I still believe SEO and SEM are the most special marketing channels of all time. With SEO and SEM you are serving your business to a customer when they are looking for someone like you. ~ James Lawrence
Could you tell us about your journey in Marketing?
I was studying a double degree in both Communications and Law in the early 2000s, when by chance, I was offered a job as an in-house internet marketing coordinator. At this stage, the industry was in its very early days, and I basically rode the wave of growth that we’ve seen over the last twenty years.
With two business partners, I set up a web development and digital marketing company in 2006 in Surry Hills, Sydney. We ran this for about ten years and grew it to around 100 staff. From this, we launched Rocket in 2017 as a best-of-breed digital marketing agency.
The industry has changed so much in the last twenty years. In the early days digital marketing operated more in the technical rather than the marketing space. Nowadays, strategy and creativity are just as essential as the technical which makes it a much more challenging, but also rewarding place to be.
What challenges did the Covid-19 pandemic pose for your team?
In March 2020, 30% of Rocket’s clients felt massive impacts when COVID struck, especially our hospitality and tourism clients. As a result of the pandemic, Rocket lost over 30% of its recurring revenue within four weeks. Thankfully we were able to keep things balanced and the entire Rocket team was kept together with full pay for all staff. Easily my proudest accomplishment as a business owner.
In an effort not to make any team member redundant no matter how long the crisis stretched on for, we decided to market ourselves out of the slump. The result was super successful – over the course of the pandemic where many businesses reduced their digital marketing budgets, Rocket had two of the highest-revenue generating quarters in the history of the company and we grew headcount significantly.
What sets Rocket apart from the competition?
For me, there are three things I would say that separate Rocket from other digital marketing agencies.
The first is the people. We work tirelessly to make sure that we attract and retain the best digital marketers in Australia. We have a phenomenal graduate program called the Rocket Academy, we hold onto staff way above the industry averages, and the quality of our SEO, SEM and paid media teams are proven in the Australian and International awards we continue to win (including ‘Marketing Agency of the Year’ at the 2021 AMI Awards).
The second thing that sets us apart is our focus. We’ve learnt over the years to say no to different types of work, which means that we’re expert at the things we do – that being SEO, Google Ads, and paid social ads (Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram).
Thirdly, it’s love. We’re not a churn and burn agency that takes on hundreds of clients a year. We work with well-established smaller businesses as well as bigger brands, but the clients we choose to work with are loved and respected by the entire team at the agency. We get to know them. They learn to trust us. And together we achieve great things.
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How do you see Marketing Automation evolving over the years to come?
For one, the lines between ‘marketing automation’ and CRM are already quite blurred, more so in the last five years. With privacy concerns making tracking and attributing increasingly challenging, I see businesses relying significantly on first-party data to automatically serve better ads (be it via email, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook, LinkedIn or another channel) to a more targeted and warmer audience.
As for paid media channels, I believe machine learning and AI will continue to grow in effectiveness. Given that, marketers will need to use their judgement to identify the moments when technology won’t understand the intricacies of a campaign and the nuances of your audience. This is where manual adjustments will still be needed.
As a company, we seek out and utilise the latest technology. I wouldn’t describe this as something revolutionary, for us it’s simply business as usual. My view as a leader of marketers, is that performing now and in the future is all about getting better at the fundamentals. By better understanding our prospects, their journeys, their problems, and where we can add value to their lives, we are in turn better marketers. It is the marketers and the agencies who apply this who will win, as they will most effectively meet the needs of their prospects.
What role do you see SEO and SEM playing, especially in brand growth from the digital marketing perspective?
I still believe SEO and SEM are the most special marketing channels of all time. Being able to place your business at the fingertips of a customer that has literally just turned to a search engine and demonstrated intent for a product or service like yours is amazing. Whilst still excellent in their own rights, display, email and social media advertising are still disruptive in nature. You are disrupting a consumer as they are doing something else. With SEO and SEM you are serving your business to a customer when they are looking for someone like you. There are clearly massive changes to each channel each year, but the fundamental benefits and shift to digital are showing no signs of slowing down.
The top 3 marketing events that you have attended in the last decade and what made them so memorable?
- Content Marketing World – Cleveland, Ohio. Brilliant conference that shaped my view on the role of content in modern marketing.
- Inbound (many many times) – Boston, Massachusetts – So much of my thinking around what good marketing is, the buyer journey and content marketing has come from sessions and interactions at Inbound.
- Leadscon – New York, New York – Met and formed lifelong connections with agency owners in the USA which helped steer where Rocket has gone as a business.
What are the key ingredients that make a successful marketer?
Elevate the conversation away from marketing and into business. In order to get buy-in from an organization and leadership team, you need to speak the language of business and not the language of marketing. Then, you need to go back to the marketing team to execute. Generate revenue for your business and don’t fall back on marketing vanity metrics.
Great marketers are always thinking from the perspective of the customer they’re trying to move and they don’t assume anything.
Could you name one other marketer that you would like to see featured here?
I would say a former employee of mine who is now a good friend, Jordan Slover. He was an ex-Googler from Google in NYC + London. After Google he came to Australia as a backpacker. I hired him and he worked with me for four years. He went back to the USA and founded Neon Ambition. It is now one of Texas’ most experienced paid search and SEO agencies. He now has offices in New York and speaks so well on search + content.
Your top pick for a book on Marketing/Sales that everyone should read?
[Laughs]… I’d like to say my own book, Smarter Marketer. But if I had to pick another, I’d say my second favourite is Robert Cialdini’s ‘Influence’. It’s a fundamental book about how to move human beings, which is exactly what a good marketer should know how to do.
Any advice you would like to give to budding marketers?
Once again, I’m going to plug my own stuff here and encourage you to listen to my podcast, Smarter Marketer. Not because of me, but because at the end of every episode of the pod, I ask each guest for their single piece of advice for aspiring marketers. It is always gold and at least half of the time, the answer is that you need to connect marketing to revenue. Great marketers think about profit and revenue and then have the ability to step back into their team and deliver great marketing.
Thanks James!