strategy that built trust into their product pages. So there was always this worry of like, will we ever get past fifth position when you’re up against IKEA Wayfair all these big brands. It’s very tough, and it took us a year. But the traffic on those keywords are huge. And what they specialize in as a brand. And what they’re really good at is conversion rates and retargeting. So with our ability to drive that positional ranking and that strategy, their paid media program, and their SEO program has really flourished together.
Jeremy Weisz 41:21
Well, you can see on the site here, it’s really cool. I mean, for me, it visually locks me in because you could see, obviously, the Superbowl is coming up when we’re talking right now. And you can see they have some, I mean, enter your email for a chance to win two tickets for the big game and one transformer table. So they’re going all in on their marketing here. Exactly. So if you’re listening to this, maybe the next Superbowl will be in because right now, it’s gonna be in like a week or so. But really interesting. First of all, thanks for sharing your journey. And lessons, I have one last question for you. But I just do want to encourage people to check out your website, nav43.com, to learn more. And the last question is just on resources, some of your favorites. It could be books, it could be mentors of yours that you’ve learned from who are some of your favorite resources.
Ben Dankiw 42:28
Good question. I mentioned earlier, I really believe in the power of community. I think some of my strongest ways that I’ve grown over the past few years has been through my LinkedIn network and some of the slack groups I’m a part of leading up to that I joined lots of mastermind groups, but you really get it, you get out what you put in. And I would say it’s a little bit of a cop-out. But I would say some of the strongest things you could do is find like-minded marketers in your space, who are doing what you’re doing, and grow those relationships, understanding that you’re not going to be the best at everything.
I have people who are amazing at email marketing, and I give them tips about SEO. And they tell me how when they’re building new lead funnels out because that’s their specialty. And similarly for technical SEO, someone who’s a lot more than myself and understands how all these technical evolutions are happening either within NAV43 or within my community. So I definitely think it’s a great idea to find a mentor. I think it’s a good idea to find your community and make sure you’re investing in them. I go on these, I go on LinkedIn, I answer questions people ask me, I go on these slack groups, and I engage with personal and business level.
If you’re going to be a business owner, as an agency owner, you kind of have to be both feet in and some people can do it, they can be solopreneurs and have their lives completely disconnected from their business. Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely a possibility. But for me, I really foster those relationships so I don’t check in once a month right like I have these slack groups open I go on my LinkedIn daily or every other day or weekly at least. And I engaged. So those are some of my favorite like things I do. I do love others too is when I’m in Toronto, it’s just called the shadow. I think it’s a private group if I’m being honest. So it’s just called Digital Marketing Toronto shows another one. There’s another one called the Rhodium Weekend, which is a phenomenal business group where I have a lot more widespread opinions online. Those are two of my favorites.
Jeremy Weisz 44:45
Chris Yates started it. I don’t know if he’s still involved.
Ben Dankiw 44:52
Yeah, he still runs it he actually just rebranded it I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Chris and really enjoy him. He’s very smart.
Jeremy Weisz 45:02
Yeah, Chris is awesome. So yeah, definitely check out Rhodium for people out there. Ben, I’m gonna be the first one to thank you, everyone check out more episodes of the podcast check out nav43.com and we’ll see you next time. Thanks Ben.
