Ep 014: How Digital Marketing Powerhouse Spigot Has Hired Over 100 Employees In The Past Year

World's leading digital marketing powerhouse spigot has hired over 100 employees in the past year. Christian Stewart explains how they're able to have such a massive reach and scale their agency using proven tactics.

Here's the video interview

Here's the full transcript

Ryan Shank: What's up guys. Welcome back to another episode of growing your agency today here with Christian Stuart from spigot. Christian, thank you so much for joining. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, man. So, so tell us a little bit about spigot. Um, tell us about, you know, the agency, uh, why you got started, how you got started, give us a little, give us, uh, you know, backstory.

Christian: Yes. Because it is a Internet advertising agency. Um, you know, pay per click ads is our business and um, yeah, it got started with them a couple of years ago and just it's grown super quickly and it's been really exciting, so

Ryan Shank: awesome. How did, um, so, so tell me, I guess how, you know, how long has she been there? A couple of years you said. Okay, awesome. How do you guys acquire clients today?

Christian: Um, I mean, we have a team of salespeople that's just reaching out to people, um, you know, scouring the Internet, trying to find out where people are and then, um, figuring out, you know, who's behind the sites and how we can get them more traffic. Just constantly looking for opportunities.

Ryan Shank: So when, when you go, I guess out reach to them, outbound, whatever it is, you find their site, you see them, what's, I guess like the hook or, or what's the angle? Um, are you saying, you know, hey, like can you take more clients? Hey, I noticed something cause like, you know, I, I get a bunch of people that reach out to us and you know, a lot of times some of them, hey, I have a tip for Ya. So just curious on a kind of like the tactic that's used when you're, you know, kind of going outbound.

Christian: Yeah. Um, I mean we focus on sites that, you know, they may already be doing some advertising or something and um, you know, we have a big enough team that we kind of have worked with enough people and kind of see what works and what doesn't that, um, we just like, you know, we see optimizations that could be made and we just go, hey, you know, do you want, you want to be doing, you know, 20% more, you need more traffic, whatever. Like, yeah, we can deliver that. So it's just, it's just seeing what's out there already and then, you know, letting them know how they could improve and that's what we help them.

Ryan Shank: Awesome. Awesome. So, so then what, all right, so you've got the clients coming in, you see the, you see the improvements. What, what do you guys offer for them? So it looks like you do like, you know, SEO and it looks like you use some social media paid ads. What's, what's kind of, I guess, your, your bread and butter and then, you know, when you report to them, are you reporting on like a number of leads, cost per lead, you know, kind of, how does that relationship look like?

Christian: Um, yeah, so I mean we're, we would function as like an affiliate basically. So for whatever traffic we send them, they would pay us, you know, based on how much traffic they're getting. And then per user, um, we get, um, we get paid like on a per thousand basis or whatever it is. So,

Ryan Shank: okay. So you are charged, you're charging them a set essentially for ad spend are not urgent. So not a manage. So it's basically the percentage of ad spend. Got It. And then you also have like a retainer or management on top of that, or

Christian: is it simply a function of just percentage of ad spends that just honestly depends completely on the client and what they're trying to do.

Ryan Shank: Got It. Got It. And then what kind of tools are you guys using? Like, so when you go in, you get a new client, let's say know what are some types of clients by the way that you guys are working with?

Christian: Um, it's honestly just kind of across the board. Um, anybody who's, uh, like running my content sites even just so it's like, that's one of our main books is just, um, like publishers. Um, really it's just anybody putting content out there that wants to monetize that.

Ryan Shank: Got It. Got It. Um, and so are you working with any, any like service businesses or like densities, companies, things like that, that like are driving like actual lead forms or is it people that are just trying to monetize?

Christian: Yeah, it's just monetizing traffic. That's pretty much.

Ryan Shank: Okay. Cool. And then what sort of tools are you guys using when you want to, like if you get a new client and you want to like see areas, like are you using, you know, spy foo, SCM rush or anything like that? Or,

Christian: um, a tool that I use a lot. Um, so I'm focused more on the social media and SEO side. I use [inaudible] like constantly. That's definitely one of my favorite tools. Um, that's super helpful. If you're looking for like organic opportunities and obviously look for the most in there. Do you look for like back links or do you look for like high performing content from like competitors' sites? Like, well, what kind of like views are you looking at inside of h refs? Yeah. Um, so I use, uh, like the content gap tool a lot. So what I do with that is I just look at my competitors sites and see what keywords they're ranking for and then, and then what pages they're going to exactly. And then, um, I will make content to, you know, hopefully get my clients sites ranking for those. Exactly.

Ryan Shank: Keyword stuff. Got It. And then, so in terms of like the actual agency, so you said you're, you're kind of focused on like the social and like organic side of the house. You, you said you make the content. Do you have like an in house, you know, in house copywriters and designers, you Ed, do you guys, uh, you know, outsource that w who creates the actual

Christian: content? Um, so a lot of that is me. Um, but you know, if I, if I need to scale that, then it's like, you know, use tools like Fiverr or Textbroker or upwork to get to get that content. But a lot of that has done in house.

Ryan Shank: Got It. It's so funny. Almost every single person that I've talked to is using upwork in some, you know, part of their, their agency or another thing. It's a good, we actually had a conversation the other day about upward versus fiber. I'm actually curious, what are your, what are your thoughts? What do you, which one do you like better? Um, when trying to source talent or certain service?

Christian: Um, so honestly I haven't worked much with upwork. I've used Fiverr a lot more. So like that's all I have experience with. Um, I have noticed a lot of the work on fiber is kind of low quality, so you have to be kind of careful with what you, uh, with who you go with and you know, give a super specific direction to them or else you're not going to get a very good product. But uh, but yeah, it's definitely super helpful.

Ryan Shank: It's interesting. I've been using a just recently like 99 designs, but not the contest. Like I used it in the past where you like to post the contest or whatever. I've been using it recently to just like hire directly almost like you would do on a fiber or a or up or I should probably compare, compare the two to see, see which one's better. Um, cool. So, so in terms of like clients, like how, how, how many clients are you guys able to take on, like what's, what's the goal right now, I guess, of the agency? Is it more like retaining and kind of growing into, into those clients? Or is it like, hey, let's just acquire more, um, w what is, what is I guess the mindset and the approach? Cause you know, some people want just more of like this kind of like intimate, you know, agency where they're like, you know, working with a few clients, which, what's your take on that?

Christian: Yeah, I mean we've definitely been in like hyper growth mode, so it's, you know, constantly bringing on New People. Um, I mean honestly it's kind of funny cause we have like, since I've been here, we've hired like probably a hundred people just like growing like crazy. Yeah. It's, it's been huge, but that's crazy. So we've definitely gone after more clients. Um, the ones we have obviously, um, you know, want to get them going as fast as possible and kind of, you know, scale up what they're doing. Um, but for the most part, yeah, it's just bring it on, on more, more clients, working with more people,

Ryan Shank: more people. Awesome. Um, cool. And, uh, when, when you're talking with, uh, with clients right now and you guys are doing like, I guess the reporting back to them, what are, what are some of the metrics that I guess, like your, you're measured on and like what is the cadence of the reporting that, you know, when you're talking to a client, is it, you say it's weekly, monthly?

Christian: Um, so as far as reporting goes, it honestly depends on what the client wants. Um, some are like, hey, you know, let's check-in once a week. Some it's like, just let us know at the end of the month, you know, how much we spent and you know, what returns we can expect on that. Um, it's Kinda so like my role, I'm not very client-facing, it's just kind of, um, in addition, um, on the back end I guess. So I'm not really dealing with clients, but you know, the people that are, it could be every day or it could be once a month.

Ryan Shank: Yup. Um, awesome. And then, uh, when you're, when you guys are looking to, you know, bring on a new client, like what is the PR, like, what is the proposal process that you go through? It's like, you know, someone sources it as someone on the sales team, I'm assuming. Then they come on board, like, what is, what does it look like? And again, maybe this is kind of out of like what you're dealing with on the day to day basis, but you know, are you guys like doing a demo? Are you doing like a site audit and saying like, Hey,

Christian: here's some, you know, areas of improvement. What does that, what does that, I think it's just, it's kind of like, yeah, going through their sites, seeing, um, you know, what their traffic opportunities are and, um, you know, what they can expect to gain. And then, um, just, you know, trying to get an idea of what they want to do and then just getting started, honestly, there's not, not a huge process. There is just kind of, you know, tell us your numbers and let's, let's get going on going on it.

Ryan Shank: Yeah. Um, awesome. So just going to wrap this up. We'd like to stay like fast action-packed and tactical. Um, last question we ask everyone, what is your morning routine?

Christian: Ooh, uh, so I dunno. First thing I do is um, kind of check the news I guess. Um, so reddit or hacker news is another side I really like. Do you have a lot of Karma on reddit? Um, I have like, do you like post and stuff? SORTA. I have a couple of accounts. I think the one with the most has like 1200, so I don't the weirdest username of an account that you have on reddit. I don't know. The one I've been using is miss talk. I think that might've just been the like default one that read it. Set me up with, but audit the autogenerated one. Yeah. Right. All right, so you checked the news, check the news, get some coffee and then uh, just kinda get to work. Check H, see how my sites are doing and then yeah, get to get to work, get to work. Do you like m cow milk? Are you a an almond milk guy in your coffee? I'm, so, I'm a cream guy. Just give me all the facts.

Ryan Shank: Wow. First Cream guy we've had on on the podcast. That's fine. That's awesome. I'm honored. Yeah. No, it's huge. Huge, huge honor. Um, all right, Christian. Stuart, thank you so much for joining us today. Christian Stewart from bigot spigot. How do, where do they find you guys if they want to find you or a, or your company?

Christian: Um, yeah, we're online at [inaudible] dot com um, we're located in Florida and yeah, find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook at spigot. Alright. Awesome. Christian, thank you so much for joining us today on growing your agency. Yeah, going, thanks so much. Yup.