← MarTech Podcast ™ // Marketing + Technology = Business Growth
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- [00:00]
Podcast Announcer
The Martech Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com.
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Benjamin Shapiro
From advertising to software.
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Scott Harkey
As a service to data, across all.
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Benjamin Shapiro
Of our programs and clients, we've seen a 55 to 65% open rate.
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Scott Harkey
Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising.
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Benjamin Shapiro
Typical lifespan of an article is about 24 to 36 hours. If we're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action, then it's just.
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Scott Harkey
A matter of timing.
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Podcast Announcer
Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network. In this podcast you'll hear the stories of world class marketers that used to technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the Martech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro.
- [01:15]
Benjamin Shapiro
Welcome to the Martech Podcast, I'm your host, Benjamin Shapiro and joining me today is Scott Harkey. Scott is the founder of the Harkey Group, which is a full service integrated marketing agency with consumer centric, performance focused and creatively inspired teams across multiple industries and verticals like Monogram, which focuses on the hospitality industry, or Nomadic for digital creative and of course Matter Films, their video production firm. Scott is also the host of the Rebrand Podcast which is a member of the I Hear Everything network. He's a wonderful guy, one of my favorite people. We've already talked about the art and science of billboards and now I want to move on to finding your niche. Now, Scott, you've done some really interesting things. It turns out you're an expert on billboards. Who knew you own a agency that owns multiple agencies. And one of the things that I think is the most interesting evolution in the Harky Group is you went from this sort of vertical orientation. You had a digital agency, a creative agency, a strategic agency, a video agency. Right. All of the different things that a brand would need. And then all of a sudden you guys did a very interesting shift. You created Monogram, which is a specialized agency specifically for the hospitality and entertainment industries. And from what I understand, it's going gangbusters. Still going good?
- [02:40]
Scott Harkey
It's going great. Yeah, they're doing a really job.
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Benjamin Shapiro
Good to hear. Well, I want to talk a little bit about that process because I think it's something that's really useful for marketers here. So first off, let's start off with a little segment we like to call game plan. You got your playbook out, your team's running down the field, you got to call your next play. What steps should you take to identify and penetrate a niche? If you're starting to think about nichifying, if you're starting to think about focusing on one type of different niche, we.
- [03:07]
Scott Harkey
All know the old saying, show me a great marketer, I'll show you a better niche marketer. And I think in the professional service space that I work in, and specifically the marketing professional service space, it's very competitive and it's getting harder and harder to convince new clients to hire you, right? You have your clients, you've had for a long time, and you had a lot of success together, and you've made money together, and they trust you, and those go great. But how do you continue to grow and bring on new clients knowing that you're going to have leakage no matter what? In the professional service industry? And for us and for me, what I found is there were two ways to go about it, especially if you were independent, not publicly traded. One of the biggest five publicly traded holding companies of agencies, and that was either you could have a product or a specific service, a specialized service or product. So you could be. Which I did some of that, right? We have a film production agency, I have a digital agency. We have analytic products and specialties, and people want that warm and fuzzy when hiring somebody that's a specialist. Or you could go in another direction and you could have a industry agency that could really drive outcomes based on the experiences they have within that industry. And I really feel like the industry specialization is a better way to go, personally. It's more differentiated in the marketplace and you're able to offer products and more outcomes because you're confident in the industry that you work in and you know the players, you know the competition, you understand how to drive real value for partners in that space. And it's just fun. You know, the team members that we have that work out of Las Vegas in the hospitality industry, I mean, they've worked client side, they've worked agency side, they love working in that arena. And we have so many great case studies in that arena. When we started Monogram, it was the first agency I've ever started in 16 years from scratch that was converting better than agencies I've had for 15 years. I mean, literally cold pay per click, clients coming to that website and hiring us. And when you work with great brands like Marriott Luxury and the Wynn is Resort Group and Virgin Hotels, other hotel brands have confidence in you. And that's what's worked really well for us. So if I were to do it over again, I would have started this much earlier and sort of really doubled down on the industries that we have the most success in rather than going down the path of buying or building specialized agencies.
- [05:27]
Benjamin Shapiro
All right, I got a good one for you. I want you to tell me. This is called Buy your Sell Buy or Sell this statement. If your total addressable market, the niche that you pick is too small, your business is destined to fail because it's harder, it's too hard to expand from your initial niche.
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Scott Harkey
I am trying to think about, and I want to challenge you like we always do. I'm trying to think about an addressable market that has been too small. Have you worked in a space where you've really niched down so much that an addressable market's too small?
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Benjamin Shapiro
I struggle with this myself right now. Right. We build B2B podcasts. That seems like a pretty big niche.
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Scott Harkey
That's fair.
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Benjamin Shapiro
B2B podcasts. So our targets are B2B companies that can afford to pay for a real producer and production firm. You're looking at mid market companies that are interested in content marketing. I think that's a relatively big niche. But it also opens us up to a ton of competition. Right. Everything from iheartmedia down to some guy who has a Descript account can say that they are producers of podcasts. So do we niche down to be like we only do our podcast for Martech companies because we own the Martech podcast. That's a tiny little niche. So I honestly struggle with this. I'm not sure what the answer is.
- [06:46]
Scott Harkey
Wow, that's a really good point. I guess I'm thinking so much more on the consumer side that I've dealt with and worked in for addressable market sizes. But I think in B2B, you're absolutely right. The way I think about it for our agencies and again, I'm sort of have a weird background where I probably know a lot about B2B marketing only because I've run agencies and had to market my agencies for six years. But my professional experience and what I really do is for B2C marketers. Right. So I've had very few B2B clients except for myself. And what's been successful for me and our 16 year run in B2B is really not developing products right away. So when I'm hearing you talk, what it sounds like is you had this and I've worked with you, obviously you have this Podcast product that is pretty niche. The products that I've built on our agency side from a B2B standpoint, we have an analytics product, I have an influencer product. We've sort of made the products like three years later after we sort of tackled the specialized service and we do start the service pretty broad and then we sort of narrow down over time based on the requests that we're getting for clients. So as we've been pretty customer focused, again meaning our clients needs and it's changing so fast and I think it's only getting worse. AI will be of course having a lot of very specific specialized outcomes for brands and agencies. So I'm very leery of having products that are going to compete with AI at all because I think we're going to get smoked. And I've seen an inverse of talent with my agencies compared to five years ago. I think five years ago I had a lot of mid and junior level people making a lot of stuff, production, art, loyalty books, email, like all this stuff that needed to be done in marketing, big brands would hire us to get it all done efficiently. And now we've sort of seen an inverse effect where I have less people making stuff and less mid level and junior people and more senior level people providing strategy and support at a really high level. High level designers, high level videographers and directors, high level creative directors, high level strategists, high level VP of account people, high level PR people that are doing like IR and crisis, high level social media strategists and hardly any mid and lower level people. So I think for a lot of B2B companies right now, I would, to your point, be leery about a product, first of all, that isn't AI driven, that can produce a lot of stuff very fast using some sort of AI or any product that's maybe too early to market or too small of a niche or not quite the need that you thought it had from a client perspective. So I do like to start a little more broad. But again, if it were me, I would target industries. I would look at what industry can use, like in your case, content as a service. And then once I get into that industry and I'm learning what content and what budget will drive what outcomes, at what return on ad spend, then there could be potentially products that you're designing and incubating out of that opportunity. But I know a lot of people, what I would call the field of dream strategy where they build something they hope people are going to come rather than crawl, walk, run, approach with Maybe a service or an industry that they know a lot about.
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Benjamin Shapiro
I feel like it's chicken or the egg. You can start with a very specific niche and if you're doing that, you have to understand the real pain points and you build their solutions. That advanced in depth research you've done on that very specific person you're solving the problem for, or you've got a solution and you build something and you go around and find who wants it and start to sell it and then you modify it based on where you get a signal. I do feel like you can go either way. I'm not sure whether it's a buy or a sell.
- [10:31]
Scott Harkey
Either way, I love this topic. I think it's a great discussion. I've never been successful in anything I've done as a startup or even helped other startups from just building something with a lot of research. I think everything I've seen has been a moving target based on what customers want and what will actually drive outcomes. And there's so many things at play from price point and value on the service and product that I think really need to be flushed out as a working prototype. But I haven't seen very many things be successful where you do the research, you make a prototype, you go to market and you hit lightning in a bottle. Very few times have I seen that, even on the B2B or B2C side. I think it's just like a great digital campaign where you're optimizing something along the way based on different changes in the marketplace and based on different needs of clients and consumers.
- [11:24]
Benjamin Shapiro
All right, so it's time for the big finish. Last question I have for you around finding your niche. You've done this successfully with the Monogram Agency, focusing on hospitality and entertainment. What are the most powerful lessons that you've learned by focusing on an individual niche?
- [11:42]
Scott Harkey
I think the biggest is, and I know you don't want to go look at the presidential election and we're two days off and we won't. However, at the end of the day, what we're all selling is trust. Period. Any brand, any service, the currency is trust. And for me, in Monogram, we have the permission and trust in that industry. And people that work in that industry trust other people in that industry. Like, I've really just seen something tribal about people and the industries that they work in, the conferences they go to, the 20 year, 30 year, 40 year relationships of people that have gone to different places in that industry. We've seen it in the hotel and casino and sports betting and entertainment industry like crazy. Like, someone could work for Wynn one minute, then they're working for mgm, and then they are going, and now working for the government Abu Dhabi, they're building a casino. Like, we just see this sort of tribal aspect to different industries, especially the travel, tourism, hospitality, luxury industry. I think, again, when the currency is trust, and for any agency, trust is probably at the top of the list of why and how you get hired. I think that's what's helped us. And again, I wish we would have done it a long time ago. It's hard because you never want to give up on another industry that you also love, right? Whether that's CPG or health care or other industries we and I have worked in. But I just think the lesson learned for me is, again, trust is still the currency of at least the US Market today. And whether it's a CPG company, a ad agency, political campaign, like, that's what, at the end of the day, we need to think about, we're selling is trust.
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Benjamin Shapiro
Wrapping up with trust is the most important thing when you're picking your niche. If you can't build trust within that niche, you're probably in the wrong space. And whether that's existing credibility, product positioning, just the relationships that you have, if you can't build trust in your niche, you probably have a bigger problem. You're probably in the wrong place. And that wraps up this episode of the Martech Podcast. Thanks for listening to my conversation with Scott Harkey, the founder and CEO of the Harkey Group. If you'd like to get in touch with Scott, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes. He's on Instagram as well under Scott Harkey. Or you could visit his company's website, which is theharkeygroup.com T H E H A R K E Y G D r o u p.com if you'd like a summary of this podcast, or if you'd like to apply to be one of the next guest speakers on the Martech Podcast, head over to martechpod.com you can also find us on YouTube. Just search for Martech Podcast. And if you'd like to contact me, you can find my LinkedIn handle in the show notes. Or you just search for Ben J. Shapper. B E N J S H A P and if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app and we'll be back in your feed tomorrow morning. All right, that's it for today. But until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.
- [14:53]
Scott Harkey
Foreign.
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Podcast Announcer
Thanks for listening to the Martech podcast and I hear everything. Production Looking to launch or scale a podcast like this one for your brand? Then visit iheareverything.com.