[00:00:00] Speaker A: I would probably implement AI as much as possible because I think that will be very prominent in our very near future. Been like an AI agency if I were to redo it. People can appear in the top three search results depending on the competition, their location, other you know, the niche and the ROI on that can be like 32,000%. SEO is not a good answer for you. For you. You need to spend on ads because ads give you immed roi. Marketing is a catalyst for growth.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Welcome to the Entrepreneur's Lockbook podcast. I'm your host Zach Benard. You can find me on its social at IT zackbe. In each episode I bring on experts from various industries for you to learn about their strategies and insights driving extra business growth. Today we're joined by Ayaki Kimova, founder and CEO of Leap Engine, a digital marketing agency that brings Fortune 500 level strategies to startups and small businesses at a fraction of the cost. And funnily enough, she has a pretty interesting story. She immigrated to the US from Kazakhstan at 16 as a first generation immigrant, not even knowing how to type on a computer. But she pushed forward. She earned her MBA in marketing and finance and built a pretty distinguished career before founding her company in 2021. She spent six years at Microsoft managing over $50 million annually in ad spend for Fortune 500 companies like P&G, Macy's and AT&T. And with that performance, she even earned the Microsoft prestigious Platinum Club Award given to the 0.01% of the company. Aya, it's great to have you on the show.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: Thanks Zach for hosting me. It's fun to be a guest here.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Well, thank you so much for joining and how I always like to like start these podcasts is. I'd love to hear if you were to like start your company from scratch, like rebuild it knowing like everything that you know like today, even the fact that you've had a corporate.
What's the like the one thing that you would do differently or implement from day one that you feel a lot of entrepreneurs like getting correctly?
[00:02:09] Speaker A: I would probably implement AI as much as possible because I think that will be very prominent in our very near future today, but even more so in the next five years plus.
So I think I would have been like an AI agency if I were to redo it.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Interesting and just like touching on the AI side of things. Are you guys using really heavily like AI when it comes to being more efficient or when you work with clients? I imagine, but I could be wrong here too.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: So. Yeah. So once you start a Business and you have a certain way and then you have your sort of time allocation.
Because we have already allocated a lot of our time to a lot of manual tasks.
AI is sort of secondary for us, but we do use it increasingly more. So for example, we have an AI tool that does all of our local SEO for a Google business profile and it works really well. And the results can be as quick as two weeks. People can appear in the top three search results depending on the competition, their location, other, you know, the niche and the ROI on that can be like 32,000%. So 32x to a dollar. Like it is just one of the most efficient ways for us to get clients and customers for our clients.
But other, other than that, AI is used for us as a sort of junior marketer.
We cannot let it run the gamut just because it's still learning. But we have AI infused pretty much in every aspect of our services, of course, with a very heavy human guidance and strategy.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: Yeah, and I mean you need that like human side of things to be able to like navigate that. And I, I thought that was interesting though you mentioned with SEO like two to three weeks it can get like top three. Like that's crazy because in my world, I mean at least in mine, when you look at like SEO, I mean there's a lot of misconception like, hey, this takes like years and like months and months to be able to build like that SEO presence. But, but it seems with like AI and just also having the right expertise and knowledge, you're able to like shorn that gap to get a quicker roi. And I feel that's probably very important when you work these small medium sized businesses because they have a limited budget, they need to get a bang for their buck as soon as possible when they're investing in marketing. And a lot of them, if they don't see the return fast enough, it's like, okay, we'll cut that. It didn't work when they might have not given enough time to see like the return. And what I'd love to hear is when a client like comes to you like they want to work with you, what is the like the process look like? And then like how do you take these like strategies that you've learned working like Microsoft and then make them work for companies who have a smaller budget, who are really more like cost conscious in a way.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: Yeah. So the first question, first SEO that we're talking about is more so for Google Business Profile, which is basically a listing in Google Maps.
And that's very different to the rest of the SEO, like the general SEO that touches your website where optimizes and shows the main Google search results that still takes about three, four months plus. And that's only because Google, Google's algorithm, there's just no magic trick to trick Google. Like they just will reward you within time and consistency. But the Google Maps is a whole different sort of part of Google that is underrated and it's a huge sort of search engine in its own world. So that's where what we're talking about where you can get visibility within a week or two even if you have sort of the right combination of things. Like we have to look at each business and each location individually for the second question in terms of the path and the process of getting client onboarded, we sort of screen clients, but also not so much for screen, but give them the strategic map before we get them onboarded. Because marketing in general and digital marketing sometimes is not a good fit for everyone.
So for example, we have A process called GPS and GPS stands for growth, profit and sales. And in 15 minutes we can go through that process and it's basically an Excel spreadsheet where we get certain numbers from a business and in 15 minutes we can know whether marketing is going to make sense for them or where they need to fix certain things before they can even implement marketing. Or if it's a fit, then we can say, okay, we'll now do a deep dive audit into your entire business model and looking into your competition and doing a deep research, so to speak, that AI unfortunately cannot do. So it's very human and it requires a lot of sort of experience that is not readily available online, which is the primary source of education for AI systems.
So we do this kind of research to just say, okay, now marketing will work for you, but this is how we would do it.
So it's like akin to let's say you want to go treasure hunting and if you don't have a map, you don't know where to look for treasure. And I think a lot of the times the small businesses or any sort of or startups that don't have huge resources or huge marketing departments, they don't have this map and they just dig randomly and we just help them figure out like you should dig in this place. If you dig two times, you will get a gold.
And we just know because you know, numbers don't lie. We are very much analytics driven.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: I love that, I love the analogy, analogy that you made with the treasure hunt because that's so True. And like I speak to some people sometimes they'll say like, yeah, we have like a fun budget where we're just going to be testing like a few things. But when you're dealing with like small businesses, it's more like I need to make this work. Like I can't just spend all my time and effort and money around like all these different efforts. And that's interesting. So like when you start working with a client, what you do is you already have somewhat of a process with like the Excel or like Google Sheet that you mentioned to see if this will even work for them. Which I think is interesting because a lot of companies will try to sell you like the dream. So like yeah, we, we can definitely like help you but they can't quantify or like showcase like how you're going to be helping them but in the first place can even be helping them at, at first. And I think that's really important for like those small, medium sized businesses because they, they need to understand that they do.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: And it's not a fit for everyone because marketing is ever evolving landscape. So marketing 10 years ago, which, you know, back then you could just take somebody's money and it would work just.
But these days it's just you have to have so many factors and things in like all your ducks in a row before you can even do any ads, do like SEO or do any sort of cold email outreach if it's a B2B or LinkedIn outreach or in any sort of marketing because it will just land flat, it will be a waste of budget and waste of money. So for us it's very important to open the hood, look underneath and see if your engines are working behind the scenes and if the product or service that you are offering is actually has a product market fit and there is a demand there and there's also healthy profit margins, healthy lifetime value.
And if your operational systems are in line, like let's say you are a good candidate for marketing, but then if we drive more marketing to you, your systems will break. That's not a good model. So we basically have to verify that your business model is a good fit for us to even help you grow.
And then you know, with that, that will essentially create a profit profitable system for people to grow. Of course we don't guarantee anything because guarantees are like, I hate when people say we'll do this guaranteed. And then when you sign contracts with them, you have to read the fine print and realize there is no such thing as guarantee.
But basically it's kind of like imagine you're buying a ticket to Barcelona and the pilot will get you there, guaranteed. But then there's a crash or there's something like you can. Nothing in life is guaranteed. So we have the best intention of taking you to Barcelona and you have a flight and we are going there. But if something happens that's beyond our control, obviously that's.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Yeah. So I mean, that's like why it's like very important to look under the hood, as you mentioned, to figure out exactly if the app, the E, the system, the operation in place where you can actually perform. Because that's a good example. Like I have this one friend that does like ads for like local businesses and what he found is if you tried to start working with a company that didn't have like an appointment set or something that could call the leads directly, it was a complete waste of money because they would get all these leads, but they would not even call the leads. They wouldn't get any like leads being called. And I think that's exactly what you're talking about. It obviously depends on the business you're working with. But they need to have the system. And I think that's a very important component with your approach. Like figure out exactly like, hey, you need to have that before we can even like work with you.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: So, so for us, I think also what differentiates Leap Engine is that not only they get the services, which is, you know, anybody, right? You can do SEO, you can do ads, you can do CRO, which is conversion rate optimization, CRM system set up. So basically looking at our services individually, but we also provide, and I personally step in to provide the strategy. So acting as a sort of fractional CMO to, to give the roadmap short term, long term planning to understand how this business not only can improve from the lead gen or kind of like the prospect gen situation, but also profit gen, right? Like how do we increase profits and how do we help this business to open a second location, for example, in the next six months or next year?
How can we plan for all of those and figure out how we can improve operationally? So maybe we can hire a person. Maybe we've consulted our clients on helping them hire like a CRM expert, for example, or an email marketing expert. So all of these things, like we don't just provide raw services, we like step in as part of your team and to help kind of fill in the gap within the marketing space.
And then the other thing that they would get with us is ethical, right? Like I am a Mom. And for me, ethics is very key because I am raising a little human and I need to bring this little human to be as a good little human right to contribute to our society. So for me, ethics and honesty and just being, like, transparent is very important, which is why we list all of our prices transparently on the website. We do not discriminate between, are you a small company? Are you a large company?
All of our price are flat. A lot of the models for ads, for example, they. They do like a base fee plus a percent on top of.
Yeah, we don't do that. We're just like, this is what it costs for us to run Google Ads and that's it.
So there's no sort of tricking of any of the clients. So for us, that ethical nature of our relationship is very key, which is also a screening factor for us with working with the right clients too.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: No, that's fair. And I mean, you have to have that into place. Make sure you're working with good fits, but also good clients at the same time. And one thing I'd be, like, a bit curious to hear, which is a bit more focused on, like, the. The marketing, like, myth side of things, because there's a lot of misconceptions, stereotypes in, like, marketing, where you should be doing that, you shouldn't be doing that. I mean, a good example we were talking about, like, before, you could literally run ads, get a return, like, directly, like, really easy. But now you. You need to have all those ducks in a row to make sure that you get that return. Like, I remember the day seeing people run, like, Facebook ads, but $100 get a thousand back out doesn't work like that anymore. If you just try to run a random creative, like, you need the approach, you need the system.
Where I'm going with this is when it comes, like, these marketing myths, is there, like, certains that you see these small businesses fall for that are actually costing them a lot of money? And is there anywhere where perhaps they should be focusing more of their efforts on.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: So I think the biggest marketing myth for me that I've seen across in my career and also working at Leap Engine at my company was so that businesses come to me and they're like, oh, do you do SEO? We want SEO? And I'm like, why do you want SEO? And they're like, I don't know. I've heard a lot about it, and it seems like it's the right thing to do. I mean. And I'm like, okay, let's first take a Look at your numbers.
Show me the numbers, I'll show you the money. And we looked at the numbers and then they're like, but I only have like $2,000 a month budget. And I'm like, okay, and do you want what, what is your priority right now? Cash flow. I need, I need money back. I need cash right now. I'm like, okay, SEO is not going to pay off until four to six months from now. You're gonna get zero cash flow from that. It's a good investment, but you have to have pretty good budget for it to be able to sustain yourself for next six months with no money back. The ROI is long term.
SEO is not a good answer for you. For you. You need to spend on ads because ads give you immediate roi. But first, let's see if the back end of the ads is going to work, which is where they land the landing page, your offer, your profit. Turns out basically none of this would work for this person and for this business. Their profit margins were 20, their conversion rate from lead to sales was 10%, and their customer retention was like less than 50%. I'm like, okay, first of all, you need to work on your back end. Your customer retention needs to improve, increase your lifetime. It's a one and done. It's like an E Commerce without repeat. So their business model would be like, hey, we sell this once and never see you again. And I'm like, well, you just spent so much money to acquire this one customer and you have no repeat offer for them. That's, that's kind of a pain. So basically I had to tell them and turn them back and say, SEO or no SEO. You've heard a lot. The people are very good salespeople, but it's not going to work for you. At least not right now is not a good time. So yeah, that's the biggest myth. People come to us because they heard the buzz or they sort of. Social media, social media. I got to post every day and I'm like, okay, posting out strategy is not going to do anything. Is your post. Do you know if your post is bottom the funnel, middle of the funnel, or top of the funnel? Do you even know the difference? Do you know that the bottom of the funnel should probably be the longer one and more with the call to action to a particular offer. Middle of the funnel probably should be a little bit shorter, educational, reaching more people, but giving them some kind of value. And then top of the funnel, maybe seven seconds or less. Like, did you know that people don't have Any idea? They just think that they just need to pose. But again, having no strategy, having no map is just randomly digging. Like I gotta dig, I gotta dig and I'll just dig randomly. Maybe I'll find treasure. Like, no, you first need a map. Let's go look at where the treasure might be and where is the easiest for you to get. Like maybe the treasure is in England and you are in Washington and that's a big flight. What about maybe there's a smaller treasure nearby where you can walk to and it's not going to be this multi million dollar treasure, but it's $5,000. That's still a better ROI because it's closer to you.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: Yeah. So knowing where to focus and why you should be focusing your efforts in certain places is like the overarching theme that I'm seeing. Because you have some people that the myth again, like they're going to have these misconception like, hey, this is working for this person. This should be what I'm doing. But when you look at your numbers, you look at your particular use case in business, it's like, okay, I mean I don't really have the cash flow to Entertain this for 6 months and not make any money out of it. I should probably be looking at paid ads, get that direct return investment and then reinvest into the business. So every, like, every like marketing, like, ways like things, strategies, like they all work, but they might work better for certain people, might not work really great for you. So you have to find that sweet spot, like really what works for you. And I really like the fact that you have like that like some roadmap that you show them. Like, hey, this is where you're at. You don't really have the necessary tools to get to that next phase on the roadmap. So you probably should be focusing on this before trying to jump the gun and get to phase number 10 when you're only at phase number two. And I think that's an important one because a lot of people try to do everything at once when clearly you should just laser focus on one thing. And that's one thing that some of it brings me to another question. Be kind of curious because I know we spoke to AI when we stare at the conversation because we're seeing AI all over the place. I mean there's so many AI tools nowadays, just like coming out, coming out. I mean a lot of them are just like the exact same thing. They're just a ChatGPT wrapper. There's not too much anything special with the actual tool where you could build it yourself. But what I'd be curious is when you look at small businesses and like they want to implement AI, is there anything specific that you would recommend to these business owners, entrepreneurs, that they should be doing to still not be like, ahead of the curve, but not lose that, like, authentic connection with their customers? Because a lot of people, they're going to use a chatbot, they're going to put on their website, they're going to use an AI caller to make sure that an AI responds to the call. But directly there, in my experience, if I call a place nowadays and it's an AI that responds, I'll ask to speak to someone or I'm just going to call the next business. And I have a feeling probably some of your clients may have ran into that same scenario or not.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: Yeah, AI needs to be implemented and used very carefully. Because as somebody who, you know, I'm a proponent of AI and I like AI, but I think we have to find the right tools and a lot of it, because AI is created by humans, is who do you trust to create the right tools? Right. So we've tried.
So for example, I mentioned we have AI for Google Business Profile, that's for local SEO and that works really well.
However, for SEO, we have tried multiple AI tools that are out there and they only solve a very limited problem, which is technical SEO.
And not even. They don't do a lot of the more complex coding fixes and they kind of solve for content. But again, like you can, if you are human, if you can tell and a content is like written so well and repetitive and has all these emojis and it's just, you already know that that's AI written content.
If you can tell, Google can tell.
And we don't know how Google will respond. It already kind of deprioritizes the type of content. So I'd be careful with that. So basically, you kind of want to have AI tools that are verified, trusted and recommended by somebody you trust and recommend. Right. So for us, we're very, very careful with that.
We are working on our own AI ads tool because the ones that I've seen out there, again, are sort of like terrible.
I mean, it's, it's like a waste. It's like hiring on Fiverr and wasting your time, wasting your budget and essentially losing out on competition. A year later, you're like, I wish I've hired a person to do this in that AI. So, yeah, like, it's, they lack strategic insight so for small businesses, I would recommend working with a human who can help you build the AI that you need, but not sort of just doing the cookie cutter AI tools out there, because those are like a turnoff and everybody is into AI. But that's not to say that it's kind of like we're in the early days of Internet.
Internet was kind of crappy in the beginning, but then now it starts, sort of permeates everything. So you have to find the right tools out there.
ChatGPT for me is my favorite. I don't have any other recommendations for people who want to do social media.
I still use Canva and it has AI components out there. I heard about Gamma app today, which I'm testing for presentations. But yeah, there's sort of no substitute yet for strategy, for human strategy. So I would say still work with somebody you trust who can then help you either build a tool or scope out a tool for you if you don't understand it. But basically my recommendation is very similar to Warren Buffett's. If you don't understand it, don't do it.
[00:25:27] Speaker B: That's a very, very good point of advice because like, yeah, it's so true. There still has to be that like, human component when it comes to obviously, like using AI, because the way I look at it, it's an amplifier for like anything that you're doing, it's making you more efficient, more faster, but you still need that human touch, be more like efficient and active. And I thought that was interesting. You mentioned that you're building out like an AI tool for like ads and stuff like that.
Yeah, like how does that look? Is it more. So just look at being able to like look at KPIs, give recommendations and everything like that.
[00:26:00] Speaker A: So no. So basically it would take. So you could give it a bit your website descriptions of what your, your business does and what you're looking to get.
And then you would do a deep research on competition and from there it would build out sort of campaign drafts.
So we're starting with Google just because Google is, you know, the most common type of ad.
And all of these different platforms are highly complex and very different and ever evolving and changing. But Google is important because it's bottom of the funnel. And for businesses that have high search volumes, like local businesses, it's key to show up front and center and to be as relevant as possible. So what the tool does, it builds out the drafts. But then we are in the process of sort of training it. Right. Because it needs to learn what's the right structure for Google Ads. Structure is key and important in targeting. Part is part of targeting. So then the targeting is another thing. But the creatives, that's the easy piece. That's where AI can do a super, super easy job. It's more so the setup. And then the second phase would be the optimization where it would automatically optimize based on certain signals From Google, embedded Cs and within the industry. So there are other competitive tools that are outside of Google. They can give you an insight on what's happening in your niche or amongst competition.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: Yeah, and we're going to see so many new tools start to pop up here and then with obviously AI that starts evolve more. But something I'd be a little bit curious about because we talked about obviously roi measuring numbers and tracking things. You've obviously worked with over 100 businesses across the different industries at like your time at Microsoft and obviously running out your company now. But what I'd be kind of curious is, is there like certain mistakes that you see these like business owners, entrepreneurs, small medium sized businesses when it comes to measuring like their marketing roi and like what's the kind of framework that you take to ensure like all these marketing dollars do drive results as opposed to just putting them all over the place and hope that the darts hit the middle of the board.
[00:28:27] Speaker A: Yeah, analytics is a huge part of marketing dollars and just marketing decision making across channels and across devices.
And a lot of the times in the past and even to this day, businesses use last touch attribution, which means that basically even if the user bounced around, found you on Instagram, then came around to like TV ad and then heard you on the radio, but then searched on goog and landed and converted through Google, Google gets the full credit and the rest of them don't. So we have to be careful of that kind of attribution because all of the previous touch points are not measured properly. And also through more recent research we know that it takes about 10 to 12 touch points before a user converts. So the previous 10 or 11 need to be accounted for and valued at a particular amount.
And that is highly customized per business.
So this is where you know the Fortune 500 type of analytics and research and marketing sort of decision making that is usually not available on a small business level. They just don't know. They're just like, oh, all of my leads came from Google, I love it, let's double down on Google. And I'm like, okay, but if you cut Instagram or if you cut Meta, your Google will Dry out. Because that's where actually Google is feeding from.
If we look at Google Analytics and take a look at everything, you know, just the full path of a user journey.
So the other mistake that I've noticed a lot of small businesses do is they look at it very short term. They look at. So for example, I have a client and they, their lifetime value is about 25,000 because they have high client retention rate, they're doing a great job. And the clients come to them year after year after year.
However, they come to them once every six months and they look at the last three months and they say, oh, we spent $200 to acquire this customer and they spent with us like a thousand dollars. That's not enough. That is not a good enough roi. And I'm like, but that customer that you acquired for $200 is gonna overall in the lifetime spe $5,000 with you. That's a very good ROI. So just educating them because they're looking at it short term. And sometimes, you know, I'm just making up numbers, but sometimes it could be that you, you spend $200, but they spend only hundred dollars in the first month. But again, looking at the lifetime value, you have to account for the benefit and the roi. So ROI measurement alone, I think just looking at the wrong numbers, looking at the wrong attribution can cause huge mistakes. And I've seen it done before and before over and over again where people just sort of don't know how to read this metrics. And that's where I think my Fortune 500 experience comes in.
[00:31:45] Speaker B: Yeah, and I love the example that you mentioned with that client like just now like having that short term thinking when like a customer like, hey, it doesn't have like an insane like LTV or they haven't purchased like so much so far, but your average customer literally stays with you maybe for three years. Like that LTV is going to like higher up and higher up. But if you just look at the last three months and obviously the first thing you're gonna say is like, okay, this, this is not a good roas, like not a good ROI that we're doing here. So basically the overarching theme for these small businesses is like, zoom out, look at the bigger picture, not taking like any quick assumptions, but also look at like where your leads are coming from. Because as you mentioned, like the attribution, a lot of people are gonna say, oh, Google, it's like, okay, turn off the, the Facebook ads a little bit and see if the Google Ads are still Working and then just comes crashing down. So, yeah, that's a very good one. And people should always like test things and see exactly where those leads come from to not make assumptions. Again, like, and the other misconception, I.
[00:32:46] Speaker A: Think the other big mistake, and I'm sorry, I'm just gonna say one more. The big mistake that small businesses and just businesses in general, they look at marketing as an example expense. And I think that's a very huge mistake because when you look at it as an expense, you look at it or where you can cut it. But you know, marketing is, is a catalyst for growth.
So I've seen businesses that had both perception, right. And the businesses that have the perception that it's an investment for your revenue and growth are the ones that have started.
So obviously we work with really small businesses and, and their budgets can be as low as a thousand dollars a month. Right. So this particular client has started with thousand dollars a month.
Their ROI on that thousand was like 15,000.
And obviously for me, I'm like, hey, invest more. Please increase the budget.
It doesn't mean you pay us more because our fees are flat.
So they did, they did increase and now their monthly budgets are like between 20 and 40k a month. And that makes sense to them because most of their revenue, like, majority of it comes from online advertising and online marketing that we do.
But there's another client, again that's has this really amazing 10x ROI ROAS, but does not want to spend. They're like, our budget is 3,000. We just can't. We cannot. We have the space. We have to a. A lot of money for this space. And we have, you know, employees that we have to pay for. I'm like, but if you get more clients, you'll be able to pay for them very easily because your ROI is insane.
So there's, it's, I think it's the mindset of having to look at marketing as an investment because that's where you'll see really amazing results.
[00:34:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Like breaking that limiting belief so much that they somewhat have. And I mean, it comes from you being able to advise and being an expert, having been in the space for quite a while. It's like, okay, maybe you should listen to the expert that you're paying every single month to advise you on like marketing here, so.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:35:01] Speaker B: Well, yeah. Thank you so much for coming on the show. This is amazing. And for like anyone that would want to like get in touch with you, because I know we obviously have like your website, fleepengine.com is there anywhere else people should be looking at if they want to reach out or find you online or.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: Yeah, they can google me, but I also am offering a limited number of GPS sessions.
So basically those are the ones that I was talking about. It's a free 15 minute call. There is no obligation. In fact, it is more likely that I will turn you down and tell you to go fix something before I will try to anything else, which I usually don't.
And it will be just very helpful for you to find out what your limitations are and where you need to fix your business or your numbers. And it's a free call for 15 minutes with me, so I would invite everybody to try that call. It's going to be only for the next month or two.
[00:35:57] Speaker B: Perfect. Well we'll put that in show notes so everyone can go and book a call if needed here. So perfect. Well, thank you so much to our listeners. If you've enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. You can also find more
[email protected] where we're dedicated to helping entrepreneurs build their thought leadership and business by booking them on podcasts and launching their own podcasts. Until then, keep pushing and we shall see you in the next one.
