Max is a serial entrepreneur who built & sold an award-winning 7 figure ad agency. Since then, he’s earned more than 200,000+ followers with his growth marketing content. Through Max’s agency, 1-on-1 consulting, & portfolio of businesses, his work has driven $100m+ in attributable revenue for brands of all shapes & sizes.
Featured in Forbes, Business Insider, USA Today, & Market Watch, Max has consulted for more than 250 fast-growing brands’ on everything growth & marketing including Juicepress, Hubspot, Notion, Techday, Statefarm, and countless more.
Max hosts The @MarketingMax Show, and is also becoming a regular on conference stages for his easy-to-implement marketing strategies and great marketing battle-stories.
What you will learn
- How A/B testing your ads and landing pages can drastically improve your marketing results, especially with rising ad costs.
- Why newsletters are essential for building deeper connections with your audience, offering much higher engagement than social media.
- The secret to creating content that grabs attention by delivering a key payoff or insight at the end, boosting your visibility.
- How AI tools like ChatGPT can act as your daily assistant for brainstorming, content creation, and research, making you more productive.
- Why emotionally-driven content, whether it’s how-to guides or inspirational stories, is key to cutting through the noise and engaging your audience.
Transcript
Jeff Bullas
00:00:05 – 00:00:56
Hi Max and welcome to the Jeff Bullas Show!
Max is a serial entrepreneur who built & sold an award-winning 7 figure ad agency. Since then, he’s earned more than 200,000+ followers with his growth marketing content. Through Max’s agency, 1-on-1 consulting, & portfolio of businesses, his work has driven $100m+ in attributable revenue for brands of all shapes & sizes.
Jeff Bullas
00:00:56 – 00:01:49
Featured in Forbes, Business Insider, USA Today, & Market Watch, Max has consulted for more than 250 fast-growing brands’ on everything growth & marketing including Juicepress, Hubspot, Notion, Techday, Statefarm, Licorice Candy | Shop 50+ Licorice Flavors | Home | Licorice.com , and countless more.
Max hosts The @MarketingMax Show, and is also becoming a regular on conference stages for his easy-to-implement marketing strategies and great marketing battle-stories.
So welcome to the show. And so where did this marketing drive curiosity emerge from the midst of marketing Max’s consciousness as a child or a teenager or, or a child later?
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:01:51 – 00:02:25
Well, thanks for having me on the show, Jeff. Yeah, I uh I’m the son of two entrepreneurs and uh my mother’s father actually came to the United States from Israel. I think it was the forties, um late thirties or early forties. And he came to the States with a couple dollars in his pocket and died a successful serial entrepreneur and told me from the time I was, you know, two days old, whatever you do, you have to own the company. And my mom followed in his footsteps and then met my dad and he’s an entrepreneur. So I’ve always known that
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:02:25 – 00:02:47
entrepreneurship was quite unquote in my blood. And from a very young age, I was told to read the Wall Street Journal every morning, literally like elementary school. I was reading the Los Angeles Times business section in the Wall Street Journal every morning and learned very quickly that marketing is the lifeblood of business if you don’t have customers. And if you don’t have a way to get customers and you don’t have a business because you can’t keep the lights on and pay your employees.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:02:47 – 00:03:23
So I’ve always been fascinated by marketing. But then after college, I went to work on Wall Street helping early stage companies raise capital at an investment bank, a very small investment bank in midtown that doesn’t really exist anymore. And I royally bombed the series seven exam, like totally bombed it. The exam that I needed to become an investment banker. And one of my clients two weeks later looked at me after a capital raising meeting where I was helping her raise capital for her series a round and said, hey, every ad agency and marketing agency I hire really sucks. I’ve gone through like three or four of them. Can you run my Facebook ads?
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:03:24 – 00:03:53
And at the time I just bought the series seven exam, I was kind of wondering if I was gonna be a Wall Street guy for the rest of my life or if there was another path for me. And I said, sure I have nothing better to do. Let me give it a shot back. Then she gave me $2000 which was a lot of money in Facebook ad spend because it was only like $2 or $3 C PM. So it only cost, you know, $2 to get in front of 1000 customers, say literally 10 X. But she gave me $2000 in ad spend. I watched a couple of youtube videos and learned the platform completely on my own.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:03:54 – 00:04:38
And within two weeks, I turned her $2000 that she gave me into $20,000 and collected revenue for her business. I was immediately hooked on Facebook ads, Google ads, landing page optimization, started learning all the acronyms from CC to CTR to CPA and all those fun things. And uh a couple of months later, I had signed up a couple of other clients at the investment bank basically saying, hey, I’ll help you, you know, acquire customers more predictably so that we can put these numbers into your financial models to help you raise capital. And I got to the point where I could quit Wall Street and start an agency. So I quit my career on Wall Street, hung up the suit and tie and started my ad agency on Madison Avenue. Uh And yeah, the rest is history.
Jeff Bullas
00:04:38 – 00:04:56
So what year was that? Because we’ve seen the rise in prices of uh digital advertising, both Google and Facebook and so on. So what year was this was this early like in the, the two te as in 1213, something like that.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:04:56 – 00:05:00
Yeah, so I ran that very first campaign for Alexandra October of 2016,
Jeff Bullas
00:05:01 – 00:05:56
right? Ok, cool. Because Facebook really only went public in about 2013, I think something like that 14 and actually started uh monetizing because it’s, because it went public, it needed to show its investors that it could make money rather than just being a premium model. So, in other words, you got a great first off experience in terms of running ads, and got a great result. Now, are you finding that more difficult as the cost of ads on Facebook and digital platforms has arisen? How, how’s that looking in eight years later? Because 2024 doing math is eight years later. Um So how’s it today compared to the glory days? And they used to be the glory days of Google adsense back in two thousands. So how’s it today? It must be getting a bit harder.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:05:58 – 00:06:43
It’s significantly harder, it’s significantly harder and not so much because of I OS 14, I think Facebook’s kind of figured out a way around I OS 14. Um It’s really hard because it’s just more expensive. So when I started the agency, you know, my first client ran those ads for Alexander October 2016. And then uh we formally launched the agency in February of 2017. You know, it was 2 to $3 to get in front of 1000 people on Facebook ads today. It could be upwards of 20, even 30 or 40 bucks sometimes to get in front of your target clients. And back in the early days as you called it the golden era, the golden days of Facebook ads, we averaged above a four X return on ad spend regardless what the client’s product or service was.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:06:43 – 00:07:24
So, if you came to us and you gave us a $5000 ad spend, there was a really, really, really good chance that whatever your product or service was, you know, we could turn that into $20,000 in revenue pretty easily. Uh, we did that by creative testing more than a lot of other agencies. A B testing, landing pages a lot more than other agencies, but still like it was only, you know, three bucks to get in front of 1000 people. And so now when the cost to advertise has literally 10 X, you know, if it used to cost us uh Alexandria’s business was a modern kind of wellness uh spa like a med spa. So if it used to cost us $20 to get someone to book a session at her med spa in New York City,
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:07:25 – 00:08:00
we’re now in Philadelphia. Uh She’s expanded um you know, if it was 20 bucks back then it could be upwards of $200 today. Granted, if we A B test a bunch more creatives and A B test a bunch more um uh a bunch more uh you know, landing page variants and you know, maybe the algorithm is a little bit smarter. Now, even if that number is seven or eight X like that, that went from a $20 cost to acquire a customer in 2016 or 2017. All the way up to, you know, 100 and 50 to $200 today. Totally different ball game. Right. Significantly more expensive. Uh, you’re getting a lot, you’re getting a fraction, literally 1/10 the amount of customers you’re getting for the same ad spend. And so a lot of companies,
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:08:00 – 00:08:27
um, you know, that they’ll send, they’ll spend the same every single month and for whatever reason, they can’t increase their budget. Uh you know, they run out of inventory so they have to pause ads. There’s a whole bunch of other examples that I can give you. But essentially, you know, it’s significantly more expensive now. And so you’re continuing to spend five K every month for 10 years or 20 years, whatever that is, or eight years as, as you did the public math there, um you know, over eight years,
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:08:28 – 00:08:55
you know, if you used to spend five K and it would cost you 50 bucks, you get 100 customers every single month and now you might get five, you might get 10, right? It might be significantly, significantly more expensive. So that was one of the main reasons honestly that I sold my agency is, you know, we averaged a four xray and we were able to get a ton of clients by telling them we can get a fourcroy. And after you know, a while that four X became three X and that three X became two X and then, you know, the average was, was below two X.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:08:55 – 00:09:28
Um, that number might have gone back a little bit up given a few things I mentioned earlier, but essentially, uh, you know, it got significantly harder to generate those returns and, and we always worked with start ups. So our average client was spending somewhere between 5 to 50 K a month on ads. We certainly worked with clients that were spending 100 K, 200 K and we managed one client that had $500,000 in ads spend. Um But, you know, we worked with start up and, you know, if, if a start up goes from acquiring 100 customers with a $5000 budget to five customers with a
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:09:29 – 00:09:44
$5000 a month budget, you can’t run ads anymore. It’s just not a profitable channel for you. So, yeah, it’s significantly, significantly challenging or I should say more challenging to run ads today. And um you know, I just wish I capitalized more on it back when things were so cheap.
Jeff Bullas
00:09:45 – 00:10:31
Yeah, the reality is that you sort of look, if you’ve got a cry to boy, look, try and look into the future going well. Ads are gonna go up and Facebook and Twitter are gonna make it harder to grow your organic followers. Um I grew up in the glory days of the wild west of social media back in 2009 through to about 2013, 14, where you could grow followers quite organically without doing shock and awe um shit and drama, which is what we’re, you know, basically almost descended to in terms of content these days. Um I’m reading a great book at the moment called Chaos Machine, which is about the insight into uh you know how social media platforms are designed, the algorithms are designed to actually maximize revenue for them
Jeff Bullas
00:10:31 – 00:11:15
and almost minimize revenue for us. Well, for the companies. So let’s talk about content. Then how do you cut through so much noise with content today? And then you got the rise of tiktok. Um We’ve got the ongoing development of algorithms which are designed to increase engagement despite the type of quality or the type of content we’re getting is about divisiveness and it’s about Clickbait. Um We’re seeing the rise of superficial rather than deep content more or maybe seeing that come back. How, what’s your view on content in 2024 to get cut through? You’re trying to build a personal brand. I’d be interested in your thoughts.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:11:17 – 00:11:36
Yeah. Well, about two years ago, right after I sold my agency, I made a bet with my friend who could get the most Tik Tok followers in 60 days in the summer of what was that? 2022 I believe it was 2022. Um Maybe it was 2021 whatever. I made a bet with him. And uh what we learned very quickly was the algorithm
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:11:37 – 00:12:27
will show your content to more people if it keeps people on the platform longer, right? So to your point, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, whatever the platform is, its goal is to maximize its own revenue. And all of these platforms are competing with each other for attention. They want more people to spend time on their platform than on other platforms. But they also are competing for attention against Netflix and against the news, cable news and all sorts of other things. So what they’re looking for are signals that get people to stay on the platform as long as possible. And so what we learned was you need to create content that signals some sort of payoff for the user at the end of the video. So, you know, by start, like I’m in a business niche of creating a business like personal brand, you know, three,
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:12:28 – 00:12:55
three ways to increase your Facebook ads, right? You wanna stay around and to hear the third or if you say six ways, six of my favorite ways to increase your return on ad spend from Facebook ads, you say number five is my favorite. Well, now I feel obligated to stick around to the fifth one and even if people make it past, you know, the 1st 10 seconds, that’s way more than the average person makes it past any video. And so they’re gonna start showing that video more and more and more so from a tactical standpoint, your goal is always to have some sort of payoff at the end.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:12:56 – 00:13:23
Um With that said Listicles absolutely crush shit. And so if you’re posting a Twitter thread, if you’re posting a long form piece of content on linkedin, you know, I’ve found it absolutely beneficial to always lean on Listicles and always lean on seven reasons too or five ways to do this or uh six things people don’t talk about about Facebook ads or six ways, people don’t talk about building your personal brand or whatever. So I lean on Listicles. That’s always my best advice to people. And then from a platform perspective,
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:13:23 – 00:13:50
Your number one goal is to push people off of social platforms. So your number one goal is to get just enough attention and awareness on Twitter or on linkedin, on Instagram, on tiktok, on whatever it is to push people to sign up for your newsletter. And I’m the biggest proponent of newsletters. 100 and 7000 people read my newsletter every single day, literally six days a week. We send out a newsletter and it goes out to 100 and 7000 active subscribers. People who have said I wanna, you know, subscribe to this newsletter.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:13:50 – 00:14:19
Uh and they open it regularly, 40% open rates. Um And the reason for that is because when you post on Instagram, you know, only 10% of your followers, if you’re lucky will ever see your content, let alone engage with it with a newsletter. You know, that number could be upwards of 40 or 50%. So you’re getting in front of your target audience more. And when people are scrolling Instagram, when they’re scrolling tiktok, when they’re scrolling linkedin, they’re looking for something very different than what they’re looking for. When they’re sitting in their email inbox, they’re looking for quick dopamine hits on, on social platforms, whether it’s linkedin,
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:14:20 – 00:14:56
even though it’s B to B, right? They’re looking for B to B. Dopamine hits inspiration. I’m gonna get that job. I want to start the company that I want. They’re looking for Dopamine hits with the newsletter. It allows you to go way deeper and allows you to build real trust just like we’re doing here with this podcast where you feel like, you know, you’re connecting with the audience and the audience feels like it’s almost like they’re reading your brain, right? So that’s another thing pushing people over to the newsletter platform. And then from there, I think it’s just really a matter of finding your voice and finding your mission, right? What is the thing that you believe about your target clientele or your target audience? Whoever you want to grow your audience of, what’s the thing that you believe? If they do,
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:14:56 – 00:15:18
they will accomplish their goals, whatever that might look like and then finding 100,001,000 different ways to tell that story, a bunch of different ways, the biggest best social creators, no matter the platform, whether it’s Gary V, Alex or Mosey Greg Eisenberg, uh Mr Beast, it doesn’t matter. They have like one main thing that they believe and they figure out how to tell that story 100 different ways and how to share that 100 different ways.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:15:18 – 00:15:44
You are no different. You need to find that and you’re competing for attention against Mr Beast and Gary V and Cody Sanchez and Greg Eisenberg and Soho Bloom and all these people, you’re competing against all of them, right? So you need to figure out what is the thing that you can plant your flag in the ground and say, I believe this, I believe if you do this, you will accomplish your goals, you’ll accomplish your dreams. Uh You’ll build the company you want to build, you’ll find the success of Facebook as you want to find if you do this one thing,
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:15:45 – 00:16:20
right? And it just works over and over and over again, right? Gary V says, you know, if you post more on social, you’ll accomplish your goals, whatever you’re doing, whatever your business is, wherever you are in the world. If you post more on social, you’ll accomplish your goals, Cody Sanchez, millions of followers. If you buy a boring business, you’ll accomplish your goals. Whether that’s escaping the 9 to 5 better using uh or better investing your money getting a higher roI on your investment. Don’t put it in the stock market. Put it into a boring business, right? Justin Welsh, I believe if you build an audience, you’ll have complete freedom for the rest of your life, right? If you do X, you will achieve your goal, you need to fill in that formula.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:16:20 – 00:16:31
You need to create content that has some sort of payoff at the end and signals at the beginning, right? That way the algorithm pushes you more and then you need to push people off the social platforms onto a newsletter, forgive me if I’m rambling, but I can go.
Jeff Bullas
00:16:32 – 00:17:09
It makes total sense. And uh you’ve been playing this game, watching it evolve for a long time. So it makes total sense to me and I’m sure to a lot of male listeners now on building an email list, you actually love the, you know, insight in terms of dope mean hit short content, but then you want to get them onto your platform, your email list. So basically you’re moving from rented platforms, which is where you don’t have any control to your own platforms where it’s actually your own property, it’s your own digital asset and that’s where you can really monetize.
Jeff Bullas
00:17:10 – 00:17:23
Now. What are some of the tactics beyond social to newsletter? Do you offer something for free to help people achieve their goals? Like is it an ebook? What are some of the things and incentives for people to actually hit subscribe. What are some of the incentives you do?
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:17:24 – 00:18:00
Yeah. So uh I’ve actually started working with a lot of different brands to help them grow, write and monetize their own newsletters. And one of the things I work on a lot with clients is getting on this tool called unbound.com. It’s my favorite marketing tool on Planet Earth. It’s an, it’s a landing page A B testing tool and I actually have a template. If you listen to this and you wanna, and you want the templates totally free. Uh DM Me on Twitter and say that you listen to Jeff’s podcast and um you want the template, you could plug it right into unbalance and essentially I create four or six or eight different variations of a lead magnet.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:18:00 – 00:18:27
I drive a bunch of traffic to that unbounded landing page. I split the variations up. So you know, if I have 10 variations of that landing page, 10% of the traffic who visits the page will see one lead magnet, 10% will see another lead magnet, 10%. We’ll see another lead magnet. We can start with four, right, four different people who land on it will see a different lead magnet. And then after, you know, I drive 405 106 100 people to that landing page, I can see the conversion rate
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:18:28 – 00:18:43
of which lead magnet gets the most people to sign up for the newsletter and then I can go build that lead magnet. You literally don’t even need to build it. Right? Then you can go back to everyone and say, hey, I finally built it or hey, sorry, there was a snag with Zappia with my email automation system, whatever. Here’s the ebook, right?
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:18:43 – 00:19:27
But if you can, over the course of a week, come up with 46, 10 different lead magnets that you think your target audience might want a B test for. Drive hundreds of people to the page and see which one actually gets the people to convert. I’ve been able to increase my newsletter sign up landing page conversion rate from 13% upwards to 50% by doing this 50%. I’ve tested more than 100 and 50 different variations and unbounded my newsletter landing page and it’s just wild, right? Talk about how we started this conversation about how the cost to advertise on Facebook has gone up, right? If you’re spending a dollar to get someone to land on your landing page and your landing page converts at 13% right? For every 100
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:19:28 – 00:20:01
people that visit your landing page, you’re getting 13 signups, right? You’re spending roughly $10 per sign up. So I don’t, I don’t do public math, but you’re spending roughly $10 if you were to round up a round down whatever the number is, right? But if you were to increase that conversion rate from 13% to 50%. Right. Suddenly we have 50 and so now we’ve been able to lower our cost per subscriber down from roughly $10 to roughly $2. Right. And so it behooves us to, I believe if my public math is right. Right. Fif 100 divided by, uh,
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:20:01 – 00:20:31
50 it’s two bucks. Yeah. So, you know, it behooves us to A b test the living daylights out of our landing pages. And it’s something I talk a lot about with clients in my fractional CMO. Work that I do. I work with a lot of brands on fractional CMO uh as a fractional CMO. It’s a lot of the time what I work with clients on from the newsletter consulting thing. Everyone spends so much time focusing on ads, ad creative gotta get UGC, gotta get pictures, gotta get videos, gotta get copy and they forget about what happens after the people click on the ad.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:20:32 – 00:20:55
That is the easiest way to lower your cost per acquisition and increase your return on ad spend or your return on investment on whatever it is. Wherever the traffic is that you’re driving. If it’s social content, you’re driving it to your Lincoln Bio doesn’t matter. A B testing your landing page. Yeah. With the simplest cro in unbound is by far and away. The easiest way to lower your CPA and increase your return on ad spend is reality.
Jeff Bullas
00:20:56 – 00:21:05
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So remote calculations you maybe spent 200,000 plus driving traffic to your landing pages to get email subscribers.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:21:05 – 00:21:08
Last year. I spent over 100 and 50 k of my own money.
Jeff Bullas
00:21:08 – 00:21:09
Yeah. Ok.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:21:09 – 00:21:18
Yeah, I got it down to like a buck 30 a buck 50 when I was really cranking at 20 K a month.
Jeff Bullas
00:21:20 – 00:21:58
So the next question in terms of uh is just a quick question about unbound, in terms of uh is unbounded using A I or anything to actually optimize and give you data, not just, and you need to load up your landing page. Is that correct? Yep. OK, cool. Um Now the newsletter is uh you know, sounds like you’ve got great open rates. So with a newsletter, what’s the number one thing you’re trying to get across? Are you getting people to try and subscribe to a paying newsletter? Is it trying to be, you know, fractional CMO A S you know, CMO what’s the objective of the newsletter you’re wanting to build a personal brand? OK.
Jeff Bullas
00:21:58 – 00:22:14
You know, I aspire to be Gary V for example. So what’s the goal of the newsletter monetization wise or personal brand wise? Is it, is it premium first and then go for the Jugular later? What’s the, what’s the goal?
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:22:16 – 00:22:40
Yeah, I mean the number one goal is to monetize. So we work with huge brands and small agencies that want to get in front of the marketing max audience. Um you know, in our first year, we averaged about 50 K a month in ad sales per month uh with a small rather small newsletter as we were building up to 100 K. Now, that number is obviously higher. But yeah, the number one goal is to monetize with partnerships.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:22:41 – 00:23:08
So we work with monday.com and Notion, hubspot, mailchimp. Um A bunch of like huge companies that would try to sell to marketers or to start ups in the marketing realm. And then we also work with a lot of agencies who want to sell marketing services to the marketing max audience. Um So that’s first and foremost, like the, the number one goal of the newsletter. Number two is and I guess these are kind of interchangeable. But yeah, number two is just to build the personal brand. I can build a way stronger connection with people
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:23:09 – 00:23:31
uh and teach them, you know, my marketing skills and my marketing strategies and tactics and growth hacks via a newsletter way more than I can via social. And so yeah, the goal is just to build the personal brand and eventually be able to sell them anything. The cool thing about the newsletter is because it’s marketing Max’s newsletter, but it’s called Growth Daily. And we have and you can go to Growth daily.com to check it out.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:23:32 – 00:24:13
Sorry, shameless plug. You could see some of our old content you don’t need to sign up for. Uh You can see some of our insights of the day and, and all of those news. If you scroll down on the bottom of the home page, you’ll see our most recent like marketing industry news. But the cool thing is because we work with sponsors like money.com and Hubspot and Notion and a bunch of other sponsors when we don’t sell ads at, at sticker price, right, at rack rate. I can plug in my own products or service into the newsletter without people actually knowing that it’s mine or without people actually knowing that I own a percent in that business. And so it allows me to spin up new businesses or new projects or new offers or new products way way way faster
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:24:14 – 00:24:51
without needing to stake my reputation on it as much because I can run an ad to a landing page that IAB tests and unbound, take a few sales calls and be like, oh, you’re max from the news. And I’m like, yeah, I’m considering starting this new business. That’s a seo agency, that’s a ghost threading agency here. That’s an agency reviews platform or whatever it is. It’s like a huge sandbox for me to play around and, and test building a bunch of different cool sandcastles and a bunch of different cool projects. So yeah, number one, obviously, monetization, gotta put food on the table for me, my wife and my dog. He needs bully sticks. But uh you know, number two is to build, build that audience in a way more relation or re relational uh deeper, deeper relation,
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:24:52 – 00:24:55
context and situation than just posting on social media all the time.
Jeff Bullas
00:24:56 – 00:25:29
So in terms of uh you know, A I has been hot now for nearly two years with Chat G BT being launched into 2022. Um So how do you use A I for marketing? Um if you do and how do you use A I for content creation? And they’re the, maybe the two biggest areas of chat chips used in marketing. So, you know, funnels landing pages, copy, you know, deep content, social media content. How are you using A I day to day for your content creation and marketing?
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:25:30 – 00:26:08
Yeah, it’s funny before the pandemic, you know, we had 15 people full time at the agency. We had an office in New York City and I’d walk into the office every day and there’d be, you know, a handful of people there that I can kinda go back and forth with and strategize with and brainstorm and you kind of play words off of each other for tag lines and for strategies. Uh, I don’t have that now. I work out of my garage now I move to the suburbs, out of Manhattan and, uh, you know, live in the suburbs and I don’t have that kind of back and forth ability to, to brainstorm with someone. I don’t have a writing partner if you will or, or someone to kind of bounce ideas off of. And so for me, chat GP T has replaced that
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:26:09 – 00:26:33
I say I always use Chat G BT Daily as a research partner, as a writing partner, as an inspiration partner to help me come up with new content ideas, help me think of analogies to uh to, to, you know, explain and, and get across my message easier. I use it to find stats and find research to get my point across. So if it’s, I just know that,
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:26:33 – 00:27:17
You know, x percent of people who land on a landing page typically bounce. I can ask GP T. Hey, can you find a study that says, you know, this happens and sometimes there isn’t a study and I need to rethink it. But yeah, I use chat GP T really as, as kind of the, the friends as sad as that sounds in in the office that can help me think differently and think outside the box and, and I can kind of brainstorm with brainstorm, tag lines and messaging and body copy and even strategies, right? Like I’m trying to reach this target audience, you know, what are examples of five big companies that have used a very specific marketing strategy to reach that audience. And it’ll give me those ideas right? At versus before the pandemic. And before we had chat GP T
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:27:17 – 00:27:38
I would look up at my laptop and I’d say, hey John or hey, Mark or hey, whoever was on my team, right? Uh Sarah and I would say, you know, do you, can you guys think of a big brand that targeted, uh you know, women who are interested in yoga, any like interesting marketing strategies or tagline for that? And now I have a chai pit for that.
Jeff Bullas
00:27:40 – 00:28:25
Yeah. So the reality is too, I think a lot of people are still getting their head around because we’ve moved so quickly from uh A I zero to A I everywhere almost. Um Apple just announced a new A I enabled phone to help with Siri and so on. So really, I think people are worried about me replacing them. The reality is that it’s really an enhancement of them. In other words, it’s ee even look at Microsoft’s name for its A I tool. It’s called Copilot. Uh We have A I companions, we have A I assistants. So I think people are still getting used to this fast moving landscape and ecosystem trying to work out. How do I use A I chat GPT? Um You can create specific tools which actually can create sequences and so on. So,
Jeff Bullas
00:28:26 – 00:28:42
but it’s really interesting that you see that as an assistant to you, not as a replacement for you and also you can be much more productive. So how much more productive do you think you are? So you said you replace maybe 15 people with you and you and your dog. Is that how it’s working?
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:28:43 – 00:29:13
Uh Junior who’s napping right behind me is uh is maybe uh 1% helpful when it comes to these marketing strategies and taglines and everything else. I certainly haven’t replaced those 15 people, but I am miles ahead. I don’t know of a number. I am at least 3 to 4 X more productive as a content creator as an entrepreneur leveraging A I, no questions asked, no questions asked. Uh I think a lot of people, they just don’t know how to use it
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:29:13 – 00:29:38
and the prompts that they asked and, and the way that they ask uh chat GP T they, they just don’t know how to get a lot out of it. And um you know, my, my friend, this is, this is, this might be totally unrelated, but in my, in my head, it’s completely related when I was in college, Snapchat came out and my friend was telling me you have to get on Snapchat. All of the girls are on Snapchat Max. Like you have to get on Snapchat. All the girls are on Snapchat but download Snapchat
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:29:39 – 00:30:00
and a week went by and I sent like two snaps, right? Two messages via Snapchat. And I went back to my friend John and I said, dude, I have no idea what in the world. I snap. I don’t know what to send these people. My friends let alone the girls, but like my friends are on, I don’t know what to send you. What do I send you on snap? And he said you have to get in the mindset that everything you do could be a snap.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:30:00 – 00:30:22
You have to get in the mindset that if you’re standing in line for a burger on campus and you see something funny or you see something interesting or the line is really long. You could take a selfie and you could just write like, man, the burger, the line at the burger, whatever the name of the burger stand is, is so long today. Uh And that’s the snap. But you just gotta get like in the mindset that anything
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:30:22 – 00:31:07
could be a snap. And I think it’s the same with chat GP T I mean, it’s the same with A I, we have to get in the mindset that anything we need help with could be assisted by A I. And what that leads to is not every single thing you do being, you know, snapped, not every single thing you do finding its way onto Snapchat. And it doesn’t mean that, you know, every single thing you do I can help. But if you mentally get in the mindset of like, could I send this as a snap or could you help me with this? You’re gonna lead to, that’s gonna lead to a lot more opportunities in ways that you didn’t even realize you could leverage A I in the same way that I didn’t realize I could send 500 snaps a day.
Jeff Bullas
00:31:08 – 00:31:18
Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s a great point that, uh, you’ve got to say, how could I use a, I for this as in almost your default question, don’t you?
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:31:20 – 00:31:20
Yeah.
Jeff Bullas
00:31:21 – 00:31:53
Um, I use it to summarize a book. I say, give me a summary and the takeaways and the main points for, uh, this, uh, book title and author. And, uh, it’s fabulous. I still do, I still do a lot of important reading, but I still do a lot of summaries as well. So it could be the book I’m reading or it could be a book. I say, well, I’d really, let’s see how good this book is or is it relevant for me to actually read it? Uh, the, uh, in terms of, um, you know, a thing to a lot of,
Jeff Bullas
00:31:54 – 00:32:28
a lot of the jobs that a lot of apps that break through are solving problems. In other words, Uber solved a taxi problem. They were hailing a taxi. Um, uh, basically, you know, Airbnb solved the issue with having bikes going expensive, but hotels could actually use people’s homes. The list goes on. So I chatted yesterday, uh, with a guest and he said that what you need to look at is what are the 10 biggest problems that my business has and how could I help with that? And I thought that was actually a rather good insight.
Jeff Bullas
00:32:28 – 00:33:07
So, you know, basically my biggest problem is creating content. How can I use chat GT to do that? Takes me a long time to do a marketing funnel. How can I use a chat chip to do that? I need to do research. How can I use chat GP to do that? These are all. So it’s really interesting. Now, the other question I have is that it was actually more than one, but number one, I want to know. So in terms of growing your followers, a lot of people would be interested in growing your followers because apparently in the United States, every man, dog, woman and child wants to be an influencer, right? So
Jeff Bullas
00:33:08 – 00:33:38
the numbers are in the 50% plus for a certain generation which I don’t know. It’s Gen X, Gen Y or Gen blah, blah blah because we’ve got so many gens now I, I’ve run, we’ve run out of alphabets but millennials and so on. So getting followers is about becoming an influencer. Um Now you’re not a bikini model, neither am I? So how do you get followers without wearing a bikini? Let me um what’s your secret?
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:33:39 – 00:34:18
That might be my favorite question I’ve ever been asked on a podcast or on a stage uh in all my speaking gigs or podcasts I’ve ever been interviewed on, how do I get followers without wearing a bikini? Well, first of all, I will say if I wore a bikini. I think um I would either get a shit ton of followers or I’d probably lose all of my followers. So I will not be doing that anytime soon or reach the wrong or, or yeah, or reach the wrong audience that have no interest in working with me as a fractional CMO or getting my help for their newsletter um or some of the A I stuff I’m working on now. Yeah. Uh how do you get followers? You have to say things that people look forward to reading,
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:34:19 – 00:34:44
right? Like at the end of the day, that’s all it boils down to, right? People use the word influencers because if you have a lot of followers, you can influence people’s decisions, you can influence what they watch, you can influence what they read and what they buy. But at the end of the day, all it really comes down to is creating content that people want to look forward to seeing. And so, you know, you’re in marketing, I’m in marketing. I think a lot of people listening to this are entrepreneurs, maybe marketing agency owners or
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:34:44 – 00:35:17
you know CMO S at companies correct me if I’m wrong any of that. But like, you know, people in, in the B to B space, there’s only a few real ways to do that, right? Number one, you provide crazy amounts of value with how to content. Here’s how to use A I, here’s a prompt to use A I to create more content or use A I to do research or use A I to do whatever it is, right? Creating a lot of content. You could also create inspirational content, telling stories of entrepreneurs or telling stories of marketers who struggled and found success, right? Uh You know, the one of, one of my great mentors told me
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:35:18 – 00:35:48
this amazing piece of advice, which is like no matter what at the end of the day, your content needs to tie back to some sort of emotion. And so how to emotion, right? The how to content would tie back to some sort of emotion of, oh I can do this. Oh Wow, this is easy. Like, you know, I, I can accomplish my goals. I can do this. Inspiration would tie back to some sort of, you know, optimistic emotion or some sort of I can do that or not. I can do this, but some sort of uh you know, if they can do it, I can do it to emotion. Like if you tie everything back to an emotion
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:35:48 – 00:36:25
with how to content or with inspirational content uh or story content or um you know, here’s how I do Xy and Z, right? I think that’s another huge kind of pillar for a lot of B to B creators. Like here’s how I use chat GPT to write my content or to help me brainstorm content ideas. Here’s how I can convert subscribers of my newsletter to customers of my services or of my products or my offerings. Um you know, whatever it is, you know, it needs to tie back to some sort of emotion and specifically for B to B some sort of value or some sort of real, real real value.
Jeff Bullas
00:36:26 – 00:36:54
So leading on from that trading, creating great value comes down to creating deep content, substantial content that matters. Um And so where do you store that content? Do you? And on top of that, then, uh do you have an SEO strategy to build digital assets that actually build online authority through Google? So where do you host your digital asset content? Where, where do they sit?
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:36:55 – 00:37:36
Yeah, I mean, you did the math and, and I didn’t even know this. So I’ve been doing marketing for eight years, I guess, you know, I’ve been doing marketing via projects before that, but I’ve been kind of offering this as a service and helping other companies with marketing since 2016 for eight years. As of three months ago, I just now started to get into Seo for myself. I just now started to house all of my content on Growth daily.com. Um I’m getting as many backlinks as I possibly can within a budget. I’m hosting a lot of content on Growth daily.com. Uh But essentially, you know, my content is hosted on social platforms in my newsletter and then all the best newsletter content makes its way under dot com. Um,
Jeff Bullas
00:37:36 – 00:37:49
cool. Yeah, because it’s, it’s almost two schools of thought. There’s people that actually go for paid traffic and then there goes for organic traffic. And I think the truth sits somewhere in the middle in terms of how you should be operating. Um,
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:37:50 – 00:37:54
depends on your budget. Right. Everyone has, has either more time or more money.
Jeff Bullas
00:37:54 – 00:38:02
Yeah. Well, the reality is, it costs money and time to create content. So in fact, there’s your ad budget right there. Yeah,
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:38:03 – 00:38:42
I mean, creating, creating content really shouldn’t take much money unless you hire a ghostwriter or you need a video editor. Um But yeah, you’re either paying with your time or you’re paying with your wallet to get in front of people. Right. At the end of the day, marketing comes down to one thing, getting people’s attention and converting that attention into dollars. I guess that’s two things, but like 11 strategies, right? Getting people’s attention and then converting that attention into revenue, right? That’s all marketing is. Uh And so you’re either getting people’s attention with dollars giving it to Lord Zuckerberg or Sergei brand and, and the, the family over at Google or you’re getting that by, you know, investing time to create content to play the algorithm game.
Jeff Bullas
00:38:43 – 00:39:04
Exactly. So just one last question uh in terms of what’s your primary goal in terms of messaging your doing to the audience? Um what’s, what’s your clear singular, most powerful motivating goal that you’re trying to achieve for marketing Macs?
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:39:06 – 00:39:08
What is my goal with marketing Max or
Jeff Bullas
00:39:08 – 00:39:28
what? Yeah. What’s Yeah, in other words, what’s OK, let me, that’s actually mis said, what is the main message of marketing max? Is it growth, for example? So you could call the, you know, growth daily newsletter the name of the newsletter. So is that it, in other words, how did people grow their business?
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:39:28 – 00:39:44
Yeah, I, I think it’s uh I my, my goal is to help make growth marketing easier for you and to niche that down even a little bit more. It’s, you know, I, I wanna help make marketing easier for entrepreneurs and I wanna help entrepreneurs grow their business easier
Jeff Bullas
00:39:44 – 00:39:49
and that’s woven into all your social and all your content and your newsletter, obviously 100
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:39:49 – 00:40:35
percent 100%. Now that’s taken on different forms. Like when I was running my agency, uh we worked with companies of all shapes and sizes and all industries. A lot of hospitality brands, um a lot of software businesses, but the last two years, it was predominantly like 75-80% Ecom brands. And um I think Ecom just kind of had a boom and bust a little bit. And especially when Facebook ads were a fraction of what they were and everyone during the pandemic had stimulus checks and wanted to shop and they couldn’t go to stores and shop in person. So I’ve kind of gravitated more away from ecom and worked more with client service businesses or just anyone that kind of focuses on leads and, and clients more than customers. Um
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:40:36 – 00:40:43
But yeah, that’s the marketing max goal to help make marketing easier and growing your business easier for entrepreneurs. And
Jeff Bullas
00:40:43 – 00:40:46
so your target market is B to B instead of B to C. Is that correct?
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:40:46 – 00:41:24
My goal these days. Yeah, is, is to work with more B to B companies. Yeah, I mean II I am the fractional CMO of two different ecommerce brands right now that are all doing, you know, north of seven figures in revenue. I still know this, the skill set, I still know the game and the strategies and I still have the skill set to, to execute for them. Again at the end of the day, it just comes down to getting attention and converting that attention into dollars doesn’t matter what you’re selling if you can do that in, you know, in a cost effective way, you have a, you have a, you have a real business, right? But um you know, I’ve just found these days I’m having uh more, I’m just enjoying it more working with B to B rather than B to C.
Jeff Bullas
00:41:24 – 00:42:10
All right. Cool. So two more questions and I’m gonna, I’m gonna pose the last one first. Um And then I’ll get your answer after I ask you the next question. So if you had all the money in the world and you could do whatever you wanted, what would you do every day that would bring you deep joy and happiness? And I’m not talking about getting drunk on a beach. Um So or drinking tequilas till you can’t remember. So just think about that park for a bit also. So, and the first, the next question is, how do they find you marketing Max? Where do you live in this digital ecosystem world? So, uh do they search things? You know? Tell me.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:42:11 – 00:42:48
Yeah, so I spend the majority of my time on Twitter. So you can find me marketing Max on Twitter or on X as we’re supposed to call it. Now, uh If you want to learn more about me or potentially work with me, you can go to marketing Max dot IO. There’s a fractional CMO kind of form there if you want to work with me. But you could also just find me on Twitter and DM me. Uh the question of, you know, if I had all the money in the world, what would I do every day? Well, uh I, I imagine it’s gonna change because my wife is 12 weeks pregnant. So come six months from now, it might be a little different. But right now I would wake up first thing in the morning and I go play 18 holes of golf
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:42:48 – 00:43:12
every single day. I came home. I take my dog to the park and then I would have some lunch and then go into some sort of an office where I run some sort of a startup incubator. Uh I love working with startups and working with businesses to solve growth, specific marketing specific uh and sometimes product specific challenges. And I would just love nothing more than to walk into a room of,
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:43:13 – 00:43:54
You know, 10 or 20 entrepreneurs uh all working and, you know, struggling with different things that I or I can bring in friends and mentors to help them with, uh help them accomplish their goals. I’ve worked for a couple of different accelerators and it’s just the, the energy is, is like a drug to me, it’s just like the most fun thing in the entire world. So, yeah, uh you know, I sold my agency not enough to retire forever, but whenever I sell my, my next company or two, hopefully I have enough to start an accelerator program, raise a fund, do something a little bit, uh you know, similar to Y Combinator in Los Angeles or New York. And that’s what I would do. Help companies grow and play golf every day, play with my dog.
Jeff Bullas
00:43:54 – 00:43:58
So a bit of the intersection of marketing and golf. There you go.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:43:59 – 00:44:02
Golf is life. So, yeah.
Jeff Bullas
00:44:03 – 00:44:05
So what, so, so what’s the handicap you’re playing off then?
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:44:06 – 00:44:25
Uh these days I’m not playing enough. So I’m probably like a four or a five. Wow, that’s good. Yeah, I played competitively when I was a kid and I walked on to a golf team in UNI. As you guys would say in college, um, got my ass handed to me by a bunch of kids who are much better than me, but I still love it more than anything else.
Jeff Bullas
00:44:26 – 00:44:52
Yeah. Well, it’s like I do love it because it’s a great walk in the park and I try not to take it too seriously because, um, I, I interviewed, uh, the guy that rescued Harley Davidson back in the eighties. And, um, he was asked a question, um, who’s your competition? In other words, who’s the competition to Harley Davidson? Was asked us at a conference boardroom, um, at a conference and he said golf
Jeff Bullas
00:44:56 – 00:45:00
because the reality is it’s competing for your weekend.
Jeff Bullas
00:45:03 – 00:45:17
And he still says something about golf, which I found interesting and like, uh, you’re, you can play golf better than me. Um, so, so this is even more relevant to me is it’s where you spend so much time every day to just be average.
Jeff Bullas
00:45:21 – 00:45:21
And that’s
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:45:23 – 00:45:45
average is subjective in golf because 90% of golfers never break 100. So if you play any sort of consistency or like any, if you play consistently at all, you’ll break 100 and you’ll be above average, it won’t feel like it, but you’ll be above average. I don’t know why they made par 72 on most courses. It makes no, no, no, no, no sense. Like literally no sense.
Jeff Bullas
00:45:45 – 00:46:25
Well, I have broken 100 a few times, so I’m grateful for that. So it looks like I’m so, that’s excellent. But um Michael Max, thank you very much for your time and insights. I’ve learned a lot and uh that’s what I love about doing this show is that um I’m very curious and love learning. So, uh in fact, I sit on my ass most mornings and read and take notes, which goes into my writing and uh that brings me deep joy and uh thank you very much for sharing, what brings you joy. Um Your life is about to change in six months. So I’ll let you know because I’ve got a few Children myself, um small kids, small problems, big kids, big problems just letting you know, just a heads up.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:46:25 – 00:46:27
I heard that
Jeff Bullas
00:46:28 – 00:47:16
but, but there is joy there and it’s just so, uh you know, but thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure and um good luck with the golf and um good luck with the followers. Um you know, being an influence is fun. Um I, I think Tim Ferris has worked out that, you know, being a celebrity is actually not what it’s cracked up to be. Um Look, I’ve, I’ve, I was an influencer before influence was actually invented. I was a social media influencer back in 2011, 1213 and, uh, traveled around the world speaking, which I have done some of it recently too. But, uh, I sort of, I suppose I’m a little bit older than you. So I actually am enjoying the quiet time to write, think and create and reflect and, uh,
Jeff Bullas
00:47:17 – 00:47:31
but, uh, it is good to give back to the world basically, whether it’s from stage like you’re doing and I’ve done, um, or whether it’s from your writing and your social media posts. So uh good luck for the future marketing max has been an absolute pleasure.
Max (Marketing Max) Bidna
00:47:32 – 00:47:37
Thank you for having me on. I appreciate what you see on Twitter.
The post The Unexpected Trick to Growing Your Audience Faster—And It’s Not More Content! (Episode 234) appeared first on jeffbullas.com.