Winning in Digital Marketing: Strategies for B2B & B2C Growth

Digital marketing is evolving faster than ever—are you staying ahead?

In this episode of Curve Ahead, host Brian Wiles chats with Maria Harrison, president of Bullseye Strategy, about:

✅ B2B vs B2C marketing strategies and what works best
✅ The role of storytelling in brand engagement & lead generation
✅ How video marketing is changing digital outreach
✅ Why SEO & paid media are crucial for business growth
✅ How AI & automation are reshaping the marketing industry

Tune in now to learn how to optimize your marketing strategy for success!

Transcript

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Today on Curve Ahead, I am joined by Maria Harrison. She is the founder of Bullseye Strategies. Maria, welcome to the podcast. Do you mind introducing yourself? Hey Brian. Well, first let me just thank you for having me here today. I am the president and co founder of Bullseye Strategy. We are a 15 year old digital marketing agency headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We've been here, like I said, for 15 years and we help a wide array of clients in different verticals achieve digital marketing success. In every channel. You had mentioned you have a co founder. So what inspired you guys to start Bullseye Strategy? We really enjoy helping other people be successful with digital marketing. We really wanted to help companies make sense of what a Martech stack should look like, what they should include in that, and really helping people leverage Google Ads, programmatic advertising and media social. Social media advertising, organic content to drive success for their businesses. We're really passionate about that. We like to win. You know, I think what we both love about this business is that it's always changing. So you know, that was kind of the short story of how we started the longer story. We both came from corporate America backgrounds, we worked for very large companies with a lot of red tape. I think just from a personality perspective probably didn't sue either of us very well. And so we wanted to be in a position at that point in our careers where we could have more flexibility and work faster. You know, you have to work fast in this industry if you're going to be successful. So I think that was also part. Of the driving force over the last 16 years. Have you stayed fast? We've really tried to lean into our strengths. Right. So our strengths being the Martech, our strengths really understanding. Because we sat in corporate America marketing and business development seats for so long, we really can put ourselves in the client's shoes. So we really know the pressure they're under and the challenges that they're facing. Right. We are a small to medium sized business, so we get that side of it, but then we also get the corporate side because we had to report up to the C suite so we understand what they're trying to achieve. And because we understand that we can often see around corners for them. And that's kind of the DNA that we've instilled in all of our teams. So like all of our strategists, all of our managers, all of we're all thinking that same way, like how do we drive the best ROI and the best ROAs? That's one piece of it. But then how do we see ahead to what's coming next? And we've been able to do that because I firmly believe it's because we've been in that client side seat that we understand what their challenges are. Of course, some of that can be industry specific. And so, you know, we will work with just about anyone, but we do have certain industries that we've specialized in over the years, like real estate, hospitality, restaurants, travel, and on the B2B side, B2B tech companies, SaaS companies. So we also come with, you know, 15 years of experience in doing it. We've seen what works, what doesn't work, and of course we're able to bring that to bear for new clients. So you mentioned that you work with both B2B and B2C. How does that, like this strategy piece kind of differentiate from one type of organization to the other? Does. Does that question make sense? Yes. Yeah, it definitely does. So I love that question, actually. So, you know, it's a different dance, so to speak, right? When you're pitching another business, it's a very different process. It's usually depending on the price of the product that you're trying to pitch. But, you know, a lot of these are big ticket items, they're big commitments because especially if it's a tech product, you know, you're asking a whole company to shift their tech to a new piece of technology. And so there's a lot of work often involved in that too. So you have these, you know, you might have one point of contact at a company, but you're going to always have this larger buying committee that they have to pitch to. And so we are really skilled at helping them have all the resources they're going to need to make the pitch. And something we really lean into, or some things we really lean into in B2B are of course, content marketing. So, you know, filling the top of the funnel is like the first challenge, but then you got to pull them all the way through. And to do that in B2B, you really have to have strong content. So we lean into things like white papers, webinars, blogs, articles, and then we, on top of that we add CRM. So we're a HubSpot certified agency. We can work with any CRM. And through both the marketing enablement and the sales enablement tools, if we set them both up, they talk to each other, we're able to really effectively drip on these prospects so that you're building trust and you're sharing educational pieces with them that are not just a pitch. Right you're really trying to educate the prospect. And so that happens usually over a longer period of time with a B2B prospect, say three months, six months, even a year, depending on how big the sale is. Different from B2C, which usually has a much shorter window to close. And you don't have that huge stakeholder committee that has to be necessarily pitched and bought in on. You know, maybe it's one person buying the product in a B2C situation, maybe it's, you know, maybe you need to get buy in from a spouse or a significant other. But it's a much shorter process usually to close, right? Promotions, offers incentives, you know, time constricted offers, you know, book now for the best deal, etc. So it becomes a little more urgent in B2C to close that way and to offer those kinds of promotions. So those are a few of the ways that it differs. One thing that I saw recently was a B2B company who is offering kind of like Black Friday pricing. And I thought that was such a, a clever thing, but not necessarily something that happens all the time. So I always, I mean, what is your take on an organization who works in B2B offering incentives like a Black Friday sale? I love that. I mean, we see clients do it. We've done it with clients. I love it. In terms of why I love it. So you're always going to have that stakeholder committee you're going to get to, but at some point they're almost there, right? And so, you know, that Black Friday deal could be the thing that pushes them over the edge. And what I always preach to my B2B clients, you know, so funny, like B2B clients will come in and they're always talking about their ideal customer and they almost always talk about it in terms of another business. Oh, we want to sell to businesses that do between $50 million and $150 million in revenue. Have, you know, 700 employees or more. And I always say, stop. Who's a person you want to talk to there? You're still selling A people, right? Who's the person I'm trying to get to? What is that ideal customer profile? It's still a human. And so as humans, we are conditioned to Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. And so why not lean into that and B2B, right? We're already conditioned to look for these deals. So B2B is going to ship you that deal as well. And the same thing, you know, throughout the year. It doesn't have to just be Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I mean, we happen to be coming off that as we're talking here. But, you know, I even encourage my B2B clients to lean into other worldwide events, right? So you got the super bowl, you have the Olympics, as you can see, very sports driven over here. But, you know, you have Mother's Day, you can have all kinds of specials in B2B, because at the end of the day, you're selling to a person, right. And you want to make some kind of an emotional connection with that person, because that's ultimately what's gonna allow them to have recall for your brand, too. When working with B2B clients, is it hard for you to help them make that mental shift of, hey, I'm not just targeting this entire organization. We're actually talking to people. We're in a service industry. We are trying to serve them what they need at the time that they need it. So is that, like, a bigger hurdle for you to overcome? So some clients we work with, you know, if we're working directly with a CEO who, you know, oftentimes, especially in a B2B tech company, they're very techie themselves, right. And so they think in very black and white terms. Right. And when you're talking about an ICP and ideal customer profile, it gets a little. Gets a little emotional, right. It gets a little touchy feely. And that sometimes is harder for the tech people to really embrace in the conversation. So there is definitely a big component of what we do at Bullseye Strategy is educating the client, educating our client. And that really starts for us. It starts when we first meet them, so it starts before they're a client. We are the reason we win deals. I'll tell you right now. We're often in competitive deals. The reason we win deals with B2B clients and B2C is that we're very willing to be educational through that process. Right. So we start teaching them right away, okay, this is what you need to be looking for. This is what you need to do. And usually we can get some alignment on that, and they see the value in it once we explain it to them. You know, if you can explain it logically and show them great results for other clients, which, you know, is our source of proof and truth. Right. It's really not that hard. Usually we get them there. So it does vary. Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think it kind of just goes back to how perceptive they are to your messaging and how effective you are with the messaging for education. Right. I know that I've got a PM background. So. So having people come to the table and try to kind of understand what I'm telling them as far as like a project status is, has to be done in various different ways to make sure that all your key stakeholders are absorbing the information that you need, that they need in order to be effective on your team. So I assume that it's probably very similar for you as well when it comes to educating leaders on how best to attack. Moving from addressing just an ICP as like this construct to being more people driven. This is the person that you're needing to try to meet with instead. Yeah, I mean, it is. But you know, we again, we educate them through that process. We explain to them, you know, this is, you know, you need to humanize your content and humanize your approach because you need to make that connection with the person. You need to be in a relationship with them before you can get to that stakeholder committee. That's really going to help make the buying decision at the end of the day. And they need to trust you, most importantly. Right. They're not going to pitch your product to their buyer's committee if they don't trust you. We're going to give you the content, the sales tools, the white papers, to have that social proof. To have the proof and to have the education so that they can offer that up to their team. And they feel like you actually care about their business, because you probably do actually care. But that has to be articulated right through that process. And so, yeah, we get them there. It might take a few minutes, but we definitely got them. So how does storytelling in those instances come into play? Yeah, so I love this question. I mean, storytelling is kind of like everything these days in content marketing, in my opinion. You know, for a while now we've been using something called the story brand seven part framework. And so the story brand framework was created by another marketing expert. But it's a really good framework for how to communicate with either a B2B or a B2C prospect. It doesn't really matter which you're trying to get to. And that framework really helps us to help our clients tell a clear story from start to finish. And so it starts with a character, right? Like, who's the Persona that you're trying to talk to? What is that ideal customer profile that you're trying to reach out to? And ultimately the question is, how are you going to make that person the hero of the story? Right? Like, I want to make the buyer at my target company the hero of the story. Because if he's the hero, then I win, right? So if he or she is the hero in finding the best new tech for their company, or if mom is the hero for planning the best vacation for her family this year, she wins, I win, right? So we make them the hero and then what's the problem we're trying to solve? We are now the business, the vacation entity, the B2B company. We're the guide. We're going to help them understand their problem, how to overcome the challenges to getting to success and give them a plan to get to success. And then we're going to motivate them, call them to action, to actually get them to commit to the purchase. Right? And we do that like we talked about with promotions, but we also do that by creating a compelling story, getting them to feel like they literally, if they don't do this, they won't be the hero, there will be failure. Right? So getting them to feel that, which might feel like pressure or it might just feel like they're going to let someone down, getting them to really feel that and connect with that is what's often going to get them over the line to make the purchase. How does your broadcast journalism background influence how you approach storytelling, especially in the digital marketing space? So the same thing is true here in digital, right? So I try to really encourage my copywriters and clients that I work with not to try to be too cutesy or too fancy with their copy. You don't have but two or three seconds to capture people's attention today. I think I saw a stat recently. We have less attention span than a goldfish now because saw that yesterday. Yeah, you need second attention span because why we're all doing this, right? And. Or just scrolling. It's gotta. Whatever it is, a subject line in an email, a headline in an. A headline in an organic post with a good piece of copy in the image. It has to compel me to stop, so it has to make me feel something and it has to be the lead of the story and then you can pick up on all those supporting details and facts. So that's really where my broadcast journalism background has helped me in guiding writers, guiding my strategist to write that compelling copy. So what I'm hearing from you is one, don't bury the lead. But also the hook is key. The hook is so key. You know, in another place, I think my broadcast journalism background has really helped me is video. You know, as a broadcast journalism major and working in that industry for a minute before I came into digital marketing. You know, really storyboarding the story that you want to tell in any piece. And you had to be able to do that very fast in broadcast journalism. Obviously we know now it's even faster, right. You have about two minutes that you need to get the word out because of our 24 hour news cycle that we live in. But being able to storyboard a video to really tell the story with that hook very clear up front and taking them on the journey I just talked about with the story brand has been really helpful as we've leaned and as clients have leaned more and more into video. And video has to be a part of your plan today. You're just not going to capture enough eyeballs if you don't have compelling videos, Whether that's in your paid ads, your organic ads, your emails like it. It has to be everywhere and it has to be part of that creative asset suite across the board. So let's get into that a little bit more. Right. Like I always think of me in my organization as being video first and I was having a conversation a couple of days ago is like I really wanted to like move into also having a newsletter and I was like, well why can't I do both and just use the content that I'm creating and video take that transcript, run it through AI help it have how that helped me generate enough to I can start putting out newsletters more regularly. And it's like that just why didn't it dawn on me sooner? So I mean I love the idea of more organizations needing to be video first. How who do you think are the big winners right now when it comes to some of that video first? Top of funnel content creation. Think hospitality and real estate. You know, they're smaller companies often, but especially some of like the more boutique luxury properties they're investing right in 3D video. Because people who are gonna spend on a five star vacation, a luxury vacation, they want to know what they're getting and we have that capability now through drone video through something called a matador. There's different ways that you can really let them feel like they're walking through the property. Right. I see that being done very well today. Yeah, I would agree. There's a, actually a content creator here in Colorado that I am a huge. He's in, he is a realtor by trade and he's putting out great content on, you know, these properties that are just being listed here in Colorado. So he's keeping it hyper local to his market. And then I don't know if he's repurposing some of the photos that are taken of the property or actually going and shooting some of his own content in addition to. But like, what he's putting out is incredible. And I love to just look at his stuff and kind of gain inspiration because it like, he has a really good eye for just the contrast of like these ultra modern buildings. Plus, like in Colorado you can have super rugged backgrounds or. And he depicts that quite well. So, yeah, I would say that when you mentioned real estate, definitely it's having its moment. Especially I mean, even if you're just calling like considering like Zillow gone wild that, I mean, it started as a joke and now it's a huge, you know, money generator for the. The original creator. So I think that, you know, is super cool. Yeah. Whenever we work with luxury properties. So we've been the. The agency of record for Corcoran Real Estate Group for a long time. We've also done some independent properties here in South Florida. We did not too long ago, we finished selling out a project here in Florida, Fort Lauderdale, called the Enclave. Really exclusive home, private home, community, custom built homes, all backing up to one of the most prestigious golf courses in Fort Lauderdale. And we primarily did that using video. Right. We used a lot of drone video to shoot. And it was interesting because were shooting vacant lots and so it's not so easy to sell dirt. Right? You're selling a vacant lot and so you really had to sell the vision and the dream in the video until we got a few of the houses that went vertical. And then of course, we could start showing the product. But the drone video that shot over those landscapes and facing the golf course so you could really get that view, but then also shooting the surrounding area so they knew what kind of neighborhood they were going to be living in. Because a lot of those buyers came from out of market. We had some in market, but we also had some out of market buyers for this very exclusive community. We could not have done that without the aerial shots from the drone. I mean, it was really key to selling the property. So you had mentioned community and it seems like you have pretty strict strong ties to the community surrounding you in Florida. How does that help your business? I love this question, man. I was literally at a lunch the other day talking about this. You know, listen, we live here, so we also work and play here. And we want this community to be the best it can be. And my partner and I have continuously tried to reinvest in the community since we started the company so, you know, he serves on a board at one of the local colleges here, the Florida Atlantic University Tech Runway. He serves on. He serves on the Broward Workshop, which is Broward county is where Fort Lauderdale is, to really try to figure out what's going to attract top talent to this market and what's going to keep them here. And we're facing challenges like a lot of communities are today. I give back to a lot of my time with the Orange Bull Committee, which is of course part of the college cfp and our new playoff system that we have this year. And people think of that often as just a game, but we actually give back quite a bit to the community. We build digital media centers in schools, et cetera. And so why would I do that? As a digital marketing agency owner, we truly believe that if the community is better, our business is better, right? And so we want these. We want the kids in the community to succeed so that they continue to make the community strong, right? They are the future. And we want our local businesses to succeed, right? Our restaurants, from our local mom and pops all the way to our very high end luxury dining that we have here for all the foodies, we want them to be successful. And so I think, you know, when we talk to local businesses, whether they're small or medium or they're much larger companies, they feel that, right? We know the community, we know the players, right? So we know what people in the market want. All that said, we do a lot of business internationally too, right? We have clients everywhere from literally like obscure places like you would never think of, like Nicaragua all the way to Italy to Chicago to Dallas, you know, And I think we win on that national and international level because of our experience in the industries that we're in. But community for us is very important here in South Florida. I love that. I mean, what I'm kind of envisioning is why wouldn't you work where you eat? Exactly, exactly. And especially for us, we have as an agency and both as executives, we have a strong background in travel and hospitality. And that is the industry here, right? Whether it's cruises or hotels or restaurants or new entertainment venues, there's all of it here. And so, you know, we're very invested in how the community continues to develop. We have a lot of luxury development lately. So we're really exploring, like, how is this going to work? How are we going to house workers for these luxury developments, right? They can't afford a $6 million condo on the beach, so where are they going to live? Those are the kinds of things that we want to tackle with the community so that the whole ecosystem works for everybody. Yeah, we've. I mean, we face similar things here in Denver. Right. We've got all. We're the gateway to the mountains for all your skiing and want to need our winter wonderland needs. Right. And you know, the people who are working at the mountain aren't the people who can buy a house at the mountain and there's not a lot of other properties. So we face very similar issues here in Col. Yeah. And I think, you know, I don't know the Colorado market quite as well, but I think, you know, what I've heard when I've been out there is they're commuting in from very far away oftentimes and that's starting to happen here. But the problem here is traffic, right. It's very congested area and public transportation is almost non existent. So you know, we've been working with different groups here to say, like, how can we better support these people that have to drive, you know, an hour in to be a teacher in an inner school because they can't live in the neighborhoods, they can't afford it. So it's interesting challenges for sure that we're facing as we get deeper into development of our communities. Let's change topics a little bit and focus more on trends in digital marketing. So there's been a lot of new technology, a lot of new platforms that have come out since your inception. How do you guys kind of stay on top of all the new big trends? Yeah, man, well that's my job. That's what I like to say, right? That's literally my job. You know, I always say that's like my first job. I have to know what's happening in the market. And so yeah, man, like when I was coming, I was already on that, you know, before my clients ever mentioned it to me. Right. So that's always my job, is to be a couple of steps ahead of my clients, you know. So of course we have industry rags that we read, we have podcasts that we are faithful to listening to. So, you know, you gotta stay informed. You have to be reading. But very importantly, in addition to all of that, we get out in the community, right? We talk to our peers, we talk to other agency owners, we talk to the people who own these technologies so we can kind of get that sneak peek under the hood, like what's coming next? What are you working on next? What's the next tech that you're bringing Right. Or, you know, even as a HubSpot certified agency, like, they'll come to us and say, you know, a lot of customers have asked for X or Y or Z future, it's coming, it's on the roadmap, and we often know it before our clients do, so we're bringing that to them. The other piece of it, that's very important, and I stress this with my team all the time. You have to be a great observer of the world. Right. Like, you need to understand market trends and facts and how they're going to impact your business. And yes, I mean, like, I guess the usual suspects, right, Are, is consumer travel up or down? Is business travel up or down? Right. That to me is like the usual suspects if you're working in travel, let's say. But I'm also even talking about the bigger stuff that we've seen, you know, much more so in the last few years, like supply chain issues. You know, we have a very, we have a few very prominent clients who, you know, they need parts from overseas, they can't produce their products without them, and they're, you know, constantly bracing for product shortages and how are they going to deal with that and how are they going to fulfill orders and of course, impacts the marketing. Right. How are we going to communicate that and how are we still going to book revenue when we might not even have product to deliver? Right. So you have to be constantly watching what's coming. Right? You got to deal with what's here and now, but you have to be ready for what's next. Yeah. So there's two things I want to pick up on with that one. Early on in this podcast series, I spent a lot of time talking to experts in the automotive space. And I, I've been asking them, I'm like, you know, how are you guys recovering post Covid? And they're like, you know, we're kind of to this new normal where you're seeing kind of a split. Some have really good inventory, but others have gone more to like the order your car right off the line model, similar to like what Tesla does. So it's kind of interesting how they that industry has evolved to kind of overcome what has transpired. The other thought that I had while you were talking about the trends is a couple of days ago I saw a TikTok and it still stuck in my head. It said, and you only need to be 10% of ahead of your clients to be 100% effective. And I was like, that is so true. Like, you may Feel behind, but you only have to be a little bit ahead of them to understand what's coming next, to really help them out. So that. That's something that. It's just. It's living rent free in my head. Yeah, no, it's. It's a great. I love that quote. A stat like that is, you know, very often true, you know, and we definitely saw that with the advent of AI in the past 12 months, right? And so were ready. We knew it was coming. We were ready. I think, surprisingly, a lot of big players in the industry were not ready, but were ready. It was. It was there. And, you know, we got peppered with questions right away, like, how are you using this for my account? Are you using this for my account? Is the content AI generated? Well, what am I paying for that? Right. All these questions that we knew were gonna come up, and so we dealt with that. Then we also had clients who just have not really known how to deal with governance issues. Right? Like, they don't want any of their content being fed to ChatGPT or to any of the AI because they don't want it used, they don't want it learned about. Right. It's proprietary in many cases, so how do they lock massive teams out of it to not be able to use it? So it's been an interesting journey. We've helped clients with all of that, and to your point, always kind of staying one step ahead of that to see, like, what's coming next. You know, it's been a journey through that and will continue to be, you know, as. As nascent technology becomes more mainstream, as, you know, procedures and processes will standardize about how to use those technologies in different companies. But I always like to say, I started in this industry in 97, like, when it was the Wild West. And, you know, I kind of feels like it reset us to that a little bit. But, you know, that's how I started. So for me, it's very comfortable. Right. I embrace change, I embrace the technology and just say, like, how can we use this to be more successful instead of fearing it, like, what is it that we can all gain by working with this new normal? As you said, I think with AI is that there's so many platforms out there right now that there isn't a single singular, clear winner. So there isn't a lot of governance on how to use those with certain clients, especially when they don't want their. Their proprietary data on a platform like that. And I know that there are definitely platforms who are better suited for those types of instances than others say chatgpt not being that platform. I think it's Amazon's, you can set up a singular instance and it doesn't actually use to train the model back. I'm not super familiar with those. I'm more on the commercial application side, so. Well, right. And that's the thing, right. So most mom to medium sized businesses are going to be more on the commercial side because they're not going to be able to make that investment. Right. Then you have the bigger companies who maybe want to make the investment but are not quite sure. Right. How to navigate that yet. And so what we're seeing pop up in the industry and I even have a friend who just started an AI consultancy because they need real guidance. Right. They need to know what's workable, what's not, what's going to work with their general corporate governance policies. It's been an interesting journey, I can say for us. We've embraced it. It's now integrated into almost every tool we use. You see, CRMs are integrating it, content management platforms to publish, the social media are integrating it. It's, it's in your face anyway. You can turn it off. But you know, for the most part, why wouldn't you take a suggestion? You don't have to use it, but why wouldn't you want to get another pov, right? You would. I think of it as a companion or a brainstorming tool or a ta. Right. Like it's another companion that can brainstorm with you, give you ideas. You don't have to take the ideas. And it still needs, at least from a content perspective, in my opinion, it still needs a human touch. Right. It's content generated by AI can be a little stiff. Right. And it can be a little repetitive. And so you still have to massage it and work it to get it to really drive to compelling headlines, hooks, get emotion out of it. But it can be a great research assistant and tool from that perspective. I use it more often than I think I probably should. I don't know if I'm becoming reliant upon it like I am gps, but it is, you know, it's a tool that's there all the time that is so easy to just ask for a second opinion, especially if it comes to brainstorming new ideas for content creation or you know, putting together questions like this. How can you leverage the tools that are already there around you to better understand information more quickly for whatever your application is? Yeah. And I, I think a lot some of that is Subjective, Right. I think it's going to depend on the subject matter that you're asking it about and sometimes it comes back with, you know, answers that are logical. Sometimes not so much. You know, we also use it to improve processes in house that have no impact on, let's say, the client facing or public facing deliverables that we provide, but things that are just helping make our processes more efficient, more, let's say error free. So they're improving our accuracy internally. You're able to use scripts, you can have it write scripts for you to upload to other systems and tools that's going to make those programs more efficient. So it just depends how you're using it as far as becoming dependent on it. I do think that's a risk for all of us. Right. Like you said, we're all, do you get in your car and go almost anywhere today without plugging in the address? People don't know, they just don't know. Right. So it's easy to use the gps. No one's pulling out a map, that's for sure. No one's getting out of paper maps. So you know, to think we used to print directions on MapQuest and take them in the car with us. Like that's not a thing, you know, so you can kind of mindlessly drive wherever. I do think it's a risk and I do think we still need to teach people. And I think about this from an academic perspective. I teach a marketing honors class at a college prep high school here and you know, I think about this from, you know, the student's perspective. Yeah, why can't I just ask ChatGPT to do everything right? Because, you know, when were a kid, back in my day, when were kids, we would always tell our math teacher, why do I need to learn this? Can use a calculator. And they would literally say to us, this is in the 80s, you're not always going to have a calculator in your pocket. Well, little did they know, right, that we would have a calculator. And so I get the kids points, but you know, they still need to have those critical thinking skills to get the tool where it can actually help them to answer the right questions. You know, if you ask the wrong question, it doesn't give you the right answer. So I think, you know, that's where we have to remind ourselves that you're dealing with a tool, you're not dealing with a human. And it's, you know, maybe 15 years from now, this would be A different conversation. But today it doesn't know everything and it doesn't always have context for everything that we're asking it and it certainly doesn't have emotion. Yeah. So I've got two quick questions for you. You had mentioned that you teach an honors class. So what advice would you give a young professional looking to get into digital marketing or someone who is considering marketing as a career path to make their mark on the industry? Love it. Well, I love the question. So the first piece of advice that I give all these young up and coming adults in my life, I tell them, get internships, man, you gotta do internships. You cannot just go to college or go to a certificate program and think that's gonna have you come out as a marketer, right? But go do an internship, do six of them through college. If you know you want to work in marketing, you need more internships than anybody else. That's. First of all, go find those. Work for small agencies, work for big agencies, work client side, work in different industries, work in travel, work in B2B, work in whatever industry is interesting to you. So internships, internships. I can't stress that enough. Second of all, as you go through your internship process and you work at companies and you see, I would say try to find your passion, right fast and not even necessarily your passion, but maybe find what you're really great at, right? There's going to be, you know, I always tell my students, there's qualitative aspects and the soft kind of sciences to marketing and then there's the analytics side and the more qualitative aspects to it. You're probably going to better at one than the other. So you may not be as passionate about numbers, maybe that's not as fun, but if it's what you're great at, lean into it, right? Go find what you're great at, lean into what you're great at, better at it than anybody else that you know and keep learning. There's always more to learn. And if you keep doing that for the first 10 years of your career, get every certification, get your master's degree, go get certified in every tool out there. By the time you're 30, you're going to better than 95% of the people in your field. And if that's the case, you're going to be able to write your ticket. So I tell them, go get great at what you're already good at. Go get great at what you're already good at. And you should be able to write a career. Maybe the last thing I would tell them is try to decide early where you want your focus to be. So, meaning, do you really want to be an expert in martech? Then go study that and go work in that. Do you want to be a generalist? So go get great at that, right? Go work with other generalists. Go study it. Go do it. I have other people who really love paid search and programmatic. So go work the trade desk. Go work Google search. Find businesses that will, even if it's a few thousand dollars a month, let you run their Google search campaigns. Right? You're only going to learn by doing. Love that. Okay, so we've come to the end of the podcast. This is where I give my guests 90 seconds to plug anything that they're passionate about. So this could be Bullseye. It could be anything in the community. So without further ado, the next 90 seconds of yours, I'll always plug Bullseye. Right. This is my baby. So you know, Bullseye Strategy has been here about since 16 years now in sunny South Florida. We service clients all over our community as well as all over the world. We have expertise in real estate, hospitality, travel marketing, luxury resort marketing, B2B tech and SaaS marketing and E commerce in every digital marketing discipline that's out there connecting all those things. And I think we do this all really well because of our client side experience. We've sat in clients shoes so we know exactly what they're trying to accomplish, you know, on their end. So that is my shameless plug for Bullseye strategy. You know, we like to work with great clients. We're really proud of the brands that we work with here at Bullseye. And I would also tell you know, we're a smaller agency and I think sometimes bigger brands are just naturally pulled towards bigger agencies. But the beauty of working with a smaller agency is that you're going to have access to executives and the doers, right? You're going to get to meet with the specialists on your account. And so we really become this either fully outsourced marketing team or a direct extension of your in house team. And clients really enjoy working with that. My final plug for the community. Most of the country is about to get pretty cold, so come and visit us. Maria, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much, Brian.