“In my early days, I owned a call center. We did everything from surveys for the government all the way to selling timeshare. Neil was actually an employee back then. And I can’t say I remember much about him, but we connected later on in our life, so yeah. I think that the gist of it is I’ve always been in a function of marketing. It was telemarketing back in the day. And we just got very innovative very fast and realized that technology was kind of the light that I was looking for.”
— Yohan Perez, Founder of Rank Media Agency
Neil Rubin and Yohan Perez (LinkedIn: @rank-media-agency, @yohan-perez-80883731, @neil-rubin-b498b84 Website: RankMediaAgency.com) are known quantities in the competitive digital agency market through an agency they co-founded in 2010 with over 35 employees, Rank Media Agency. Boasting a client list including Ritz-Carlton, Sotheby’s, and Montblanc, Yohan and Neil have made it Rank’s mission to assemble a team of developers, designers, and marketing professionals to help clients navigate the fast-paced digital ecosystem.
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Build Assets, Create Content, and Use Tools to Mitigate Risk
“Today we don’t want to build technology. We want to build assets online. We want to build great content. We want to build control. And I think we want to let the guys like Ringba and other technologies that we use help us mitigate loss. And that’s really what it comes down to.”
Neil and Yohan were dealt some blows in a previous technology endeavor, so now they rely on technology providers to help mitigate risk while they can focus on building up their assets.
Do Not Underestimate the Power of High-Quality Content
“People underestimate content quite a bit. We invested heavily last quarter, and our plan for 2019 is really stack on the content side. And from what I’ve learned– remember, I’m not an SEO expert. I don’t come from that world, but I’ve obviously learned quite a bit. Just banging out content is one thing, but good content ranks better. Google likes that better. They see that it’s more relevant. You know, Google’s a relevancy engine at the end of the day.”
While Bill Gates’ adage may sound stale, and is overused as ever, the fact still remains: content is king! When building up an online asset remember that high-quality content is effectively your best mousetrap when it comes to high-quality inbound traffic. Technical optimization and backlink authority are also major pillars to a well thought out SEO strategy, but without compelling content the other two are much more of an uphill battle than they need to be.
Calls Eliminate Many Fraud and Quality Issues
“One of the reasons that we really chose to focus on calls, is it eliminates a lot of the BS, right? It eliminates a lot of the fraud that happens in data. You can’t be selling someone data and it’ll take them 30 days of them buying from you every single day to realize that you sold them something that was sold to another dozen people.”
This is one of the reasons we’re big fans of Pay Per Call at Ringba. You’re able to bring the best tools from a more traditional online marketing background, and reap the benefits of call tracking and analysis software. Gone are the days of waiting weeks, or months, to find out if you’ve bought cold or resold data.
Because Calls are Immediate, You Get Feedback Much Quicker
“The crux of what calls are, is that they’re immediate. Someone’s on the phone. You’re not calling them back, telling them like, ‘I’ll talk to you later.’ It’s they’re on the phone at that moment. You get a lot– the feedback loop’s a lot quicker. So you could have clients saying, ‘These calls are awful. What are you sending me within a half an hour?’ Or the reverse.”
The instantaneous of calls offers plenty of advantages, and immediate feedback is a significant one. There is a feedback loop that you’ve got to remain engaged with, but all parties benefit from this instant feedback. This gives sellers an opportunity to establish trust in a timely, consistent manner, and buyers the opportunity to identify hot leads from cold leads, and good sellers from shady sellers on the fly.
Go Hyper-Local on Your Segment, and Offer Knowledge
“The traditional shows, Affiliate Summit, LeadsCon– I think that still works, but if I had to give advice to your audience, it would be go hyper-local into your segment. So that means that if you’re in the health space, you’re not necessarily going to find all your partners and buyers at those shows. But you will find them at associate– shows that represent the entire industry as a whole. You may want to listen, really, into some of the broadcasting that people are doing in and around that space. And offer your knowledge. Become either a guest speaker in some of these unique shows or become a guest writer.”
Affiliate Summit, Leadscon, etc. still have not lost their luster, however, depending on your vertical there’s a good chance you’ve got to get more granular than just these shows. Find out about the events which your segment really gravitates towards, every industry has got them. Do everything in your power to embed yourself within that segment, listen to broadcasts or podcasts relevant to that space, read trades and industry blogs, and once you’ve got a good footing do not be shy about offering up your own knowledge as a guest speaker or guest writer.
Final Thoughts: Playing the Long Game
“There’s also the mentality of the long game, right? To all the media buyers listening, it’s fantastic to be able to put yourself a good media-buying campaign and make a good vig on it. And you’ll be very happy, but if you intend to stay in this space, the long game to us is building and buying some of these other properties and truly, once again, giving this community that’s looking for your research, looking for your data, looking for your answers, give them some true, easy, bite-sized ways to kind of get answers.”
Always adjust your lens for the long game. Too many of us can develop myopia around a singular success, when that’s only a small part of the overall equation. The best guarantee for future successes is building a long term strategy, and ruthlessly following through with it.
