Navigating the Digital Landscape: Insights on Growth, Strategy, and Entrepreneurship

Hey, hi everyone. Welcome to your show E-Coffee with Experts. This is your host Ranmay here and today we have Chris Moulton who is the founder and CEO at Moulton Digital LLC with us. Hey Chris, how is it going?

It’s going. Thanks for asking. Another busy week but this week is like any other, right?

For probably many listeners and yeah, it’s underway.

Lovely, lovely. You cannot really complain, if you got a busy life, from an agency unit’s perspective.

Yeah, no complaining. No complaining from my end. Busy’s good and it’s an interesting time right now.

Lovely. And Chris, before we You know, take it forward with the questions and, pick your brains. Let’s get to know the human behind the mic. Why don’t you talk us through a bit about yourself, your journey, how did you land up in the digital marketing space, and also more about your agency in terms of what you guys do, what do you guys specialize in, and then we take it off from there.

Sure. So I guess my journey begins I grew up in the wine industry and became really adept with computers, found a passion for that at around the age of 10 programming and building computers. And so I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur at that time. So fast forward. And I began my entrepreneurial journey in San Francisco at around the age of 22.

Early twenties and at that time was more so focused on just entrepreneurship, but so there were some startups and different endeavors, but nothing exactly focused on digital marketing, advertising, or growth. And so there was a job offer I received around 2014. And a lot happened prior to that with startups and.

and entrepreneurship. But there was a job offer I received to head and spearhead an expansion of basically a non existent digital department for a traditional ad agency in San Francisco. So I went in and got really accustomed to all of the things that I knew informally as an entrepreneur, but was focused on the operations and really building this department up.

So while in the process of doing that a lot of the clients I brought in some fortune 500 are affiliated at that point. With large partnership, enterprise clients and early startups, some of them got together and said, Hey, we want you to go out on your own. You’re really focused on data driven growth metrics and really lean experimental ways to use digital marketing, not just.

To do marketing, but to achieve and, to constantly. Thrive or to constantly pursue results, right? And when something wasn’t right, it’s not like it’s a budget allocation, but more so looking at the results and making adjustments and constantly iterating off of that. So you’re having this process of understanding and experimenting.

And so that’s where, the term growth hacking, which had come around a little bit prior to that, right? That’s what you would call me at that time. So I went out on my own and was funded and the whole thing was set up by these. clients brought some people with me and the initial objective was to keep everything very lean small and very data centric yet not foregoing the creative process or You know any of the typical things but really trying to drive revenue drive results the things that we all think about when we, get to the heart of marketing, especially today.

And yeah, so I was able to do that and a very fun way and still am, and at that time it looked like, working with the NBA someone there, like an arena to try to really make sense of. like what a partnership looks like and how that actually looks monetized with offline and online touchpoints and the buyer’s journey.

So yeah, so that is where the journey was at that point. Fast forward to today I’m a, a CTO, a CMO and advisor and really heavily in the AI space, but also continue with Molson digital to consult. With early stage startups and larger companies and still focus on that data driven growth marketing so and in a nutshell that’s how I landed here.

Lovely quite a journey.

Yeah,

and talking about growth hacking, right? What you know ask me what is the secret sauce to identifying? Right growth hack strategies for You know for a particular business because it can vary from You know niche to niche. So yeah, what is your take on that?

I always Absolutely. It’s going to depend on who you’re working with but some of the things don’t change and that is establishing a foundation, right? Really getting that foundation. And when we’re talking about what a foundation looks like, that’s going to be things like SEO, right? And not just basic SEO, really trying to get into advanced SEO like entity and semantic SEO, understanding and having someone who can help you understand how to get those you know, basically get the customer acquisition costs down but to get conversions coming through.

And so the first focal point that I always look at is SEO. But knowing that brands and businesses are different, also looking at. Okay. If we need to do paid and have intermittent campaigns ongoing while the SEO is starting to commence, and we need to do something like account based marketing maybe and create some workflows where we’re able to.

target people based on not just demographic, but advanced insights, or we’re able to really create a cohesive pipeline, but that can take time. And so up to that, I really stress similar things for every business and a foundation. And I guess if we’re talking about SEO, some of the phrasing I like to use is, establish your position, right?

Nurture that position, attack tertiary positions around that, right? And continually expand, and I’m speaking specifically with SEL, but first you have to establish your position. Before you can do anything. So SEO is always step one. But sometimes it’s not fast enough. And also, in today’s world, there’s so many touch points that you have to have different initiatives ultimately.

Absolutely. And what about startups, with limited resources? What do you feel Dan? Be there, go to growth hacking strategies as you’re like, you only mentioned there’s a long term game, right? Let’s be honest about it. In a small brand fighting is the big one established one.

A difficult battle for them to sneak in. So what do you feel is, sustainable and achievable, rapid growth for these small scale startups or businesses with limited resources. Let’s put it that way.

Yeah, so aside from the foundation I spoke of I think really establishing those touch points right the social the linkedin the google my business and in addition using the tech like local directories.

These are just like foundational, but then looking at account based marketing, understanding your ICP and doing, trying to understand where you fit, where you’re not just PMF, like product market fit, but your competitive analysis, if you have competitors, what your offering is and be proactive, right.

Not wait for people to come to you, but really. Set up a nice pipeline with account based marketing and to understand that once people start coming to you, that you need to be able to convert them, whether it’s on the site or using technology, that’s able to then identify who they are and to create a nice workflow, with automated lead scoring and fortunately and email outreach, and LinkedIn like multi step, multi platform. And fortunately in today’s world with AI and hyperautomation, if you want to call it that the automation at such a such a fast pace, the ability to utilize these things and really, yeah, again, hyper automate, not just automate things.

You can do this with limited budget. You know where to go.

Yeah. Yeah. And Chris, you’ve got a background in ui ux design and obviously university of your clients. So how do you balance both of it, as your optimization and, at the same time, while optimizing websites also giving a great user experience because that can be tricky, right?

So how do you ensure that?

So I’m of the belief that when we’re looking at ICP, right? And when we’re thinking about a brand new business, for example, a new startup, a SAS, whatever it is that, perfect is the enemy of good. But I am also of the belief that I’m a perfectionist. And I’m speaking from myself as a consumer, but also an advocate for these companies and for companies in general that when they ask this question that it’s about validation of what you’re offering, legitimizing.

And so there is something to be said about the UI UX without even getting into conversion rate optimization, just draw initial contact, right? And establishing that identity and making it a clean. Very simple, elegant experience that one can, that there’s not going to be much drop off, but that is identifiable, right?

And that validates what you’re working on. So they really go hand in hand. And if we’re talking about SAS, for example. Product market fit and product led growth. And all of these things in viral loops, essentially the growth of your company, if you are in that space, as so many are hinges on the actual UI UX, many facets of it.

And this goes back to things like conversion rate optimization. So it’s actually a hand in hand. And I feel like it’s yeah like it’s a perfect parallel for them to work in tandem and has done has definitely contributed to not only the success of companies, but immediate results.

So not to skimp on that, but also if you are a new company to go to market, not to be as scared, not to be afraid to launch. But to improve to constantly improve and to get it where you want it to be but not to hold back Just because it may not look exactly like what you want.

Absolutely. Absolutely And you know talking about starting out, you also started your own agency, right?

I’m how did the initial days look like? What was the inspiration behind starting your, own thing and initial days are always challenging, to get those first clients, set up everything, right? So there are a lot of challenges, day to day challenges. So how did you overcome them?

And, how did it look like initially?

So initially it was tough, it’s been there. It’s it was tough. It was tough. And I guess what I would say is at that time when I first started account based marketing wasn’t a thing, right? It was, it didn’t exist. Like it does today. There was ways to aggregate data and enrich it.

But yeah, it was a, it was one of those things where my recommendation to myself, looking back is just because you have a few stellar clients, reputable, well known established brands, you cannot stop there. You have to continue. And so it’s if you would ask me why, Hey, why didn’t you just ever relent and give up on this pursuit?

Whether it’s entrepreneurship or consulting and it goes down to, it comes down to, excuse me, mindset, the mindset that I am not happy in that situation for myself. And I know a lot of people when they think about what they want to do, It doesn’t necessarily, it’s not necessarily a nine to five job when they see their dream life.

And so there are hurdles and getting there, but I will tell you one day I just somewhat recently look back and everything, all that hard work paid off so it’s A lot of sleepless nights and hours. And I would say you just never stop. And when you feel good and that you’re driving, you have enough revenue and you’ve got an established business, you don’t stop there because all of a sudden, if you have, five clients that are, generating significant revenue, but something happens across the board then you’re back to square one.

So you just, you have to keep going. Growing, keep going. And yeah, so

Absolutely. And moving on AI, is actually revolutionizing, SEO real time now. What, are you excited about it? And, or let’s say, what are the real time AI. Implementation that you’re doing at your own agencies, own agency.

And what is the result that you’ve seen that kind of, have made you like go, wow, about AI.

So when we’re talking about like the AI space, which, I’m heavily involved in these days through the startup world, but if we’re talking about indie consulting with, or for digital marketing specifically, the things that excite me.

So looking back to 2014 right 2015 when I was just getting going then what we’re talking about is nlp right and we’re talking about things like bart and so this was already in existence then and doing things like entity seo, so What I like now is the fact that when you’re looking at entity SEO or on page or trying to get schema on page, you can really automate a lot of that using AI.

I wouldn’t use it to generate content. I would use it to help you scaffold content and then and to help you Create a structure around what you want and then to add your personal touch just like I’m not a fan of like keywords themselves more so thematic and semantically related content and so I think the biggest breakthrough spots besides being able to really expedite the technical aspects of SEO and predictive analysis and all of these things is going to be like lead scoring.

Automating advanced workflows and lead scoring behind the scenes and not having to spend time with marketing qualified leads, sales qualified, trying to figure out what a campaign like that looks like. And yeah, and to personalize, to really personalize everything. So those are the major impact points that I see as of right now, a few of them.

There are many, there are endless yeah. So those are a couple.

Absolutely. Great, Chris. And for our listeners you have made quite a few companies now you’re yourself a successful entrepreneur for our listeners, young listeners who are trying to start, their own entrepreneur journey.

What is that piece of advice you’d want to give to them?

I would say. Use, use your growth mindset. If you’re an entrepreneur and you are a perpetual learner, don’t be afraid to use the tools at your disposal that are new and not untested, but that people have mixed feelings about maybe in your at your work environment, depending on what it is that you really just, you have to get out there and you have to try to stay ahead.

And fortunately now more so than before the resources are available. So whether it’s get on Coursera and learn about machine learning or just AI and marketing constantly work towards that. And then I would say the biggest thing that helped me is positioning myself in San Francisco when I was young to establish a network, right?

And to never stop continuously working on that network. And working on that growth mindset and that’ll get you a long way. And execution is also key and that has always been key, but yeah, don’t be afraid to take advantage of everything that’s available.

Lovely. Thank you. Thank you for the wise words, Chris.

But before we let you go, let’s play a quick rapid fire.

Yeah. Yeah. Let’s play a quick rapid fire. If you’re game for it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Okay. Your last Google search.

That’s going to be Oh probably I’m going to have to look just give me a second here. Oh, it’s installing hot jar like in a react application.

Okay. All right. Work again.

Okay.

A client whom you have said no and, might have repented later. You don’t have to name the client.

Yeah, I’ve had them, definitely. I’ve had a few in the financial sector, alternative energy sector, and luxury space.

Okay. All right. And quite a few of them then.

Okay. Yeah. All right. Your next vacation.

I’m going to Paris in a few weeks. Okay.

All right. What did you do with your first paycheck, Chris? First paycheck of your life.

I probably took someone on a date and a nice, took them out to a nice dinner.

Lovely. Lovely. That is nice. Okay. Finally the final, and then the last question will not really any further.

Why do we find you on Friday evenings after office, after all the chaos of clients? Where do we find you on Friday evenings there?

Yeah. I’ll be hanging with my good friends. Typically we’ll be just unwinding after, typically, usually we’ll go to an event or something and cook dinner and just sit around and, yeah, just enjoy each other’s company.

Yeah. Thank you, Chris. You have been a real sport and really appreciate you taking out time to do this with us. Thank you so much once again.

Absolutely. Anytime.