Shownotes
Episode 162 Frederick Dudek (Freddy D)
Performance marketing takes center court as Jake Tlapek of Finch breaks down demand-side platforms (DSPs), TikTok SEO, and conversion optimization playbooks that win customers on every channel. He shares his journey from Air Force IT to agency leader and founder-creator, including how posting twice daily sparked 100K+ TikTok followers and a steady stream of leads. You’ll learn why DSPs let brands place ads where buyers actually are—from Hulu to digital billboards—without juggling a dozen dashboards, plus why search isn’t dying, it’s moving (hello, Reddit, Pinterest, and TikTok). Jake caps it with two slam-dunk case studies: a landscaper scaling from 3 to 9 crews and a simple button-color change that 5x’d conversions.
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Key Takeaways:
- DSP dominance: Use demand-side platforms to reach buyers across Hulu, Pandora, podcasts, and digital signage—meet fans where they play.
- TikTok SEO is real: Search is shifting—1 in 4 TikTok sessions starts with a search; optimize captions, hooks, and on-screen text.
- Founder-led content wins: Twice-daily posting built Jake’s 100K+ audience and inbound pipeline. Consistency > complexity.
- Conversions are a game of inches: A button color change lifted a landing page from ~1.2% to 6.5%—micro-tweaks, macro-results.
- Messaging mismatch kills deals: Most sites speak to the owner, not the customer—rewrite copy to the buyer’s “benefit of the benefit.”
- Search isn’t dead—just moved: Blend SEO + social search (Reddit, Pinterest, TikTok) to capture intent beyond Google.
- ROAS that scales: Finch’s DSP programs target money-in/money-out efficiency, with cited 17x ROAS examples.
- People over pixels: AI is the cream in the Oreo—useful in the middle, but humans bookend the brand experience.
Guest Bio:
Jake Tlapek is a performance marketing strategist at Finch, known for DSP-driven omnichannel campaigns and no-fluff SEO + CRO execution. He grew a 100K+ TikTok audience by posting twice daily and turns that attention into qualified demand. His wins range from doubling crews for a Chicagoland landscaper to 5x conversion lifts with surgical UX tweaks.
Freddy D's Take
Jake plays full-court press on performance marketing—open lanes via DSP buys, fast breaks via TikTok SEO, and high-percentage shots with on-page conversion. His stance that “search moves” reframes strategy: build content for platforms where your buyer already searches, then use DSPs to shadow their journey from streaming to street-level signage. The message discipline—benefit of the benefit—turns features into emotional wins, the same ethos I coach in the SUPERFANS Framework™: Attract → Engage → Convert → Elevate → Advocate inside your ecosystem. Do this and your brand stops playing pickup ball—you’re running a championship system that compounds trust, referrals, and revenue.
This podcast is hosted by Captivate, try it yourself for free.
One Action:
The Action: Run a 7-day “platform-search sprint” for your top offer.
Who:Founder + marketer + copywriter.
Why: You’ll capture intent beyond Google and build omnichannel consistency that compounds.
How:
- Identify 10 buyer-intent phrases your customers search on TikTok/Reddit/Pinterest.
- Create 5 short videos + 3 carousels mapping benefit of the benefit.
- Syndicate via DSP to follow your audience across streaming/audio/out-of-home.
- Ship daily, measure saves/clicks, and A/B your CTA/button color on the landing page.
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Finch
- Ninja Prospecting
- TikTok
- Hulu
- Amazon
- Meta
- Perplexity
- Subway
- Jimmy John's
- Quiznos
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Transcripts
If you were to just post consistently, you're automatically in the top 10% of all contributors on the Internet.
Speaker B:But I am the world's biggest super fan.
Speaker B:You're like a superfan.
Speaker B:Welcome to the Business Superfans podcast.
Speaker B:We will discuss how establishing business superfans from customers, employees and business partners can elevate your success exponentially.
Speaker B:Learn why these advocates are a key factor to achieving excellence in the world of commerce.
Speaker B:This is the Business Super Fans podcast with your host, Freddie D.
Speaker C:Hey, super fans.
Speaker D:Superstar Freddy D. Here in this episode 162, we're joined by Jake Telepak, better known as the wizard of marketing.
Speaker D:Over the past decade, Jake has helped businesses grow not just bigger, but smarter.
Speaker D:From his early days as an IT technician in the air Force to becoming a sought after marketing mind, Jake's journey is a masterclass in reinvention.
Speaker D:He has taken brands from five figure struggles to seven figure scaling with a blend of SEO, ppc, web development and a deep understanding of human psychology.
Speaker D:Today, he's not just a marketing strategist, he's a content creator, speaker and TikTok sensation known for turning complex marketing ideas into real world results.
Speaker D:Now with Finch, a performance marketing agency, he's helped brands dominate everything from paid ads to organic strategy across platforms like Google, TikTok and even Hulu.
Speaker D:Get ready to learn how to build trust, create craft messaging that converts and why Marketing isn't about selling, it's about connecting.
Speaker D:Let's dive in.
Speaker C:Welcome, Jake, to the Business Superfans podcast.
Speaker C:Great conversation we had before we started recording.
Speaker C:Couple of Chicago boys here in Arizona.
Speaker A:It's great.
Speaker A:I love it.
Speaker A:Especially the fact that they've started bringing some deep dish pizza places here.
Speaker A:I can get a little bit of home.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Luminalis is not too far here in Scottsdale and there's a couple others in town.
Speaker C:There's Uno's is here.
Speaker C:I think there's another one.
Speaker C:I can't think of it right now.
Speaker C:It'll come to me.
Speaker C:But yeah, there's a multitude of things.
Speaker C:We've even got the place where you got the sausage.
Speaker A:Oh, Portillo.
Speaker C:Portillo's is here too.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker C:So yeah, this place is turned.
Speaker C:It's like Chicago's second home.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker C:So Jake, what's the backstory?
Speaker C:What's the pivotal point that you really kind of changed your career to doing what you are doing today?
Speaker C:How did that all come about?
Speaker C:So where did it start and what was the point point where you made the right hand turn and said, this is what I want to Do?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I mean, I feel like my career has been a series of right hand turns for sure.
Speaker A:I started off as a IT technician in the Air Force.
Speaker A:Oh, wow.
Speaker A:That's where I cut my teeth after high school.
Speaker A:And I got out, ended up transitioning into more of a project manager style position.
Speaker A:I got a project manager job at a marketing firm and I said, this marketing thing is kind of cool.
Speaker A:I really like this.
Speaker A:So I just started learning everything, taking certifications and courses and watching endless number of YouTube videos on how to do everything from video editing to copyright.
Speaker A:It was a crazy time, but I loved it.
Speaker A:And I restyled myself and I became a marketing manager.
Speaker A:I ended up running my own agency for several years, which I sold.
Speaker A:Now I'm with another agency.
Speaker A:But I would say for me, where my career is kind of solidified now is I really love my job, as I hesitate to say an influencer, but more of a founder creator.
Speaker A:About four years ago when I was running my first agency, I got asked to speak at a conference specifically about 10 TikTok.
Speaker A:And at the time it was all China, China, China.
Speaker A:And so they wanted to know what's up with this TikTok thing.
Speaker A:I wasn't really into social as a marketing avenue at that point in time, and I said, I'm gonna figure it out.
Speaker A:So I did some research and I said, I'm gonna make an account, I'm gonna post two times a day and I'm gonna give this social thing a good whack.
Speaker A:And after doing that for about 45 days, I had a couple videos go viral and I started getting clients from my TikTok account.
Speaker A:And now four years later, I'm over a hundred thousand followers on TikTok.
Speaker A:I do a multitude of leads a week and that's kind of where I've transitioned my job within my own organization into being this kind of founder led, outreach evangelist person.
Speaker A:And I love it.
Speaker C:Well, it's a great story and what doing is.
Speaker C:You're really engaging with your audience.
Speaker C:So you're not really marketing anymore.
Speaker C:You're really having conversations with a multitude of people.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:It's my favorite thing in the week and I've been slacking on it the last week.
Speaker A:I love going live on social and just sitting there and talking to business owners of every single imaginable business you can think of and being that resource for them to ask a question about marketing or business development and really helping them push past whatever blockages that they have.
Speaker A:And if they do business with me, great.
Speaker A:I don't really push it that hard, but they tend to build that trust and come and work with me.
Speaker C:Well, what you're doing is you're putting out a lot of value out there and you're building a reputation.
Speaker C:And reputation takes a while to really build that up, that people actually trust the information that you're providing.
Speaker C:I just had a conversation yesterday with some guys that I'm on a business show as well.
Speaker C:We talked about actually reputation and trust.
Speaker C:And it takes a lot of work to build up that reputation, but it can take seconds to destroy it.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:It's now that you have to stay on your toes.
Speaker A:But if you're not always speaking truth, if that's not what you're always putting out there, you will have to play a balancing act.
Speaker A:And I'm fortunate enough that I have nothing to gain and nothing to lose by just speaking the truth and being honest.
Speaker A:And sometimes I'll get a question I don't know the answer to.
Speaker A:I'm not going to make something up so someone can go and say, well, that didn't work.
Speaker A:This guy's an idiot.
Speaker A:I'll just tell them, I don't know.
Speaker A:That's a unique one for sure.
Speaker C:Look into it and I'll get back to you.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker D:Let's take a quick pause to thank our sponsor.
Speaker D:This episode is brought to you by our friends at Ninja Prospecting, the outreach team that makes cold connections feel warm.
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Speaker D:Head over to ninja prospecting.com to schedule chat today and be sure to mention you heard about it right here on the business super fans, the service provider's edge.
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Speaker D:All right, let's get back to our conversation.
Speaker C:So tell me a little bit about what you guys do with Fin.
Speaker A:Yeah, so Finch is a performance marketing agency.
Speaker A:Our job is to get you those leads and those sales that you need to keep your business going forward.
Speaker A:So whether that's through an organic search strategy to include AI, or whether that's through a paid media strategy such as Google search, meta, TikTok ads, Pinterest, and even my favorite platform in the entire world is leveraging DSPs to put ads everywhere.
Speaker C:What's a DSP for those listeners that have no clue what a DSP is?
Speaker A:So DSP is more of a generic term.
Speaker A:It's demand side platform.
Speaker A:And there's a bunch of DSP companies out there.
Speaker A:But think of it like instead of going to Meta or Facebook for your ads, and now you're sitting and waiting, twiddling your thumbs for the person that you want to target to come to Meta instead.
Speaker A:With a dsp, they have relationships with all different kinds of advertising vendors to include Meta and Google, but also maybe Hulu or Pandora Radio, or maybe there's a digital billboard, something like that.
Speaker A:And so now I can instead run ads to people where people are at.
Speaker A:That's what DSP does.
Speaker C:So what you're doing is you're really leveraging a platform to disperse through multitude of other channels versus individually going into Meta, Google and everything else and spending the time to set up the marketing campaigns on each unique specific platform, which takes more than five minutes because you wait five minutes and it's different.
Speaker C:So, you know, just by the time you figure it out, you refresh the page and like, wait a minute, it all changed.
Speaker A:That's so true.
Speaker A:Meta is what we would call a supply side platform because they have a supply and we're buying it.
Speaker A:But with the demand side, we want these opportunities and so we're reaching out, demand those opportunities rather than, you know, waiting with a catalog of digital real estate.
Speaker C:Right, so you guys are changing the game in a sense by leveraging.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:That way, if we find somebody who's interested in, let's say, golf clubs, we can find that person when they go to watch their favorite Netflix show.
Speaker A:We can find them at the bus stop across from a digital sign, we can find them when they're listening to their favorite podcast on Spotify.
Speaker C:Wow.
Speaker C:So it's really a multitude of platforms and it's strategic marketing in a sense, because whatever that person's interested in, oh, there it is.
Speaker C:See it enough times and you go, hmm, maybe I should look into that some more.
Speaker A:Yeah, the way I usually describe it, and this is kind of the funny way, it's not entirely accurate, but if you've ever mentioned like, ah, I Need to buy a new toaster and then you start seeing ads for toasters everywhere.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's me on demand side platform.
Speaker C:Got it.
Speaker C:It's just like you buy a car and then you're driving and then all of a sudden everybody's got the same car, you know.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker C:It's the same concept, you know, but in technological aspect, that's pretty wild how you're leveraging that aspect to communicate.
Speaker C:And strategic marketing, basically you're really going into high level strategic marketing because in the old days that didn't exist.
Speaker C:I mean, in the old days, basically you put up a website, the Microsoft front page.
Speaker C:I'm going back to the beginning and that was like you were cool because you had a website.
Speaker C:The messaging wasn't even good.
Speaker C:Was to just show that you were at least legitimate, that you were legitimate business.
Speaker C:Back in the late 90s when people started focusing on websites and everything else.
Speaker C: n it started to evolve in the: Speaker C:So everybody was just getting on there as a party.
Speaker C:It's evolved dramatically where now it's really a strategic strategy to leverage that audience.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:I remember the very first website I ever built.
Speaker A:I don't think I've ever told this story, but this is a good one.
Speaker A:First website I ever built was for a local guy in my town who wrote jingles.
Speaker C:Oh, wow.
Speaker A:And he had written a couple of jingles.
Speaker A:You would know.
Speaker A:He actually is the guy who wrote the Oscar Meyer wiener jingle.
Speaker A:And he said, I want to write more jingles.
Speaker A:What do I do?
Speaker A:And I said, well, you need a website.
Speaker A:And this is, you know, long, long time ago.
Speaker A:He's like, I don't know how to build a website.
Speaker A:I don't either, but I'll try.
Speaker A:And I set that thing up.
Speaker A:And he got a bunch of work from that jingle's less popular now.
Speaker A:But back when that started, it was doing pretty well for him without much left.
Speaker C:Sure, I'll share.
Speaker C:My story is I was in charge of global sales for a software company selling manufacturing software.
Speaker C:And they had a website and it was horrible.
Speaker C:And so I said, hey, let me take a whack at it.
Speaker C:And that's where I rebuilt it.
Speaker C:Microsoft front page.
Speaker C:Because that was the platform at the time.
Speaker C:A couple of the resellers for us said, hey, who redid the website?
Speaker C:I said, I did.
Speaker C:Says, well, how much do you want to do ours?
Speaker C:And so I ended up having a side gig for a little while doing Microsoft front page and then I moved up to go live from Adobe and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker C:But anyway, so yeah, we have some similar backgrounds from that perspective.
Speaker C:So let's get into how is AI changing the game in search and stuff like that, because perplexity is popping up and that I see as a game changer.
Speaker C:Now, if you just read.
Speaker C:But recently I think they offered $34.5 billion.
Speaker C:I think it was billion dollars.
Speaker C:I think it was $34.5 billion to buy Chrome from Google.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:Did you read that?
Speaker A:Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:I think it's never going to happen, but it's wild.
Speaker A:And I think the reasoning behind why they want to acquire that is very evident in the direction that AI is going right now.
Speaker A:Where we're at in the kind of AI development stage cycle is that AI has plenty of information, but it doesn't understand user user experience and user data.
Speaker A:And that's something like maybe a Chrome or a browser might have a better idea of how people are navigating the Internet, how they're exploring web pages, how they choose CTA is to click on.
Speaker A:So perplexity is looking to uplevel their AI with that level of data.
Speaker A:And it's.
Speaker A:Someone's gonna do it.
Speaker A:It's probably gonna be Google and Gemini.
Speaker A:But there is that whole thing with they gotta spin off Chrome because it's too big of a company and stuff.
Speaker A:So we'll see where it goes.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:But as far as the Internet's concerned, especially with AI and marketing's relationship to it, it's a very precarious place right now.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So how are you guys dealing with stuff like that?
Speaker C:Because I got a feeling that paid search is going to change in front of our eyes.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I'm not terribly worried about the outlook of paid search as a solution.
Speaker A:I think the areas that my concern begin to rise in is what platforms and channels will be the kings of paid advertising in the next five years.
Speaker A:And one of the reasons why I bring up DSP is that it's so universal.
Speaker A:I can show on a zillion different platforms.
Speaker A:And so I don't have to worry about if my Google Ads goes away, I can still get to the right people.
Speaker A:I do think we're going to see a shift, specifically in search.
Speaker A:SEO has kind of always been my bread and butter element of marketing.
Speaker A:So I pay very close attention to it.
Speaker A:And from that side of the house, we kind of have to do two things.
Speaker A:One is we have to have A little bit of doctor bedside manner.
Speaker A:Clicks are going down, data is getting consumed without visiting your website, period.
Speaker A:And part of me is happy that people are getting their information.
Speaker A:The other part of me are we destroying the social agreement of the Internet, which was I make a website, Google indexes it, they give me clicks.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:That's the social arrangement we've had.
Speaker A:Now that they're not giving us clicks, do we still have a fair social arrangement?
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:It's a better question for ethical people.
Speaker C:Well, I think that that goes back, Jake, to where you're really leveraging it in a different way because of the engagement that you Talked about on TikTok and some of that stuff.
Speaker C:I think what we're seeing is a transition to being more engaging with people and having conversations.
Speaker C:Maybe go to the website specifically because they're not searching, because they found you through a social platform that you're becoming awarded as a thought leader on a particular subject or several subjects.
Speaker C:I think that's where things are starting to pivot and that's where the influencers have popped up.
Speaker C:And I still question that a little bit because I think there's a difference between an influencer and really somebody that's actually providing real value.
Speaker A:That's true.
Speaker A:And so that is the other side of the SEO coin, which is search will never die, search will just move.
Speaker A:So we're seeing a lot more search on non search engine based platform like Reddit, Pinterest, TikTok.
Speaker A:TikTok just drops stats one in four TikTok sessions.
Speaker A:So someone opens up TikTok one in four of those, the first action they take is a search.
Speaker C:Really?
Speaker A:Really.
Speaker C:Wow.
Speaker A:So getting your TikTok SEO, which is such a silly sentence to say to even begin to conceptualize that, oh my gosh, my content is, is being treated like SEO content.
Speaker A:But consciously doing that is going to give you a huge range of opportunity if you take the time to do that like you would a traditional blog or website.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So the game is really changing right in front of our eyes.
Speaker C:And really the advice to the listeners is I'll word it this way, there's three types of people can be one that make things happen and basically get in the game.
Speaker C:Second type of person watches what happens and so you're sitting there going, well, I'm not sure if I want to do this or not do this or whatever.
Speaker C:And that third person wonders what the muck happened because it all went by and they're clueless and they're going, where did everybody go?
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker A:I think it was Reddit that dropped this stat.
Speaker A:So bear in mind, it's kind of limited to Reddit, but I think it remains true probably across the Internet.
Speaker A:90% of the content of Reddit is provided by 10% of the users.
Speaker A:And of that 90%, it's something like 70% is by the top 3% of users.
Speaker A:So if you're concerned about getting lost in the field of Internet data or videos or posts or whatever it is, I think a very kind of reassuring clarity is that if you were to just post consistently, you're automatically in the top 10% of all contributors on the Internet.
Speaker A:That lowers your competition pool mentally by a massive amount.
Speaker A:And that can hold people back if they think that there's too much competition.
Speaker C:Sure.
Speaker C:So let's go into share a story of how you guys stepped into an organization that was looking for some help in their findability.
Speaker C:Because it's one thing to be found, it's another thing to convert.
Speaker C:So let's talk about how you've kind of helped somebody not only get found, but then when they were found, people actually took action and did something with that.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:One of my favorite stories to tell is about a high end quality landscaper that I did work for for many years in Chicago.
Speaker A:And when I came in, the previous marketing team, which had been in place for eight years, mind you, when I looked at their search console, which is where you see how you're ranking in Google, they ranked for a total of 18 keywords, which is not a lot.
Speaker C:Nope.
Speaker A:And so I came in and we started rebuilding his site with his content.
Speaker A:We did two blogs a week.
Speaker A:And this is back early in my career before I had learned all of my own tricks.
Speaker A:I'm just doing the street line basics of marketing.
Speaker A:A little bit of Google Ads, a little bit of Facebook ads, and having a great website.
Speaker A:Over the course of the next two years, his business went from three crews doing about $1.2 million in total revenue for the year to nine crews doing north of $10 million a year.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:And we were the only marketing change they made.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker C:That's incredible.
Speaker C:It's a huge change.
Speaker A:And what I did for that account, now this is many years ago.
Speaker A:The game has changed.
Speaker A:I don't want to make this sound like you can go do this today.
Speaker A:It's a little bit of a different effort than it was, but it was just getting the bare minimum up and running and doing the basics.
Speaker A:The basics mean a lot.
Speaker D:Sure.
Speaker C:So that company definitely is a super fan of you guys because You've more than doubled their revenue.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:And I have other stories that are very similar, but that's the one I always like to throw out there because it's just so dramatic.
Speaker D:Sure.
Speaker C:It's a huge story.
Speaker C:I mean, I can appreciate that because I've worked with some companies and scaled them and one of the things that we did when I was running the company was we looked at the messaging of the company and had to go through a couple iterations of changes because you don't hit it on the money the first time.
Speaker C:So you make an iteration change, you go, okay, that's 50% better than what it used to be, or maybe 100% better than what it used to be.
Speaker C:But you look at it at about two months and you go, eh, that could use a little bit more tweaking.
Speaker C:It's good, but it needs a little bit more shine and some stuff.
Speaker C:And so you re improve it and, and you re improve it.
Speaker C:So it's really an evolving process but eventually it gets to the point where it's a well oiled marketing machine because the messaging is on point.
Speaker C:You, it's converting and you're getting and you're now what?
Speaker C:I would say it becomes your closing mechanism.
Speaker C:It creates your validity as a business and now people take action.
Speaker C:Because you look legit.
Speaker C:Because you are legit.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:A quick one.
Speaker A:I'll share.
Speaker A:I had a online recipe company, they did recipes on their site and they put together a cookbook of some of their top recipes and they were getting about a 1.2% conversion rate on their landing page for the recipe book.
Speaker A:And we came in and we changed the color of their button.
Speaker A:That's it.
Speaker A:And they went to a six and a half percent conversion rate.
Speaker C:Wow.
Speaker C:Well, there's a psychology behind that.
Speaker C:But you're right, you're hitting a really important point because there is a psychology behind that.
Speaker C:Because colors matter, verbiage matters.
Speaker C:A multitude of different things come into play and we don't think about that stuff.
Speaker A:And it was seven minutes of work, probably two to three hours of evaluation and you know, game planning.
Speaker A:But that was a huge revenue difference for them.
Speaker C:Wow.
Speaker C:What advice could you give a listener to that?
Speaker C:They should look at their stuff, whether it's they're dealing with the marketing agency or them doing it themselves.
Speaker C:What is something that they can look at right now and assess and maybe make a tweak?
Speaker A:Oh, I love that question.
Speaker A:I am a sucker for good messaging.
Speaker A:I love well developed website messaging and I have seen thousands of websites and there is something that I have noticed as a trend on the majority of them, which is that the website assumes the owner is the target market.
Speaker A:This happens in a lot of businesses, especially small businesses, where owners wear so many hats and very commonly will be the ones who write the copy for the website.
Speaker A:Your product means something different to you than it does to your consumers.
Speaker A:90% of the time there is a disconnect.
Speaker A:And so the work and the effort that you've put into creating value in your product while you're close to it and it means a lot to you, that doesn't translate to your buying audience.
Speaker A:So very often we need to take a step back and go, does this website copy mean anything to my actual consumer base?
Speaker A:And there's a couple of ways you can figure it out, but the easiest one is to go to your top five clients and say, look at my homepage.
Speaker A:Did any of this sell you on the product?
Speaker A:And you'll find four out of five of them will say, no, it was this reason.
Speaker A:That's the reason you need to have on your website.
Speaker A:That's the copy you need to be promoting.
Speaker A:Because that's the reason your consumers engage with you.
Speaker A:Not because you added feature A or you reduced cost B.
Speaker A:Whatever it is.
Speaker A:It's that one thing.
Speaker C:So you're really connecting to them emotionally on that one thing.
Speaker C:And then you've got to have the proper call to action for that one thing so that they actually reach out to you.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:People browse intellectually and buy emotionally.
Speaker C:Sure.
Speaker C:And then they justify logically.
Speaker A:There it is.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:So it's the emotion piece.
Speaker A:I feel like a lot of places.
Speaker A:Miss.
Speaker A:What is the benefit of the benefit?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:If I had a CPA service, what's the benefit of having the CPA service?
Speaker A:I don't have to do my books.
Speaker A:What's the benefit of that benefit?
Speaker A:Now I have time to go do all of these other things because otherwise I'd have to do that.
Speaker A:And so that's that benefit of the benefit is what you need to be pushing and selling.
Speaker C:Yeah, I was deep in thought when you stopped there.
Speaker C:But really what you're hitting is you're really getting people to visualize.
Speaker C:And I think that's the part there is.
Speaker C:You're getting people to visualize what their life would be like upon having that benefit.
Speaker A:Yes, 100%.
Speaker A:Because that's your emotional cell.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:Everything else is your logical and intellectual cell.
Speaker C:Interesting.
Speaker C:Because that's really.
Speaker C:You're changing the game.
Speaker C:And so now, you know, you talked about call to action.
Speaker C:But more importantly, getting it to convert.
Speaker C:That's really the secret to getting it to convert.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:One group of businesses that I think have done this particular element very well is look at the differentiators between sandwich shops and how they all sell the exact same product, but they all create very different feelings around their product.
Speaker A:You know, Subway, it's everywhere.
Speaker A:It's the most popular restaurant on the planet.
Speaker D:Sure.
Speaker A:You can go anywhere and find a Subway and get the exact same sandwich every time.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:Whereas Jimmy John's.
Speaker A:What's Jimmy John's whole catch?
Speaker C:Fast.
Speaker A:It's freaky fast.
Speaker A:I'm saving time.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:That it's time I can't get back.
Speaker A:I want to use that time for other things.
Speaker A:That's emotional.
Speaker A:So I'm gonna buy Jimmy John's.
Speaker A:Maybe going back a little bit in the dating here Quiznos.
Speaker C:Oh, yeah.
Speaker A:Remember those toasty.
Speaker A:It's elevated.
Speaker A:It's the elite sandwich.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Obviously not Subway toasts and everybody else toast too.
Speaker A:But at the time, they were the number one in the game, you know?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So what you're doing is they're really kind of building that emotion.
Speaker C:I mean, Apple is.
Speaker C:It's the lifestyle.
Speaker A:Think different.
Speaker A:Who doesn't want to be different and think different?
Speaker C: Like a: Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:And now everyone has an iPhone.
Speaker A:So different.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So what are some of your services that you guys offer?
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:I mean, we kind of sit on the two sides of the aisle of organic lead gen.
Speaker A:So we have our SEO programs and we scale those custom to your business.
Speaker A:So we sell you the package you need.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:And not fit you into some pre built structure that we already have.
Speaker A:And then on the paid media side, if you're looking to acquire more leads through Google, Meta, Amazon, Reddit, Pinterest, TikTok, Hulu, or through our DSP, we typically average 17 return on ad spend.
Speaker A:So for every dollar you put in, you're getting 17 back through our DSP program if you're ready to accelerate.
Speaker A:Because the beautiful thing about ads is it's money in, money out, you know, the equivalency and the exchange rate.
Speaker A:So we can scale quickly and as far as you want to go.
Speaker A:So those are kind of the two major offering sets.
Speaker A:We do have some ancillary services like conversion rate optimization, like I mentioned that button that we talked about evaluating.
Speaker A:We do have some audience recognition tools to help you analyze your buying audience, things like that as well.
Speaker A:But those are our two bread and butter core product lines.
Speaker C:What about any video stuff or any social media type engagement that you help companies with or.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:So we don't directly do that.
Speaker A:We do have an extremely trusted partner.
Speaker A:And I don't know how much I can say here.
Speaker A:Their director of social media services directly reported to a v ery, maybe a Gary Vary person.
Speaker A:And so he's very, very talented.
Speaker C:I can do the math.
Speaker C:I can add.
Speaker A:There you go.
Speaker C:Interesting.
Speaker C:So cool.
Speaker C:Yeah, you guys get into a lot of important aspects of really the digital marketing space.
Speaker C:And as we talked right now it's changing.
Speaker C:And how big is AI playing into that?
Speaker A:Smaller than you might think or larger than you might think think, comparatively.
Speaker A:It depends on what your experience is with AI.
Speaker A:What we're finding is a lot of companies are rushing to be powered by AI.
Speaker A:And at Finch, that's not our objective.
Speaker A:We always want to be powered by people.
Speaker A:And the reason we want to be powered by people is because when you use AI, you are accepting the center of the bell curve.
Speaker A:You are accepting the average output.
Speaker A:That's the whole point of AI.
Speaker A:I'm going to average all this data together and give you the average output.
Speaker A:And we believe that when it comes to brand development, lead generation, e commerce growth, it takes a human to connect with human.
Speaker C:Sure, yeah.
Speaker C:AI.
Speaker C:I use it a lot for.
Speaker C:Oh, I do too, for collecting data and everything else.
Speaker C:But then you still have to massage it.
Speaker C:You can't just take it and say, okay, here it is, go.
Speaker C:You got to take it and say, okay, let's tweak this and whatever.
Speaker C:I use it primarily myself for refinement.
Speaker A:We like to consider ourselves an Oreo when it comes to AI.
Speaker A:The cookies are people, the cream is AI.
Speaker A:It's always in the middle.
Speaker C:That's an interesting way of putting it.
Speaker A:Never on the beginning, never on the end.
Speaker A:And we think that allows our team to leverage it in a way that speeds them up, makes them effective, makes them true killers in their field.
Speaker A:Without reducing the undeniable value of the human experience on both sides.
Speaker C:Yeah, because at the end of the day, people buy from people that they like and trust, not from a robot.
Speaker A:It's one of my favorite things to say about B2B businesses.
Speaker A:If you think you're selling to businesses, you are so wrong.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:There's no such thing as B2B.
Speaker A:It's everything is people to people.
Speaker C:Yeah, there's no B2C.
Speaker C:No B2B.
Speaker C:Whatever.
Speaker C:It's people.
Speaker C:And that's how you create superfans, is the experience that you deal with individuals.
Speaker C:And I always say that the Sale isn't the sale.
Speaker C:The signing of the paperwork is just a deal.
Speaker C:The sale is everything that happens after the agreement to sign.
Speaker C:That's the sale.
Speaker C:Yeah, and it never ends.
Speaker C:You're always selling.
Speaker A:Mentioned this when we were talking before.
Speaker A:There's external marketing, what your brand shows off to the world.
Speaker A:Once people come inside your fences, inside the walls of your business by being a customer.
Speaker A:A lot of businesses turn off that experience.
Speaker A:They turn off that marketing and that brand and now it's just a sterile surgical room environment and they feel like they're at the dentist just getting drilled and that's not good business.
Speaker A:You need to have that internal marketing layer as well.
Speaker A:That experience needs to carry all the way from first touch point to your first sales call to the signing of the paperwork, to the onboarding process, to the delivery of the product, to the renewal and beyond.
Speaker C:Yeah, that's how you develop long term superfans.
Speaker C:I mean I saw on you guys website your average is about nine years for customers.
Speaker C:And I have the same average from some of the customers that I did.
Speaker C:Digital marketing when I had my digital marketing I still handle.
Speaker C:I think I got like maybe 2, 3 left.
Speaker C:But most of them, the longest was 15 years, the average has been 10.
Speaker C:It's all because just what you said, maintaining engagement, sending them birthday cards, building relationships on a personal level.
Speaker C:Whenever I fly into town, somewhere in Michigan, somewhere back in Chicago and et cetera, I meet up with them, stop in their store, buy their stuff.
Speaker C:It's fundamentals, it's the simple things.
Speaker C:Or like one of my quotes is, it's the little things.
Speaker C:But the little things are really the big things.
Speaker A:1000% agree.
Speaker A:The industry average for marketing agencies right now is sub 18 months for relationships.
Speaker C:That's crazy.
Speaker A:There's a reason for that.
Speaker A:We have shifted to a mathematical sterile experience and it is bad and it is wrong.
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:No, it's you.
Speaker C:You've got to engage because things change.
Speaker C:People's lives changed.
Speaker C:My biggest success in sales, one of my biggest super fans was a manufacturing company in Rockford, Illinois and it was a tool and die shop.
Speaker C:I remember and I've shared the story many times, but I'm going to share it again because it's so important.
Speaker C:The IT manager that I had built a relationship over for a couple years.
Speaker C:I went in one day doing my typical visit.
Speaker C:What's happening?
Speaker C:Where you guys at?
Speaker C:What's going on?
Speaker C:I could tell his demeanor was off and his name was Bob.
Speaker C:And he says, what's going on Bob?
Speaker C:And he says well, I'm going through a divorce.
Speaker C:I said, all right, let's go to lunch.
Speaker C:I'm buying.
Speaker C:And so for the next couple hours, we were at the restaurant, AKA Bar, and, you know, having some drinks and letting him talk.
Speaker C:And I stopped being a business guy and I became a friend.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:And I still have that relationship, you know, decades later because of that.
Speaker C:And that's.
Speaker C:Those are the things.
Speaker C:That's how you create super fans of your customers, and that's how you keep them for more than 18 months.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:I'll throw a quick one in here.
Speaker A:That landscaping company I referred to earlier, I was very, very close with the owner and he had to let go a employee that had been with him for a very long time.
Speaker A:They had a very personal relationship.
Speaker A:I'm a contractor.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:As an agency, I'm a contractor.
Speaker A:I could see his struggle though.
Speaker A:And so I actually did the firing for him.
Speaker C:Wow.
Speaker A:Because he wasn't going to be able to handle it.
Speaker A:And so I did the whole process for him.
Speaker A:Take the laptops back and the car keys and handled the whole thing for him.
Speaker A:Because that's what you do when you take care of people.
Speaker A:People take care of you.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:It comes back tenfold, if not more so.
Speaker C:Jake, great conversation.
Speaker C:We could talk about this stuff for at least another five minutes.
Speaker C:But how can people find you guys?
Speaker A:Yeah, best way to do it.
Speaker A:Finch.com.
Speaker A:just like the bird.
Speaker A:Hit us up over there.
Speaker A:You can also find us on our socials.
Speaker A:We also do a bunch of podcasts under the network Vox and Coin V O X and Coin.
Speaker A:So if you want to see our leadership team and what they have to say about business development and marketing, go check us out there too.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker C:Thank you so much.
Speaker C:We'll make sure that that is in the show notes.
Speaker C:Great conversation, Jake.
Speaker C:We definitely would love to have you on the show again and continue the conversation another day.
Speaker C:And thank you so much for your time.
Speaker A:Absolute pleasure.
Speaker A:Thanks for having me.
Speaker D:What a great conversation with Jake Telepek, the wizard of marketing himself.
Speaker D:His story is proof that mastery isn't about chasing tactics, it's about understanding people.
Speaker D:From IT technician to marketing powerhouse, Jake reminded us that real growth happens when you stop selling and start connecting.
Speaker D:For service based business owners, that's the edge.
Speaker D:When your message builds trust, your marketing becomes magnetic.
Speaker D:That's how you turn one time clients into long term superfans.
Speaker D:If you enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss future episodes.
Speaker D:Thanks for tuning in today.
Speaker D:I'm grateful you're here and part of the Business Superfans journey.
Speaker D:Every listen, every action you take gets you one step closer to building your own superfans.
Speaker D:Remember, one action, one stakeholder, one superfan closer.
Speaker B:We hope you took away some useful knowledge from today's episode of the Business Superfans Podcast.
Speaker B:The path to success relies on taking action.
Speaker B:So go over to businesssuperfans.com and get your hands on the book.
Speaker B:If you haven't already, join the accelerator community and take that first step in generating a team of passionate supporters for your business.
Speaker B:Join us on the next episode as we continue guiding you on your journey to achieve flourishing success in business.
