Personalized Campaigns in a Digital Marketing World

Well, hey, everybody. Thanks for joining me, Kevin Stevens on on. I don't care with Daphne, Kevin Stephenson. And, today's guest is Derek Chu Derek is the founder CEO. Probably, the custodian does a little bit of everything at full moon digital. So Derek, welcome. I don't care. Thanks for having me, Steven. Kevin, it's a pleasure. Appreciate being on. Tell us a little bit about self in in about full moon. What do you guys do? Yeah. So we we are a hundred percent remote digital agency And, you know, we have, team members all across the United States. Started full moon about six years ago in two thousand seventeen. So pre pandemic. I like to say that we did remote working before it became a cool thing. But, yeah, it's it's been a good ride. It's been a good journey. It's been a crazy adventure. Full of ups and downs. But, you know, it's something our team enjoys, and that's something that I love and we're passionate about That's great. So so why did you start full moon? What was the what was the rationale behind that? So coming from the corporate world, I've spent some time, as the internal SEO at yahoo. I've worked in, you know, big agencies And, you know, I think at the end of the day, none of those really fulfilled what I really enjoyed doing, which is finding really good brands and good client partners and good people, to be honest. And and just building something with them. Okay. And I think I'm I'm a I'm a glutton for punishment because the the the tough of the challenge is the more excited I get. Well, that's cool. Okay. You know, I always like to talk to to entrepreneurs. I get to talk to a to a number of them. And I would just wanna find out the passion and and the reason behind, you know, why they do what they do. So so, you know, let's talk a little bit about full tell my my audience a little bit about the clients that you have. Yeah. So we have a broad array of clients, anywhere from high fashion apparel, on one end to the extreme end, which I, you know, we say aftermarket auto parts. Right? So fashion really has nothing to do with auto parts. It couldn't be more more, you know, total opposites. But we have clients raging the spectrum of everything in between We have clients doing indoor rock climbing gyms. We have audio, class clients. You know, it's a b to b clients selling adhesive tapes of all things. So it's a broad spectrum of brands that we work with And, you know, the the cool thing is this, you know, as opposed to a different agency where, you know, you hear a lot of agencies where they like to focus on one market and be an expert in that singular market. I came from a world where that was the case. And what I found was, honestly, Kevin, it is boring. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And the team doesn't get sided. The team doesn't learn. You you know, I was in agency where I managed a team of eighteen people, fifteen to eighteen people, marketers, And at one point, ninety percent of our clients that we work with were, like, denim brands selling jeans. Now there's only so many pockets, different types of pockets. And so many different type of fabric. Yeah. There's always so much you can do with with jeans. Right. Absolutely. Well, that's really cool. So So, Derek, back in in March and April, I went to a couple of big healthcare conferences up in Chicago. And both of them, I found that the vast I would say between a third to forty percent of all the sessions involve consumerism. And so, you know, in in health care, I've been I've been doing this for ever. And I remember back, you know, early on when there really was no advertising in health care at all, I was actually one of the first people that did, you know, worked in business development for referral based hospitals. I was in, freestanding of physical rehab hospitals. And so, you know, I was kinda the outlier for a while. And then, you know, marketing began. There was that advertising that started and then physicians started, you know, advertising and and all that. It just blew up. But there's been kind of and I think it's since the pandemic, you know, there's been this re re energizing of the health care landscape where, you know, we're trying to to go directly to the consumer. You know, whether it be a service line, whether it be the hospital, the system as a whole, individual clinics, whatever. But it's really trying to customize that marketing for for the consumers, in the various markets. So, yeah, I was reading, you know, some of the background on you, and it's, you know, you're saying that up to eighty percent of the marketers could abandon personal is a personalization efforts by twenty twenty five. What the heck? Know, I I think, you know, everyone has your forecast. Right? Forecast is only as good as kind of a stone throw away. But you know, from what I've seen and what I've, you know, experienced and talked to my peers, I mean, personalization is is it's an easy concept to understand. Right? But it's extremely difficult to execute, and it is even more difficult to execute well. So, If you're a brand, you know, out of nine out of ten pit business new pitch that you get on, I guarantee you there's gonna be something about personalization. Now it is the easiest thing to put on a presentation deck. Right? But when you talk about actually executing personalization in terms of a one to one marketing or seemingly one to one marketing with your customer, man, it is hard. And when I tell you it's hard, whatever we hear marketers talk about today about personalization and, you know, having know, it's important to talk about your customer one on one, customize the message. I mean, I talked about it fifteen years ago with my team. Right? And and and it is still the same concept. It's still the same, you know, shiny object that that gets people. Right? It's still the the same pitch on every single deck we see from agencies. But the data combining the data and making it work, that is a whole different ballgame. Yeah. For sure. Well, but but there's another stat you know, in your info, this is eighty nine percent of marketers see an increase in ROI when they use personal personalization of their campaigns. So What why the why the the the disparate views of this? Is it because personalization is hard and people wanna take the easy way out and and are willing to forego a little bit of the ROI or what? Yeah. I think it it all comes in context, you know. No. Have I seen a good positive ROI from personalized messaging and marketing? Yes. But it's every campaign going to be a hit? No. Right. I think what we're seeing is really a bias from both sides of the spectrum. Right? You know, if if I'm great if I'm out there telling a business that personalization is gonna fail if you'll do it right, I would be the, you know, I'll probably be one of the few alone on the island. Yeah. Right? But as an agency owner, I feel like it's my responsibility. To be completely transparent with our prospects with our clients and say, look, personalization is good, but it's your business. It's it's your the systems. It's your marketing technology. Ready for it. Yeah. Now I could sell you the dream, but but we're just gonna be living a nightmare. If you're not ready for it, Okay. So how so so what do they need to do to be ready? Data datasets. A customer data is is key. Alright. And when I say customer data, I mean, how clean is your customer data? Do you have customers? You you might have a customer list of, you know, a hundred thousand in your database. When was the last time you checked if what percentage of them are valid? Right. Because that affects the email you send in your personalized strategy. Right? You get too many bounce emails. Your email software, your email provider is gonna ding you. It's gonna penalize you. We talk about, you know, in terms of, you know, how how is your, funnel in terms of your website. Right? Have you are you are you constantly working on conversion rate optimization? Well, yeah. If you're not, it doesn't matter what your marketing message is and no matter how personalized your marketing message is because when that customer gets your website, they're gonna be getting a totally different discombobulated message. Right. Right. So so how are agencies using like a generic marketing funnel that that that are just failing to to deliver on these personalized campaigns. Yeah. Is it is it just like flipping a switch and and, you know, like you said, you go from fashion to you know, auto parts. You know, are there agencies out there basically using a canned approach for for multiple industries? There are. There are. And, you know, we we audit prospects accounts frequently. Right? To to see if it's a fit or not. And more frequently than I would like. I have seen accounts being managed where you could just tell that it's automated. It is pre canned. It is templatized. And, you know, maybe it'll work. And also some use of AI. And actually, one, one account one brand that we looked at about three, four weeks ago, I'd say ninety five percent of your campaigns was all AI. Right? And so here you have a client paying fifteen, twenty thousand dollars a month for what they think is an agency of team of people doing the work. The return was good, but here's the thing. The return could have been better if there was some customization to it with a human touch because, look, the AI doesn't know, you know, let's let's talk about aftermarket auto parts. Right? The AI wouldn't know what's a what's a fort f two fifty to a a RAM three thirty five hundred to the engines. Like, they don't know that. Unless you tell it what it needs to know. Mhmm. But even then, You know, you have to be in the industry to really know the slight differences between the engines. Right? Now the AI would give you marketing message like increase your horsepower, the best part, like, very generic things. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So and that's where I think fills because the next thing you know is you have five three zero five advertisers on, let's say, Google with eighty percent, eighty five percent of the same copy? Well, and and going back to what I said, you know, about the the conferences I went to. You know, what wasn't consumerism? Was, AI. And so, you know, I I I was I was really I'm really interested in talking more about that with you from a from a marketing agency standpoint. Because we're seeing it certainly in health care, you know, trying to to optimize throughput, trying to do, you know, I mean, there's even some AI being generated for for, like, treatment plans and things like that. And, yeah, there are some, there are some templates in there, but but every patient who's different much like you. Every every client is different. And so there has to be some some human touch, some variation in that. So You know, I'm I'm glad to hear that, you know, you're you're you're trying to push away from from that standardization that that that you're trying to really work with your clients on an individualized spaces to get the maximum, ROI for them. So, you know, something else that that really always concern me. And my background is in marketing PR two. I I run, four different hospitals, marketing and and, PR efforts over my career. You know, I I was always very wary of agents that would agencies that would come in and say, hey, we're gonna guarantee you these great results. You know, that really, really bothered me. You know, so so let's talk about that. You know, what should you look for instead from a digital marketing agent? Could see. You know, that that will will come back that, that red flag. Well, any anytime you get a pitch that says we guarantee the results for you, that's that's a gay that's that's your guarantee to run. Well, I was gonna say, it's time to run. Yeah. But you know what? I've still I still hear these pitches where You know, and, of course, if you're on LinkedIn or you're on social media, you see a lot of, you know, advertisements about, you know, guaranteed result in ninety days or, you know, I can scale your business from zero to million dollars in in ninety days. I mean, I mean, if it was that easy, honestly, Kevin, if if it was that simple, I would not share that secret. Yeah. I wouldn't. No. Absolutely. Alright. And You've got an old mine. Right. Right. I'll be doing it day in day out. Right? Yeah. So, you know, when when agencies, you know, everyone has what they call playbook. So, you know, bay playbook should be basically it's a set of instructions. Right? But it does not guarantee you success. And I feel that, you know, brands and brands should should really you know, get smarter about it because just because you hear the word playbook, you hear the word process, it doesn't mean that it's gonna be, you know, a success. Right. It's a pitch at the end of the day. So I've been I've been in the receiving end of pitch. I've been, you know, I've given him, you know, pitches myself. And, you know, the the reality is, you know, being full moon, being only a sixteen people team, I do most of the business pitch myself. And I do very, very few of them every year. We only take we only we only accept seven new clients every year. So we're not your typical agency. Right? And and the reason why I do that is because I wanna make sure the team won doesn't burn out. Two, our clients are selected the best that we can, and they are they they know that we are gonna serve them fairly and what they deserve and not treat them as an invoice number. Okay. I mean, that I as a former VP of marketing, that that makes me happy. So so talk to me a little bit about full moon, full moon's experience, you know, in the healthcare space. If you don't have a lot of it, you know, talk about the ideal healthcare client for for full moon, Yeah. Health care is an interesting space. You know, we we we doubled, but it it there's so many rules and regulations governing the health care industry. Right, the HIPAA laws and all that. And, you know, to really succeed, I feel agencies that that do well or they can do well in in that space is really taking the time to understand patients. Right? Right. You don't you don't need to understand the the the health care business itself. They just want patients. They that's all they want is patience. So agencies might go to the health care organization and say, hey, what what are you looking for? What are your needs? But those are great questions, and those are, again, templatized questions. Mhmm. But what, you know, what if an agency took a counter intuitive approach Right? And say, look, health care business, a, b, and c. We don't care about what you need. We know all you need are patients. Right? What are your patients looking for? And how can we speak to them? Now in in in California, which where I used to live, I'm in Orlando now. But in California, there's an a a health care I think as Kaiser Kaiser, Kaiser Permanente. Yes. Now rate times in is one of the most horrendous things I've We all know that. Right? You could go in there. It couldn't be empty, but you'll still be waiting there for two hours. That's right. And so, you know, they came out with a, a billboard strategy which I thought was brilliant. Right? They actually advertise, use that as a communication tool to let you know what the wait time is in the yard. Down. Yeah. Right? Now That's exactly. No one drives down the street waiting to go to But but if you happen to want to or need to, and you're seeing that, you know, there's that there's that There's a human connection there that oh, that that that, you know, that organization cares about my wait time. Yeah. Well, I it goes back to your to your philosophy of being personalized. I mean, you're you know, you've gone to the consumer. You said, okay. What what are what are your pain points And as you said, you know, not only California trust me, it's all across the country. We see our wait time because I know Kaiser did that out on California. HCA, which is the largest, for profit, health care, organization in the country. They've been doing that for a long time. They've got those, the little, marquee up on their sides. They also have that on their website. So you know, if somebody you're you're scrolling through, hey, I gotta go to DR fast, but you happen to be clicking on the website, you can say, hey, I can get to this hospital for it, you know, get in in twenty minutes or whatever. So, you know, to me, those are the types of things that a good agency is trying to solve for you. What is really and truly the main issue with that with that patient, with that consumer. And how can that institution, whether it be a hospital or clinic or whatever? How can they meet those needs. Yeah. I mean, I I would almost say how can they obsessively meet those needs. Right? Because solving for time alone could take you ten years to solve for it. Oh, believe me. Yeah. From the operation side. Trust me. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. So and but agencies like to go for the shiny penny. Right? It's like Yeah. AI. AI, this craze right now is all all about AI. Well, AI, you know, existed ten, fifteen years ago. You know, in different forms. Right? So, you know, everything we we kind of have this concept that AI generative AI is brand new, and now every agency is jumping on it. But, you know, just like every new technology, everyone jumps on it, and and they put it as your first thing on your It's like, oh, we are experts in this new technology. Well, how? So, how when you're working with clients, You know, what's the best way for them to communicate with with an agency like yours more effectively so that they can get the the biggest return on investment that they can for for their dollars that they spend with you or or another agency like you. So the best experiences that I have that I've seen worked myself and with the team, and that's one of the reasons why it takes us a while to look for the right client for our agency, waiting for the clients to say that they don't know everything. Okay. Right? But also also allowing us, the agency, the future partner agency, allow us to say that we don't know anything everything either. Right? So the expectation is to go into business together as partners and forging that relationship and working together versus working for each other. Okay. Alright. So if you were if you were a brand, right, Kevin, and you say, hey, look, I can afford to pay you fifty thousand dollars a month. Go do my job. Go do work for me. You know, you would probably say, okay. Well, come back to me every month I report and and all that stuff, and you expect the agency to do the heavy lifting and then expect, like, amazing results because you you're affording a lot of a lot of agency fees. And then on their side, they feel like they would have to know everything. Because they are the agent pressure. There's a lot of pressure. So, you know, it it's one of those things where we like forging relationships and and saying, look, you are the expert in in x industry. We are the experts in executing things for you. Mhmm. But if you are not willing, if you want to hire and set and forget then we are not the right partners for you. So so give me a success story of full moon. I've I'd love to hear one, one of your big success or Yeah. Six years ago, I got introduced to a, aftermarket automaker, parts brand out in, California. And they have been in business for sixty years. Right? And it's always it's always been retail business, wholesale, No. E commerce was a spec of what they represented. It was a direct brand. So I got introduced to them, and I started working with the, brand manager who oversees the e commerce program as well. They knew that they wanted to go direct to consumer, but they didn't know how to. So, visited the office, I didn't know a lick about automotive parts. I can tell you that. Right? I I would I did not even try to lie my way through. I just said, Sure. I just say client, I have no idea what a turbo engine does. And I think that kind of naive transparency and honesty was actually refreshing for them. Right? Because agencies before that came in and said they knew everything about the auto mo automotive industry So for me, it's like, okay. Well, I'm here to learn, and I need your help just as much as you need my help. Yeah. Right. So, they took a chance at me. And the first month, the first few months, their total ad spend. So whatever they're paying for Google ads or Facebook ads was about five thousand dollars. That that was six years ago. Right now, your average monthly spend is well over six digits. Oh, wow. Okay. Okay. So I'm I'm guessing they're getting pretty good results now. They are they're they're only revenue actually means something today. Right? Where to a point where if they see a blip, it it freaks everyone out. Yeah. Right? Before six years ago, I was like, oh, we don't sell online. We don't sell online. Who cares? Yeah. So now it's about how do we sell better online? So, again, but here's the thing. The success is not because of myself. It's because that we have a champion in the client's business -- Mhmm. -- who believes in what we do who have very, very passionate. I mean, I would talk to him, like, he was my brother, and we will yell at each other just to you know, solve the problem. Right? Sure. And and we have that rapport where we say, look, it's not personal. We want to solve the same problem. But we have to respect each other's perspective. Very cool. That's a good story. So so Derek, I'm sure, you know, Hey, you're you're on my you're on my show. I wanna I wanna help you get some information out. So, if any of my, audience is interested in talking to Derek, and the folks at full moon digital. Just go to full moon digital dot com. You guys make it as easy as possible. So appreciate that. Derek, any final words before we sign off today? Yeah. I think, you know, the the marketing industry is getting more exciting. It's getting more interesting. It will change very quickly over the next year, next two years. And I'm very excited to be part of it. It's it gives me the opportunity to learn meet new people, meet awesome people like yourself and and share my, you know, experience with with your listeners as well. So I thank you for the opportunity, Kevin. Absolutely. It's been a real pleasure. Derek Two founder of full moon digital. And, appreciate you being on, Derek. So we've wrapped up another episode of I don't care with me, Kevin Stephenson. Thanks for joining us, and we will see you next week. Take care.