Molly Ruland:

We’ll get this party started. Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Camp Content. We have the marketing maestro, Trey Robinson, in the hot seat today. He is the brains behind the story. Trey’s 2 decade journey in the marketing realm has been nothing short of a roller coaster ride from boosting brands like Realize Stockwitz to 24 Hour Fitness. He’s your go to growth. This is a hard one. You go to a growth guru.

Molly Ruland:

That’s a lot of g’s in there. Navigating through trade’s financial services saga, I love that, where he left an indelible mark during his tenure at Schwab and USAA, revolutionizing marketing strategies and reshaping industry landscapes, which I’m really interested to talk about because that’s such a big world over there. And when he’s not crafting marketing marvels, you can spot Trey cheering on Texas sports events, pounding pavements around Towne Lake, and basking in the starry Texan nights. But after hours, Trey is a family man at heart, finding his greatest joys and watching his boys grow into remarkable individuals. Love that. Tune in, learn about his incredible journey, and we’re just gonna dive in paid, free marketing metrics, advertising, all of that. So let’s jump right in. Trey, thanks for coming on the show.

Trey Robinson:

Thank you so much for having me.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. Yeah. I am genuinely looking forward to this conversation after, looking at all your content and spending time on your website. You you’ve definitely got a great history with all the work that you’ve done, with these massive corporate brands like 24 Hour Fitness and USA and Schwab, like, that’s a that’s a whole lot of questions I have about navigating that space because as you know, at the core, you’re you’re a creative. Right? Like, I mean, you’re a business brain, but

Trey Robinson:

Yeah. I mean, ultimately, in those spaces, you gotta do a little bit of politics and a little bit of creative juice, and then and then symmetric sprinkled on top of it to prove you know what you’re talking about.

Molly Ruland:

It’s a tightrope balance for sure. You know? And, yeah, some of those bigger corporate corporations like that. More creative stuff they can’t do, but then sometimes they really limit you on that. So I’m sure that that was an interesting landscape to navigate.

Trey Robinson:

Yeah. I mean, a fun story. We took a campaign adage with my boss when I was at Schwab, and it was too creative, too funny. He’s like, dude, you’re off brand. I’m like, yeah. Now that you point that out, I probably am. Sorry about that. I’ll be back in a little bit.

Trey Robinson:

So You like

Molly Ruland:

to know crazy Eddies? Come on, guys. What are we doing here? Well, they’re so buttoned up because they have so many rules and regulations and, you know what I mean, different people watching and all this. Right? So that makes a lot of sense. So I wanna talk to you about, you know, how do you help businesses grow? Like, let’s start at the very basis of what StoryBrand is doing or Story Amplify.

Trey Robinson:

Yeah. So, also, ultimately, I mean, I wanna sit down and ask a business owner what his problems, what he’s trying to solve. Like like but not in marketing language. Tell me in business language. Where are your challenges? I am over 20 years old. I got a marketing toolkit that can come to the table, but I need a business owner to say, hey. You’re sure I’m really, really struggling with it. And a lot of times, it’s top line growth. Hey.

Trey Robinson:

I need to talk to more customers. I need to have more of that. Right? We see that a lot, but we also see, hey. I’m spending money on marketing, but I’m not. It’s not as effective. Right? And I I I don’t know that I can keep up at this pace. So how do I optimize that? So we spend a lot of time really saying we are driving more volume? Are we trying to be more effective? Right? Are we, you know, are we worried about ROI, or is it just sheer numbers? And then what channels are you using today, and what maybe are you missing in your marketing mix? So, but it all ultimately ladders up into growth. I mean, I found that winning cures all ails.

Trey Robinson:

Right? Right? So if we can help a business grow, generally, they’re happy, and then we can start to optimize after that.

Molly Ruland:

How do you stand? I mean, all these social media platforms are changing so fast. Moreover, I feel like marketing is changing so fast. So how are you? How are you navigating, staying on top of all of these different platforms and all of these different options? I mean, you got from social media to PR to blogs to SEO. I mean, how do you stay on top of that consistently for 20 years? Because it’s changed a 1000000 times.

Trey Robinson:

It’s it’s funny you say that. I I I am happy that I don’t have to be a marketer for the next 25 years because I the frequency of change seems like it’s getting faster and faster. And so I tell my young marketers, that’s something you’re gonna have to stay fresh. You’re gonna have to stay sharp or you’ll become a dinosaur. And so, that’s actually one of the reasons that I if you look at my career, I go into corporate America, and then I come out of corporate America, and then I go into corporate America. And because I don’t wanna become a dinosaur. And so when we when I get into the agency world and we’re dealing with 25 or 30 clients at a time, and we’re looking at metrics across multiple businesses, and we’ve got PR strategies with some clients and paid strategies with another. It forces you to stay on top of what’s happened because clients aren’t gonna stand for things that aren’t working.

Trey Robinson:

And so we need to be leaning in and be good stewards of their money. And to do that, we need to be optimizing when you, you know, it’s working. If we see the success of one client, we need to take it to another. And so that’s one of the things I love about the agency business is I feel like I’m working in dog years.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. I love that. Well and with different types of businesses, you get to do different types of things. Right? So that keeps it interesting. I don’t know if I could ever have a company where I did the same thing every single day over and over. Right? Like, the challenge of new new clients, new new goals.

Trey Robinson:

And and and I’m an idea guy, and I’m a puzzle guy. Like, if you leave me by myself, I’m gonna be trying to figure out some puzzle, trying to figure out how to take something apart or put it together. And so when a client comes to me with a business problem, that’s when my brain kicks into high gear. And we really talk a lot about, like, bringing new solutions, new ideas, new tests to the market and to the clients. And with the smaller clients, we don’t have big budgets to test. Right? We’re talking about 100 dollars, not 1,000 or even 10,000 dollars. But it’s fun to put things in the market and see what your early signals are, and then double down a little bit into an idea, or pull back and optimize because we’re seeing it break somewhere in the customer journey. And, that to me is just a blast.

Trey Robinson:

It’s that kind of game that we’re playing with the marketing funnel, with the customer journey, and trying to figure out how to make it work.

Molly Ruland:

Well, I I love that you say that it’s like a game and intriguing with, like, even less money because there’s a lot of agencies. Right? You know, there’s a lot of agencies out there that just can’t wait to say no to their clients on everything, and they waste a lot of money. Right? So I love that you think of it as a challenge. Like, okay, we have even less. We gotta make it work even faster. We gotta be even more effective because, ultimately, that’s how it should be. Right? Like and then if you’re effective, that little bit of money grows, and then they have more to invest the next time and more the next time and ultimately build. I think that’s such a unique experience you’re bringing to the table with such big corporate experience, but also being willing to work with smaller businesses.

Trey Robinson:

So at the agency, we have a mantra that says, to be the best, you have to be last. You put yourself last. Like, that’s how that’s how we’re actually the best. It’s when we serve other people. And that, for me as a leader, that’s the employees, the clients. Right? But this is the account managers. I want them to serve the clients. Ultimately, we deal with a lot of financial advisers, and so they’re serving families and families’ monies and trying to bring families’ dreams to life.

Trey Robinson:

And so we just have to be good stewards along the way. And as a small business owner, I know I know what it means to be worried about making payroll. I mean, I’ve been in those situations and and and and trying to figure out how to drive growth and get the next win. And so I just wanna make sure that when we come in, whether it’s dealing with a client or dealing with our employees of career growth that we are putting their needs first, that we’re being good stewards with their time and energy and money. Because, ultimately, if we do that, lay our head our our head on the pillow at night, sleep with, you know, without any regrets, and ultimately leave this place a better place than we got to.

Molly Ruland:

Exactly. I mean, that’s the goal. Right? You know? Speaking of your team and your website, like, I was like, oh my god. I love these people. I gotta hang out with them. I wish I was in Austin. I would crash your next happy hour. But, there are so many quotable things on your website.

Molly Ruland:

Like, we think, like, business people, not marketers. You know? Touching on what you just said about, you know, you’ve been you’ll be there because you’ve been there. You understand the plight of the business owner. You know? Payroll is, you know, employees are like, Friday, and employers are like, Friday. Right? Like, a very, very different side of the table sometimes. So, there were a few things. Like, one of your big headlines says we care. We disrupt.

Molly Ruland:

We wanna see you win. Meet the team, and I love that. I say that all the time too. I wanna see my clients win. Like, what the hell are we doing if we’re not you know what I mean? Like, why aren’t you taking it personally that that graphic sucked or you didn’t hit the mark? Like, it doesn’t matter if you got paid or not. Like, you should want to see them win. You should want to go above and beyond, and I love that that was, like, in your h 2, you know, or h one text on the page. I was like, oh, this is a good team.

Molly Ruland:

And I was gonna ask you, did Amy Davenport write that content? Is she the copywriter?

Trey Robinson:

Amy’s wonderful. Amy, also, by the way, I know you’re in Costa Rica. Amy spent a few years in Costa Rica as a teacher at one point in her career. So she’s got a real, real heart, and she’s wonderful with words. But our head creative director, JJ, is, like, for I don’t know where he comes up with some of the stuff. Like, he ‘s literally inspirational. And so, I think he probably wrote that line.

Molly Ruland:

So there’s, like, so many of them on the website. And then when I went to your about page I mean, I gotta tell you, you’re you’re walking the walk. You know? Like, your team is, what, 80% women?

Trey Robinson:

Oh oh, yeah. But, I mean, they’re harder workers than us lazy men. So come on, mister.

Molly Ruland:

I know that. I mean, welcome to the party, Trey. You know what I’m saying? Like, come on. I’m on the team. You know what I mean? So I get it. But that’s just not something that you see all the time. You just don’t. You see a lot of, like, token diversity hires for whatever reason, but now you have a very female forward team, and that’s awesome.

Trey Robinson:

Look. You’re a good leader in my mind. And, by the way, USAA and Charles Schwab had phenomenal management leader training programs. So I was very blessed to work under phenomenal leaders in places that cared about growing leaders, and so I can’t say enough about those 2 organizations and how they develop talent. But well, I recognize me in those places as we all have shortcomings, and we have the best team when the team is the exact opposite of you. And they fill in your shortcomings, and they bring different opinions, and so I never wanna hire a bunch of men because we will just fail. Because I have big critical flaws that I need help with, and so we really try to hire a very diverse group of people with different backgrounds. Because when we do, we get a better holistic product because everybody compliments each other in different ways.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. Well, it’s like a barbecue, man. You don’t wanna go to a barbecue. Everybody brought hamburgers. You know what I mean? It’s not a very good barbecue. We need some beans and some potato salad. You know, we gotta bring everything to the party, right, or it’s not a very good party. So, cheers to you for walking the walk and having such an amazing team.

Molly Ruland:

And it really does shine in all your language and your website and just so many things about your business. It’s really evident. Let me ask you, speaking of, you know, time’s moving fast and everything else, let’s talk about AI a little bit. Like, how is that impacting, the work that you guys are doing and your client relationships if at all? Like, are you using AI in your business?

Trey Robinson:

Absolutely. As we were talking earlier about saying, Sharp, you have to adapt as a marketer. I mean, that’s part of your DNA. At the same time, we’re way early in the AI journey, and so we have to use AI. I feel like Spider Man. With great power comes great responsibilities. Like, we have to use AI in a way in the right way. And so, I’m a big believer that it helps with the research part of the right effects.

Trey Robinson:

Like, how do we gather information? How do we understand what’s going on? And so I feel like we’re able to shorten the research cycle because we can ask AI for some help on the research side. At the same time, it can be really wrong. And so we’ve gotta have a subject matter expert expert. Like, if we think the research phase is in the beginning and the subject the review phase is then we have to have a real subject matter expert reviewing the content because it can be wrong and we don’t have a responsibility in our content to not give people bad advice. Right? And so on the back end of AI today, specifically, we really need to have some subject matter expertise. That’s one of the reasons that Streamify, we try to stay in the financial services world because we have a lot of subject matter experts that can review the content, that can make sure that it’s right. And so I have had some engineering clients. It’s wonderful.

Trey Robinson:

But if I were writing about structural engineering, I would have to have a structural engineer in the process. And so I feel like AI is a great way to speed some things up, but it’s definitely not the answer to all the solutions.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. You have to be careful. You know, have you ever asked an AI to write a bio for you? It’ll have you, like, graduating top of the class at Harvard and, like, a full on wizard, you know, by the end of the paragraph.

Trey Robinson:

That’s funny. I’m gonna try that. I haven’t tried that before.

Molly Ruland:

It just lies. It just lies and lies and lies. It’s like, wow. I wish half of this was true. I’d be in a better position in life.

Trey Robinson:

Let’s hope that’s not reflecting what it reads and thinks about society. Like like

Molly Ruland:

Amen to that. Amen to that. Yeah. I’m a big fan of AI. You know, for as a podcast production company, you know, we immediately start using AI for the show notes and transcriptions. Why wouldn’t we? That is such a, like it’s metadata. There’s not a lot of feelings in this. Take the transcription, scrub the keywords and the key takeaways, and put it into a document, and it does it in 40 seconds.

Molly Ruland:

It used to take us 4 days. I mean, listen. The metadata on a podcast is not winning any awards. You know? But it’s going on your website, and it’s going on YouTube, and those keywords, you know, all that stuff makes a difference. It’s not well written. It’s just how many keywords can you cram into a paragraph without sounding like a robot. That’s what podcast metadata is, period. You know what I mean? The content itself is what’s gonna give you the good stuff.

Molly Ruland:

But, yeah, AI, what a great tool for that. 4 days versus 4 minutes. I mean, that’s a no brainer. Right? So it frees us up to do deeper work on other things. So, I mean, you know, I think there’s real value in it. Right? But it’ll be interesting to see with marketing because there’s just a lot of bad stuff out there and weird pictures.

Trey Robinson:

Yeah. Well, and and, you know, we’re reading now and it’s unofficial. Right? But Google is punishing pure AI written documents. Right? And so it’s interesting that there could be a little bit of backlash on AI. And so, and I think that’s for good reason. 1, they’re trying to predict their business model, but 2, they want to make sure that the content is authentic and it’s good, and that someone’s taking the time to read it and make sure it’s right. And so that’s gonna be fun to watch. How do these different businesses both help you produce AI, but then how do they judge AI?

Trey Robinson:

Right? And so it’s like I said, it’s still unfolding, but it’s an interesting game to watch.

Molly Ruland:

For sure. So okay. So let’s go into I have a speed round section of the podcast, so, whole strap in. It’s gonna get rowdy over here. Not really. So the first question I have for you, and it’s not definitely not a speed round question, so I’m, you know, contradicting myself here. But I wanna talk about marketing metrics like CAC and LTV. But first, you have to explain to us what CAC and LTV are, and then and then we can talk about its impact a little bit.

Trey Robinson:

Okay. LTV, lifetime value. In a nutshell, how much money am I going to make from the relationship I have with the customer over the long term? Alright? CAC, customer acquisition cost. How much does it cost me to get a new customer? And that’s the ratio. Right? Can I spend less, to get a customer than I make from a customer? And if I can keep that ratio right, I can continue to spend money. Right? And so we’re always worried about what kind of money we make for a customer. How do we improve what we make off a customer? How do we reduce what it costs us to get a customer? Because that ratio is what makes a healthy business. Now I’m a big believer that we need to build relationships with our customers and then to be long term. So when I say what the money we make off of them, I really don’t mean that.

Trey Robinson:

I mean, it’s about the relationship, but we’ve gotta have a monetary number that we can judge against.

Molly Ruland:

For sure. So how do you do it when you’re working with a client, are you just constantly looking to kinda bridge the gap or widen the gap, I guess, between the CAC and the LTV? Is that really the Yeah?

Trey Robinson:

I mean, that’s definitely one of the metrics. I mean, there are tools to do on both sides, but that makes a healthy, healthy marketing budget. Honestly, can we invest in the long term lower cost free channels? Are we optimizing our media in a way that it performs better? Because then we’re pushing the media cost, the hard cost of marketing down. And then are we building stronger relationships with our customers where we give them more opportunity to interact with us? Are we giving them more solutions to meet their problems? If so, then they will spend more time and energy effort that all of us usually translate to profit. And so if we can do both of those in a healthy way, that becomes a healthy business.

Molly Ruland:

Makes a lot of sense. Alright. In a world saturated with data, how can brands effectively leverage data analytics to drive their marketing decisions in 2024?

Trey Robinson:

Well, I mean, I usually start at the very bottom of the funnel. Like, what am I converting to? Like and when I say converting, what’s turning into a paying customer? Right? And then I move up from there. What activities are leading to those conversions? What activities are helping drive those conversions? And then the last thing I look at is our metrics like brand awareness. I mean, and things like that. Those are important metrics especially if you have a big consumer brand like a GEICO or a Coke or something like that. But at the local business level, it’s harder to measure. And when we’re thinking about return on investment, right, the lower funnel items tend to be more, easier to measure. And so I start bottom, move my way up.

Trey Robinson:

I think there’s a need for awareness tactics, but they have to be in the right place in the marketing plan.

Molly Ruland:

Interesting. So I wanna talk about funnels a little bit. Yeah. My question is, like, is the marketing funnel still relevant, and how do you use it? Because I feel like it’s a difficult thing for a lot of people. Like, I gotta have a funnel, and I’m like, well, that’s really what what does that really mean? It means you’re starting with a bigger amount of something you’re funneling and it’s something smaller. And so if you’re a small business not getting any real visibility or traction or engagement, then then there is no funnel. Right? So how do you, how do you address that with these smaller businesses?

Trey Robinson:

Well, so it’s a great question, and, also, one of the things, it’s that the funnel concept is a very old concept, and it started when buying journeys were very linear. I am 100% for everybody who says the funnel is dead will agree that it’s not a linear buying journey anymore. People come in and come out, and they they they they they bail out, then they come back. Right? And so we understand that it’s not a 100 percent linear funnel. But what I think the funnel does when used correctly is it gives you a paradigm to break down a very large dataset and start to understand where to take action. What’s the old adage? How do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? Marketing your acquisition campaigns, your marketing programs are usually very large, and they have lots of attributes. And so it becomes hard, and you can get spun around in the data, and it becomes hard to figure out where should what’s what level should I pull? Which tactic is it working? Where am I having breakage? And the funnel allows us to say, do we have enough people shopping? Are the shopping people converting? Are the converting people buying? Are there carts converting? Are people coming back? Right? And so it just gives us a way to take that big elephant and focus on the trunk, or focus on the tape, like and break it down into something that we as humans can consume. Right? And that’s that’s really, to me, what it brings is a construct for making very complex decisions easier.

Molly Ruland:

I love that. I mean, one bite at a time. Right? I mean, it’s an old saying, but there’s a lot of truth to it, you know, because it could be very overwhelming, especially if you’re not really a business minded person or a marketing person. Right? It’s very, very overwhelming for a lot of business owners. So, alright. So number 4, what is the right balance between paid and free? Because I know a lot of small businesses don’t understand that you gotta pay to play somewhere.

Trey Robinson:

You do have to pay to play. So I ask clients all the time when we get started. What do you have? Do you have more time, or do you have more money? Like, because that’s that’s really that’s really free channels take time to develop. Right? They take time to build. Pay channels are a jump start into a marketing program, but you don’t want to rely on them solely over time or that you get very expensive. Right. We have another adage and maybe it’s because I’m a Texan. We have way too many colloquialisms, But at the agency, I say, I said, when was the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago.

Trey Robinson:

When’s the second best time to plant a tree? Today? Right?

Molly Ruland:

Right, man.

Trey Robinson:

Same thing with your free programs. Let’s put some search in. Let’s get some content going. Let’s work on word-of-mouth. Let’s get your customers carrying your message for you. But those things are gonna take time to build. So while those are building, we need to be doing those along the way. We will also spend a little bit of money to drive some traffic today.

Trey Robinson:

And by the way, usually, money spent well will speed up the free channels. And so if we can think about them in concert, then that’s really the best way, but too much on one side or the other is an unhealthy marketing plan.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense because you can’t just rely on paid, and there’s no engagement. There’s no there’s nothing there. No authenticity. Alright. Number 5. How do you see well, I already asked you this. Number 5.

Molly Ruland:

What is your go to guilty pleasure social media platform for marketing inspiration? For marketing inspiration. Wow. Alright.

Trey Robinson:

So I waste more time on Instagram reels than I should. So when we talk about guilty pleasure, I have to Me too. That one. Right? So when we talk about guilty pleasure, I have to meet after that one. Right? And I have a whole love language with my cousin and my kids who are sending reels back and forth and laughing, and everybody’s laughing. And so there’s a hole there’s a whole just social side of the TikTok, Instagram thing that I absolutely love, and it’s a great way to release. But from a market perspective, I’d spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. I’m looking at my connections.

Trey Robinson:

I’m looking at what people are talking about. I’m looking at best practices. I’m following marketing people and seeing what their posts are. I get lost on Twitter. I get a lot of noise, so I tend to grab taking over toward LinkedIn from a business use perspective. I also honestly signed up for a few newsletters that I get that I just love that they’re curating content for me that I can read. And so I spend every morning, reading, you know, 3 or 4 different newsletters, some personal, some some work related just to try to stay sharp and then to share best practices with my team and articles if I’ve read something I feel like they’d benefit from. But if you ask me from a work perspective, LinkedIn is where I spend most of my time.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. Linking to LinkedIn is interesting. Some of it’s a dumpster fire. Some of it’s really good. You know, it’s a mixed bag. Right? I think there’s a big shift happening, it seems like, in the type of content that’s doing well on LinkedIn, which is good. You know? I think if people spend too long on some of these posts, I’m like, dude, this is a newsletter.

Molly Ruland:

This is like, am I getting paid to read this thing? Like, for real, this is too this is it’s 8 AM. You know what I mean? Like, reel it in, man. I didn’t sign up for this. I thought it was a social media post. But, it is an interesting place to see what other people are doing and what is working. You know, I, you know, I’m finally getting to talk to somebody about this. I put up a newsletter yesterday, and 2 people commented the exact same thing. And so I’m like, oh, they’re using I guess they went to hit reply, and they just let LinkedIn write the response with AI because it was the exact same response.

Trey Robinson:

Yeah. That’s too bad. That’s too bad.

Molly Ruland:

I know.

Trey Robinson:

Instead of trying to, make a post without actually really leaning into the content. We talked a little bit earlier. You gotta have, you know, you gotta have some ownership in what you’re doing. Right?

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. And I mean, I use a little bit of AI to write my blogs, but then my personality is all over it because I’m like a, you know, failed stand up comic at heart. So I never tried, but I’m sure I’d fail at it. So, I write like I speak, and I write with a sense of humor because, I mean, whatever. We’re all slowly dialing. We might as well have some fun while we’re here too. You know what I mean? It’s LinkedIn. There’s enough of that seriousness going around, but it’s just, you know, you gotta I don’t know.

Molly Ruland:

It’s where people are putting their time and energy and it is interesting to me. You know what I mean? Like, these posts could be whole podcast episodes. That could be a solo 10 minute podcast episode, which should get you so much more traction than a diatribe of a LinkedIn post. You know?

Trey Robinson:

Yeah. You know, one of the things is this is a little bit of the flaw of the algorithms, I think. What what what what when you algorithm the algorithms are looking at time and post, right, as a proxy for it’s a good piece of content. So what’s happening is people are creating longer pieces of content, not because it’s a good piece of content, to trap you and and and and and and trick the algorithm, and and I’m not a fan of that. I love a little bit of intro. You wanna keep going, take me somewhere else off platform, and I’ll spend more time there. But, like, the algorithm probably doesn’t love me as much as it loves that, that long garbage.

Molly Ruland:

God. It’s so annoying. Hopefully, we’re gonna get to the end of that soon. Maybe I could fix that too. Maybe the AI will get smarter with the algorithms and actually give us, like, what we want.

Trey Robinson:

Yeah. Yeah. I will tell you, I also do love seeing when I’ve got friends or old colleagues get new jobs or get promotions. To me, I know that that’s like, oh, look at me. But I there’s a little bit of excitement when I see somebody get promoted to the head of marketing that

Molly Ruland:

used to work for me. Like, I’m like Yeah. That’s cool.

Trey Robinson:

And so I do like a little bit of that because it’s easy to keep up with old colleagues. And like I said, I love to see people succeed. So that’s that’s fun too outside of the pure marketing side of it.

Molly Ruland:

See. I like even people I don’t know. I’m like, good for you, man. It’s a rough world out there. There’s a lot of layoffs. People are really struggling out there, so it’s always good to see people win. Alright. Next one.

Molly Ruland:

What is the weirdest marketing trend that you’ve seen recently that actually worked?

Trey Robinson:

Well, you know, what’s funny is at first, I I mean, I would say the TikTok stuff is just and now I’m a I’m we live in financial services, so I don’t actually know if it works in financial services, but one of my kids came home the other day with some Chinese variety box. It had all these weird Chinese candies in it, and I didn’t even know what they were buying, but some influencer was like, oh, try all this Chinese candy. And so we were passing around the weirdest junk the other day. Right. It was a total influencer campaign. You could see it all day long. It’s so Hey. Weird.

Trey Robinson:

The idea that and and maybe because it’s an impulse spot. The idea that the weirdest stuff gets promoted and people are buying it because somebody’s talking about it to me, I find it fascinating from a market perspective. And like I said, maybe it’s because I spend so much time considering purchases that I don’t live over there in the instant gratification world from a market perspective. So that’s one I always keep my eye on. And I keep wondering when that is gonna work for financial services, and how it works for financial services, and what’s the right way to make it work over there? And so I haven’t figured it out yet. Quite honestly. All honestly, we’re still trying to figure it out.

Molly Ruland:

I mean, it would be cool to bring some of that, like, TikTok, like, Vine kinda short, like, punchy things into the business world. Like, if we could shorten all LinkedIn posts and, like, make them better somehow and, like, punchier and shorter and more impactful and, like, a little bit more human. Right? Because I think a lot of these, like, more serious companies lean into serious longer conversations, which can be valuable from a business development standpoint, you know, interview people you wanna work with, create case studies, all that. But, like, are the people who on LinkedIn gonna randomly consume that? Probably not. But if you did, like, a 12 second video that was funny, they’ll remember you.

Trey Robinson:

Humor. I mean, look. GEICO proved that humor works. I mean, when they went from being the number I don’t know what it was. 12 15 insurance companies 10 years ago to number 2. Right? Because they’re basically entertaining. Right? And you wanna engage in all those commercials and you’re laughing about the camel talking around about hump day and, like, like, it’s working. Now don’t forget that it’s anchored within 15 minutes and can save you 15% on cartridges.

Trey Robinson:

Like, they still get their message there, but they’ve used humor in a wonderful way to drive engagement. And so to your point, I think it goes a long way when done well.

Molly Ruland:

I love it. Alright. I got one more speed ramp question. In a world where marketing tactics evolve at lightning speed, what’s one timeless principle that you think will stand true in 2024?

Trey Robinson:

I mean, good, good , helpful content is going to always be a bellwether. Like, people start at Google because they have a problem or they’re trying to solve a solution. And if a brand can come alongside them and provide them, not brand stuff, not marketing stuff, but real answers to problems that they’re trying to solve. That brand will ultimately be a little bit more endearing. The customer will appreciate them, and then that, the long term, is gonna translate into favorable brand metrics, which then translates into sales. And so I’m a big believer in the content world by starting by helping people, starting by solving their problems. And then once you’ve done that, then introduce your brand. Like, let’s keep up, let’s keep the brand where it goes, which is after we’ve given them what they were looking for.

Molly Ruland:

I love that. You know, and that reminds me on your website, there is a, or in your bio rather, there’s a line that you said that there are very few people I’ve worked with that wouldn’t consider me a friend, mentor, or a partner, and I I love that. And that kinda dials into, you know, useful, helpful information. You know? And that’s exactly it. Like, just not like an SEO written article, but, like, answer my questions. Help me solve my problems.

Trey Robinson:

Help me. And look, if you help someone solve what they’re doing, then you earn the right to have an opinion, talk about yourself, whatever else. But let’s start with putting that other person first. That comes like what we were saying before. Right? To be the best shift, put yourself last. Right? To help others first and then worry about yourself. It’ll come around in the way it’s supposed to eventually. Right? And if it doesn’t, you’ve at least you’ve made you’ve helped somebody else along the way.

Molly Ruland:

Exactly. You have so many good quotes. I’m taking notes so we can quote you later. Alright. So now we’re gonna go into the real or fake segment of the show, and I’m gonna list podcast names, and you gotta tell me if it’s real or fake.

Trey Robinson:

You know, I’m gonna go exactly opposite of what my gut says because I know I’m gonna totally butcher this segment.

Molly Ruland:

Per per it’ll be funnier that way. It’ll be great. Okay. Number 1, the garlic marketing show.

Trey Robinson:

Fake.

Molly Ruland:

Real.

Trey Robinson:

Yeah. I knew I was gonna,

Molly Ruland:

like number 2, video marketing madness.

Trey Robinson:

Fake.

Molly Ruland:

Real. Alright. Number 3, make marketing suck less.

Trey Robinson:

Real.

Molly Ruland:

That one’s real. That one’s

Trey Robinson:

real.

Molly Ruland:

Number 4, not another marketing podcast.

Trey Robinson:

Real.

Molly Ruland:

That one’s real too. And then for the last one, the upper cervical marketing podcast.

Trey Robinson:

Please tell me that’s fake.

Molly Ruland:

It’s real.

Trey Robinson:

Oh gosh.

Molly Ruland:

And you know what’s wild is all these shows have, like, 4,000 plus downloads per episode.

Trey Robinson:

That’s amazing to me.

Molly Ruland:

Who knew that garlic marketing was a hot topic, but that’s a industry for

Trey Robinson:

you. I was in the gym yesterday thinking about brands, which is totally so I’m a marketing nerd, and I was thinking about functional brands versus stuff like that, the garlic. What and, like, it’s more memorable. Right? And you don’t run it from a search perspective, you don’t run into some real thing that’s in the way. So I get where it would work. The garlic marketing show. Like, it’s so good.

Molly Ruland:

It’s a show. Like, it’s so good. It’s a show. It’s not even a podcast. It’s a show.

Trey Robinson:

But have you but when you have a brand that doesn’t say marketing, it just says, like, lemonade. You type in lemonade, and it’s supposed to be an insurance company, but you gotta go through 25 recipes of insurance of lemonade, real lemonade before you can find an insurance company.

Molly Ruland:

Exactly. Like, messed that one up. Alright. And then the last thing, I have a wild card question, and I usually make it, like, ridiculous about marketing, but you live in Austin, and your website is also covered with all kinds of music analogies. Your mixing board for, you know, advert I mean, I couldn’t love it anymore. I’m a former musician, recovering from the music business. So I, I loved all the musical references, and you live in Austin, and you’ve been there for a long time. So my last question to you is what is the best show you’ve ever been to in Austin?

Trey Robinson:

So last year by the way, I could talk music all day. Last year, there’s a there’s a up and coming, southern rock country band called Whiskey Myers. Last year, they held a whiskey release party at a distillery in Dripping Springs called Tree Oaks. Normally, when you go see this van, it’s 25,000 people, 20, 25,000 people. There were 200 people there. It was like the most private thing I’ve ever been to. And so that was unbelievable because it was basic. I felt like it was me and the band. Right? So that was last year.

Trey Robinson:

This weekend, I saw a high school kid play at a house party who’s just come back from Nashville and released and has recorded his first album, and he’s a junior. And that was neat for a whole different reason because he was good, and he covered some surgery, and he covered some Tyler Childress, and you’re like, this kid’s gonna do okay. And that was exciting too, just to see a kid living his dreams out, and seeing all the high school kids, you know, singing along with his parents were on the back. But I know, when I see a big artist in a venue that’s way too small for them, or see someone that’s coming up that you know you’re like, I saw that kid when he was you know, those to me are my 2 favorite scenarios to see shows. So that’d be my very long answer to what I think is a wonderful question, by the way.

Molly Ruland:

I love it. No. That was I mean, it says so much about your personality. You know? Like, the bigger experience with a bigger band, but also getting just as much joy from watching this young kid. I think it says a lot about who you are, so, so thank you. Trey, thanks for coming on the show today. This was a lot of fun. I knew this would be a good conversation.

Molly Ruland:

I think this would be really helpful for any business that listens to it to really think about how to measure success and think about paid advertising. And so if anybody has been inspired and would like to connect with you, what is the best way for them to do that?

Trey Robinson:

Well, honestly, you could hit us up on our website, storyamplify.com, where you can find me on LinkedIn. Right? Trey Trey Robinson. I’m very easy to find on LinkedIn. But, the site’s there. To your point, it’s fun. It’s got some musical stuff in it even though we do financial services marketing, and I’m really proud of the work the team did for that.

Molly Ruland:

It’s a beautiful website. You know, I’ve built a lot of websites in my day, and I have a harsh eye. And I was like, oh, I like this website. I like the fonts. I like the colors. I like the layout. It’s it’s, it’s really, really good stuff, so cheers to the team for knocking it out of the park on that one. Trey, thank you for taking time to hang out with me this morning and come on camp content, and, you know, bless our listeners with some solid information this morning.

Molly Ruland:

I really appreciate it.

Trey Robinson:

Thank you. I tell you, it was a lot of fun. I really appreciate your style, and thank you for having me.

Molly Ruland:

Awesome. Well, you know, there’s a lot of people just talking, and I’m like, we gotta spice this up. We gotta have some fun. You know? And any opportunity to make fun of podcast names, I’m in. You know what I mean? There’s an endless supply there, so no shortage. But, thank you again for taking time, and, thank you for tuning in to Camp Content. If you found the content valuable or interesting or funny, please, leave us a comment on the recording. All of Trey’s links are in the show notes.

Molly Ruland:

So on YouTube, on LinkedIn, anywhere you’re seeing this, if you just scroll down a little bit, you will see all of his links so you can check out his website for yourself. And, hey, if you’re looking to hire a company that actually celebrates diversity and puts people in the right places, then I would say story amplification is a really great place to start, for a whole lot of reasons. So until next time, be excellent to each other, and we’ll see you online. Okay.