The #1 Lesson Marketers Can Steal From Cadillac's $450M Wager on F1

Summary

Perpetual Traffic – “The #1 Lesson Marketers Can Steal From Cadillac’s $450M Wager on F1”

Podcast: Perpetual Traffic
Hosts: Ralph Burns (Tier 11) & Lauren E. Petrulo (Mongoose Media)
Date: September 19, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode zeroes in on the shifting mindset that marketers must embrace to succeed in modern digital advertising. Using Cadillac’s audacious $450M entry into Formula 1 as a springboard, Ralph and Lauren explore how brands—big or small—need to think beyond direct response and transactional goals. Instead, they emphasize investing in foundational marketing, brand experience, and understanding the real drivers behind growth—lessons that every marketer can “steal” from Cadillac’s play. The episode is a practical, passionate guide on advancing your marketing after the basics, the dangers of seeking quick wins, and why true business growth is a marathon, not a sprint.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Paid Ads Can’t Cover Foundational Marketing Failures

“If you’re using paid ads to compensate for where your marketing dropped the ball, where your offer is irrelevant, where your audience lost brand equity and trust with you, your Runway is going to run out like so.”
— Lauren E. Petrulo [00:00]

• Lauren cautions against using paid ads as a Band-Aid for deeper business and marketing issues.
• If you lack an in-demand offer or strong customer trust, scaling ad spend simply accelerates failure.

2. The Spend vs. Invest Mindset

“You said spend—it’s not spent. You’re investing into marketing point blank.”
— Lauren E. Petrulo [07:16]

• Marketers and business owners must see marketing as an investment, not an expense.
• Returns may not be immediate, but they build brand equity and customer loyalty over time.

3. Metrics Matter: Understanding MER and Your Numbers

“Know thy numbers, first and foremost.”
— Ralph Burns [29:24]

• The hosts break down how to view Media Efficiency Ratio (MER) and debate what costs should be included.
• Many businesses, even at $25-30M in revenue, don’t have a clear grasp on their actual metrics and goals.

4. Marketing ≠ Just Paid Ads

“Advertising is an element of marketing... But foundational marketing, which was neglected before, is now becoming non-negotiable.”
— Lauren E. Petrulo [07:16]

• The show pushes against the Silicon Valley ‘growth hacking’ myth that paid traffic alone delivers sustainable success.
• True marketing involves customer research, brand-building, and sustainable strategies beyond PPC.

5. Lessons from Cadillac’s F1 Gamble: The Power of Brand Plays

“You cannot track the success of Cadillac’s team buying... but there’s not this money in, money out ATM scenario. At extreme levels they understand you have to invest in marketing.”
— Lauren E. Petrulo [24:06]

• Cadillac (as well as Thailand bidding for an F1 event) is betting hundreds of millions on brand exposure and long-term equity.
• Small and midsize brands should take inspiration—think “What’s your F1?” (i.e., your big, bold marketing statement).

6. Practical Next Steps for Growth after the First $10k

Step-by-Step Summary:

• Understand & Audit Numbers: Calculate cost to acquire a customer, MER, and profitability.
• Talk Directly With Customers:
  • Call/email your first 100 customers.
  • Ask why they bought, what they like/dislike, and what could be better.
  • “You start calling, you smiling and dialing, and you try to figure out what broke, what stopped working.” — Lauren E. Petrulo [12:18]
• Experiment with Brand-Building “F1 Moments”:
  • Local sponsorships, events, partnerships—activities that raise brand awareness.
  • Even if budgets are small, find creative, high-impact plays in your industry or community.
• Don’t Rely on Agencies for Miracles:
  • Agencies aren’t a Hail Mary—business owners must be engaged and realistic about timelines and outcomes.
  • “If you’re looking to spend your last $40k on a Hail Mary... that’s a big ask.” — Lauren E. Petrulo [12:18]

7. Brand-Building and Top of Funnel Investments Pay Off—Even if They’re Hard to Measure

“If you don’t make that investment top of funnel, you’re going to hurt your bottom of funnel numbers. You’re just going to make it more competitive.”
— Lauren E. Petrulo [28:41]

• The hosts cite a case study where cutting top-of-funnel spend led to skyrocketing acquisition costs.
• Investing in “pre-awareness” puts you in a stronger position when prospects consider buying.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “All their data scientists, their massive teams… the secret weapon you have is thinking like a business that's building for the long-term.”
  — Ralph Burns [00:29]
• “Big companies are big for a reason. You have to think like a big company even when you’re smaller or mid-sized.”
  — Ralph Burns [25:52]
• “The attention economy demands you invest into getting their attention, and then your marketing has to retain it.”
  — Lauren E. Petrulo [36:10]
• The playful banter about odd customer payment methods, $2 bills, and Venmo highlights how marketing and business practices evolve, but fundamentals remain (i.e., “Even the homeless men and women… have Cash app and Venmo.” — Lauren [04:33]).

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• [00:00] – Show opens with Lauren’s warning about using ads to mask business problems.
• [07:16] – Spend vs. Invest, advertising as a component of holistic marketing.
• [12:18] – What to do with your last $40k; why Hail Mary agency spends rarely work; focus on customer research.
• [21:35] – The myth of “easy marketing” and necessity of experience/brand differentiation.
• [23:30] – The Cadillac & F1 parallel—what bold, brand-focused marketing looks like.
• [28:41] – Real case study: Cutting top-of-funnel spend increased cost per acquisition.
• [29:24] – Action plan for next steps after spending $10k: Know numbers, know customers, keep building brand.
• [35:12] – How direct customer insights drive better creative and profitable advertising.
• [36:10] – The importance of earning attention in today’s economy; vanilla ads are out!
• [37:53] – Airbnb’s founder story underscores the value of talking directly to early customers.

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Actionable Takeaways

• Before scaling paid ads, audit your business fundamentals.
• Treat marketing as an investment, not an expense.
• Know precisely how much you can afford to acquire a customer—and why.
• Prioritize direct, real conversations with customers to fuel brand and marketing strategy.
• Steal from the Cadillac playbook: find your own “F1” equivalent, however small, and invest in foundational brand-building.
• Balance immediate acquisition with long-term brand awareness efforts—neglecting top-of-funnel hurts future performance.

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Final Thoughts

This episode is a wake-up call for owners and marketers at all stages: flashy ad hacks are fleeting, but strategic, customer-obsessed brand marketing is what drives growth. Whether you’re spending $10k or plotting your own “F1 moment,” the path to sustainable success starts with curiosity, rigorous numbers, and genuine human connection.

Transcript

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

If you're using paid ads to compensate for where your marketing dropped the ball, where your offer is irrelevant, where your audience lost brand equity and trust with you, your Runway is going to run out like so.

[Ralph Burns]

The recommendation, back to it, to that next step. I've got my $10,000. What do I do next? What would your first, second, third step be?

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

First and foremost, you're listening to Perpetual Traffic.

[Ralph Burns]

All right, I get it. You're a small business, you're a startup, you're a lean team. Everyone's doing dozens of different things and you got to move fast and be smart to compete with the big guys and the big gals. You've seen their endless resources. You know they are power. They have more money than you, but you can level the playing field and all their data scientists and their massive teams. Finally, the secret weapon that you have is ActiveCampaign AI. The ActiveCampaign AI suite is built exactly for you. The small business, the startup, the lean teen. It's the secret weapon that saves the average user up to 13 hours a week. Just think of what you could do with 13 hours a week. It's not about saving time on writing. It's about getting predictive insights that used to be out of your reach. From predicting which deals are most likely to close to generating on brand content in seconds. From the AI brand kit, ActiveCampaign puts enterprise level capabilities in your hands. Compete smarter, not harder. Discover the power of autonomous marketing with ActiveCampaign. Go to activecampaign.com to get started today. Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic podcast. This is your host, Ralph burns, founder and CEO of Tier11, alongside my incredibly amazing co host Lauren E. Petrulo, the.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Founder of Mongoose Media.

[Ralph Burns]

So glad you joined us here today. And if you're a director of marketing, VP of marketing or a CMO or you're running your own business and you are trying to figure out this digital online marketing stuff or making sure that your team is doing it right or you know, God forbid, your agency if they're not doing it right. You have come to the right place because we teach marketing the right way here with metrics that matter and growth at scales. And today we are going to be talking about sort of an add on to an episode that you and I did a few weeks back, episode 7 26. We'll leave a link in the show notes how to get sales in your first year of digital business with just 10k. Which I think is a good way of doing things. Starting out with a very Limited budget, learning how to do it yourself. Hopefully learning a lot from this show. But then what? Then what do you do?

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Then what do you do?

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah. What's the next step after that? And you and I have had some interesting experiences this past week with clients who maybe, I don't know, move the goalposts a little bit as far as ad budgets are concerned and kind of still treat this whole online marketing thing as like an atm. And I'm not talking about at the moment on text. I'm talking about automatic transfer. What actually does ATM stand for? I don't even know.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Automatic transfer machine.

[Ralph Burns]

Autofirmtra. That's it. That's it. I just. The cash machine. That's usually what I say.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

What is cash? I'm sorry, what?

[Ralph Burns]

I don't know. What is it? There's Venmo, and I don't know.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

USDT is the same thing.

[Ralph Burns]

Usdt. That's good. Somebody asked me for cash the other day. I was like, what? Like, I don't carry any cash. Oh, no.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

I was with a friend, Kwanzaa, and we went out to eat, and she's like, yeah, she has $2 bills. She just goes to the bank, collects $2 bills. I was like, what? She's like, you don't know how good it feels to give someone an unexpected cash bill. It's already surprising to have cash. Now it's a $2 bill. I was like, dang.

[Ralph Burns]

Well, I mean, that's a little bit kind of part of the theme of today's program, actually, because that's sort of an old school way of looking at things. And we're so locked into using Venmo and what is it, Zelle, which now a lot of people now I accept.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Amex, Visa, Bitcoin, Crypto, Venmo Cash app, you name it.

[Ralph Burns]

I take it EFT is my preferred modality of choice. I like looking at my bank account, just seeing money coming in. The point is that is the old school way of collecting money. But the. The. The. The old school way, rather, is like cash. I know what it was. I was going to a gym. I was up, like our place and on the lake, and the gym that I go to, she's like, yeah, drop a five in, like the mail slot. I'm like, oh, my God. Like, can I Venmo you? She's like, I don't have Venmo.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

So even the homeless men and women are the displaced citizens that live on my street. They have Cash app and Venmo.

[Ralph Burns]

That's so funny. Relating that back to today's show, everybody wants to go, like, the Venmo route, the Zelle route that. I mean, PayPal is root route at this point.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

You say root. Root.

[Ralph Burns]

I say root. I'm from Massachusetts. It's the right way to say it. But the point is, is, like, still the other ways work. Like, cash still does work. I will still take cash. Now, we don't pay any bills here at tier 11 in cash. However, we get checks still.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Oh, I pay via checks. Actually. I have two suppliers. I pay via check.

[Ralph Burns]

So this relates to that show because once you get a little bit going on, then you sort of expect, okay, now digital is just going to be. I'm going to put 10 grand in, I'm going to get 30 grand back. So an example of this is a recent customer like, oh, we need to get 3x on our paid traffic. And I actually did the math. They shared their P and L and they're actually getting 3.7 back. But they are not. Yeah, they are not actually including their email and their SMS and they're not including their Amazon, so. And they weren't. Yeah, so, but they were saying, all right, we need 3x. But I feel like, wait a second, are we getting 3 plus X for them? Like in MER, media efficiency ratio, which is all the revenue that's coming in global, all that you're spending on marketing? Well, in some cases, it might just be media. It might be total marketing. We've had this debate before. I tend to include, like, you know, for us, I include my staff, I include what we're spending. You include marketing labor, I include marketing.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

I do not.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah. So when I do mer, that's how I look at it. So if you're a business and you're trying to figure out your media efficiency ratio, you can look at it two ways. You can. You either say, all right, here's my revenue for this quarter month, whatever it happens to be divided by how much I spent on media or divided by how much I spent on all my marketing, which could include your SEO agency, your paid media agency, your staff, you know, your videographer, all that. So there's two different ways of looking at it. So in this particular client, they were looking at it the incorrect way from my standpoint. So siloed. But that's what a lot of businesses still are caught up in. And it's like, where do you get to that next step? And they're like, well, I don't want to spend any more because all of that isn't coming back in channel as a return on that ad spend, when in fact that's the short sighted. That's the old way of looking at it.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

You're already saying the wrong language. You said spend, it's not spent. You're investing into marketing point blank. You might be spending on advertising, but you're investing into marketing. And I think a lot of that is like where people can assume that marketing and advertising are the same thing because they're convolutedly used together. But advertising is an element of marketing and you always invest in marketing and you can spend on ads, but it's still you're investing if you're introducing a product penetrating a new market. Like even just that small language is where. Kudos to Russell Brunson and Mark Zuckerberg for developing click funnels and meta and allowing small business owners to flush the playbooks of marketing. So modern day marketing was just paid ads in a way that your business could grow and thrive in the world of AI and all this programmatic stuff, what's foundational and was neglected before is now becoming a non negotiable in a lot of capacity.

[Ralph Burns]

Just what you're saying alone, thinking about it as an expense versus an investment. Like once you spend on marketing, you're never getting it back. But the point is, is that will pay future dividends, maybe not immediately that day depends on what kind of product that you have. You have to invest that money and think of it as an investment. If you don't have the Runway to invest in it, it's either you need to rack up, you know, credit cards, which is what I did when I first started this thing, and. Or you need to get loans or you need something additional to just your cash flow. Because in the case of this particular customer, they were losing money every single month when they were thinking, oh well, I can just install an agency and boom, voila. All of a sudden everything just magically changes.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Did they start taking teeth from little kids to put them under the pillow too? So the tea tooth fairy can arrive at a bunch of capital and flood. Like what?

[Ralph Burns]

That's a far flung strategy. So like when you're confronted with this, this is a common issue, how do you respond to that? How do you. Obviously the difference between spending and investing are two different things, right? So getting the mindset shift to occur, don't think of it as an expense, think of it as an investment. But that's all well and good, but if you're losing 20 or $30,000 a month and you only got, you know, 40 grand in your bank account. You know, your Runway ain't that long. So how do you talk to clients? And how do you sort of convince them that this is an investment? And then what would be that sort of next strategy after you've kind of gotten things going, which we talked about back on episode 7 26.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Okay, I will say on the episode we had just filmed with Oren Claff, and because you and I just wrote reread for you and I listen to pitch anything, I think first and foremost, anyone that is finding if you're an agency owner or in sales in general. Like, definitely that episode obsessed with Orin. His name sounds like mine.

[Ralph Burns]

So Oren. Lauren. I never thought of that.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Oh, my God. The whole time I kept thinking of it, I was like, oh, so, Lauren. Oren. Laura. Anyways, he's married. Oh, I'm sorry. Did you just think, like, my dating was orange?

[Ralph Burns]

Oh, my God.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

I'm not winning. Any reply for this answer? I will just get eviscerated from all angles.

[Ralph Burns]

So anyway, gotta go onto YouTube. Professionaltraffic.com forward/YouTube. See Lauren Petrulo blushing. Anyway, go right ahead with what you're saying.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

I can't. Like, my knees are sweating up, like, blushing. I look brighter than my lipstick. How dare you. No, it's fair. Fair play.

[Ralph Burns]

Just fair play.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Jen, be ready. He's come. I'm coming for him.

[Ralph Burns]

Okay. Oh, so, okay, gauntlet.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

So you're saying, how do you convince someone that it's not spend and it's an investment? So, yeah, definitely. Check out that episode in chapter two of his pitch. Anything he talks about, like, framing and having control of the conversation. And so I think assuming you've completed that, that's where a lot of this continues, the conversation. I think a lot of it is when you have a short Runway, $40,000, depending on what their monthly expenses. I mean, I'm in the middle of reading, like, the Hundred Million Dollar Money Models book from Alison. He talks about how he $5,000 for one month Runway. The guy's like, how much do you have left to live? He's like, come on, this is no longer them. Interesting. In working with us long term. They're looking for a Hail Mary, and sometimes we can perform miracles. But, like, I'm not Jesus. I can't guarantee anything in that capacity. Look, my hair might. We might have closer hair, right? We don't know that. He could have been in the sun all day. No, we do know that he.

[Ralph Burns]

He was not bleached by the end of it.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Well, it just depends on which doctrine you're following.

[Ralph Burns]

Right? Yeah. We're getting off subject here, so.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Yeah.

[Ralph Burns]

All right. So you continue that thought.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Someone says, like, I have $40,000. It's my last $40,000 thousand dollars left. If I don't figure something out, what do I do? I think hiring an agency to run paid ads is probably the worst thing to do. What I would say, like, in that capacity, again, like, what would you spend through $10,000? And this is how it says, like, if you're looking to spend your last $40,000 on a hail Mary, the amount of work you're just giving me a very hard task for me to maybe make a few grand where, like, oren said, like, 30% gross margin, 5% net. I have to now commit everything to save your company and your employees. That's a big ask where I'm not getting any share of the profits, you know, like, that's a huge, huge ask. So I'm like, if you're really going to commit, I need you to invest in me. Because if you're saying that you're going to spend that with me, I'm already losing. So if you are like, I only have $40,000 left, I would say, like, hire me for an hour or two. Or like, like, go back into your team and figure out where is their money you're leaving on the table. You need to go back into your business and out where your marketing failed. Because if you're using paid ads to compensate for where your marketing dropped the ball, where your offer is irrelevant, where your audience lost brand equity and trust with you, your Runway is going to run out. Like, you cannot demand success from a Hail Mary in that capacity. Now, if they have $40,000 and their. Their monthly liabilities is two grand, okay, then we have a lot more space to work with. But that's just, like, where I go back into it. If you're like, on your dying last four, 40 grand, you have to pull in and get into the foundational pieces. You have to talk to your customers, get on the phone with every customer. I don't care. You have $40,000 left, and you have $20,000 in labor. You start calling, you smiling and dialing, and you try to figure out what broke, what stopped working. Because likely where I'm like, okay, Russell Brunson, like, your click funnels was amazing. It made it really easy to cut all of the garbage that you can or all the fluff that is actual marketing from people's small businesses. And then what happens is When Zuckerberg or Bezos, oh my God, his prime day changes, or Google or any of these ad networks change the rules on you for advertising, your whole company collapses because you didn't do any marketing.

[Ralph Burns]

So is it because of the platforms themselves? So what you are saying is that this industry has trained these businesses to have such high expectations of return that it's unrealistic.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Yeah, well, I would say this industry as well as like TikTok and Instagram influencers, like think of how many times Ralph, someone's come to you that says, yeah, but I saw someone on TikTok say this worked for them, so it must work for my business too.

[Ralph Burns]

Well, if I get a dollar for every time I heard that. Paid in cash by the way, not Venmo. So I guess that just leaves me open to this, this problem of like, what's the next stage? And if you do have money, like this becomes more of a client and customer issue. Understanding why your clients and customers bought from you to begin with, what they like, what they don't like, you're saying going down that granular route, going back to sort of the basics of yes, you know, smiling and dialing and understanding like how you need to fundamentally shift your product and, or add more. Because the business that I'm referring to here, their average order value is $20 very hard, with a, let's see, frequency.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

How often do they refill a 7?

[Ralph Burns]

It's like a 70% gross profit on that. But then it's such low volume, their operating expenses basically just eat all that 70% up like after cost of goods sold. So yeah, so that's basically what the math is. Behind the scenes. They're like, oh, we need a three to one to break even. Well, actually you don't. It's kind of not the right way of looking at it. So I find like there's this in between kind of business that like they still don't kind of understand their numbers quite yet. And they have to be able to dive into that, figure out what the expenses are. Obviously look at everything from a business owner standpoint. We've talked about this so many freaking times here on this show. It's like the MPIs marketing performance indicators. If you haven't gotten it, go over to perpetualtraffic.com forward/mpi or tier11.com forward/mpi and actually go into the tier 11 one. Just because you'll be in a nice sequence there. You'll learn about like what we do and all these other stuff. It's not a pitch here for tier 11. The point is, is like, this stuff matters. I spoke with two businesses this week, a 25 and a $30 million business. I was like, what's your goal? Tell me what your goal is. Or like, Oren clapping this all the way, by the way. Because I'm like, well, it's like, well, what is your goal? It's like, I want to be more efficient on this channel. I'm like, I can't really measure that. I don't really know what that is. Like, in order for you to work with me, this is totally like the orange claf way. It's like, I need to understand exactly what your goal is. And. And marketing is a means to get to that goal. I don't care about. Like, my team will figure out the marketing strategy to get you there, but I need to know what your goal is. What are your metrics? What's your profitability? How much can you pay to acquire a customer? Like, all of these things still 20, $30 million companies. Like, there was a $25 million company we talked to last Friday. I was like, all right, guys, you're hugely profitable. You're very successful. Oh, we've reached a ceiling. What's your goal? What do you mean? Like, what. Where do you want to be? Yeah, like, where do you want to be next year? If I work with you now, what is your goal in 2026? Because if you don't have a goal, I can't work with you. I can't help you. Because we're. We're. We're operating in the ether. So it's like, how much can you afford to pay to acquire a customer? And so their guy, their finance guy was on the call. He kind of went through it. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, it's in and around this area. But that's not really actually it. They didn't know. Hey, you know, when I was first at a consultant actually doing the stuff that we're doing right now in Tier 11, one of the first tools that I learned how to use was from a company called Unbounce. And they are now a sponsor of Perpetual Traffic. And the reason is, is that their landing pages and how quickly you can create those landing pages without having to consult your designer, your developer. With drag and drop builders now built in AI copywriting, it's even better than when it was 10 years ago when I first started it on my own to create my very first landing pages. These guys are absolutely amazing. They've got conversion, optimized templates, giving you everything you need to launch your pages on your own without developers. In fact, Unbounce is the leading landing page platform for building, testing and optimizing high converting pages. Powered by data from over 2 billion conversions. That is 2 billion conversions with a B. That means they know what converts. So if you want to Convert more customers one platform and launch pages fast, Unbounce is offering PT listeners a special offer. They are giving you the PT listeners 10% off when you enter coupon code PT10OFF [e-mail] PT so head on over to unbounce.com PT, enter code PT10OFF and cash in today. Convert more customers with one platform, launch pages fast. You shouldn't have to wait for your designers and your developers to build and test your landing pages. Get started with Unbounce today. So you've got highly successful companies at that end of the spectrum that don't even know their MPIs. And so we're talking about the people that have just started, spent the 10 grand, listened to that episode that we talked about, and then they're in that next stage and you expect them to know their numbers. Like that was one of the first things that you said, is like, look through your numbers, understand your metrics, understand in order for you to pay more to acquire a customer, maybe you should actually have a higher naov when people first come in. More profit bundling. All the things. We've talked about this so many times, cross sells, upsells, all these other sorts of things. We'll refer to those episodes here that we've gone through in the past. The point is, is I don't think that's happening at that next stage of business. And that has to happen. And then combined with all the manual things that you said, talk to your customers, who are they? Why did they buy? What are their likes, what are their dislikes? Why did they buy what they bought? What other products would go well with those products that they already bought from you? Your best seller? Maybe you have something in there. Maybe that is the first formulation of a funnel or some kind of upsell sequence, or that's the first thing that you offer after they actually buy through your email sequence. All of this stuff, everyone just wants to like scale it and then put their hands up and say, well, why didn't it work? Why am I not delivering 3X? Why is my internal team not delivering 3X? Why is My agency or whatever it happens to be? Because you need to understand all of these things first. And these are not Things that you can AI automate. These are things that you have to do. This is business and it's hard work.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Yes. And what's great is like a lot of people are able to jump into business without great products. We just think about the, I mean, drop shipping. These are good products that aren't yours. You're just white labeling. It's like again. And like, I'm gonna keep referring to Oren Clough episode of like where he was talking about like, what is the quick rich get quick rich. No, he says get rich crazy kind of scheme. And it's like a lot of people have set these up. Even a lot of agencies, they set up because, oh, I can hire someone offshore. Like whatever it is is. Entering a business has historically been hard. And what's been great is that people can create businesses much easier than ever. However, what's also been great is that people have been able to make money much easier than ever. But as I said before, if you aren't competing on price, which is a race to the bottom, you have to win with marketing and an experiential play. Like you can't just create a product like, oh, I'm going to drop ship this or I'm going to overprice this from China because I can get that same product cheaper by going direct. So if you don't invest in marketing and if you don't invest in experiential play, you don't actually have your own business. You have a copycat short life of what's working. Like you going back to it. Do you have a product and an offer that people want? And if you're not the cheapest, you sure as shit better have stronger marketing or an experiential play because someone has to have a reason why they choose you over someone else. So I'm not saying you have to compete on price and do the race to the bottom because that sucks. Margins are eviscerated. That's what's going to happen in Black Friday to most people. We pay the most to acquire new customers that are likely never going to come back. They're just looking for a discount. But when you have like we were talking earlier about like what F1 is doing, like what Cadillac is doing, like people are going back to, I need to get my brand in front of customers so that they know me and I'm doing marketing so that my advertising is more successful.

[Ralph Burns]

Right. That's pre awareness. I mean, everyone knows who Cadillac is, but obviously it's like the new F1 play in Bangkok If I'm not mistaken is a whole other sort of grab for advertisers. Yeah, it's all brand and it's upscale and it's Rolex and it's Gucci and it's all this. And now Cadillac obviously is getting into the race as the. I forget what would they be, the 13th team or the 16th? I forget which one.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

They're buying in as a new team and spending $500 million just to have and just to be able to new team. It's like with MLS it's like 500, 500,000 or $5 million, whatever. If you want to have an official sports team, you can buy into these professional leagues. So Cadillac is buying into it. Bangkok, like Thailand, the country of Thailand has a $1.23 billion bid to buy in as a location from F1 for a five year contract. Brands, governments, Cadillac, all of these bigger entities are buying in at levels that maybe a lot of the listeners aren't accessible to necessarily. But they're investing in the marketing in a way that was previously rejected because like oh, I'm going to spend in digital. I can track how this goes. You cannot track the success of Cadillac's team buying. I mean you can look at the overall, do we have more cars that are sold? But there's not this money in, money out ATM kind of scenario as it pertains to investing in marketing at the extreme levels of buying a team on F1 or having a city on the F1 tour.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah, we're not saying here that you should be discouraged or you should figure out a way to buy into F1. I'm not saying that. It's the concept of this, it is diluted in the digital world. So a lot of these brands are going offline. And the country of Thailand understands this is a money grab because they are going to be able to make money on a $1.23 billion investment. Cadillac is going to get a return off a 400, 500 million buy into F1. It's like this. I mean these are extreme examples. But big companies, we've said this a hundred times here on this show. I feel like I'm repeating myself all the time. But big companies are big for a reason. Big companies, you have to think like a big company even when you're smaller or mid sized.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Right.

[Ralph Burns]

Big companies do not go to an agency and say, hey, I'm 25 million, I want to grow. Like, what are your goals? I don't know. They have projections. You should know what it is. You should have your metrics dialed in. You need to know all this stuff. Now we're obviously we're doing performance marketing with branding sort of as a secondary play here. So there is all of that that takes into consideration. However, I'm seeing branding especially and referring back to like the Andromeda update branding, top of funnel, stuff that doesn't sell your product as absolutely essential to be a part of more meta campaigns now through this content diversification strategy.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Can I tell you a case study?

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah. So, but what I'm saying is like you can relay. Just let me finish my point. If you is like you can relay this. Bangkok Buying into F1 as a money grab. You know, Cadillac buying into F1 for 4, 400, $500 million as like an indication that this is the stuff that actually grows brands. And it's not direct marketing. They, they will never be able to say, oh, that's a direct result of our 4 or $500 million investment. The point is, is like they will see a lift over, I guarantee it.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Relationship building, all that stuff. So I asked the listener, what is your F1 event? Maybe it's going to your local chamber of commerce. Maybe it's going to a local event. Maybe it's partnering with another business. Like there's stuff that you can do and you can invest in marketing for where you're buying in a booth at a trade show where you know your customers will be. Maybe it's you investing to bring someone else to your physical store. Like if you're selling, Monique has Moonbeam Healing and she has different. She sells like stones, gemstones and crystals and all that stuff. And she'll have other businesses use her storefront to host whatever their ceremony is. Like say there's a psychic or there's some sort of sound bath stuff. People that like her products or would like her products, she invites other people to her store. I don't, I'm not in the that kind of space. So, so forgive me if I'm saying the wrong channels, but it's again, what is your formula one equivalent that you can do? Like how do you get back to business to introducing your brand. But in the digital play that like case study I was referencing is we had a client where we cut $5,000 a week of ad spend for and what ended up happening, which what we have been saying for the longest is if you don't invest in top of Funnel, you're paying more for bottom of funnel. So we 80% our efforts into top of funnel, but we 80% our budget into Bottom of funnel and then we flip it right of efforts in the bottom of funnel campaigns, 80% of efforts in top of funnel. Then you have 20% of budget in top of funnel, 80% of budget. So what we did was we cut $5,000 from the top of funnel campaigns because we were limited on resources and it ended up costing us a $60 increase per acquisition. So we collected a lot fewer acquisitions and we paid a buttload more because we invested less in our marketing that our advertising, our paid ad bottom of funnel stuff suffered significantly. So if you don't make that investment top of funnel, you're going to hurt your bottom of funnel numbers. You're just gonna make it more competitive. Now that is something. You have to have enough budget. If you are spending less than $10,000 a month, you're probably doing 90 to 100% of your budget to your bottom of funnel things. But then again, you're going to find yourself in a Runway if all you're doing is advertising.

[Ralph Burns]

So the recommendation, back to it, to that next step. I've got my $10,000. What do I do next? Know thy numbers, first and foremost.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Yes. In thy numbers we trust.

[Ralph Burns]

Yes. Perpetualtraffic.com MPI or NCAC by the way, you can figure out how much to acquire a customer for 211.comncac you should have those anyway. Like, I swear to God, like nobody knows any of that stuff.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

So.

[Ralph Burns]

So you need to know your numbers, you need to know your customers. And then after that, what will be the next step? So somebody comes to you like, yeah, all right, I just spent, I just listened to that episode, Lauren. Now I'm ready for the next step. Like what would your first, second, third step be after that?

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

So they spent the $10,000 either on like hiring a videographer, making a bunch of content, or partnering with influencers. Cause I think those were our two strategies.

[Ralph Burns]

I think they were, yeah.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Let's assume that your next step is you've got your first hundred customers, strangers. Like you've got your first 100 strangers that bought from you. Then I would say one, I'm assuming you've already established an email marketing system. And if you don't, you need to start capturing that first party data and start having dialogues with these people and set up in a way automated so that you can get them to give you feedback. Do you have a hundred customers or manual?

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah, like email, all of them.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Call them. No, call them a hundred if you have a hundred. Hey, my name's Lauren. I'm the Founder of Mongoose Media. You just purchased my Sleepy Mask, right?

[Ralph Burns]

Most AI tools are like a helpful assistant that just waits for your command. You have no idea. You type it in, you just give it a piece of content and that's a start. And it's all about the prompt, right? If you don't get the prompt right, then pretty much everything falls apart. Or you spend more time with prompts than you do actively doing the work. But at ActiveCampaign, we believe AI should be more than a passive tool. It should be a proactive partner. Imagine that. We call it autonomous marketing. It's a full AI agent that works in the background to help you imagine, activate and validate. You don't just ask it to write. You give it a goal and it helps build the entire campaign. It suggests high value segments you didn't even know you had. It predicts your deal's win probability before you even make the call. Our AI handles the busy work so you can focus on the big ideas. It's the difference between a tool and a true teammate. ActiveCampaign is the autonomous marketing platform. Find out for free [e-mail].

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

This is I got from Shop Talk, actually shout out to Tax Cloud who achieve sales with tax. Peace of mind. I thought this was really clever marketing, right? This is marketing. There's no this is marketing.

[Ralph Burns]

And then they got off on this shit for them.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Yeah, it is. Well, it depends. And it's like, hey, I just want to see, like, did you have a good night's sleep? Did you get peace of mind? How can I help you? I want that consumer feedback before I start advertising and spending more money. You got to know their angles. Because now if we go into how Andromeda is working and how advertising is different. It is a demand for creative surplus. It's a demand for different angles. It's a demand for better creative. And it's demand for creative that is personalized and relevant to the individual. Which means a lot of times before, we were creating ads that talked generically. Hey, get a sleeping mask that increases your sleep by 13%. And then you had two versions of the same creative with five different copies and you combine them. Now meta's Andromeda is saying like, get a sleeping mask that tells your husband I'm too tired for tonight. Right? Get a sleeping mask that lets your mom know I'm not ready to wake up for school. You're talking to two different avatars. You're making a campaign.

[Ralph Burns]

Great idea for us, by the way. Like some Sort of visual, like, no sex tonight, honey. Or like sex, like with a extra. It's like the subtle signals, like I'm too tired. Yeah. Anyway, but that's a different avatar.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Yeah.

[Ralph Burns]

Somebody who is, I don't know, like, doesn't pay for blackout shades.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Sure.

[Ralph Burns]

Like, we just got blackout shades in both of our, like, both of our houses. And it's like I have a great night's sleep now.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

I don't ever or even like think about the person. Like, we know your partner's on their phone till four in the morning and if it's like you're like block out their scrolling, you've got better sleep to.

[Ralph Burns]

Do and you get that feedback. There's a way to do this with AI to a certain degree. I'm not going to get into that. But however, if you have, like, if you have customer service calls or client service call recordings, you can get all that sort of stuff. You can put it into your own LLM and you can extract it. I'm not talking about that. Those are what big businesses should be doing. But what you're doing is finding out, like, why did they buy it? Instead of me just saying, hey, you know, get this sleep mask, 15% more sleep. You know, get it. Also Today, with a 20% coupon off, best sleep mask ever.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

That sounds so boring.

[Ralph Burns]

It's like the worst marketing ever.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

You're like, stop talking to everyone because no one is listening. And Andromeda is closing the door because it's like, you're not marketing. Why? You're just advertising generically. Why you, the business owner, think it's a great idea, but you're not listening to your customers. You're not extrapolating the very specifics.

[Ralph Burns]

So like, for example, like, if I was in the market for that sleep mask, I'd be like, well, the reason why I wear it is because the sun is always coming in and I'm too cheap to get blackout shades.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Okay.

[Ralph Burns]

So it's like that was my objection. And then Jen went and bought like blackout shades for everything. So it's like now I don't really have that. That objection. I don't know where she got the money from.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

So she. That could be the blackout shades. Free gift until your wife is smart enough to invest in real blackout shades. Here's our gift with you. And on it it says, like, if you think these look stupid, imagine I'll take these off when you buy the blackout shades. Or something like that. That's marketing.

[Ralph Burns]

I know. This is a ridiculous example. Everyone's like, oh, what are they talking about here? This is actually how it's done. Yes, this is actually how it's done. It's not a bland, vanilla marketing. Bland and vanilla is out. Although in Oren Cloud's book, he talks about bland and vanilla bringing in. That's one thing you're like. If you're trying to sort of sell a completely new idea, make it sound bland vanilla, when it's actually complex, set that aside for right now. Bland vanilla. And for this type of business, I don't care if you're a director of marketing or you're running your own business or you're just starting out, this is how you do marketing now. Because that's what stands out in the news feed. Think about it. If, like, you get the conversation that's going on in your prospect's head in the newsfeed, they're going to stop the scroll. And still, we've been saying this for 700 shows. Your job as an advertiser is to stop the scroll.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Interrupt, interrupt.

[Ralph Burns]

You might not buy off that stop of scroll. No, the point is, is the impression was made. You've invested in that impression.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

The attention economy demands you invest into getting their attention, and then your marketing has to retain it.

[Ralph Burns]

Exactly. That is what we're talking about here. So very manual. I love this because I love handcrafted stuff before you automate, but that would be like, you and I are actually in 100 agreement on this. So know your numbers, talk to your customers. You're like, oh, it seems like so much work. Well, welcome to business.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

And don't expect a Hail Mary from your agency because that's just. You're the business owner. That could be reckless and irresponsible. Like you said, welcome to being a business owner. I'm sure most of the business owners are like, that's. Sometimes they get stressed and it depends a thousand things.

[Ralph Burns]

But I know you're doing a million things as a business owner or as a, you know, somebody is in charge of a marketing department. Have one person dedicate a person or dedicate a half a day, block it out on your time schedule on a Friday, not on a Monday. Call customers, do it every single week. Like, that's how you understand your business. It's like that the, the we'll leave on this, that this is not some random thing that you and I have thought of. We have been talking about this for a long period of time. And when Airbnb first started, I've used this story many times. Brian Chesney was at A conference out in San Francisco, like some Y Combinator thing. He's like, yeah, I need all this money for, like, I want to scale this thing up. And whoever it was, it was. It was somebody that's in the space. I forget exactly who it was. Anyways, very smart venture capital guy. He's like, what the hell are you doing here? He's like, well, I wanted to come out here to get money. It's like, well, all your customers are in New York. And literally they had like 20 customers, so they had proof of concept. So go there, talk to all of them, every single one, and then come back and talk to me.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Yeah.

[Ralph Burns]

And so that's Airbnb. And if customers think like that, think like, I want to create something that's big and great and groundbreaking. And Airbnb, I would posit, is actually.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

That where they didn't break any ground.

[Ralph Burns]

Well, it probably broke a few mattresses. I don't know. The point is this, is that follow what some of these brands do think about. Yes. The F1 example is an extreme one as well. You have to think like a bigger business, but you also have to understand your customer and understand the math behind the numbers. Yeah, Larnie Petrillo is this week's show.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

That was fun. Sorry I got aggressive.

[Ralph Burns]

I know we're very passionate about this. So of course, wherever you listen to podcasts, make sure that you leave a rating and review. If you like this show, just tell us. So, please. But no more Importantly, get the MPI checklist, for crying out loud. Tier11.com MPI or perpetualtraffic.com MPI if you need our help at Tier 11, of course you can go over to tier11.com apply. The point is this is that know your numbers. We're going to leave those links for those shows in the show notes. Go back and listen to those, and we'll probably be doing more episodes like this in the future. As my guest, Lauren.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

They're fun.

[Ralph Burns]

So. All right, so on behalf of my amazing co host, Lauren E. Petrulo, ciao till next show. See ya.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

You've been listening to Perpetual Traffic, Sam.