Contest Marketing Trends for 2023

josh: [00:00:00] Hi everyone. This is Josh Ledgard back with the On Growth Podcast, the first one we're recording in the new year 2023. my first guest for the new year is Derek Videll. So he's an expert in contest marketing has helped several KickoffLabs Customers run successful contests welcome back to the podcast, Derek.

derek: okay. So good to be here, man. I'm talking about my favorite thing.

josh: Cool. And now we're at the stage of the introduction, where we play our. music know that was

derek: it.

josh: there we go. The intro music, you can do a little dance to it. All right. This is testing out the soundboard for me. Does it get lower as I do this?

derek: Mm-hmm.

josh: Oh, cool. I did my own fade out there. All right, we are officially in the meat of the podcast. We got right to it. Cool. So how are you doing?

derek: I'm doing great, man. Got a lot of contest about to kick off start this year and I, I think it's such a great time to run them right at the beginning of the year for a lot of reasons. So we'll get into that today. But yeah, just

josh: just

derek: happy about the new

josh: beginning of the year a good time [00:01:00] to run a contest?

derek: It's because December is the most expensive month for advertising by quite a bit. I just looked it up yesterday to see what the actual numbers are. It was like a I might get the sense slightly off here, but it was like $11 and 27 cents was the CPM in December. So the cost to show your ad to a thousand people.

And then in January it's been like six 50. Somewhere right around there. So it's about half the cost. And it's really just because there's less advertisers. It's not like, oh yeah, no one buys things in January. All their money's gone, right? They, they still do whatever, whatever they wanna do, and, and you know, buy whatever's a good deal.

So you just gotta create urgencies and urgency in other ways other than just saying, you know, get your gift in time for Christmas. But yeah, it's just a lot cheaper to run ads in January and February than pretty much any other time of.

josh: yeah. that rings true. We basically stopped running all of our ads in early December because we have hard caps on like the CPM and what we want to spend per click and per lead. And we started [00:02:00] seeing that creep up after Thanksgiving and then as soon as we hit like early December, I was like, no, we crossed a line man, and we're not gonna, we're gonna turn this off for December.

Like, I don't need to compete against people's you know, black Friday and Christmas shopping ads and all that stuff. I don't need to compete against it. And so, Turned them off for a while and let the, let the business hum and it was kind of nice break from having to worry about the, the ads running

derek: Yeah, that's exactly right.

josh: But now that we're back into January I'd say the one trend I'm seeing is so talking about we wanted to talk about trends for the new year. So like the now is a good time to run an ad or run an ad, run a contest. One trend I'm seeing is people are spending I actually think after December you could, we were watching the ad prices and it's kind of plummeted back below where it was last year in our ad prices, in our cpm.

I don't know if you're seeing the same. or is it above where you were last year?

derek: So this year versus last year, just comparing month to month?

josh: versus last year in January.

derek: I'm not sure. I didn't actually look at that stat. I, I believe [00:03:00] it's pretty similar though, over the last few years. The, the pricing has been pretty similar apart from the seasonal trends. So, yeah, I don't think their, their advertising is gonna get that much more expensive.

It, it really does vary more per season and then per industry of course, than it does just over time at this point. I mean, like if you run ran ads seven or eight years ago, that's when you're getting the, you know, really, really big discounts. And that's why like TikTok ads would be something for, for people to look at that the struggle is that there's fewer people who have done it.

There's not as much of a template to follow. You're having. Go be a trailblazer if you want to get TikTok ads started for your company is why it's difficult, but that would be where you would find slightly cheaper ads right now.

josh: I haven't I haven't tried myself we haven't booted up this account in a while, but I've heard I've heard Twitter ads for various reasons are our bargain basement at the moment. If anybody wants to go to go hit up the Twitter community for advertising at least my anecdotal [00:04:00] experience being a Twitter user and on Twitter is that the quality of the ads has gone dramatically downhill in the types of products that I'm seeing Advertis. would be really easy to stand out with a high quality product on Twitter compared to the way it used to be. At least if you were, if they were sending me ads for higher quality products, you would really stand out. Now compared to the stuff that I'm seeing getting advertised to me,

derek: that's true cuz I just see DraftKings and crypto.com over and over when I go on Twitter. So just any kind of change of pace that, that's a good point. I mean, they're used to seeing a lot of new and exciting offers on Instagram and you know, if you're a coach, especially, I think if you, if I did something over on Twitter, they'd be like, why is this guy.

Even over here, it'd be such a pattern interrupt in itself to run some unique ads over.

josh: Yeah. And. outside of advertising trends, what else do you see happening when it comes to people's marketing strategies in the next year? Like, what do you, what do you think, what do you think's gonna be big in 2023? You may just mentioned TikTok, which got me [00:05:00] thinking about the next year. Is it something we've thought about experimenting with? But what do you, what do you, what do you see besides TikTok is something up and coming for marketers to keep an eye out for.

derek: So the answer is pretty similar to 2022 in that in 2022 it was, figure out your nine by 16 vertical video game no matter what you gotta do. So You know, TikTok reels, and then you've got, Snapchat has spotlight. Pinterest has these things called story pins or excuse me, idea pins that are nine by 16 content.

And then YouTube shorts, like for the first time ever, every platform is valuing this same format of content. So if you can find some way to make content that works on all of. I mean, one post that you get to post on like five platforms who are all favoring that form of content more than anything else, is such a great strategy.

It is easier said than done to make something that works on all of them. I think they're like, not every TikTok trend belongs on reels. Not every reels trend belongs on Pinterest. So it's [00:06:00] difficult to. To just do that. I will say, like, I, I think when, when people hear like, okay, just do nine by 16 on all of them, and then you actually go to post, you realize like, all right, now I got like a watermark on this one.

I'm trying to bring it over here. Like, there's intricacies like that you want to get rid of watermarks, you want to know how to do the plat, the hashtags on each respective platform, stuff like that. Right? But the, the other way that I think it's really different in 2023 versus 2022 is that it's gonna be less of.

Copy the trends, but do it for your business. It is kind of what it's been. E even in like 2021 this is what reels was. It was just like, go on TikTok, find a trend, and then be the one to move it to reels. Like that's how you. Make reels, you just trickle down tos and then now it's so much where people are having to be unique and find really their own way to provide value.

And I think if you had like a North star question to really point you in the right direction of what you should be [00:07:00] doing, it's how can I pri provide the most amount of value in the shortest amount of time? If that is through a carousel post, that will probably. The unique factor that works for you, if that is in a short video where you sit.

And you just rattle off the points and then you clip it very fast. And maybe even like background music, whatever, if like, if that's the shortest way to clearly get out your point. Cuz there's a lot of things that I could teach. Like for, for example, I could teach people like how to find your niche.

And that's something that I. I can't even like fig fit that in like a 62nd reel very effectively and, and actually feel like I've provided value to people. So like that's something that I did better in a 10 slide carousel. And it, it really is gonna be about just solve that problem or, or, you know, solve that question of how can I provide the most about amount of value in the shortest amount of time and then kind of fit fitted in the format that, that works best to deliver that.

But every social media platform is at a stage of [00:08:00] maturity where it's not. You just gotta figure out TikTok because you're just gonna go viral over there. Like it wasn't 2020, it was just like you're just gonna go viral. I went viral twice, like accidentally just doing trends and I got all these untargeted followers cuz they had nothing to do with my niche, but it was just like you could just go viral on accident.

So like there was, you know, reason to just find a way to get over there, even if you're not motivated to. . But now I also think that a large part of your strategy should be based on where you are most excited to go. Cuz if you're really not excited about TikTok or maybe as a personal user, like you just can't get off the scroll on there, so you just feel like it's just better for me not to have it.

I don't even want to be on there. Maybe you just download TikTok, post your businesses post, you know, and then get, get back off. Like, I'll do that sometimes, cuz I just really don't even want to have that app on my phone. It's just too dangerous as someone who works from home all day. So and I, and I can just do it under the guise of me thinking like, oh yeah, I'm just doing social media research right now.

So it's, it can be dangerous, right? You gotta really [00:09:00] know yourself here. I, I think wherever you're most excited is, is you know, something to say about where you should go too, just because there's, there's a lot of people in, in every market on all of them.

josh: Yeah, I think, I think that speaks, I was gonna ask you that and so you, I'm glad you mentioned it, which was, you know, it felt like a lot of the other social platforms like YouTube and Instagram were really struggling to catch up at first with TikTok and then, you know, it became that like easy way for people to exploit, kind of like as if they were like a new network that had just started.

Cuz in a lot of ways they were in that short form video, the 16 by nine video. And so I was gonna say like, yeah, I bet I bet it's harder to stand out for that reason. Like now you actually have to go back to like what really works and the fundamentals of like, oh, you have to produce content that excites you and excites your audience and reaches that specific audience. I know it's interesting cuz you mentioned like, you know, going viral with an untargeted audience and that's so. Where I see sometimes where people say, like, people will look at a contest or, or they're launching a [00:10:00] product on kickoff labs and they say, oh, I've got like, you know, a thousand a thousand views like in, in a week, but like my conversion rate's like 3%.

And that's, you know, pretty awful conversion rate for on our platform for what we see in, in usual. And I, and I asked them like, well, how are you driving traffic? And then they'll tell me, I'm like, is that where your customers are? they're like, well, no, like that's not where our customers are. And like that you get this like answer and you realize that like they were doing, they were trying to do this like trend-based marketing, so they managed to get a couple successful videos, but the videos they were marketing were not closely aligned with their product.

It was maybe kind of like aligned in terms of like lifestyle of their customers, but it wasn't, you know, it wasn't super aligned with the product. And you're getting all this traffic that. Yeah.

They're not, they're not ever gonna convert. They were just like there because the video and you, the video went big enough that you got enough people to come through and, you know, we see it, you know, even with other marketing strategies like SEO and like, we've put a lot of effort in the last year and our products like search engine marketing cuz [00:11:00] frankly it's just a place that we had not really spent too much time being really calculated about. we hit a post, we hit a, a bunch of posts that got really popular in the last. some of 'em are great for conversion. Like we have a posts on, on you know, keeping contests legal and fun and like all the rules around running like giveaways. And for different countries, like one for the UK and one for Australia. posts are due phenomenal because like people come there and like, you're not coming to a post to read about the legality of a contest unless you're actually thinking about like running a contest. We've actually had, have had, we've actually even had law firms contact us and be like, Hey, can I borrow your content? Sure but then on the other hand we had a post about we did a post about sponsored posts. And for whatever reason we now rank number one on Google for several keywords around like doing sponsored posts. But it's actually kind of annoying cuz we don't do sponsored posts on our blog. And so now we get, all we get from that is people to email us and say, I want to pay you $5 to put this post on your [00:12:00] blog. like, nope, sorry.

derek: Make it 10.

josh: I, I've gone back and forth. So I went, I did one time last in the last couple years, a couple times I've emailed them back and I say, that's too low. And then they say, they do say, they say, how about $10? And then and then I say, and I say, here's our, here's our line. So I wrote back one time and I said I said I said, for, for $50,000, we'll run a post about that.

Like it was kind of somewhat targeted on the blog with a link back to your site. And he. Hold on, I gotta go check. Like he wrote back, like, hold on, I gotta go check. And I'm like, I'm like, I'm curious where this is going.

And he came back and he said, he said, I talked to my boss. Your website doesn't have enough traffic for that.

I can offer you 15

derek: and you did it

josh: No

derek: No,

josh: But it was just, it was just like interesting because then that like the. Like for people like doing sponsored posts, I think there's coaches and there's people that make that probably do a really good job of like getting sponsored posts, boosting your [00:13:00] SEO and your rankings that way, like doing that.

I mean, that's, you know, sponsored posts is kind of, to me it's like modern influencers, like people that pay, pay to play influencers in the, in the space online and like there's a price and there's a strategy and there's a, there's a way that works. It just wasn't a post that we probably should have put up on our blog because that's not the audience that we. Sorry, that was a long story to

Yeah,

like you're restate what you said, which is like really aligning it with the audience. It's like gotta be critical no matter what task you're doing.

derek: absolutely.

josh: Wait, I just hit this train. There we go. All right. That was my smooth transition of pausing,

derek: I like it.

josh: and then doing it again so what I wanna mention at this point in the podcast, and we can keep talking about trends, is that Derek and I and kickoff labs are co-sponsoring a contest that we'll launch in the that we'll be launching with this podcast in the first week of February.

So if you're listening to this, you can already go to [00:14:00] grow dot kickoff labs.com/boss. So it's a extension of our boss marketing contest that we're running. Derek and there's a couple of cool things going on at the same time with this contest. So one that I'm excited about is that we've made it easy for for people to produce contest templates.

So the secret, top secret formula that Derek uses for his contest will be available as a template that you can just go and create on kickoff. with instructions and guidance in the template to run it the way he recommends running contests. That's super excited. So everybody, you know, signing up for a kickoff labs account, going and entering a contest can just do that, can start for free and do that, but that's not even the contest prizes.

And so Derek, I wanna have you talk about the prizes that you are contributing to this competition for February.

derek: Yeah, so I've got two different prizes in it. One is my social launch formula course, and then the other one is a two hour coaching call with me where I can advise you on a contest. We can [00:15:00] talk about a lot of other stuff. Sure. In that time, but well, I mean, if you've already got your contest ready, I might even need more than two hours.

I'll probably just be nice and give you a little bit more if we need it, but we'll just fully consult your giveaway before you spend any money on advertising. Just let me look over it. I've done about 150 giveaways now. Between. You know, my, my own companies as well as all of the other companies that I've consulted with.

So I just kind of know what it needs to look like before it works. So that's one of the prizes. And then the other one is my Social launch Formula program, which I've had for four years now been refined multiple times just based off of the, all these contests that I've run where I've just got it really templated.

Now. At the beginning it wasn't nearly as templated as now, cuz I hadn't run as many. But basically, , you know, if you got this type of company, here's what your image show look like. Here's what your caption should say, and then just like fill in the blanks. Email templates for after they enter the giveaway.

What, what emails do we send them? Because you actually want to not just confirm their giveaway entry, but send them some emails to let them know [00:16:00] about your product. And then also at the end of it, I'm a big fan of, at the end of the giveaway, not only announcing the winner, but simultaneously offering a consolation prize for all the losers in the form of some kind of discount.

So we do the, the sales emails and everything like that to sell your product at the end of the giveaway, but, What the ad should look like, how to build the kickoff labs landing page. You know exactly how that should be. It's all just step by step. So if you've ever gotten into kickoff labs and not exactly sure what to write exactly what sure what, which template to choose or whatever it's just basically, if you'd rather just follow click by click instructions, that's the, the social launch formula program.

So you'll just be able to follow that and run a large scale social media giveaway right out of.

josh: Yeah, absolutely. And so from the kickoff lab side we're going to be giving away a few things. Mm-hmm. , so we're gonna be giving away regular to the contributors. We've been doing it weekly. You might do it more than weekly, depends on the, what we're seeing. But at least weekly we give away we give away our boss market or mug. I dunno if that's reversed for you. So this is the nifty

derek: [00:17:00] I see it. It's good.

josh: For anybody for anybody that wants that we are gonna give away a couple of year long subscriptions to kickoff labs so you can run your contests for the whole year on our product. And you'll wanna stick with us after that year as well.

Cause we've got several people that just keep running contests uh, year in and year out as part of their engagement marketing. then, Derek, I'm gonna have you demo this one cuz you have the fancier microphone. We're gonna be giving away the grand prize in this it's gonna be the sure SM seven B microphone.

So, oh, there's, there's my modeling. Yep. Perfect. Thank you. So we're gonna be giving away one of these babies which is perfect cuz we were just talking about we were just talking about, you know, upping your video and your, your 16 by nine video and your, your production. And so I've found like a high quality microphone makes a huge difference.

Last There was a little bit of a tangent last night. My kids were going back and listening to early episodes of the On Growth podcast. And like, I think my son is pretty picky about the audio because he was listening to one episode and then he played another one, then he played another one. [00:18:00] He is like, why does it sound different from episode to episode?

This one sounds way better. I'm like, well, this one, I got a better microphone. That one I was traveling. I didn't have it with me. And like, and and, and so he is. And so it makes a big difference not just if you're doing podcast interviews or anything. recording a product demo, you're recording like something.

It's just a big part of big part of the job of like marketing a product these days. So the microphone's a big help in that in that space you'll sound a lot better and hopefully get better results as part of the upping your game, your audio game. I'm excited. I think be a fun contest.

derek: Can I win?

josh: you've already got a microphone,

derek: End my course.

josh: Yeah. As when we hire people at kickoff labs one, that's one of the questions is when they start seeing the contest people are doing, people ask like, can I enter 'em? Like, no, like that

Yeah.

good. If somebody at kickoff labs wins one of these prizes,

derek: Yeah.

josh: any

derek: Josh Ledgard one again.

josh: it's, it's actually just my personal grifting scheme [00:19:00] that's I, I win, I

All the time for a. Which is funny cuz Hannah who works in marketing, she's, she's like the luckiest person. She wins so many promotions. And I think it's, so I talk to her, it's because she enters promotions for all these small companies, so her odds are really good. And but I've, I feel like I never win anything. So I even a, you know, non kickoff laps contest, I hardly ever win. But some people are just lucky.

derek: I've got a couple of giveaway win.

josh: Oh,

derek: and under my belt. Yeah.

josh: won?

derek: I won, when I sold Cutco Knives my first business conference, they gave away like a $1,200 knife set and there was like a couple hundred people in it and I won that one. And then I won a guitar at this. Like county fair or something.

They were doing, like a band was giving away guitar if you stayed till the end. And I was just looking around and like it, I'm like, this is like a two hour show and it ends at 10, like. 90% of these people are gonna be dipped out by that. And so they can't even win. And you have to like use a QR code and then sign in on Facebook and then give your phone number and like do [00:20:00] all these steps.

And there was no cellular, cellular service there. So I was like, all right, if I figure out a way to do this, my odds should be good. And they, I actually did win. They, they called like two names before me and they weren't there. And then they called mine. So I was like, yeah.

josh: like contests from small businesses are a good thing to enter one. I mean, it's just, it's good. Better to support small businesses. It's a tiny way to do it. Beside from buying from them is just, you know, getting on their audience and hearing from them. What, what makes you like, want to enter a contest?

Like, you know, you as like a consumer at this point. I'm not talking about Derek, the, the, the contest person. Like you're looking at a contest, judging them si silently all the time. But like when you see a promotion either online or in person or a contest, like what makes you want to enter.

derek: There, there is just a natural marketer in me that just loves to put myself through the sales process no matter what. So I think that's like, usually like why I always just participate in so much marketing and download so many free opt-ins every time I see 'em. But other than that, I mean, as long as you want the prize.

Why wouldn't you give yourself [00:21:00] a shot for it? If you want the prize big enough, and there's that. I think people think like they, they have to have like a strong believability that they're gonna win in order to enter, but they really don't. And I've seen this in terms of like when people are like, should I give away one?

Or if I give away like 10, like 10 winners will, like way more people join. And it's like very similar, the amount of entries that you get when you're picking one winner versus 10 winners. It's just kind of like, you know, a shot in the dark to these people no matter what. But I mean, it's just as long as the prize is exactly what someone.

Then there you go. And you can maybe think of some ways to increase the value of whatever prize you're giving away. Like for instance, with this SM seven B microphone, if there is like a special edition one online, or you can buy one signed by Joe Rogan or something, and you're giving that away, then you can increase prize value in unique ways too.

Like one time I did a giveaway for the first of one of the products that we were coming out with, like, who is going to win the first one of these? Was like a way to add a little extra value.

josh: Yeah. Say we [00:22:00] see that a lot. So that's in terms of adding extra value to the prize in a non costly way, there's kind of like people get stuck in the trap of thinking about it, like you said, of like, oh, I have to either give away 10 of. or, or the other way is like, for the giveaway to be worth it, I have to give away something worth, you know, $2,000 and like, I don't wanna do that.

Like, that's a lot of money and when I don't know how many entries I'm gonna get. But like, you know, if you are a book author, just like, even like, you know, signed dedicated copies or like a meet and greet with you as like a book author if you have like a physical product, we've seen companies with success of doing. a color that's exclusive to the contests, like they won't release that color for another year, but you get the color of the product, whether it's like a t-shirt or whether it's like a toy or a game or something. You get this edition, which is not gonna be released for a year to the general public just for entering the contest.

And the people are like, oh, I want the pink one. Like, I need this color. And that excites people, but it's like a really minimal cost. You as a product person to, to do it. You know, [00:23:00] and then that exclusivity factor of like, you know, getting it early works really well with people who are, you know, doing a, a pre-launch for a Kickstarter campaign is like, hey, like get on the list and like, you know, when we ship, you could win one of our shipping ones.

But the bigger prize is like you get on now and we're gonna email you about the discounts first. Like, that is a prize in and of itself for people who are really

Yeah.

in the product that might be coming.

derek: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I, I like that, that unique color one. I've, I've done something like that before. But there's a lot of ways to add a lot of value without really adding any cost.

josh: I wonder if I did a, a special a special theme for the Kickoff Labs dashboard, if that would make a d that would that would be big. I don't know.

derek: Let me sign the mic.

josh: you wanna sign the mic?

derek: Yeah,

josh: we'll, we'll have Derek sign the mic. We, you just committed us to that

derek: it will be this mic.

josh: Okay. Cool. We are you.

Everybody is Now it's recorded. So that's what we're doing.

derek: Oh, dang it.

josh: Cool. [00:24:00] This is I, I we're approaching I know you said Riverside turns into a pumpkin for you. Have you gotten any of the warning messages yet?

derek: Nope.

josh: We're at 26 minutes and it's.

derek: I was getting worried about it though.

josh: working.

derek: Good.

josh: cool. Anything you wanted to ask me?

derek: Y yeah, I guess what are you seeing as far as marketing that's working for you guys? Are you finding that a lot of the people signing up for kickoff labs are coming from these Google ads? The search intent focus to start finding you? Or have you done some push marketing with Facebook and Instagram ads where you go out and tell marketers who you are and give 'em a free account?

What, what's worked better for you? The push of the pull side of the.

josh: A combination. So a vast majority of signups at kickoff labs come from come from either referrals of people who've already used the product at this point. Doesn't help if you're launching a new business. But then the other side of it is just that organic SEO traffic that we're driving.

We're driving people too. And then from like, you know, people that hear about contests, that's our [00:25:00] goal for the next year is like really ramping this up with contests. The. advertising, we've, Hmm. It's okay. Like, I, I always like, I have a love-hate relationship with ads. We don't do great. Personally, I think it's just a skillset of where we're at as a company of like reach out to cold audience marketing. We do much better at the retargeting marketing, so like, People that have seen a piece of content and then getting, doing the retargeting to them and be like, Hey, remember you saw that piece of content on this contest platform? Like that pulls people in back into the cycle. And we hear it from our customers too, that the retargeting and I think we mentioned it in the last podcast that you and I recorded, but the retargeting, like if you run a contest, Just putting that pixel on it from Facebook or Google or wherever you like to run your ads from.

And then retargeting the people who saw the contest, even if they didn't enter the contest, they were interested in your product or the giveaway. And so they clicked it and opened it at some point. And so being able to advertise to them brings back people to make purchases after. And so we [00:26:00] hear that from customers and it's been a reality for us as well, is the retargeting is a pretty cost effective way than rather than reaching out to the cold.

derek: Yeah, I think you've got enough cold traffic coming in from, like searches on your blog posts, it sounds like, like contest related blog posts. Yeah, if they see that, then you can convert them on an Instagram ad way easier, especially if you are running it to people who have like, been to your website in the last like seven to 14 days.

But have not purchased, I don't know if you like run, like excluding some people who have already bought from the ads.

josh: Yeah,

derek: but yeah, that's, that's another thing you can

josh: with retargeting.

we've played around with the audience, although frankly, it's like, it's a, the percentage are so small. I'm frankly fine if we're sending, like, cuz some of our ads are useful content like tips and tricks for running like contests.

I honestly don't mind

Cool.

already signed up see those and like, we're paying for it a little bit because it's,

Makes sense.

percentage than the people who just like viewed the blog post. it's not, not an unexpectedly different small percentage, but you always have that drop off in the funnel. Like not [00:27:00] everybody that views the blog post is gonna come back and then sign up, cuz they're not like thinking about running a contest that day. But you know, like six months from now they might come and run contests.

I'm always floored. We get people like this today, somebody upgraded and I always look at like where they signed up and when they joined the product, they joined our email list in 2000. They created an account in 2001. they've had that free account and not done anything with it from 2001 until now, 2023, and they upgraded. So you know, it's not an enterprise but these are, this is the sales cycle for some people. It's not like we've been reaching out to them the whole time, but they've been on our newsletter list, they've been hearing about us. They've probably been retargeted a couple times. Through it. But some people like that's how long it can take to have a relationship and all of a sudden get them to buy.

It's not ideal in all the cases for the business, but like sometimes you have to have some patience.

derek: It's one of the, the most logical reasons of why just sticking with it does work. Cuz now that I've done this for four years now I [00:28:00] start having people come back like, Hey, I, I coached with you three years ago. Like, how do I get back in that program? And I'm like, oh yeah, like I forgot about this person.

And like, they just start, you know, come out of the weeds and yeah. Past customer of business. If you're getting past customer of business, then that, that's really the, the most sure sign that y your business. Like there's nothing else that could be more telling that, hey, they, it was obviously a good value exchange because they came back and did it again.

And now you just have this layer of people that are coming back without additional marketing necessary or at least additional paid marketing necessary cuz you've just been emailing them and yeah, 23 years to convert. Dang.

josh: Not 23 years. It was, yeah, three, three years taken.

derek: Oh, I thought you said two.

josh: No, not 2001 if I said that

derek: You did say

josh: that. .

2000

No No

Yeah.

business that long. No, it was,

derek: Okay. I was like, I didn't know the internet

josh: It

existed yet.

2020. 2020. 2020. They signed [00:29:00] up 2021. They

free

Mm-hmm.

2023, just like two days ago. They, they upgraded their free account to a paid account

derek: Okay. it was like 23 years. They'd just been like, I don't know about contests,

josh: never ran a contest. In 2020, in 20 20, 20 21, 20 22, they just kept to the free. And kept getting our newsletters and then upgraded. So yeah, we have been in business. It does surprise people.

We have been in business since 2000 2011 is when we first opened up. And so, that does surprise people and we actually do it is fun. Occasionally when I'll talk to some, a customer and reali and they say, oh, I use you guys in 2012 and they tell me what it was for. And I'm like, oh yeah, I remember that.

Like, like, yeah, welcome back, cuz I remember a lot of the early customers pretty well.

derek: Nice. Yeah. So do I.

josh: Cool. I think this is a good place to wrap it. I don't want to go over anybody's recording budget. I wanna remind people like we said earlier, to go to grow [00:30:00] dot kickoff labs.com/boss and enter the latest boss marketer contest again. You'll get a chance to win coaching session with Derek, the shore microphone. uh, Kickoff labs, mugs, and some additional coaching class resources from Derek, as well as some kick kickoff labs account for a couple people as well. So again grow dot kickoff labs.com/boss. And you know, enter to win and let us know what you think of the contest. any closing words?

derek: Good luck on the contest, guys. If you don't win you, you feel free to reach out to me and just shoot me a DM on Instagram at Social Bamboo with an underscore at the end. And you know, feel free to ask me a couple questions on there and I can help you out that way. And yeah, I, I got lots of free resources to help you out with it.

josh: that was the wrong transition. I meant to start the

derek: Dang. Well, I, I thought you thought I had cut off and then you were.

josh: no. I was like, I was like gonna play the play you out. All right. This is new. We're gonna nail this next time we do. That's with the sound board. I'm just playing with it later, [00:31:00] everyone.