An Interview with Online Marketer Austin Distel on Authenticity, Connection, and Transparency

Key Takeaways

hey Austin thanks so much for being here super excited to have you as guest on the modern marketing podcast here hey thanks so much for having me man oh absolute pleasure I mean really excited we were chatting before we hit record which is I mean this pretty much always happens every time we we start to talk before we cover so much material so wanted to Gump on there and uh and hit that record button as soon as we can and start talking about some of the good things I mean we were chatting about membership versus high ticket some of the contest and sweep Stakes marketing and and a whole bunch of other gems I don't want to give away just yet cuz I want to let you cover them because you're doing such a good job with it so before we dive into all that why don't you give us just a little bit about you and a little bit about your story Yeah man so my name's Austin distl uh I'm originally from Atlanta but just recently moved up to Annapolis Maryland with a few other digital marketing entrepreneurs up here man uh just to start this incredible company the entrepreneur Alliance check it out later um but yeah Super Pump been in digital marketing now for like three years um unlike most people who I I guess kind of found this space uh I actually went to the University of Georgia and graduated with a degree in online marketing so it you know I I don't think that really like I I'm any ahead of the curve actually if I probably spent all the class time that I did uh on my own learning from other people uh you know and taking courses I'd probably be a little further ahead yeah but uh it's cool to have the academic side to it too yeah no I I understand I actually have a degree in marketing as well and it's one of my I shouldn't say my least used pieces of education but oh man like if I knew like the amount of information that I learned after the degree was over or what it's not even it's not even comparable right so yeah just crazy it's so funny because a lot of the times we were talking about campaigns everything from Barbie to Sunglass Hut because my teacher my professor owns a marketing agency in Atlanta and so she' just bring in her clients's case studies yeah but uh the campaigns that we run in the real world like for small local business owners or e-commerce products or whatever totally different yeah totally different than like what Barbie does yeah yeah be yeah there's there's certainly a time and place anytime you start to sort of look at the structure of the company and how these M the massive Brands and all that are marketing opposed to how it translate to some of the smaller like if you're doing less than a few million or whatever it is yeah completely different in in how you're going to structure the campaign so some yeah some valuable fundamentals but still just nothing right like no com no comparison there right on so you moved up to Annapolis because you're obviously sick of warm nice weather and decided to uh to move to the cold and and rock the flannel yeah man got to rock the flannel up here you know I still got to support my Braves though yeah um and uh yeah so I I moved up here about a week ago so this is uh you know early January uh got up here January 1st um I've been running my own marketing agency now for a little over a year and a half almost coming up on two years bravado marketing agency um and in the meantime like I've I guess come to learn a whole bunch of different types of online marketing everything from SEO to pay-per-click to you know how how to build email list and you know do video marketing and uh kind of just found my my home uh building membership sites particularly the entrepreneur alliance with Dave Rogan Moser Chris and JP and uh and so when I saw the vision for what we're doing with that decided to go ahead and make the move and be up here right next to him every day right on yeah you can't get too close to Dave no that's fantastic we've had uh we had Dave on the uh the show a few episodes back there and yeah told us all about the entrepreneur Alliance absolutely phenomenal group of which uh I'm proud to be a part of as well a lot of just amazing people in there some really good advice uh and a really interesting model as well there's obviously the full sort of uh transparency there with the the pricing and the structure and putting the books all on chart so maybe you can talk a little bit about one of the things that I was excited to hear which is sort of the membership model versus the high ticket and for those that are listening and aren't really familiar with high ticket maybe you can dive into that one just a little bit as well yeah totally so there's kind of two schools of thought do you sell something really big up front or do you have something that's maybe a recurring model we call that subscription and um you know just from what I've learned and what my mentors have taught me such as Dave Rogan Moser they've tried it all right they've done the 497 the 997 The 1497 the weekend Workshop the boot camp the monthly membership and it is all different models and they all have pros and cons um I think that you got to figure out what works best for your audience how do they learn in the right way um and is this a skill that is just a one-time thing you need to learn or is this something that can be ongoing um whether it's motivational or is there Community attached to it and so we have personally just had a lot more enjoyment and really are getting a kick out of building a membership site versus just a one-off ticket Big Ticket item like a a 997 Workshop Mastermind or whatever else it is it's just fun to to get to know characters within the group and and I feel like you get a lot more invested when there's a membership to it because you just end up creating friendships and you don't want them to quit you know it's like there's like decreasing churn rates a big thing so how do you make sure that they're actually successful right you there's so many courses out there that don't really care if you up being successful whereas like with a membership you're not going to pay next month if you didn't get value the month before right yeah absolutely and I think that Community you really hit the nail on the head there with that Community aspect of it right like it's so it's so fundamental especially when we're talking about something as intangible as online marketing I mean we're talking I'm over here in Vancouver you're down there in Annapolis I mean we've got people from all over the world so if you're just you don't want to feel like you're just sitting there behind your computer completely alone and unsupported so the fact that you can have that camaraderie and get that support and have that interaction yeah it's it's massive and one thing I want to point out is you know a lot of people have asked me Austin you're in online marketing why did you move right especially especially somewhere Chile right why aren't you living in like the Bahamas or Hawaii or yeah dude I would love to be like Alex Becker right now in the C right in the cay yeah yeah he's he's doing something right yeah for real you know and and it's it's a funny topic of conversation because we live in the most connected World on Earth at any point in time you probably have actually already heard my phone buzzing I don't know how to turn off my notification sounds uh from my iMessage and Facebook and all this stuff it's constantly bombarding with contact yet we're the least connected right and I I think that's incredible that we just live in this day and age where human connection is truly just like connection like on on on LinkedIn they call it connections on Facebook they call it friends but are those really connection and friends I would say no and and the reason why I moved up to Annapolis to work side by side is because it is so much fun to Banter back and forth and throw the Nerf ball around the room and just spitball ideas that kind of thing gets me fired up and we were talking about this earlier today me Dave and the other guys that it is really easy to be a super successful online marketer who made it himself and like he just sits in his own D has the lights and you know the green screen and has all this other kind of stuff going on but it's only him right versus maybe splitting you know and getting a a partnership or maybe even a couple guys to start a company and have to split up the profits and make a little bit less money each but the process is so much more rewarding and so much more fun because the connections and the friendships and the jokes that are made oh my God it's like a party every day we have happy hours at 400 p.m. for like 30 minutes where we just kind of you know talk nothing serious just hanging out yeah and that's what makes it fun and I I've been really on this kick lately of I it's not about the destination it's about the journey and you got to enjoy the process um and so just really I I've been focusing on how can I make the process more enjoyable every day because it is easy and honestly most people are destined to be lonely entrepreneurs and if you can find a way to connect with other entrepreneurs you're going to have a much happier existence yeah yeah absolutely no connection is absolutely key so let's let's talk about the process then let's talk about the process of growing EA entrepreneur Alliance uh let's talk about the process of some of the things that have been sort of used in there to build up the membership because obviously I've been watching it from the sidelines here and watching it just sort of take off essentially so I mean it's growing pretty rapidly what have been some of the ways that uh that have worked for the EA and then maybe let's talk about how that could could parallel to someone that's not involved with online marketing like say they have a brick-and-mortar business what are some of the strategies that are going to be sort of cross boundaries they're going to work for all kind of businesses sure so I think that all marketing is twofold you have internal and external internal marketing being you know your current customers how do you get them to just have such an affinity and love for your brand and your products and your company that they naturally talk about it there success stories that come out of it you know the the the people end up being your best marketing tool and then you have your external marketing which is all the classic stuff we think about video ads payperclick SEO Etc um I think that it is our success with EA has been twofold because of both sides you have JP and Chris Hull who are both doing the internal marketing how do we help our EA members be Uber successful just get this raving fan audience that loves us and then on the other side how do we get more members through just promotional marketing and that's where me and Dave are um and so I I would say like getting a system in place for your internal marketing is key so for example um we use uh a couple Integrations one being drift so you go on to the EA's website join thee alliance. and you'll see in the bottom right hand corner there's a little um popup that says hey Austin here how can I help you yeah and uh and that has been great it hooks in with our slack Channel yeah and anytime me Dave Chris or JP can hop in there answer the V visitors information and it's not so we had this this uh discussion today do we Implement a bot or not right B we know bot marketing is going to be huge yeah but we decided to actually not go with the bot because it's not as authentic right so for those listening that aren't familiar with bot marketing essentially it's like an automated response that's going to say hey how can I answer your questions and then it's going to say whatever you've programmed it to say or possibly collect an email or or not so yeah obviously pros and cons right the pros are you going to get an immediate response the cons are that it's it's a bot totally man and so just like thinking about our brand image is that everything that we are about is authenticity and transparency and so when you see my face there it says hey how can I help and then a robot responds yeah no more authenticity and transparency is a little bit more spoken mirrors yeah so U we just thought it's not on brand and while it might be a little more efficient because we get a ticket every 10 minutes or whatever asking a question um it's probably not as uh you know it's not as efficient but it's definitely more on brand and I think people respect it more when it's somebody real yeah absolutely so that's an example of internal marketing that I think that um is important think about is like it's not just about you know how do you automate this but how do you still bring this human atmosphere to it right so essentially it sounds like you guys have assigned like a customer success team like you've gone out there and you've you've actually made it an integral part of the marketing which which is absolutely genius right because again it's sort of playing on the fact that referral marketing and word of mouth so powerful but so hard to sort of uh to collect and to really build up and take advantage of so yeah when you're able to do that drift also as a as a chat thing phenomenal tool to have yeah I've used that on on most of my sites and for a lot of clients as well really good even if you've got something that says hey we're not here right now we'll be back later people really like that sort of Facebook Messenger style communication get the instant answer uh which actually I don't know if you've heard of this one it's called many chat it's kind of um it's like a bot program for Facebook Messenger so maybe you've heard about Facebook Messenger marketing becoming a lot more popular obviously as we're moving forward it's uh certainly beyond the we don't have the time to dive into that one right now but Min chat is uh a tool probably worth looking into unless you do want to stay away from bots so maybe take a look at it but otherwise awesome good recommendation man yeah it's it's mostly tying in you said internal and external marketing right so I think that they're not disconnected yeah I think that's a big thing people are think like oh I gotta have my customer support team over here and then I have my promotion team over here yeah and it's not like that and actually I'll use a case study as to prove my point is the moment that we did a campaign just asking our members saying you know I we reached out to them individually and said hey would you mind making like a a quick 45 second video or if if that's too much you're camera shy just maybe write me back a post of why you love EA yeah and then what we would do is screenshot the testimonials and then download and edit the uh the uh the video testimonials to make it a little more compressed and easy to digest for most people because they'll say a lot of ums and rants yeah so but um when we added those testimonials to ouring page we increased our conversion rate from about 22% to about 32% or so 31 to 34 every other day it changes yeah yeah and uh that testimonial addition to the checkout page and to the sales page has totally revolutionized uh you know the amount of money that we're able to spend on ads because we see that come back twofold no kidding no kidding yeah that's phenomenal I mean if you're able to boost sort of the conversion rate and again for those that aren't familiar with conversion rate you're basically getting more people to sign up than were before so 10% more which is in in the online marketing world I mean that's a huge number that is an absolutely massive number that can equate to thousands or millions of dollars over uh over a lifetime so yeah absolutely powerful and yeah it just goes to show the power of social proof so how were you guys able to go out there and collect emails was it as simple as saying hey just shoot a quick shot for us write something something down and and you got a good response yeah literally that easy it's funny because every day we have people just on their own whim yeah write their own testimonial and so that just proves to us that we're doing something pretty cool yeah is that they'll just out of their way in the middle of their day because we're all busy there's so many things to do they actually decided to take five 10 minutes out of their day and write up I love you guys you guys are awesome think you're doing great stuff keep it up just to do that that shows us that man it is important to invest into your people yeah and that is something that you won't see and most high ticket items right okay yeah yeah understood so again that's sort of the benefit of that membership model versus the high ticket where you're able to really sort of foster that community and that engagement yeah again for no other reason than than financial as well because if you don't keep people happy they're going to churn they're going to uh they're going to quit and they're they ain't coming back so yeah very cool so what's the future for Austin and what's the future for the entrepreneur Alliance what does it how's that look yeah man so it's funny most the world is saying how can we get online yeah right we're actually having the opposite conversation how can we take this offline okay how can we get into people's homes how can we have Live Events how can we you know have get together in cocktail hours on a local level and um and so my pet project I take my Friday and focus all my energy on EA and Atlanta is test City chapter number one yeah uh we're going to be doing all kinds of really cool stuff to give you like a sneak preview into it we'll be doing uh Mastermind events uh at people's homes every week yeah where everybody in Atlanta gets together and we just talk about cool ideas around a certain subject hang out you know talk just brainstorm entrepreneurship yeah have that connection cuz most people aren't married to an entrepreneur if you are one uh most people they're friends they they know know that you're an entrepreneur they might spitball ideas with you but like they don't even know what you really do most of the time and so just to have that outlet in person to brainstorm with other entrepreneurs is so key to making this thing go from just a membership site to a real movement and Revolution hopefully by the end of the next couple years we can make this thing take off where people are getting tattoos of the EA flag on their bicep like yeah that's where we want to end up taking this thing man big goals big Vision I know right uh you know but going on from just the the weekly masterminds we're going to end up doing monthly cocktail hours where you know we shake things up we want to be different man we want to have fun we don't think business should be all like you know buttoned up ties and you know B and eyes right like this is not supposed to be like where I have 30 seconds to pitch myself like we want to have this where you're hanging out and you're just brainstorming your ideas you're getting advice and like you're being authentic you're not trying to put on this show of like I'm this high class CEO entrepreneur like just be the dude that everybody can relate with and um and so going on from there after the the cocktail hours you know doing week uh doing monthly workshops and then seminars and then hopefully we're gonna sell out the Georgia Dome have you guys seen The mercedesbenz Stadium it is badass is it just just check check out Atlanta Mercedes Benz stadium and you'll see the most high high class brand new state-of-the-art stadium coming to town yeah all right I'm GNA link that up in the show notes sell this thing out for the EA 2020 Summit there you go yeah I'll link it up in the show notes we'll check out Atlanta mercedesbenz Stadium there we go 2020 you say yeah okay beautiful I'll hold you to it all right my friend that sounds amazing yeah big Visions big uh big aspirations I think all you've got a great team there to help do it so if any if anyone can do it it's going to be you guys there uh what did I not ask you that I totally should have well I mean I think that there are a lot of really cool promotions that you can do for your company that will make you stand out um you know we did one last night that actually took off and one thing I think is interesting like I think that you should always go with the spontaneous Instinct of just throwing pickles on the wall and see what sticks to the window right like just try it I would say that 80% of our best campaigns were thrown up in like a blink of an eye Just say Hey try it see if that works one of them was last night um we decided like hey why don't we just do a sweep Stakes or a yeah sweep Stakes for a free year annual membership to the entrepreneur Alliance if you share this post um and you comment like a friend of you know if you can think of an entrepreneur who is either already made it or on the rise tag them in here we had a video that's like a you know lifestyle video of like entrepreneurship and kind of what our core values are um and then most importantly the reason why we wanted to get this thing shared is if we get we publicly stated this in the thing if this video or if this post gets 250 shares we're going to give $1,000 to entrepreneurial uh women in India to start their business cool and this thing has been rocketing like wildfire we hav not put $1 into paid ads by the way yeah this is all just like friends tagging friends and it's spiraling out of control we have hundreds of entrepreneurs tagging every couple hours it is fantastic and we feel really good about what we're doing too like we're knowing that we're giving $1,000 away to entrepreneurial women in India 1,000 bucks of them is like 20 grand right and they're starting a business they're impacting their community and so we feel good about what we're doing and we're like getting a huge warm list of people that are probably clicking on our website that's there saying like hey what's the fuss all about here with entrepreneur Alliance click here right and uh so now that they in our retargeting segment which is they visit your website they now leave to go back to Facebook and they start seeing your ads everywhere it's a cookies thing right like online marketing stuff uh and so yeah yeah it has been great it's making our conversion rate much higher too and uh I think it's just kind of impacting people on a different level this is not just about sales it's about how do you you know bring in different atmospheres of Entrepreneurship yeah doing good while well being good and making money and all the other stuff that comes in between yeah so interesting so basically and this just came from a whim so I guess the takeaway message here is that don't be afraid to try something right especially in today with the tools we have available today I mean you don't need to put together a $50,000 marketing campaign you can shoot a quick video you can throw it out there with some ideas and just yeah see see what works and see what doesn't and don't be afraid to um put yourself out there yeah and I'll give you guys all like a a preview since you're all the mod marketing podcast here perect um we're gonna be doing a huge split test run next month uh on doing all humor okay so we're going to be going kind of with this whole thing like entrepreneurship doesn't have to be so serious yeah and just trying to be the funniest company out there okay and run that against like the serious like lifestyle coolness like you know like guys in like Blazers talking like that's kind of like how we have now like lifestyle like entrepreneurship is like the cool thing to be and we're going to kind of go out on this like positioning of like how can we get the most amount of like crying emojis like laughing crying emojis on our post how many those can we get we'll keep our eyes peeled all right I I'll put that in the notes we'll keep our eyes peeled for next months for the funny the funny marketing push at entrepreneur Alliance I I'll let you know how it goes man I I think it's going to be pretty good though it's always good when you run these tests if you're able to collect the data right because I mean you got to you got to have something that you can run a case study with and then you're able to sort of uh get some information from it and how it can apply so yeah fantastic yeah man you know as as many people as many marketers are like me like off thewall just kind of throwing ideas at all the time uh if you really want to be successful you got to have the metrics in hand so me and Dave we we keep each other always on our game we have this kind of thing where we just throw out like in the middle of the day we'll say hey what are the numbers and like testing each other we got to know that stuff on the spot and so just you know while you might be a spontaneous dude know your numbers you know I I would say I'm probably one of the most spontaneous people in the world but you got to know your numbers every part of the day absolutely yeah I couldn't agree more especially the way that we're trending now and with uh with how quickly your ad budget can spiral out of control if you're not staying on top of it so true man defin to know yeah no kidding he awesome Austin hey man real pleasure having you on the show super appreciate all the great wisdom you share I'll make sure to link that up and uh where else can people learn more about you and contact you yeah so uh I am super reachable uh I I try and answer every message although I'm going to be honest over the last like couple weeks it's it's gotten pretty big I have a a list of people I need to talk to tonight and just Facebook message but yeah look me up on on Facebook at Austin distd Tel uh Instagram same thing Austin distl um you know I try and post pretty often I need to get better at my Snapchat game but um same thing man I'm really consistent Austin dist you look me up anywhere you'll find me um reach out like just not even to you know try and you know get into EA but I just want to know you you know let's let's talk about entrepreneurship and some cool ideas man excellent awesome hey well you heard that there modern marketing podcast Community time to reach out and give Austin a shout and yeah have a chat fun guy to talk to really good advice much appreciated thanks so much for being here hey thanks for having me man we'll talk to you soon