Achieving Growth Through Effective Marketing: Success Stories Unveiled

Hi, everyone. Welcome to your show, E-coffee with Experts. This is your host, RanmaY, here. Today, we have Ted, the CEO of Ballistic Arts with us. Hey, Ted. How are you? All good, Ted. Before we move forward, let’s get the human behind the mic. How has been your journey so far? How did you start Ballistic Arts? How is it going? What are the challenges? And we take it from there.

Yeah, Ballistic Arts. So thanks for having me on the show, Ranmay. It’s nice to meet you. I’m pleasure. I hope everything is good in Delhi over there. Yeah, Ballistic Arts, we started in the room above my parents’ garage 22 years ago. And we started as a video production company back in the day of VHS and DVDs. And people were just like, Yeah, no, I don’t even have a TV in my basement or my business. No, we don’t need video services. But I need some graphic design done for My restaurant menus. I need a website done. Can you help me with that? We slowly grew our agency into a creative agency. We worked in junior mining a lot. We were on the West Coast, Canada. Because of that, there are a lot of junior mining companies. We did a ton of work there. Then from there, we just, one step at a time, grew and got into health care, and got into real estate development. There are a lot of real estate developers in Vancouver, and so we did a lot of work there. Then About five, or six years ago, I pivoted the business, bought up my business partner, and turned it into a lead gen digital marketing agency.

We help a lot of companies that are struggling, trying to get qualified opportunities and sales for their business, and that’s what we love.

Talking about lead gen, you host the Marketing News Canada podcast, right? How do you feel podcast as a lead gen source and what industries or niches do you feel work the best?

People do it as a lead gen source. I don’t. I have an interest in Marketing News Canada on marketing folks, learning and understanding from these experts globally. I’m not one to do things to, Oh, go get business, when I’m not veiling, having a hidden agenda. Let’s create a podcast. Let’s get business from these people. That’s not what I do. I know there’s a lot of people doing it. I’m not sure if that’s what you’re doing with your podcast, but we don’t like to do that. It’s just getting to know the human being and learn from them. If business comes from it, so be it. Business is great, and that’s fine. There is an element of PR, I think that happens with this, that if you get the word out and people get to know you, and I think that helps. But no, at no point are we looking to get business from our guests, if that’s what you’re asking.

Right. Our agenda is also to share knowledge pieces with the industry at large. If clients come in, if it is a byproduct of the process, so be it. What I intended to ask was, from a generic perspective for industries like lawful marketing, we see a lot of lawful marketing agencies hosting lawyers, advocates, and a lot of other industries as well. So podcast in general as a lead gen machinery was what I intended to ask. But yeah, I got a point there. So Ted, Ballistic Arts has gone into a multimillion-dollar business. So what, according to you, were some of the key decisions or strategies you would have implemented to achieve this growth?

I don’t know if there’s one sound strategy. I think it’s going to depend on the individual, the owner, what your vision is. I think it starts with, I had a mentor, and you can look him up, paintedpicture.com. He does this where he got us to figure out where we as the business owners, wanted to go. We go and build a forward-thinking picture of our life in the next 5, to 10 years. You literally could do this picture and you go, Okay, and it’s not just for business. Sure, there’s the business aspect, but what about family, health, spirituality, community? Yes, there are finances. Yes, there’s business. But life is not just business. Life is not just how much money you have in your bank account. Those things are a means to a lifestyle. For us, it’s where we want to go, and what our dreams are. Having that crystallized and visualized our future has been extremely helpful. That exercise, I still do. I’ve been able to hit 80, 90% of all the goals that I’ve ever written out. It’s actually on this screen right now, this backdrop, and I’ve been able to hit that.

I think visualization is one. Hunger for continued growth is important. Reading a lot. You can come out of university with a degree, but you’re not going to. That’s the starting point. If you stop learning at that point, good luck. Your career is not going to flourish. You got to do a ton of different learning after school. Even now, I’m reading four or five different books right now, and you just have to continue. You have to continue.

Yeah, it is an ongoing process throughout your career. Talking about career, you have been in this space for more than 20 years now. Now, that’s quite a long time, right? What keeps you motivated and passionate about the world of B2B marketing?

I have a new YouTube channel called Ted, and you can check it out. I talk about this in some of my videos where the love of what you do is going to be more important than talent and more important than looking for something that you think is to make you money. I love marketing and all aspects of it. I’m sure I could if I needed to start a business in furniture sales or start a business selling iPhone cases or clothes. It’s just those are things that I don’t care about. But I have a passion for marketing. I love to understand how people tick. I have a background, and a degree in communication studies, so I like learning how people interact with messaging and stories and all those kinds of things. To get to your point, that’s it. I’ve always had an inherent interest and love for marketing, and I don’t think that’s going away. When it comes to B2B, why I also like doing that I jokingly say it’s the ugly stepchild of marketing. No one cares about B2B. Marketers, they want to market for Nike, they want to market for Disney, they want to market for Manchester United, on your logo there.

They don’t want to market. Most people don’t even know about B2B companies. When they first enter the market, they’re like, What do you mean? So there’s a supplier that sells this widget to another supplier that then sells to the client that then sells to the end consumer. What is that all about? So that boring ugly stepchild of business is the backbone of our economy. A lot of people don’t appreciate that, but that’s a big part of our economies in the world. And that gets extremely neglected. Those people are typically very jaded because I don’t think they get the love, they don’t know how to do their marketing properly, all that stuff. We come on and we help them create a really good plan, a solid plan, and work backward. It’s all about money. B2b folks, they’re not super precious about their brand and whatnot. At the end of the day, there are three mid-market companies that want to put food on the table, make sure that they’re making money, and that they can continue. It’s very refreshing when we can change their opinion about marketing and see that it’s not a necessary evil that is, in fact, a profit center.

It’s a math equation, and it’s been very good that way. For every dollar you put in, you get 5 or 10 back, you’re probably going to keep paying me for that dollar. That’s what we’ve done, and we very much enjoy it. I also love the fact that with B2B, there are businesses that you’ve never heard of, that you never think that’s a business. That’s very interesting. It’s very interesting. To see how other entrepreneurs operate. I love the fact that in marketing, we can see a lot of the economy. The macroeconomics of it is very interesting. It’s a lot of fun.

Yeah, I can completely relate to what you said. Coming across businesses that you would not even realize or have imagined existed. I can completely relate to that. I’m talking about BW lead gen, Ted, you touched upon messaging and crafting that storytelling and all of that. What is your secret sauce for crafting content that attracts and converts qualified needs? Because as you know, sales and marketing, always have this challenge of MQLs and SQLs. What is your secret sauce for crafting that content resonates with your audience?

Gary Vanechuk put out a book almost a decade ago now. Almost two decades ago. Oh, my goodness. So old. It’s called Jeb. I don’t know how many Jebs. Right hook. And that’s all it is. It’s providing really good value and not expecting anything in return. Providing Very good value. I don’t know if you’re married there, Ranmay, but if you’re very desperate to go on a date, you’re not going to get any dates. No dates for you. But if you’re pretty chill and just showing, Hey, this who we are, what we do, and how we can provide love in a home, and all that stuff. It’s a fun time, all that stuff, you’re going to get more attraction. With marketing, it’s the same thing. Rather than, Hey, can you buy for me? Do you want to buy it for me? Hey, you need this. Do you want to buy it for me? Buy for me. Fuck off. That’s stupid. That’s not going to work. You have to understand what the pain points are for your personas, the people that you’re marketing to, understanding what makes them tech, and how are they losing sleep at night?

Then provide really good, substantial, actual qualified content that matters, that they’re going to read, and that they care about.

I need to.

Do that. Continue to it in all different parts of marketing, be it video, be it blogs, Yeah, sure. Seo, PPC is a big thing. Having a very impactful website, that provides good content, not garbage marketing stuff, is going to be extremely important. That takes time. That takes effort. I don’t know that ChatGPT is going to be something that’s going to be able to overcome that anytime soon. That is the secret sauce. Then you make them a fan of yours. You make them someone who loves what you have to say, your brand, and all that stuff, to show that you’re an expert. Over time, it’s going to happen. It’s not overnight. Anything worth doing is not going to be overnight. If anyone who’s a marketer is listening to this and thinks that it is, you’re going to be a flash in the pan and you’re not going to last the decades that it requires to be successful in this business.

Absolutely. I love the fact that you talked about content, and we firmly believe we are the additional solution to not write content just for the Google algos and stuff because the content is going to get consumed by humans to make that final decision of either buying a product or using a service or whatever, whatever you’re trying to sell. So brand storytelling in terms of resonating with your audience so crucial versus trying to just think about it from SEO and Google and all the algorithm’s perspectives.

I think, though, that I think one thing that people don’t recognize is culture is very important. Understanding who you’re talking to in your particular area. That’s why I’m sure there are aspects of offshoring that might make sense. But in terms of content building, it’s very tough. How are you going to go and film something at a client’s warehouse in Pasadena and stuff like that if you’re out in about different places? You got to be able to manage that part of it, but also be able to speak the lingo in a way that’s going to be impactful. If the end-user doesn’t relate to the content because it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t speak to them, it doesn’t speak to the tonality that they are used to and they like, then sure, you might be able to get the algorithms to find you, but they won’t convert.

Yeah, absolutely. They won’t because it is your brand. I tell you, while a lot of brands target the large blue ocean out there, it makes a lot of sense to ask your existing customers, what is what exactly they looked for in you when they chose you as their choice of business partner or product that they purchased so that you then understand why those people came to you, what they looked at you. Then you understand the market sentiment about your brand and then do the storytelling versus trying to please the blue ocean out there, trying to target the market and the target audience that we all talk about in marketing language. But at the same time, we forget that the existing customer base that we already have, why did they come to you? Why did they make that choice to get associated with your brand, buy your product, and use your service? It is It’s really important to do that data research and then use that tonality as well. Totally. In today’s B2B landscape, they’re talking about content marketing. How can businesses leverage personalization to stand out in such a crowded marketplace? Because everyone is doing digital marketing these days, right?

Not everybody, quite frankly. Sure, people are doing it, but they’re not doing it properly. It takes time. I think it’s patience more than anything else that takes patience, takes resources, it takes guts, quite frankly, because a lot of people are like, I’m just going to the shotgun approach. It takes strategy, right? Understanding that you’re not just doing this for shits and giggles, that you’re actually going to do this and actually, how are you How are you going to make money? I know I need to exercise. But if you have no goal as to what’s your weight loss, you’re going to maintain that, what’s the health metric, all those kinds of things. If you don’t have that goal, then one, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. You need to be able to have a really good understanding of where you want to go. Then from there, build an actual plan that’s going to get you there. Don’t just do the fluff. You go and talk to an SEO agency, they’re going to be like, Yeah, you got to do SEO to solve your problem. Or if you got to talk to a web company, Oh, you got to build a new website.

You talk to a brand company, and they’re like, Oh, yeah, you need a new logo, you need a new brand, all that stuff. That’s BS because they’re just trying to sell you the service in which they’re providing. What is different about, at least what we do at my company, is that we go and think about where the client is at today, where the competitor is at today, and then pick at the low-hanging fruit that’s there, and then attack that first. Ultimately, it’s all about measuring the results. Are you getting money from it? If you’re not making money doing this, then there’s something wrong. But it’s going to take time. It’s going to require some guts because most marketers, especially on the B2B side, want to spend as little as possible and then expect a big result. You have to do it like math. You got to do it like if you’re going to If you’re going to hire a COO who’s going to manage your entire company, they’re probably going to cost you a penny or two, but they’re going to be a bit more efficient. If you’re going to hire a top-notch salesperson, sure, they’re going to cost you a little bit more, but they’re going to return you way more.

If you’re going to invest in this piece of equipment that’s going to cost you 5 mil, I have a client that invested five million on this. I’m not going to say which client, but they invested in a big hunk of equipment on manufacturing, all that stuff. That machine, while it was very expensive, returned them a huge chunk of their business. Now, I believe that piece of machinery accounts for 80% of all their new business. It’s an investment. It’s an ROI. What are you planning to do there? You have to have a really good plan. You go Again, I’ll go back to the machinery piece. They built that machine for the client I’m talking about. They built it, so no one ever did it. But they created a strategy to go, Okay, we’re going to do X, Y, Z, build this thing, and then we’re going to be able to track these clients and then export this amount of product, and therefore, we’re going to make this much money. It’s the same thing with marketing. I think a lot of people get lost in that. I think maybe that’s why we’ve been quite successful at what we do.

Lovely. Ted, give us some effective strategies for nurturing leads and moving them to the B2B sales funnel, which is quite a longer sales funnel versus the B2C.

I think a lot of the retargeting is very important and then having lead magnets on your site because you’re going to have to attract, like you said, sales cycles are typically longer. Maybe I found your company, but my budget doesn’t reset for another three months. What am I going to do? Things like email marketing. If you have a really good email campaign, that’s an email platform that is drip marketing but has really good effective content that shows that you’re the expert, that your product is ace, and why you’ve been able to solve stuff. Don’t talk about how great you are. Talk about the problems that you’re solving and talk about the pain that the person that’s coming, that’s the lead, will experience. If you can do all of that over time, that’s fantastic.

Lovely. Give us your favorite client story, Ted.

I’ve been in business for 22 years, so I don’t know. Give me a bit more than that. What do you mean in terms of what? My favorite client story.

Anything, really a deal that you did not expect to crack, but you guys cracked it, or maybe in terms of revenue, it skyrocketed. Anything that you wish to share, is your call.

I had a client, and I got to be mindful because we’re on a public podcast here. I have a client. The client has been with me for ages. When they first came to us, an older gentleman was a professional service company. That’s what I’m going to say. Okay, professional services. An older gentleman, and during the heat of COVID, he was like, You people have lost me so much money. I’m like, What do you mean you people? Because it was COVID, and this person had run their professional services firm for probably three decades at that point. They did all their biz up. It was a small boutique service industry company. Covid is you can’t go out because you’re in North America anyway. You can’t go out, especially as someone who’s almost on the senior citizen side of life. You’re going to die if you go and go out and network. People aren’t networking anyway. It’s COVID. Everything shut down. Their COO came to us and said, So and so, we’re going to call him Ernie. Ernie is not able to go sell because he’ll die. But if Ernie’s not selling, no one’s making any money, and then the business is tanking.

So can you help us? All right. This one, You people have made me so much money. I don’t believe in it. We sign, we create a plan, start rolling out the campaigns. In six weeks, six weeks into the campaign, which normally takes longer. I told you, you got to be patient. Six weeks into the freaking campaign, Ernie calls a meeting, and he’s, Tell me why we shouldn’t fire you right now for wasting all my money. And one of my team members is like, Sir, Ernie, sir, we actually, if you look at your report. And normally, we need time. We say in our plans, that it’s going to take you four, six months or whatever to start seeing the revenue return. But we were like, We beat your biggest competition already on Google. We surpassed the competition. We got you five qualified leads. One of them turned into a business. He’s like, What? He asked the CEO, and the CEO was like, It’s a so-and-so company. He turns around, he’s like, It’s an honor and a privilege to work with you, young man. Since then, they have never called us. We count for 80% of all their new business, and they’ve been extremely happy.

It’s a nice story because they were extremely jaded, and most of our clients are extremely jaded human beings. They especially on the B2B side, just don’t believe that digital marketing can make them money. Here we are, making them money.

Lovely, Ted. Ted, finally, I would like you to share one piece of advice for us today for young folks, especially those who are trying to make a mark in this digital marketing space. You have been in this space for quite some time now, and I’ve made it big. What is that one piece of advice you’d want the young fellows trying to make a mark in the digital marketing space to keep an eye out for?

I think, like I said at the very beginning, continuous learning. You have to continue learning. This space changes every two weeks thing at this point. Right? Seriously. You have to keep learning if you want to be a technician. For someone who wants to get into leadership, it’s still learning. You have to learn different skill sets rather than technical skill sets, how to lead people, how to manage people, and how to communicate well with people. Those are important. That’s more important than the, you should take a GA4 core. Sure, you should do that, but those are table stakes. How are you going to be able to speak to human beings? How are you going to be able to work with people well? How are you going to think creatively? How are you going to be strategically minded? These are all things that take time, and it takes patience, and you got to continue learning. If you’re not learning then you’re falling behind.

Great, Ted. Thank you so much for this wonderful conversation. For our audiences, if they want to reach out to you, how do they do that?

Yeah, no, thank you, Ranmay. So ballistic.com, that’s our website where you can find more information from the company. You can always find me on LinkedIn. I look like this. There are a few Ted Laos there. There’s a cardiologist in California. I think there’s a partner in Shanghai for an ad agency, funny enough, or maybe it was an ad agency. Then there’s a photographer in Hong Kong. But other than that, in North America, I’m the guy. You can find me there. Also on YouTube, there’s @Ted. You can check us out on YouTube and Meta and all that stuff as well. Yeah, hopefully, I hear from some of your fans.

Lovely, Ted. Thank you so much for taking your time and doing this with us. Appreciate it, man. Cheers.

You’re welcome. You’re welcome. Thank you, everybody.