Digital Marketer Case Study Summary Memberium

[00:04] Micah: Hey everybody, it's Micah Mitchell and I am more excited than I've ever been to create a video because today we have Richard Lindner and Taylor Nelson from Digital Marketer and Scalable.co and we are going to walk through a couple of their membership sites. They have two different membership sites using a very, very similar tech stack serving two pretty different audiences, you know, really high end on one side and then just a ton of content membership levels on the other side. So Richard, why don't you, if you wouldn't mind, give us a little bit of a, an overview in case somebody doesn't know Digital Marketer, which I can't imagine because when I think of anything online, I think of you guys for like 15, 20 years now. So, so maybe just tell us kind of how it got started and where you guys are today and then we'll dive in.

[00:46] Richard: Sure. Well, hopefully there's a ton of people that haven't heard of us. Fingers crossed. Hopefully a lot of them are listening to this, but thank you. We, I'm excited to be here too. We've used memberium for gosh, I don't know, a decade or so. So for us at Digital Marketer, like you said, we've got we've got a pretty diverse product line. Digital Marketer is 13 years old. You know, we, we really, we really did our best to, to lead the charge in professionalizing kind of the industry at a time where internet marketing was a thing. We kind of, we, we kind of kind of took a longer term bet and said, like, this is eventually going to become a, a, a career. This is, this isn't something that just is going to be a way to make money online. Like this is going to be a department, a, a job within every organization. So we bet pretty early on and, and really have been hot, hot on the term digital marketing, you know, for well over a decade. Our, our goal was to kind of open source what we do to grow all of our different companies. At one point we had well over 30 companies that we were operating in, in just every industry that you could imagine a little bit of entrepreneurial ADD for sure. We've since really narrowed our focus to, to B2B. So at Digital Marketer, we support marketers. We still, we, we still believe that the, the best way to enable marketers is not only training, but to open source, templatize and open source what's working for us and what's working for our, our partners and, and our different portfolio companies to grow our brands online, right? To grow our brands through, through all the different channels. So Digital Marketer, we do training and certification. We've got coaching and, and really that leads to a pretty robust product line. We have a la carte purchases. We have team purchases and memberships. We have coaching that have small groups and it's a, the business model has evolved and the technology on the backend has to support several different levels and several different access types. And I'm very thankful for you, Micah, and everything you guys do because you enable that, right? You enable that. So that's Digital Marketer. Scalable was the natural progression for my business partners, Ryan Dice, Roland Frazier, and myself. When we started Digital Marketer, really what we did to grow our businesses was market, right? That was our job. Our job was to, to do marketing, to grow the business, to grow all the businesses, figure out what's working, templatize that, deliver it to our customers at Digital Marketer. Well, eventually we kind of stopped doing marketing because we had a team. We had people that did marketing for us and, and really our day to day became very different. We were leading a company. We were, you know, we were focused more on, you know, other aspects of, of growing a company and, and, you know, making sure that we're leveling up and we kind of had no outlet for, for distributing what we've, we've learned and figured out, but we still had that core competence and, and kind of that, that muscle memory of documenting the processes that we used. So scalable was that next natural progression at scalable. Our goal is to help entrepreneurs scale themselves because so they can scale their companies because we believe that companies are better. Economies are better. If founders can stay in that driver's seat.

[04:19] Micah: I want to say if possible, let's go to Digital Marketer first, since that was the first site, starting out conceptually, where do people start before they're a member of Digital Marketer? What do they first see? Is it like a free video? They opt in kind of what's the path from not knowing

[04:35] Richard: you guys to being a paying member? Yeah. The, the cool thing about Digital Marketer is our, our flagship kind of methodology or our, our primary methodology is the customer value journey. The CVJ teaches the, the, the, the, you know, how customers go from, uh, unaware to aware to, uh, engaged, uh, to subscribe. So we have several funnels that we use, um, for acquisition. Um, but we really lead with a content first strategy. So, um, we're, we're really beefing up on organic, um, content on social and, and on the blog, but our primary, uh, method of, of customer acquisition and awareness is by, uh, driving, uh, paid social ads to content and then retargeting, uh, to, to, to a relevant lead magnet. So for us, it's, it's, it's always been templates and tools, um, are the things that we like to provide. We think that's the highest level value. So, um, someone may start with the one page marketing plan, which is our CVJ, right? That's kind of that again, uh, for us, it's, it's critical that someone understands our methodology before we introduce them to our world. So starting there is both, uh, an amazing tool that we can give away for free and add value, even if someone chooses not to spend a dollar with us. But it introduces them to that methodology. And it's usually a pretty good entry point to get them to want to spend money with us. So for us, uh, the one page marketing plan or one page marketing blueprint, which is that customer value journey is the ideal starting place. We have several other ones, but that one's really where the best customers, uh, come through because, uh, if you understand that core methodology, then ascension happens pretty quickly. And, and I think it is a nice little value loop, uh, value for us value for them. So, um, if we're starting there, uh, that, that is kind of the, the, the best place. Then once they go from there, we, we typically get, try to, uh, try to get them into digital marketing mastery, which that is our flagship certification that covers, uh, the eight critical core disciplines of digital marketing. We, uh, we like to think of, of, um, the ideal marketer is T-shaped, right? They have a, a broad understanding of all aspects of marketing, but a deep understanding or specialization of one. So usually it's the one page marketing blueprint over, uh, to an offer to get our digital marketing mastery certification. Uh, and then, uh, attempting to figure out what area of specialization. So it's a, so it's a

[07:04] Micah: a la carte purchase that hopefully then leads into a membership. You know, it's obvious you guys have a bunch of different products in there and you can, you know, give them access to only those they have and upsell them on the others. How does community factor into this course environment? Where does that

[07:20] Richard: come into play? For us with community? Um, the secret sauce has been to figure out where your people already are. I think I love that you said, uh, Micah, you know, it's like the Slack group, you know, why Slack and not Facebook? Why Facebook for digital marketer? Well, digital marketers are in Facebook, right? Our people at digital marketer, uh, are, are in Facebook. That's where they're running their ads. Um, that's where they're running their groups. That's where they're at. So if we want to reduce friction or increase engagement in our communities, the, the starting point or the kickoff point there is to figure out where they are and build community where they're already used to going in, um, in scalable, you know, when we're looking at, at, at founders and executives, where are they already communicating on a, on a daily basis? It's less Facebook and it's more Slack. So that's a Slack group. And for here, it's, it's, uh, it's a Facebook community.

[08:16] Micah: Have you guys had any issues with anything like that where you had to say like, Hey, you're not certified now, or has it been pretty? We have had to, um, remove two partners from the

[08:28] Richard: program, which, you know, I would say over a like five year period. Um, that's, and the, you know, the, the hundreds of partners that we've been lucky enough to have and, and to, to walk with and, and support and grow together. Uh, I feel pretty good about that. We, you know, we've had a, we've had a couple of, uh, instances. We have a, um, a way for customers to, uh, report or, um, any shenanigans that they feel may have happened. And we have kind of a, uh, a mediation or a resolution process that we have with customers and, and, and certified partners. Cause frankly, they're both customers, right? They sign onto our core values. So as part of the process, like they're adopting our brand, which means they're adopting our core values and our beliefs. So we actually have a, a, a, in the agreement, a standalone document where they agree that they

[09:20] Micah: are adopting our core values as their own. For people who don't know about umbrella accounts, do you mind explaining how you guys are using that, how you're deploying it?

[09:28] Taylor: Yeah. You go and pull up our tab real quick. So you can see it. So this started with, um, our, our elite program, which had, uh, which gives easiest five seats. So we had this elite parent tag that goes parents. And, um, this pretty much just gives them five, uh, accounts each. Uh, we didn't change anything here. Um, we just use an action set child, which all it does is apply the tag and, uh, gives them the password using the, the Mimberium, um, HTTP post if they don't have an account already. Um, and then we have these whitelist ones. I don't know if I really need this. Um, but I put these in there cause I didn't want somebody to have an a la carte purchase and have that passed down to a child account. It's only for the membership level that, um, they're actually having, you know, and I, the cancel tags in here too, just in case,

[10:16] Micah: cause I didn't know, I figured better safe than sorry. Yeah, that makes sense. And for people who aren't familiar with the concept in the first place, what this means is somebody, let's say the business owner buys a membership to the site, then they can give up to five in this case of their team members access also. And where this is really, really powerful is if somebody is taking courses where the progression is being tracked or the quizzes, then you don't have your employees coming in and messing up your progression and where you are. They have their own, you know, tracking and all that kind of stuff. Well, let's, let's jump over to scalable if you're ready. And, and I'll explain my experience first, but maybe then, um, Richard, you can elaborate on this a little bit. Sure. So, so I was, you know, taking courses and doing things and buying courses for, for my team, and even for other people, sometimes when they needed stuff from digital marketer. And from my memory, I basically got an email about the event itself, the scalable impact live and went to that. And then there they were basically saying, Hey, you could join this founders board. So I did that. And so my question is, is scalable an outgrowth of digital marketer, or does it have its own separate customer acquisition system?

[11:27] Richard: Yes. And yes. Um, so, you know, we like to, we like to be one, you know, kind of one step removed. If we're going to go into another market, we like to have a bit of a competitive advantage and be able to at least tap the database that we have, right. It's not, this isn't far enough removed to believe that, you know, we don't have founders and people like yourself that are on the digital marketer list, that there are times where you needed to put on your marketing hat and that's what growth looked like. Um, you know, it's, it was our natural journey. So, uh, it does it scalable was stood up by digital marketer, right? The first place we went to launch it, especially for proof of concept was the digital marketer list. Um, I think we officially launched scalable kind of Q4 of 2020, right? So that was kind of the official beta launch, uh, of scalable. Uh, most of the journey starts with our scalability score, right? Our scalability score identifies, um, the, the eight scale constraints and gives you a score, an opportunity score on each one. Uh, and that really, uh, goes seamlessly into, uh, into one of our strategy sessions, which is how people would, would usually either join one of our live cohort-based accelerators, uh, for our scalable operating system, or, um, if they qualify join founders

[12:45] Micah: board or founders board X. My question is based on these things, uh, the scalability score, is this only for the business owner or are you guys doing something based on this? So I think Taylor, you're

[12:58] Richard: highlighting, uh, tools and, and what we've done is we've, so these are the, what you see in those eight categories are the scale constraints. So now we have mapped the tools that we have by scale constraints. So if clarity is an issue or if demand is an issue, you can come in here and say, this is an issue. What do I do? And, and the technology will start to sort and say like, Hey, if, if, if you're struggling with clarity, here are the tools that it's tools and training. So we're big on frameworks, right? We're big on, you know, the clarity compass. If you're struggling with clarity, that one's kind of a dead on, right? The clarity compass, uh, is the way to go. This is our alignment tool, really making sure that everyone understands kind of that, that, that mission, our strategic anchors, our core values, our, our 12 Q or three year target and how everything pushes up towards that. Um, so, um, tying in that assessment to the tools to affect those different things and, and making sure that the technology on the backend allows for seamless access when you're, when you're there, you know, post diagnostic, when you're, when you, when you know the problem you're trying to solve, um, this, you know, the, the custom, um, custom categories up here,

[14:07] Micah: I believe very helpful, um, for our members. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's such a cool tie in and then sorting them like that. Um, when you say you guys are big on frameworks, which, which I know you are, how much of that is marketing versus useful, meaning other people have terms for some of these same concepts, why not just use their term versus it seems like you guys come up with, with new terms. And to my mind, your terms actually fit better most of the time. And so I'm wondering how much of it was, Hey, we just need to be unique in market versus no, this is actually just better. Um, yeah, I mean,

[14:43] Richard: better, different worked for us. Uh, look, uh, we didn't seek to build scalable, right? That wasn't, um, it was a, we tried to use everyone else's stuff, right? Um, it's so much, it would have been preferable if we could just take what other people had, had, had built and what was available in some of these different systems and deploy it and have success. Um, now some things work, others didn't, some things worked for a while, others didn't. So when, you know, when we, we ran into a ceiling, right. And had to, it was, it was obvious, like we've got to build something for ourselves. So we default to, uh, building things that are transferable. In fact, it's, it's one of the ways that we look at, um, our, our methodology here in scalable. So SPV, um, by, you know, sales, profit value, um, it are the, the, the categories of value in your company, right? How do you increase your sales? Uh, how do you, uh, increase your profits and then how do you increase transferable value, right? Frameworks our transferable value. So, um, I don't know if it's as much marketing as it is kind of a core belief of ours that we need to create transferable value within our own company and within others' companies. So, um, for us, it's the difference between, um, a guru and a brand, right? Even a personality driven brand and just the brand itself, that's transferable value. Like we were intentional when we transitioned from the Ryan Dice show to digital marketer. Um, same thing here. We want to make sure that, that when we're creating these frameworks, they're created because not, not out of, we want something like that, but it needs to be ours for whatever reason, we couldn't get the available things to work for us across the different industries we were in. Therefore, we had to make something new and, you know, one thing can only have one name. So we didn't want to take something and take a name that someone else had already used. So when, when we created something new, we, we gave it a new name. Um, but I think it does help in, in differentiation in the, in the market, but unfortunately it can, it can go the other way too. Um, I believe that we can be seen as jargon heavy, right? Internal jargon. Um, once you know, you feel like you're on the inside because everyone's using this lingo, this jargon, this language and SPV and level seven and 12 Q and QSP and got it. Yeah, I know that when, you know, you feel like you're on the inside and when you don't know what people are talking about, you either feel left out or unintelligent, right? Maybe not as smart. Neither of those are good feelings. So we have to be intentional in marketing, not in the way that you were, you were intending it. We've got to make sure that we're marketing in a way that makes, um, that, that clearly, uh, indoctrinates people into our jargon, into our methodology so that we don't give them those negative feelings unintentionally. Right? So back to the level seven and why would we have a, a really low ungated and, and lower level entry point if really our, our average purchase price is quite high because we're talking about mastermind coaching consultant, because we need to indoctrinate people into not only our methodologies, but into the, the, the jargon, uh, into, into our naming conventions. Right? So we have, I could, it could be a benefit in marketing. It could also be a detriment if you're not really, really careful.

[18:04] Micah: I have one question touching back on something you said earlier that, uh, that I learned from Ryan. I forget where he was speaking, but he was talking about this and I'd never heard anybody speak on it before. Um, but I, I find it so interesting and so applicable to people with membership sites. It was when he was talking about transferring his personal brand onto the digital marketer brand. So can you just, you, you alluded to it a little bit, can you talk about how you guys did that? And maybe some tips for somebody who wants to say, you know, I'm no longer Joe Smith. I want to become whatever brand, you know, quilting or basketball or right. How, how do they do that?

[18:42] Richard: Um, well, you still have to be Joe Smith, right? Um, you it's, it's an, um, I think it does come out of transferable value, right? What, what brands typically need is a worthy guide, right? What brands need is a brand ambassador. What brands need is someone, um, that has the ability to be a human have personality, right? Have that soul, that heart, but then point back and we need to be able to pull the characteristics that made that person interesting into the soul, the heart of the brand that comes shows up in, in, in design, in brand voice, in character diamond. There's a lot of intentionality that, that is involved in the architecture of a brand, not a logo, not a website, right? Not your color palette. Those things all matter. Right. But in your, um, you know, in, in your character diamond, right? Like how does, how does your brand speak? Because if you're speaking from a brand, a brand is everyone. So everyone has to be intentional and adopt the same brand voice, right? So it is an intentional creation of, of a living thing, right? Not an entity, but a living thing. We have to say, what is this thing? Then making sure that it's a transition from, you know, Joe Smith to, uh, you know, the brand, whether it's, you know, Joe's clothes, right? Like if we're going to go from one to the other, it's not a complete, uh, like a departure of Joe, Joe's still there, but when are we forward facing the brand for us? It happened, uh, predominantly in email subject lines, right? We mailed from Ryan Dice. Then we mailed from, um, Ryan dash digital marketer or Ryan Dice dash digital marketer, then Ryan dash digital marketer in that front line, then eventually digital marketer. Like really, I believe that that slow transition, um, is the thing that had the biggest impact in the adoption of the brand, because most of our brand impressions at the time happened in the inbox, right? So it was there and it was making sure that we had to have the CVJ. That's, I think that's the other thing, like to your, your point about the framework. Um, if the differentiator, right, if the, the, the core like value that you're bringing in kind of that, that, that big picture is the person. It's really, really hard to separate the person into a brand. You can have multiple worthy guides. If the brand has a methodology or a tool or something that everyone's pointing back authority towards, right? This is transferable. A human is not right. So for us, when we build new brands, we build, um, build building them brand first framework first, like what is that primary? Um, what is that? What's that methodology that we're going to lead with, whether it's the seven levels of scale, whether it's what is the thing that everyone who is a brand ambassador, whether or not they have equity or they're a partner or they're a founder, everyone can point back to that's what allows you to build a brand, right? So whether it's the CVJ, whether it's the, the seven levels of scale, some flagship framework that can stand the brand up, and then you

[21:56] Micah: can have multiple ambassadors point back to it. For people who don't, you know, use or understand the concept of cohorts. Can you explain why that's better than just delivering an evergreen course?

[22:07] Richard: Yeah. And it, it may not always be better. So to me, um, if I want to, if I want to consume something, I'm probably going to go on demand. I want to go at my pace, right? But when we're talking about cohort based, um, synchronous training, typically what we're talking about is we're all starting and ending at the same time. So we're going to go through module one together. We're going to have, uh, a conversation about it. We're going to, we're going to have assignments or, or deliverables that we create and that are uploaded. So we're all on the same course. Think about it like college, right? You're in a college course. Everyone starts at the same time. Everyone ends at the same time. Um, so these group cohort based trainings, you may have 25 people that are going through, um, one of these accelerators together at the same time. It's great because now you're getting the perspective of, of your peers, right? I, if I'm going through this with Micah and I'm hearing Micah or seeing what he's submitted, if he decides to share it with the entire group, not just the instructor, uh, which can happen here. Um, I'm having breakthroughs or seeing practical application of something that maybe I was a little, I had a little tunnel vision on. I could only see it through the lens of, of my scenario, my company. Um, now I'm seeing, uh, Micah's take on it through his, and maybe that's the thing that enables a breakthrough. So it really is everyone. It's a small group. Everyone starts at the same time ends at the same time. Typically there's a facilitator or a moderator that's delivering the training, um, and, and hosting weekly or, uh, bi-weekly coaching, uh, or, or, um, Q and a calls

[23:38] Micah: in and around the topic that was released that week. Uh, so you guys have been so generous with your time and showing all this stuff. Thank you so much, uh, for people who, and I'm just going to give a shameless plug for you guys. You know, if you're building a membership site, you probably need DM, honestly, because most membership site people are not the best marketers. And so just going over to these guys where they have these, like Richard saying, transferable frameworks, you can access the content. There's the live calls, there's the community. I can say from my experience that when I need something, that's where I go. And when somebody asks a question about something that I don't know, I say go buy that course. So, uh, for anybody out there, go to digitalmarketer.com or go to scalable.co. I'm also like I said, a member of the scalable thing, join their founders board. And I think there's just a truism of you guys in general. You always over deliver every course, every event, both these companies, you know, my experience has been that, and you guys didn't know me, you weren't trying to do something special for me. It's just how you show up. So I really, really, really appreciate that. And I think this case study is just a continuation of that. Um, do you guys want to say anything else to anybody watching?

[24:48] Richard: Um, I'll say something to you. I'll say, thank you. You've been very kind, not only in, in, uh, inviting us here, but, but in speaking, um, you know, uh, just the, the, the way that you, you talk about our programs, we appreciate it. And, and I think that you've underestimated the value you've added, uh, to our ability to do what we do. Right. So, um, we, uh, we appreciate you and I'd have to know you to know what you did. Um, we will show up anytime because what we've walked through, um, is enabled by you and what you've built. So I'll, uh, I'll, I'll thank you. I'll thank your audience for having us, but I really will thank you for what you've built and what you've enabled us to do. Uh, so that's, that's all I have to say is thank you. Thanks Richard. And thank you, Taylor.

[25:33] Micah: Appreciate it, man. Thanks for having me. All right. Everybody else go to digitalmarketer.com or scalable.co check out their stuff. And if you have any questions about Nenbarium, as always, you can email us. We're happy to answer. Thanks guys. Thank you. Thanks guys.