How To Create a Marketing Strategy That Doubles Growth With Rob Levin

Intro: 00:00

Welcome back to the Response Drivers podcast, where we feature top marketing minds and dig in to their inspiring stories. Learn how these leaders think and find big ideas to push your results and sales to the next level. Now let’s get started.

Rick Rappe: 00:19

Hey, I’m Rick Rappe, host of the Response Drivers podcast. Here I dive deep with marketing experts and innovators to learn how they approach targeted marketing and use data-driven strategies to acquire and retain customers. We’ll talk about what’s working, what’s changing, and how we can stay ahead in an evolving marketing landscape. 

Response Drivers is brought to you by RPM Direct Marketing. RPM helps companies develop hard hitting direct mail creative and utilize advanced testing and targeting methodologies to reach customers and move them to take action.

Our goal is to fully optimize your marketing performance to drive more sales and exceed growth expectations. RPM delivers smarter, more profitable direct mail solutions, so you can turn your direct mail programs into a predictable, efficient sales channel. Check out rpmdm.com to learn more. 

Well, my guest today is Rob Levin. Rob is a growth marketer. 

He’s a consultant specializing in SaaS and subscription growth. And after seven years in the Marine Corps, he spent more than 20 years leading growth at companies like Priceline, GE, WW, Nickelodeon, from startups to portfolio companies before founding his consulting practice. Thanks for joining me today, Rob.

Rob Levin: 01:36

Awesome. It’s a pleasure to be here. Rick. Thanks so much.

Rick Rappe: 01:38

Well, I see your Marine Corps poster on the wall behind you. And I wanted to ask you about your military experience and how did that influence your approach to business and to marketing?

Rob Levin: 01:49

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, always be marketing. Right. So. I think one of the key things about my military service.

And I’m so grateful for that service that I made that decision and I didn’t realize at the time is, you know, so, so, so many benefits. But one of the things that helps me today is that feeling that regardless of the challenge in front of me, I have no choice but to overcome it and succeed. So, you know, when something feels really hard or feels really scary, like starting a consulting business, right? I’ve never owned a business before, and you know, I’ve had to learn a lot about, you know, even the admin side, right? Should I be an LLC or an S Corp or an LLC filing as an S Corp, things like that. 

Right. There’s been a lot of learning very, very long, long days. But at the end of the day, I think part of that Marine Corps mentality is it doesn’t matter what the challenge is, whatever the mission is, I’m going to get there and I’m going to succeed no matter what. So yeah, super grateful for just having that really instilled in me for, for seven years.

Rick Rappe: 03:04

Yeah. Wow. Well, thank you for your service. That’s really wonderful. And is it the Marines that say adapt, improvise and overcome?

Rob Levin: 03:14

It is. Yeah.

Rick Rappe: 03:14

Is that a Marine Corps thing?

Rob Levin: 03:16

We love our slogans. We love our acronyms. And that is, that is one of them. Adapt and overcome.

Rick Rappe: 03:22

Yeah. I love that saying too. It’s definitely one that gets you through the hard times and keeps you moving forward. Another bit of advice I could share with you as a fellow entrepreneur is I’ve been a member of the entrepreneur organization for a long time, and it’s entrepreneurship can be kind of lonely. You feel like you’re pretty isolated at times because there’s a lot of things that you can’t really talk about with a lot of other people, but a community group like Entrepreneur Organization is a great place to find other business owners, and we get together and talk about lots of things.

And it’s helped me in many, many different ways. So I’m going to give a little sales pitch for the entrepreneurs organization.

Rob Levin: 04:09

That sounds great. Yeah, definitely want to hear more about that.

Rick Rappe: 04:13

All right. What motivated your transition from leading growth at large corporations to founding Chief Growth Advisor?

Rob Levin: 04:23

Yeah, so so that that story is actually pretty interesting. And I’d love to give a shout out here to to an incredible executive coach. And so the the full story to that is, I was in a position at a company where I had reached pretty much every professional goal that I had set out for myself. I was the top marketing person at this company. My, my, I was making more than more money than I knew what to do with, literally.

And I was absolutely miserable. It just was not a great environment. People weren’t didn’t treat each other well. It wasn’t collaborative. It wasn’t very creative. 

And I just said to myself, okay, I’m I’m stuck, right? Because I hit everything I thought I wanted, but I’m miserable. And and I wanted to dive into why, right? Why did I choose this role? How did how did I end up here? 

What’s my next step? So I happened to come across a recommendation for an executive coach. And his name is Dorian Cunion. And it is it is not hyperbole to say that Dorian transformed my life. Wow. 

Because, yeah, I mean, one of the most impactful people that that I’ve ever met, period in, in my couple decades on this planet. And when I started the engagement with Dorian, I said to him, this, this engagement will be successful. If, number one, I want to diagnose what, Why? Why have I jumped from this job to that job? Or why did I choose to go from this place to that? 

Like, why did I make these career decisions that led me here, where I had the things I thought I wanted, but I’m miserable. I wanted to diagnose, right? Find the problem before you start solutioning. Number two, I said, look, I have a couple of decades of career left. I want them to be awesome. 

How do I get there? Because clearly I don’t know what I want because I got what I thought I wanted and it’s not working. So we went through a lot of different exercises. And I think one of the strengths that that Dorian brings to the table is he never told me to do anything, but he’s incredible at asking the right questions to get me from not understanding anything to completely understanding. This is the direction of my life. 

Wow. And part of that was we had to figure out what are my core values, especially career wise. And and I had to define. I never thought about this, but how do you define happy? Right? 

Because happy for you is probably different than happy for me. My core values include some of the some of the words honor, helping people, curiosity, and and fun. And we had to go into like we had to go into fun for example. Like what is fun for me? Fun for me is incredibly huge challenges, extremely fast paced, things like that. 

So once I had my core values nailed, the next phase of the exercise was, okay, let’s figure out what career paths are available to me that incorporate as many of my core values as possible. And it just kept coming back to consulting because especially because of the fast paced and and the helping others, but also the other opportunity there. Excuse me the other opportunity there is is the the honor piece. Right. So I like to work with clients that are bringing a positive change into the world. 

So especially like edtech subscription clients. Right. So, you know, I worked at Nickelodeon on, on a digital subscription product called noggin, which helped preschoolers with early literacy. Call it selfish. Call it what you want. 

Like that makes me feel good, right? Just helping. Helping kids learn to read, helping them then get that early literacy and get it. Get a, you know, a head, a head start in life that feels awesome. So anyway, fast forward I chose consulting, started consulting on nights and weekends in addition to working my my regular W-2 job. 

And I was chatting with a friend and I he asked me, you know, when are you going to go full time? And I said, maybe in a year or two I’ll feel comfortable doing it. And he challenged me. And being a good marine, I am I am susceptible to challenge, as we said, and his his exact words to me were, Rob, you can’t climb a mountain by just looking at it. You have to take the first step. 

And when he said that, it just clicked and I said, you know what? That’s it. I’m out. And so left, left full time work and said, I’m a consultant now. Period. 

End of sentence. Like, this is what I am now and I’m going to make it work no matter what. Yeah. And it’s now been about eight months into my full time consulting journey and best, one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I mean, knock on wood, everything is going incredible so far. 

And yeah, looking forward to to a strong end of year one and and keeping it going in year two.

Rick Rappe: 09:34

Yeah. Congratulations. What an exciting transition in your career. And you know it really resonates with me. I had a similar experience where I worked for large companies and large agencies and when I left my my last large agency, you know, I could have put my resume together and gone out and probably got a big job with a big company.

But I had no desire to do that at all. I really wanted to start a small agency where I could be hands on and work directly with my clients and really help people, you know, achieve their goals and their dreams. And I, I also one of the big factors with RPM was stripping away the, the bureaucracy and the nonsense that comes with some of those bigger companies. And I felt like that was really important to me personally. So yeah, I just wanted to be more effective and efficient with my time and, and make sure that, you know, I was having the greatest impact that I possibly could. 

So thank you for that. It definitely resonates with me a lot.

Rob Levin: 10:43

Excellent. Cool.

Rick Rappe: 10:44

We were talking before we started recording about your experience at WWE. And I think that that was a really interesting job that you held. And you mentioned that there was a pivotal moment in your career that significantly shaped your perspective on marketing and growth.

Rob Levin: 11:03

Yeah, absolutely. And I’m so grateful to I feel like I’ve had so much luck in my career. You know, it’s been a lot of hard work and a lot of, of, of effort. But I’ve been lucky to work at a lot of really, really cool places. And WWE was amazing for many reasons.

And one of the things that that I like to call out is they are very focused on being the absolute best and most effective at everything. So, you know, if I could say if I could say, hey, I need this tool and it’s going to help us be the best because it provides X, Y, and z, I got it. It was it was pretty amazing. And one of the things that some of the tools and some of the things that I learned there really have carried with me through the rest of my marketing career, especially learning more about incrementality and attribution and the buyer’s journey. And so where that culminated for me was a strategy I created for WrestleMania one year, where I remember talking to my manager and I said, hey, it looks like our our growth for our subscription product is is slowing down. 

I worked with our data science team, and I eventually figured out that a lot of the people that were signing up for a subscription product were returning users. So that that behavior was, you know, because WWE has has the pay per views, Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, etc. people were pop popping in and out. I called it pogo sticking, right? So they would sign up to watch Royal Rumble cancel and then sign back up for the next pay per view that they that they wanted to watch. And so what I the argument that I made to my manager was, look, our CPA looks like it’s $25. 

I remember whatever, right? I’m making up a number. But it’s actually multiples of that because we’re acquiring, you know, Sally Smith and Dave Jones four times throughout the year. And we’re paying 25 bucks each time, or 30 bucks each time for that person. So their actual CPA is 100 bucks. 

So we need to figure out how do we get new people into the fold because the growth was slowing. And and you know, we had to widen the top of the funnel. So my my hypothesis was, look, there are many, many people who are lapsed fans, right. Or you know, they used to watch WWE, but they’ve never subscribed to WWE network or they haven’t paid attention in a while. And what we have to do, the strategy or the problem that we had to solve was WWE is storyline driven. 

And so we can’t just keep saying watch WrestleMania, watch WrestleMania, watch WrestleMania. Because because these people are lapsed, you can’t just come into a storyline halfway, right? It’s like coming into a movie an hour in, right? Because you’re wondering like, oh, why? You know, why is he upset with her? 

And what like what’s going on here? And like, why are they on Mars? Like, right. So my what I said was because it’s storyline driven, we have to educate people about what’s going on in the storyline before we can get them interested in signing up for our subscription product to watch WrestleMania. So we ended up partnering with a website called fandom, which is a content website. 

And I said, all right, let’s give previews to the matches so that before we ask someone to buy, we say, hey, this is why Brock Lesnar is fighting is wrestling Roman Reigns, right? What’s the story about the beef? Right. Because you know you’re not going to be as interested unless you know the background the background story. Right. 

So we had this content piece, we pixeled people. We started, you know, following them and showing, showing ads initially, just telling them to go back and read the next instalment of the article. Right. So we didn’t have that hard sell right up front. So we just kind of nurtured their interest, build their interest, until finally a week before maybe a week and a half before WrestleMania. 

Then we said essentially, hey, now that you know why these people are battling each other, make sure you’re signed up for WWE network so you can watch WrestleMania, right? So we called it a nurture strategy, right? And one of the things that I that I tell people, I, I mentor a fair number of, of young marketers and what I try to what I convey to them is good marketing is like a conversation, right? It’s it’s, you know, you you can’t start halfway. You can’t start with, you know, you can’t propose on the first date, so to speak. 

Right? You have to introduce who you are, nurture somebody down a path and then eventually ask them for for their money. Right. So this nurture strategy really followed that. And so, you know, learning about the buyer’s journey, learning. 

And then on the technical side, how to track that incrementality where, you know, we could go into our data and run the regression analysis and figure out, hey, display looks like a $400 last click CPA. But the true CPA, because we did the media mix modeling was $74, right? And it also helped contribute x percent to the number of new incremental subscribers. So learning that buyer’s journey part and also how to track that true effectiveness and incrementality. Those are key things that I learned at WWE that that helped me carry that through the rest of my career. 

The result of that project was we ended up doubling the number of subscribers acquired for WrestleMania year over year. So that’s that’s the probably the biggest win of my career.

Rick Rappe: 16:39

Wow. Congratulations. That sounds amazing. It sounds like I was going to ask you a question about how do you affect how do you assess the effectiveness of your strategies. And it sounds like CPA is a very important key performance indicator.

What are other tools or KPIs that you pay attention to?

Rob Levin: 17:02

Yeah, absolutely. So so that CPA is is is kind of a is one thing that’s important. But it really comes down to what is the client really want. So I have a strategy framework where I ask certain questions. And my first question in that strategy framework is what is the goal.

Right. So are you looking for volume conversion volume or looking for EBITDA. You know, what are you actually looking for. And that is that becomes the primary KPI. So I work with a fair number of subscription products and it’s it’s very often efficient volume. 

So what we look for is and what I, what I put in place or strategies that increase volume but the right volume. So for example, we you know, by looking at your data, you’re you’re almost certainly going to find that people that come in via certain channels or specific ISPs will give you much more lifetime value than, than others, right? Because it’s not just about bringing people in. I mean, you know, if you gave me $10,000, I can give you a ton of volume from Google Ads. You know, I can turn on Max and just give you a ton of volume, but is it volume that sticks around? 

 Is it volume that that overindexes on retention and lifetime value? So it’s really those those are the things that that I really look for.

Rick Rappe: 18:22

Yeah. That’s super interesting and very important to look at lifetime value and understand what the differences between different types of customers are in relationship to lifetime value. We did a big test at one point for square, helping them build a direct mail program, and we built a predictive model that was very good at predicting response to their initial offer. But what we found was that a lot of the people that we were acquiring weren’t necessarily turning out to be great customers. And so then we actually created another predictive model that created that was based on lifetime value.

And we use the two models together to really kind of optimize and fine tune their direct marketing list approach. And it was a very effective one two punch, I guess you’d say.

Rob Levin: 19:08

Yeah, that’s that’s incredible. Yeah, I love that. And and what’s interesting is two things. So when I was at WWE especially, there was a I forget the the vendor but one of our marketing channels, a smaller marketing channel. But we were acquiring people via mobile app games on, on mobile.

And I had a hypothesis and I just wondered, I said, you know, what is is this really are we really targeting the right people here? Right. Just because you play a mobile game doesn’t mean you’re interested in WWE. And the CPA was fantastic. You know, by by if you just looked at CPA, you would have said to yourself, oh, we need to triple our, our, our spend on this channel. 

 I worked with our data science team, and I found out very long story short that their LTV was was next to nothing. We were actually losing money on them because we never got payments from from so many of them. And once, once I dug into the buyer’s journey, it made sense. So, you know, a typical journey for this channel was you’re playing a mobile game and it interrupts you and says, hey, watch this video from WWE network to get this power up or whatever. So they watch it and or sign up to to get the power up. 

They sign up for a free trial, cancel immediately because they just want the power up. Right? So.

Rick Rappe: 20:26

Right.

Rob Levin: 20:26

You know, it just really reinforced the concept of, you know, understanding the buyer’s journey. And, you know, that’s another thing that I, that I say to young marketers that you can’t just look at numbers on a on a spreadsheet. You have to realize that you’re talking to real human beings who have feelings and emotions and etcetera, etcetera. And you really have to understand that if you want your marketing to be as effective as possible.

Rick Rappe: 20:53

Yeah. Interpreting the numbers and understanding the psychology, or trying to understand the psychology of what’s driving these behaviors and what what’s motivating people to do these things. I mean, yeah, you can definitely drive leads that are that are too hot to convert. Yeah. You know, they’re not gonna they’re not gonna they’re not going to become a sale.

But they’re going to respond.

Rob Levin: 21:15

Yeah.

Rick Rappe: 21:19

You mentioned your your strategic framework. And I wanted to ask you a little bit more about your strategic growth methodology and how it differentiates from from other traditional growth strategies.

Rob Levin: 21:31

Yeah, absolutely. And and so I’ll talk about first where where it was, why I developed it. And so for for all of the time that I’ve been consulting, almost every CEO that I’ve spoken to has said to me some form of this statement, we have no growth strategy, we have no marketing strategy. We’re just trying lots of things and they’re trying lots of things will eventually maybe get you to where you’re going. But what is more effective is that prioritization piece and really thinking through what is the impact actually going to be here.

Right. Because I’ve been in situations, I’ve been in the rooms where senior leader says, hey, the young kids are on TikTok, we need to be on TikTok. And really, the answer is no. You don’t have to be on TikTok. Maybe you do. 

But first, let’s let’s take a strategic approach and figure out who are you marketing to and how would you be on TikTok, right? What does that project actually look like? And look at it from a strategic lens. Does it fit with who we are, the messaging that we have, etc., etc.? So what the workshop does is I’m providing instruction on and guidance on. 

This is how you set up a proper growth practice at your company. This these are the meetings that you’re going to have. Here’s who needs to be in those meetings and why. Here are their responsibilities. I also produce several. 

I give them several artifacts. So one of them, for example, is a prioritization matrix specifically designed for subscription and SaaS companies. And what you do in this matrix is you you evaluate an idea or a project against how many incremental subscribers do you think you’re going to get? How confident are you in this idea? How much effort does it take to to produce this? 

And it gives you a score based on, on the values for for those questions. So it’s a variation of what’s called the ice ices matrix or the ice matrix. But I’ve I’ve converted it to to be more applicable for SaaS and subscription. So you get that matrix. I will also help you build a growth model. 

So a growth model breaks out each of your acquisition, monetization and retention and referral activities into its component parts so that you can forecast, hey, three years from now, if we add this project or this feature, how does that impact our revenue and EBITDA? So that is that also helps as a prioritization tool. And so again, the workshop really just seeks to to the way that it’s different from from other things that I’ve seen is I feel like a lot of people or a lot of the solutions to strategy, growth strategy that I’ve seen are fluffy. And I guess this is part of where my military training comes into play, right? Where we used to say, we’re going to break things down by the numbers, and breaking things down by the numbers means it’s kind of like an explain like I’m five, right? 

So by the time I’m done with this workshop, everybody knows exactly what to do. There is zero ambiguity and, and and there’s 100% total clarity. The cool part is, as I’ve implemented this, this workshop with clients and, and just, you know, as a standalone with the workshop, people are seeing just incredible results. I mean, I had one I have one client who within three months of using this methodology, we produced $2.5 million of incremental revenue just by following this methodology. Right. 

That’s I mean, that’s huge, right? And so.

Rick Rappe: 25:10

Absolutely. That’s fantastic.

Rob Levin: 25:12

Yeah. And and it’s just again, you know, breaking it down by the numbers, that military aspect, it’s just it becomes very, very simple to execute growth. Once you know exactly what to do. And you have the artifacts and the tools to do it.

Rick Rappe: 25:26

Yeah. It sounds like you study the scalability too of, of of channels and understand. You know, it seems like a lot of marketers start with dabbling in things instead of like really being strategic. We see that in direct mail marketing all the time, where companies will throw out a little direct mail postcard or something, and they’re like, well, we tried direct mail and, you know, we got mediocre results. That’s not a very strategic way to try direct mail.

And direct mail can become a massive, scalable sales channel because everybody has a mailbox. So, you know, it’s very it’s a very effective way to reach the audience. But if you really want to do it the right way, there’s a process and a and it’s more strategic than just starting from one postcard or something like that.

Rob Levin: 26:15

Yeah, yeah. Just one more comment on that because I, I love that you brought that up. That’s that situation that you just brought up is such a common mistake where somebody says, hey, we spent 1000 bucks on Google ads or we spent, you know, A $2,000 on Facebook. And, you know, we tried it for a week and it didn’t work. Huge mistake.

Huge, huge, huge mistake. I think anytime you’re assessing a channel, you really have to make a call before you start. What is the right amount of investment and effort into that right? And I agree with you. I mean, I think direct mail, you know, I’ve talked about this in LinkedIn posts for a while. 

I think when most marketers, especially younger, younger marketers, they hear direct mail, they think old fashioned. I think what most people don’t realize is how incredibly targeted direct mail can be. So one client right now that that we’re we’re evaluating this and we’ll probably kick off soon focuses on active duty military. So what’s a great way to find people who are active duty military. Get their zip code, get the zip code for Fort Sill, and get the zip code for, you know, Fort Lewis and start sending mail. 

Right? So yeah, it’s incredibly targeted and can be just incredibly effective.

Rick Rappe: 27:36

Yeah, there’s lists out there for just about everything. We can we we do a lot of list research and find the right list sources. And that’s an interesting aspect of direct mail. That’s kind of a black box in a lot of ways, because there’s there’s so many different potential list sources and they’re compiling data from different sources. And, and there’s so many different attributes attached to each record.

I mean, there’s a wealth of information that you can tap into much, much more so than in digital marketing. Yeah, yeah. The other thing that we, we notice about direct mail is just that there seems to be a bit of a crisis of trust happening in a lot of digital marketing and, and the, the universe of people in digital, in different digital channels is fairly fragmented. You know, not everybody’s on Facebook, not everybody’s on TikTok. And so you have to really be all over the place to like piece together your full market. 

So in direct mail we can be more we can hit the whole market or more more of it I think. Well, you answered one of my questions about what are some of the common obstacles that are facing people. You touched on that already. So I’ll skip forward to my next question. What are some of your most effective tactics for improving customer retention, or most effective tactics for acquiring new customers? 

 I mean, that’s that’s kind of two questions in one, I guess.

Rob Levin: 29:06

Yeah, I’ll start with the first one first. And my my opinion on retention is good. Retention starts at activation and onboarding. Right. And something that almost every subscription product I have come across really seems to forget or struggle with.

is that that first time user experience. And so or the to use a video game term right. So what happens immediately after sign up. Do you show them a thank you page that has an order number. And then peace out. 

And. Right. That doesn’t make sense. Right. And I’ll touch back to something I said earlier in the show here about market. 

Good marketing is a conversation, right. So you know, once once you establish a relationship with somebody, you don’t just walk away, right. You want to introduce them to you, right? So, so for a subscription product, you want to give them an on ramp into your subscription product. And you want to get to what I call I’ll keep it PG the kick butt moment. 

Right. As quickly as possible. The kick butt moment is the moment in time when somebody uses your product and says, I can’t believe that that I waited this long to sign up for this. This is incredible. Totally solves my problem. 

I love this. Right. So, for example, it might be I don’t know. You know, I’ve worked with a couple of edtech products. It might be the first time that you open up a storybook on your iPad and it reads to you, it reads aloud to you, right? 

And it’s animated, right? You might think, wow, this is so cool. I can’t believe that that, you know, something like this is out there. This is so much fun. I’m interacting with it. 

It’s reading to me. It’s great. Right? It’s that first moment and where somebody says, this is incredible. So I’m a firm believer in good retention. 

Starts with good activation. And and that onboarding piece for acquisition the the best the best thing that I will say or the best approach isn’t a specific channel in my opinion. It is really starting with strategy and understanding, fully understanding who is your target market? Number one. And part of that a big part of that. 

What I, what I find myself driving home, a concept I’m introducing to a lot of clients and people is what is that job to be done? And many people that have heard your podcast probably are familiar with that. If you’re not familiar with it, pause. Google the word job to be done. It was created by a brilliant marketing strategist named Clayton Christensen, and that that job to be done concept essentially means, you know, it’s the classic, I’m not buying a drill. 

I’m buying a drill because I need a hole. I don’t need a hole, I need a I need to hang a picture. I need to hang a picture because I want my house to look nice. Right. So, you know, and you can talk about the horsepower of the drill and it’s battery powered and all this good stuff, but you really want to keep in mind that you’re what you’re leading to is what job are they hiring that drill to do. 

Right. Because that’ll create that psychological and emotional connection to to the acquisition piece. And if you can touch on that psychological, emotional piece, your your marketing messaging is going to be so much more powerful, right? So for example, I used to work at GE capital. So for a banking institution, right. 

You know, what’s the more powerful statement is it we have a high yield savings account with 3.25% interest rate, or we have a high yield savings account that can help you reach your financial goals by by, you know, increasing your your savings and allowing you to buy that dream house that you’re looking for. Right. Piet, tie it to that job to be done and you’re going to have much more powerful messaging.

Rick Rappe: 32:58

Oh, absolutely. And you mentioned the emotional aspect, which I think is interesting too, because there’s sort of the obvious job to be done. And then sometimes there’s a different job to be done emotionally, right? Like.

Rob Levin: 33:11

Oh yeah.

Rick Rappe: 33:12

People always talk about why you buy a BMW. It might not be. Well, the logical reason is it’s an amazing machine. It’s an amazing car. And it’s going to get you from point A to point B, but that’s not the real emotional reason why a lot of people buy.

Yeah, status cars, BMWs or, you know, other brands. But it’s interesting.

Rob Levin: 33:34

Absolutely. Yeah. And it’s funny you say that. So I bought a BMW last year. The emotional reason, the emotional reason for me is I love to go fast.

And it’s a miracle that I haven’t had a speeding ticket in a while. But like, sometimes my mom will go on date night and my wife says, can you just drive like a normal person? And I’m like, oh, okay, fine, man. I love to go fast. And and that baby rips. 

So yeah.

Rick Rappe: 34:00

Yeah, there’s all kinds of reasons to buy a BMW. But, you know, it’s not always they’re amazing machines for sure. And. Yeah, but just the feeling of how you get when you’re in one and you feel successful and, you know, accomplished and and and like people will notice you and all these types of things. So there’s a lot of emotional decision making there and that it’s that way with all products we’re picking on BMW.

Rob Levin: 34:26

Absolutely.

Rick Rappe: 34:27

They probably won’t ever sponsor my podcast, but oh well, what am I going to do?

Rob Levin: 34:32

Not yet. Not yet. No, it’s it is funny right? Like just one other quick example, I actually I switched from an Android phone to, to an iPhone this week. Finally after it’s my first iPhone ever and and you know, getting all these comments about like, oh no more blue bubbles or green.

I forget what the bubbles are, but it’s like everybody was giving me such a hard time about my bubbles, my bubble color. And it’s like.

Rick Rappe: 34:59

On your text.

Rob Levin: 34:59

Message, really a big deal on my text, right? And it’s like, is that really a big deal? Like, but Apple has created, intelligently created this, this emotional resonance and feeling where, you know, they’re trying to make me feel bad about sending blue bubbles to somebody, right? And people care about that, right? Like I didn’t care, but people are like, oh, you know, we can’t deal with your your green bubbles or blue bubbles or I forget which is which.

But yeah, yeah, that emotional connection is a thing.

Rick Rappe: 35:27

It can be for and for certain products. You know, when we’re we do a lot of work with lapsed customers for a large home warranty company. And, you know, so everything that we’re doing there is we’re selling a product that isn’t really a physical thing. It’s it’s all it’s an emotional. There’s a large aspect of it is an emotional decision that, you know, you want to be protected and safe and secure and things like that.

And, you know, we play around with a lot of emotional drivers in direct mail marketing. Sometimes it could be, you know, fear based, like, for example, you you were talking about the bank that was talking about a high yield savings account. You could take the approach of, you know, help achieve your goals and, and sort of an aspirational approach like you were talking about. But you could also take the approach of, hey, don’t be left behind. Everybody else is making more money than you. 

You know that that sort of fear, of fear of losing out on something is very powerful motivator as well. So that’s something that we test in direct mail. We can test all these different variables. And, you know, the best programs are really doing a lot of testing and they’re very data driven. And then we look at, you know what? 

What if we try to resonate with this emotion versus this emotion and we see big, big differences from in our programs. So.

Rob Levin: 36:59

Oh yeah I’m sure.

Rick Rappe: 37:01

Yeah. How you’ve emphasized you’ve emphasized the importance of tailored strategies over generic templates. How do you ensure that your client receives a very tailored, unique approach?

Rob Levin: 37:16

Yeah, that’s that’s a fantastic question because I’m a huge, huge believer in what I people who know me have heard me say many, many times. If if you’re trying to appeal to everybody, you end up appealing to nobody. So I have a very a pretty extensive discovery process. And part of that discovery process really dives really, really deep into who really are your ISPs, right? I mean, just this week, I spoke to a potential client who told me that that their target market is everybody.

And and I said, it absolutely is not. There is no way. Right. Even even if if you really think it is, there are subsets of that. Right. 

And what I, what I talk about there specifically is I think about ISPs and target audiences like a bullseye framework. The people at the very center of your bullseye, those are your fanatics. They’re going to get tattoos of your logo on their arm. They love you no matter what you do. These are the Apple fanatics that are tenting out in front of Best Buy and Apple stores every time the next iPhone comes out. 

The next ring of that target are people who will pay 50 bucks for a premium t shirt. They really love you. Not enough to get a tattoo. The next ring are people that will take a free t shirt and wear it because they like you a lot, but they’re not paying for for a t shirt. And they’re certainly not not getting a tattoo. 

The point there is you have to speak to each one of those those people differently, right? You have to approach awareness differently. You have to, you know, there are different points of the buyer’s journey and things like that. So, you know, really creating that tailored custom strategy starts with that, that comprehensive discovery. I also have a very comprehensive strategy process. 

So when what I have found and sometimes I’ll challenge people if I’m feeling cheeky and I will say what is a what is a marketing strategy to you. Right. And, and very, very, very few people can can accurately tell me what a marketing strategy is, what I get 90% of the time, or 80% of the time. What I get is a marketing plan, and then another 15% of the time what I get is goals. You know, what they’re trying to achieve. 

And then the other the other percentage of the time, it’s I don’t really know which is which is the answer I’m looking for, because then you’re being honest with yourself. But for the marketing piece.

Rick Rappe: 39:40

How do you define that? What’s how do you define your marketing strategy? I’ve got a I’ve got to know the answer.

Rob Levin: 39:46

Yeah, absolutely. So so a marketing strategy is a three sentence statement that covers who you’re marketing to, why your product is special, and how you’re going to win. So I’m a firm believer in and to get to that three sentence strategy. We actually go through a very comprehensive document I have where I’m asking you questions about all of those aspects that that lead us to those three sentences. There are three long sentences, but they’re but they’re three sentences.

And for some clients, when I approach it this way and I describe this to them, what they think is that it’s too simple to be a strategy. And as we go through and as we start executing, what I tell them is, give me four weeks with this, with these three sentences, in four weeks, let’s come back together and you tell me what you think about this, this strategy statement. If you still think it’s not enough, these three sentences, the way that I’ve constructed them, guide every single tactical marketing decision for the next 12 to 18 months at a company because it is so comprehensive yet concise, that it allows you to make decisions on things like what channels should I invest in? What is the priority order for for applying budget to those channels? Who exactly am I targeting? 

What is my messaging going to be to to each one? What are the the the viral mechanisms that that ensure that we are going to beat our alternatives. And notice I didn’t say competitors. I said alternatives intentionally. But again, you know, I started my consulting practice wanting to be very methodical and break down growth. 

I want there to be no no ambiguity about how a company is going to grow and how we’re going to win. It is it is very direct. It is very concise, but it is comprehensive enough that, like I said, it guides every single tactical marketing decision for the next 12 to 18 months.

Rick Rappe: 41:40

That makes a lot of sense. Sounds amazing. I’ll, I’ll ask if you have an example. Would that be appropriate?

Rob Levin: 41:49

Yeah, absolutely. Rick. So so I just brought that up. And so this would be for an edtech product. So so again sentence one covers customer and context.

Sentence two covers our unique solution. Sentence three covers why this resonates and spreads and why we win. So sentence one when busy working parents need to supplement their child’s math education at home, they currently buy workbooks or hire tutors, but struggle with inconsistency and guilt because existing solutions require constant parental supervision and expertise, they don’t have time or confidence to provide. Sentence two. Our unique solution. 

We position ourselves as the adaptive math tutor that uses AI powered progress tracking and parent coaching to guarantee grade level math confidence within 90 days for overwhelmed working families. Sentence three why we win. This resonates because working parents feel secret. Shame about not being able to help their kids with math, and it spreads as child’s visible as children’s visible confidence improvements. Create playground conversations among parents that amplify our guilt free math support message. 

And there’s your strategy again. Sounds super simple and people have told me this is too simple. And then a month later they’re like, yep, I see it now. This this. It guides every tactical marketing decision for the next year.

Rick Rappe: 43:10

Yeah, it provides a very clear foundation for them to build off of and work on the specific tactics that they’re going to employ. And it’s a great, great starting point.

Rob Levin: 43:21

Yeah, yeah. It’s been it’s been awesome. Especially like I said, for those clients that that start off with, we don’t have a marketing strategy. Well, you know, after after an hour or two with me and and the strategy workshop now you do.

Rick Rappe: 43:36

Awesome. Well, I can tell that you’re a lifelong learner and that you’re you’re studying things and staying updated with the latest trends. How what are some of the things that you pay attention to to stay ahead of innovations in the marketing industry?

Rob Levin: 43:52

Yeah, absolutely. So so what I often start with is a problem diagnosis first. And if you can’t tell by now, I’ll say it explicitly. I’ve worked for several management consultants. So I start I adopted their their problem solving Methodology.

But I start with, you know, what am I trying to learn? And, you know. Currently, I’m trying to get even better at the strategic piece. So I. What I often do to learn is I’ll have a conversation with Claude, which is my, my. 

AI tool of choice. And I will say, hey, I’m trying to learn more about marketing strategy and can you tell me, you know, what are some books that that you think I should read? What are some blogs that you think I should read? Substacks, etc., etc. and it will spit back at me. Hey, you should read this. 

This book is on my desk right now. Rita McGrath wrote a book called Seeing Around Corners. And so you know that seeing around corners piece is just about finding inflection points before they become big business opportunities or threats, so that you can react to that. So, you know, the short answer to that question is I have a conversation with Claude. Claude knows more than I do. 

And I just say, hey, trying to get better at X. What should I be? What should I be following? Because at at my level at a, at a C level, you know I even though I still read Search Engine Land and things like that for tactical execution on TikTok or, or, you know, individual platforms or, or things like that. A lot of what I’m bringing to the table is that strategic piece. 

And so I start there at Claude and then I start branching out.

Rick Rappe: 45:33

Yeah. You prefer Claude over other AI tools? I’m just curious about how do you how did you come to that choice?

Rob Levin: 45:42

Yeah. So so what I, what I a lot of what I do is writing whether it’s writing for, you know, articles or, or what have you. I just find Claude really has found my voice and what I. You know, what I do in Claude that you can do in ChatGPT and Gemini, I’m sure, too, is I’ve uploaded about 20 pages of my original writing into Claude, created a project, and I’ll say, okay, I’m writing an a B test plan in addition to my original writing. I’ll upload ten test plans that I wrote.

Write me another test plan for these parameters. And it just it sounds like me and it gets me 80% of the way there. For ChatGPT, I will use ChatGPT when I need to back up, confirm or refute something that I get from Claude. So if I really need to something to be 100% accurate, I’ll just. I’ll ask ChatGPT the same question and just combine the two and see where I’m getting the thing that you didn’t ask this, but but in general, the way I use AI, I try to be very careful not to outsource strategic thinking. 

Right. So I will allow it to execute for me after I’ve done the strategic thought. That said, I will sometimes use it as a strategic thought partner. Right. So I’ll have a conversation with it about, hey, this is where I think we should go. 

This is why this is what I think the strategy is and, you know, ask me questions to challenge my assumptions. Things like that, just to make sure I’m thinking about things comprehensively.

Rick Rappe: 47:13

Yeah. The important thing right now I think, is human plus AI collaboration. One of my podcast guests on an earlier episode was Russell Kern, and he was a fantastic direct marketing agency leader, and he’s in his latest career iteration. He’s focusing heavily on human AI collaboration and on helping companies get out ahead of of of AI and learning how to use AI. So it’s very, very interesting.

Rob Levin: 47:47

Yeah, absolutely. It’s it’s as as well covered and thought about as AI is today. I really think we are underestimating the impact that it’s going to have on society. I mean the not a marketing example if you can indulge me. So with a with a quick story.

So my, my youngest son is 11 about to turn 12. He’s a lacrosse goalie and a very common injury for lacrosse goalies is broken thumbs because the way they hold their stick, the thumb is the thumb tip is facing the shooter. And you know, he’s at an age now where, you know, he’s not really a danger of a broken thumb, but he’s getting bruised and it hurts when when he gets hit there. I had a conversation with ChatGPT, a very long conversation, which culminated in a design for an add on piece to his glove to disperse and then absorb shock to the thumb. And so I said, all right, you’re you’re a an impact physicist. 

What is the right shape for a thumb protection? So long story short, it made me I made this design. It actually ChatGPT helped me write the patent application for this because it doesn’t exist. Wow. Basically, I’m going to use because I said to it because I’m a hockey player and I do a lot of modifications to my gear because I’m a goalie. 

On the ice. But I use a material called Sorbothane, which is a shock absorber, and I’ve used it before. So we’re going to put a layer of sorbothane on the thumb of his glove. And then hard thermoplastic on top. And thermoplastic is just beads that kind of get get squidgy in in hot water and you can form it. 

But I said, hey what, what shape should that that hard plastic be to really distribute shock. And it said, oh you should make a hexagon because because I remember reading somewhere about hexagons and I said should I use a hexagon. Is that the the right shape. And they said, yes, absolutely. You’re right. 

Long story short, it gave me a what’s called an STL file that I sent to a 3D printer to make me a form that I could press onto the plastic to make a hexagon shape, that I could then layer on top of the sorbothane to sew to to absorb the shock. So the outer layer distributes it, bottom layer absorbs it, and nothing gets to the thumb. And all of this was from me just saying, you know, hey, I have this problem I’m trying to solve. I think I should do it this way. Help me refine that problem. 

Yeah. It’s incredible.

Rick Rappe: 50:24

Oh. It’s amazing. You can do. I mean, what you can do with AI, and we’re all just learning it as we go. So it’s.

Yeah, you can generate all kinds of interesting ideas. I wish I would have known about your product. My daughter was a lacrosse goalie. No way. Oh my goodness. 

Yeah. She played. That’s incredible. She played in high school and now she’s graduated from college. So it was a few years ago. 

But yeah. Yeah. The the thumbs take a beating for sure.

S4: 50:53

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Rob Levin: 50:55

Lacrosse goalies are nuts. People think hockey goalies are nuts. I mean, I’m, I’m very protective when I step out on the ice. But lacrosse goalies are. They’re barely wearing anything.

Rick Rappe: 51:04

I would say both are nuts. Both hockey and lacrosse are nuts because both have to take shots with a really hard object. And oh yeah, a lot of shots. So it’s not like it’s not like you get shot on once or twice. You get shot on like all the time.

So.

Rob Levin: 51:20

Oh yeah.

Rick Rappe: 51:21

Oh yeah. That’s that’s hard work right there. That’s you have to have a lot of grit and determination and not be not be a quitter to be a goal 100%, that’s for sure.

Rob Levin: 51:31

Yeah, it’s good training. Good training.

Rick Rappe: 51:33

Yeah. Well, who else if is, does anyone else come to mind as somebody that’s been a significant influence on your professional journey?

Rob Levin: 51:45

Two people actually. And and, you know, I’d really be remiss if I didn’t call out. Call out my wife, who she she’s in the health field. She’s she’s not a marketer. But, you know, I, I was saying to someone the other day, I, I hit the jackpot with with my wife.

I mean, I, I sometimes think about the different things that had to happen for me to meet her and boy, am I so grateful. I mean, she is. I tell her she’s my Lego because we just fit so, so well together. She’s incredibly supportive no matter what. I mean, when I said to her, hey, I’m, I’m going to I’m going to be a full time consultant now, and I might not have income for a while and I don’t know what’s going to happen. 

And and she said, you know what? I believe in you. You’re you’re an incredible marketer. You’re the hardest worker I know. And you’re going to do this and I’m going to support you. 

Whereas I don’t know if every partner would be like that, and there is zero, zero chance that I would be here without that confidence and support. And the the other person that I, that I want to call out is I have a mentor through the small Business administration program called SCORE. His name is Mark Lipton. I hope he’s okay with me shouting him out. I actually was just texting with him yesterday. 

And what I would say is, first of all, anybody who’s out there if if you are consulting or whatever you’re doing, pause the podcast again, go to score.org. Just type in SCORE. It’s an acronym, but I don’t recall what it what it stands for. It’s SCORE. Sierra, Charlie, Oscar, Romeo, Charlie, Romeo, echo s c o r e.

Rick Rappe: 53:27

And just as a perfect military as a perfect Marine Corps way of doing it.

Rob Levin: 53:33

Yeah. Yeah. Except I couldn’t spell, right. So free mentorship. Completely.

100% free mentorship. I actually tried to give him a gift for the holiday, and he said, no, I can’t accept it. But this guy has Mark Lipton. He’s been a consultant for, I don’t know, 30 years or something like that. And we meet every week and he’s available via text. 

He’s never said, I’m too busy. There’s no way in the world that I would be this far in my consulting journey without him. I mean, he is my my consulting Gandalf. He’s been unbelievable. So, yeah, my wife and and Mark have been absolutely critical to my success so far.

Rick Rappe: 54:15

Fantastic. Can you recommend a book that has been profoundly impactful for you in your career?

Rob Levin: 54:24

Yeah, 100%. And so it’s here somewhere under my stack of books here. But the book Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown. That has been on every desk that I’ve had for the last ten, 15 years since it came out. I cannot recommend that book highly enough.

It is hugely actionable and really breaks down how growth works. It is. It has been incredible for me and my development. I mean, it is dog eared like crazy, you know, writing in the margins, it is very, very well worn because it is the number one book on growth that, that I could possibly recommend to anybody. It is so good that when I was working corporate jobs, I would come into a job or somebody new would come onto my team. 

I would buy that book for them and just, just go out of pocket, get them the book, because it covers so much of how growth actually works. And, I’ve just incorporated it so much into how I run my practice. It’s the number one thing I could recommend to anybody.

Rick Rappe: 55:31

Wow. I’m going to check that out right away. Yeah.

Rob Levin: 55:34

Thank you. Yeah. It’s fantastic. Yeah, absolutely.

Rick Rappe: 55:37

Well, this has been really informative today and I really appreciate your time. And it’s been great getting to know you. How can someone reach you if they’re interested in learning more about you or working with you?

Rob Levin: 55:48

Yeah, absolutely I appreciate that. So the best way is to find me on LinkedIn. So Rob Levin. Levin. Lima. Echo. Victor. India. November. Yeah. Find me on LinkedIn. And you know you found the right Rob Levin. If you see WWE, GE Nickelodeon, Priceline in the job history. 

But yeah, that’s what I’d love to hear from people. I love helping out people whether it’s you know, if you need marketing strategy or growth strategy or if you’re a consultant just getting started or if you just want to chat and say hi, just yeah, please reach out. Love, love making new, new friends.

Rick Rappe: 56:23

Awesome. Thank you so much.

Rob Levin: 56:25

Yeah, thanks for the opportunity, Rick. I appreciate it.

Outro: 56:28

That’s a wrap for this episode of Response Drivers. Thanks for tuning in. If you found today’s insights valuable, make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left a review. Got a question or a topic you’d like us to cover?

Just drop us a message at responsedrivers@rpmdm.com. Until next time, keep driving response and making your marketing work smarter.