Digital Marketing
Joe Jaap is a founder, revenue strategist, and software-minded operator who has spent his career building one thing: scalable growth engines for real businesses.
He launched EmoryDay in 2004, named after his grandfather, Rear Admiral Emory Day Stanley Jr., after a career shaped by direct-response sales, tech incubators, and the early frontier of e-commerce. From disciplined insurance sales to building lead-generation systems to operating inside high-growth tech environments, Joe developed a core belief that still drives him today: marketing only matters if it converts, and it only scales if it’s measured.
Over the past 22 years, Joe and his team have helped hundreds of companies, especially manufacturers and B2B firms, modernize customer acquisition. His work focuses on fundamentals many businesses overlook: sustained investment, consistent promotion, conversion-driven user experience, and rigorous ROI measurement.
He’s equally candid about the hard lessons. Over-reliance on a single revenue source is dangerous. The middle always gets squeezed. Momentum, once lost, is expensive to rebuild. Growth belongs to companies willing to double down when the math works.
Today, Joe is deeply focused on AI and automation, not as trends, but as competitive leverage. Through EmoryDay’s dashboards, data systems, and AI-powered workflows, he helps companies see what’s working, fix what’s leaking, and accelerate what’s profitable. He believes AI isn’t replacing marketers, it’s raising the performance standard.
His long-term vision is clear: position EmoryDay as an engine of growth for manufacturing companies, leveraging AI, automation, and performance-aligned partnerships to generate and close revenue faster.
Perfect. Below are four distinct center-of-gravity versions of your long bio — each emphasizing a different positioning axis while keeping your authority intact.
You’ll feel the difference immediately.
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-Transcript-
Brad Burrow (00:00):
Hello and welcome to In a World With Real Media. I’m your host, Brad Burrow, and today joining us is Joe Jaap. He’s the president of Emory Day. Joe is someone who’s worked directly with our team, and I know from personal experience that Emory Day is leading the charge in modern digital marketing for B2B companies. Joe is an expert in this area and I think you’re going to learn a lot watching this podcast today. Welcome to In a World With Real Media, I’m your host, Brad Burrow. In this podcast, we’ll dive into the lives of the most successful people in business. We’ll learn how they overcame adversity, took advantage of opportunities and learned from their experiences. Learn from our experts, get inspired, then go live your story. It’s in a world with real media. Joe, I appreciate you being on the show. Now, in all transparency, we are working with Emory Day.
(01:01):
I wanted to make sure everybody knew that, and a big shout out to Bree. She’s been awesome to work with. Your team’s, been great, rich, and give you a quick little report. I don’t know if you’ve looked at any of our analytics, but I’ve been running podcast ads, believe it or not, and we do a lot of other things outside of podcasting, but it’s kind of our inroads to leads right now and it’s done incredibly well. I mean, I was looking at the analytics before we got on here and it’s like, I think we’re getting, and we’ve had 280 form hits, website hits, 55 people have filled out the form. I mean, it’s really amazing and some pretty cool leads have come out of that. The great thing for us, Joe, is that those leads turn into other opportunities in the rest of our business. So people come in and want to do a podcast. Oh, you do TV spots, you do location shooting, you do live streaming events, audio, all these things come from that. So I’m a big fan of Emory Day and it’s, we’re doing just Facebook ads by the way, so I want to talk about that a little bit.
(02:15):
Absolutely. So I was reading, you guys been around for 20 years, you’re not the founder, is that correct? Are you the founder?
Joe Jaap (02:21):
I’m the founder.
Brad Burrow (02:22):
Okay. You are the founder. Okay. I misread that, but I was reading where the name came from. So tell us the story about Emory Day.
Joe Jaap (02:30):
Yeah, sure. So I grew up in a Navy family. All my grandparents and father and uncles were in the Navy. And my grandfather was rear Admiral Emory Day, Stanley Jr. And he was a man who really had a big profound influence in my life. Just the culture with which he lived, his ethos, how he approached the world. And when I went to name the company, you could always name something Zap Pal Marketing or Joe Jaap agency, but it just really fitting to honor a man that I greatly respected. Emory Day is how it came to be.
Brad Burrow (03:06):
Yeah. And why did you start Emory Day? What made you want to say I want to be in the digital marketing realm?
Joe Jaap (03:14):
It is a great question. So I’ve been a serial entrepreneur almost all of my life. I got out of college at James Madison to go into business and had a business as a younger gentleman. And then when the internet boom started, I hopped into a tech incubator and from a tech incubator, it led me to an e-commerce play that we took public in 2004. And I really credit that opportunity as the chance to play with big dollars in a brand new space. So it was 2004, the internet technically was there, but Google Ads had only been in existence for a year and a half at that point. And it just seemed like the chance for me to get back to my entrepreneurial routes was to help grow other businesses. So our first client was actually a company called Rover Land Parts, and they’re still a client today, some 21 years later.
Brad Burrow (04:01):
Is that right? Amazing. Amazing. So I did do a little research in James Madison. That’s a pretty big deal right now.
Joe Jaap (04:08):
Yeah.
Brad Burrow (04:09):
How about that? Talk about your
Joe Jaap (04:10):
Alma mater. They’re doing quite well. If we could keep coaches, it seems like we’re the birthplace for coaches to go on to great things like Indiana, but it’s just an amazing school. It’s an amazing program. And again, part of their ethos has always just been strive and get better, and their football program over the past decade has really been something to be quite proud of.
Brad Burrow (04:31):
Well, this year has got to be something. I mean, I can’t imagine what that’s going to be like for them. Probably going to be rough, but just to be in the conversation is that’s a huge accomplishment.
Joe Jaap (04:43):
It is. And they’re going into a tough game with Oregon. Oregon’s no joke. We also follow Penn State because both my boys go to Penn State, which has had a really rollercoaster type season this year. But Oregon’s got a great program, but as they say, any given Sunday, so we’ll be rooting for the Dukes.
Brad Burrow (05:02):
Yeah, yeah, I bet most of the country will be rooting for them on that game. That’s a good
Joe Jaap (05:08):
Bet.
Brad Burrow (05:08):
You going to have a big party at your house for that.
Joe Jaap (05:11):
We’ll do a little something, something. I’m sure it’ll be a big text fest with a fraternity and a whole bunch of chat groups, so
Brad Burrow (05:18):
It’ll
Joe Jaap (05:18):
Be good
Brad Burrow (05:18):
Stuff. So let’s kind of dive into digital marketing. I mean, you’ve been doing it for so long that things have had to have changed. Well obviously have changed so much and daily are changing. I mean, as a business owner myself, we’ve been in business 28 years and when I started it’s like you needed a sales team. I put my demo on a DVD with a bunch of stuff on the DVD, we’d author it, we’d print it, we’d send it out to a marketing director. I mean, that whole process was so convoluted. It’s instant now and it’s changing and people are in different places. Local doesn’t work. It used to work. Sure. Give me your take on what’s happening in digital marketing right now.
Joe Jaap (06:04):
So it’s a good question, and when you say things are changing daily, you’re really not kidding now, it’s not necessarily in a scary way because one of the things I like to say is there was a quote by a very, very influential man, and he said, today is the day that mankind has been dreaming of for thousands of years. And it was attributed to Alexander Graham Bell at the turn of the century, and he was talking about the telephone.
(06:31):
So if that at the turn of the 19th century, the telephone was a day that we’ve been dreaming of today is even that times so much more. I mean, we’ve had the fortune to be born in two of the most amazing technological eras and births until we get to faster than life like travel because the internet and then ai, it just doesn’t get any bigger. One of the things that I think is relevant inside of this question that everything that’s changing, I like to kind of akin it to the book Who Moved My Cheese? So one of the things that we’re seeing is not only the opportunities are getting more and more because there’s a proliferation of platforms that are working and exciting, and we could plumb the depths of those and those are a lot of fun, but we’re also seeing changes in the consumer, whether it’s B2B or B2C, that’s in many ways who moved my cheese and combining a blue ocean with a red ocean concept. What we’re finding is stuff that worked as little as two years ago or even a year ago, just isn’t returning and yielding the results that it should be. So it’s more adapting to where the consumer either business to business or B2C is today.
Brad Burrow (07:50):
Yeah, that’s exactly right. And so how do you do that? How do you decide? For me, I’ll just give a little bit of a testimony from our standpoint, we talked about, well, let’s do Facebook ads. And I’m like, I don’t know, Facebook is, but yet we’re having great success with the Facebook ads. And I’m like, okay. Then I start doing a little research and Facebook I think is one of the top platforms for lead gen right now. Is that right?
Joe Jaap (08:21):
Yep.
Brad Burrow (08:22):
But how did you figure that out? I mean, are you just following trends? I mean, what do you do to figure out, you’ve got to be the authority on this.
Joe Jaap (08:30):
Yeah. So we’ll break it down into great question and two great themes in there. Number one is how do you find out what’s working? And number two, why Facebook is working so well today? So first and foremost, we have close to 200 clients. We’ve got an amazing team of up to 50 people. We’ve got our own dashboard. So we have just an insane amount of analytics. I mean, we’re a medium sized company. There’s much bigger, but we have a tremendous amount of analytics that we’re able to look at across the platform to see what is changing and where conversion rates are succeeding.
(09:03):
And then you just have a lot of amazing feedback from wonderful clients like yourself, account managers on the front line, a specialists who are just saying a couple things. They’re saying things like Google’s not working. It used to, and there’s a couple kind of pieces if you mind, I’ll segue into the second part of that. Yeah, that’d be great. But let’s do it. Okay. So your earlier conversation was things are changing, right? And how do you know and what is changing? Well, if we take the red ocean blue ocean concept, a blue ocean is when you have the world’s at your feet, everything’s working, it’s uncluttered. Everything you throw out there works. There’s no one in your lane, and it’s just magical. Well, as someone finds something that’s working, other people find it too blue oceans can become red oceans. When one of two things happen, everybody else finds out that it’s working, which it’s a very democratized information is free, every very efficient kind of marketplace.
(10:03):
So that happens quickly. But also another strange thing happens, which is platforms actually change. So we used to do a lot of landing pages with Google ads, but Google ads changed. So Google basically got a little nervous about AI and started changing their algorithm, and effectively they did something that I think is a little sketchy. They changed exact match to phrase match. They introduced P Max and they said, trust us, we know better than you who your customer is. So we’re going to start putting blinds over portions of our platform and we’re just going to say it’s AI working behind the scenes. Well, what happened was they also left a little back door. So Google’s original premise was to do no evil. That was their original motto. And any corporation today, it really runs afoul of that kind of concept.
(11:05):
Google started letting its content networks in. So these fraudsters flooded the back of Google. So there was a period of time where Google did absolutely nothing about it, where Google ads really started to decline in terms of what was working. But then the second big piece of the puzzle happened. They say that this time next year, all 80% of all the internet traffic, all the ones and zeros that go across the internet will be short form video content. So something amazing happened in the last three to five years where we as humans stopped reading. That happened about five years ago. So we said, oh, well, let’s make the website scannable. Let’s go ahead and chunky the content. But then in the last years, humans are like, well, if it’s not in a video, I’m kind of not interested. Our dopamine centers and the things that make those doom scrolls and the algorithms work so well have also conditioned people that video is where it’s at. But that also combines with a third concept, which is the targeting is so good these days.
(12:17):
It’s been said, and it’s obviously an urban legend, but they say Facebook knows when a woman is pregnant before she knows now whether you choose to believe that or if that’s just illustrative of this massive data pool that they have in their ability to draw those connections. But we are seeing a tremendous amount today because we’re taking all of that and saying, Hey, who moved my cheese? It’s been moved from landing pages to videos. The human is conditioned to the videos and Facebook, IKA meta Instagram and Facebook. The targeting has gotten to be obscene. So we’re able to make a lot of hay in that meeting,
Brad Burrow (12:57):
Which is great news for a video production company. They’re in the catbird
Joe Jaap (13:03):
Because you do such good work.
Brad Burrow (13:05):
Well, I appreciate that, but I do agree with that. I mean, I think that I did a talk one time and the whole idea was the company that makes the tennis shoes that the skateboarders use, they’ll spend, they’re a $60 million company. They’ll spend a million dollars on a little documentary, not really a documentary, but showing somebody that’s their target audience, that their target audience loves, like a guy that drives cars around spinning around stuff. And I think it was Vans, I can’t remember anyway, but their whole strategy was building these incredible videos that these kids loved and that’s how they sold shoes. It was really amazing. But the whole idea of a video is worth a thousand words. That’s very true. I mean, we get a lot out of watching. Even somebody on camera presenting something as an authority is so much better than reading it.
Joe Jaap (14:08):
Well, and I love to kind of harken back to the NFL highlight reels, and you’re a videographer and an editor, so you know what it’s like to piece together segments where you’re using a fraction of a second worth of clip, but in a five second NFL highlight reel, how many images will you see? Now the reason why I say that is our brain has the capacity to absorb all that. So when you take that to a marketing standpoint and you present the product, the brand, the image, the message, you can nail it within three to five seconds as that video starts going. And you’re doing that video is worth a thousand words, right? Because you’re crushing through so much data to get your target audience to a point where they’re locked in and engage the message.
Brad Burrow (14:57):
Yeah, and you said, one thing that I really appreciate too is that first three to five seconds, and I know in our ad suite we have a lot to tell people, but man, if you’re not hitting in that first three to five seconds, and even with the banner on top of the video that we experimented with and kind of figured out what was actually working, that’s when we started having success. So I feel like it’s like you’re a chef and you’re trying to make that recipe perfect and it’s probably pretty good to start, but as you tweak it, it gets really good.
Joe Jaap (15:29):
Well, and you really brought up a good point because we are not target. So we haven’t spent a couple billion dollars on our brand. So you can’t float a little red circle in the bottom of a lifestyle shot and have everyone go, oh, that’s a target ad. So I encourage all of our clients, listen, hit ’em between the eyeballs. You don’t have a big budget, you got a couple grand a month. There’s no time to waste. We’re not brand building. I’m not saying that there’s not a brand building, but we focus largely on direct response. So don’t be afraid to put the banner up there and don’t be afraid to say it and nail it within the first three seconds because obvious matters when you’re competing for attention.
Brad Burrow (16:12):
Talk about AI just a little bit more. It seems so I get asked this all the time, and everything’s happening so fast, it’s unbelievable. But you can go out and generate video with AI now, and we’ve all seen that and it does a pretty good job. It’s pretty clear to me when it’s AI and the look and all that stuff, and I think people are now starting to realize that and want really authentic user generated content. Would you agree with that?
Joe Jaap (16:43):
So I would absolutely agree with that. And ai, we spin off into so many wonderful pieces. But to honor your observation, let’s stay inside the video. I think the one thing that has changed as people have gone through that space is the desire for realism. The beauty is back in the day, you had to be perfect camera ready and everything was completely staged. But today, people are looking for something a little bit more authentic, a little bit more off the cuff, a day in the life. They’re looking for just a little bit of normal. And I don’t think you can get that through ai. I think that real connection that is made when you have a videographer and a crew like yours that is onsite shooting their environment, you’re inviting that prospect into the business and into the culture in a way that you never could.
(17:45):
We have a wonderful client called eLog that does a lot of short form content and you’re sucked into their world. You see their forklift, their people, their stock, their shelves, and when you bring a professional videographer like yourself and your team into something, you get off the iPhone and you get these big, beautiful, amazing images and you capture in a way that is stunning. So we recommend you to pretty much all of our clients who can benefit from having a crew on site because let’s face it, one of the most intimidating things ever is working with a marketing company like us, and we say, we’d love to have some footage, and that’s where people get locked up. And what’s crazy is for your team’s not expensive in the scheme of the benefit to cost ratio. So a small investment in your team coming out and getting basically, I’m going to say a couple months, maybe a year worth of great B roll and footage. It’s amazing. And then for a marketing team like us taking that big beautiful footage and then putting it to use, it’s invaluable.
Brad Burrow (18:59):
I think a lot of business owners don’t realize that they need to be thinking that way right now. It’s like they’re always a little behind the curve in figuring out that. But you’re exactly right. I believe that too. It’s like the things we can build a library of content that can be used for this type of thing. And if you’re not thinking that way, you’re going to be left behind.
Joe Jaap (19:22):
But I also think that that’s a little bit of a trap that business owners fall into. They will look at their payroll through one lens, but they’ll look at a marketing investment or a video investment through a completely different lens, and you’re like, Hey, listen, maybe you should look in your back room because there’s a lot of people standing around not doing much, but you’re not really aligned with making a small several thousand dollars investment in the future of your business that can bring you revenue. Many times it’s about really getting that business owner to see the value, because today digital is your business and it’s not enough to have a website. I mean, it hasn’t been enough to have a website in a long time, but if you are not actively pushing your message in front and doing it with big, beautiful images like real media creates, you’re literally just saying, I don’t want to participate in this thing called new business. I don’t need anymore. I’m done. I’m good. Don’t call me. I’m good. I’m just going to sit here in my own little hole. I’m not going to go out and get new business.
Brad Burrow (20:35):
That’s not going to be me, by the way, just so one of the things I wrote down that I wanted to ask you about is just some of the problems that small you’re on the front lines of dealing with and marketing directors and things like that. What are some of the problems that you’re seeing that they come to you that you can help them solve?
Joe Jaap (20:55):
So I’ve been an entrepreneur for my entire life and own several businesses. And I always like to say, man, I’ve been on all ends of the stick. I have been in 500 and deep in the money and then I have been scratching to make payroll week after week after week and worse. So I have total empathy for every business owner where they are, and we have to meet them where they are. One of our sincere hopes is that the business owner is not bringing us their mortgage money because by the time they’re bringing us the mortgage money, they’re holding to that money so tight. And they say things like this, Joe, we’re going to give it 30 days. And you’re like, then I’m not going to go there because that money, you need it for payroll,
(21:45):
Where we love to have a business is big enough to be a real business and also a little bit liquid because money’s an investment. Results come quickly. But the biggest thing that we want a business owner to know is, Hey, listen, if you hired us, you have 10 employees. If you hired us as your 11th one, we’re a part-time employee. Two, we have scalable hours. Three, we’re very inexpensive, but when you hire us, think about hiring us for the year even though we have no contracts and you can cancel us any time, but don’t think about it as a 30, 60, 90 day. If it works, we’ll keep doing it. Because in reality, some business models, you get that 800 pound gorilla with a $2 million contract on the first week and then others you have to kind of grind and turn on it. But what I like to say is if we look at the amount of views and targeting audience and optimization, I’ve got a philosophy called the 52 weeks. I believe you can build Rome in 52
Brad Burrow (22:49):
Weeks.
Joe Jaap (22:50):
So if once a week you and your account manager, any marketing company, you ruthlessly attack your marketing once every week, it is amazing what can happen over 52 weeks. I mean, it is amazing what you can build and optimize. And what I like to say, just closing out on that is what is the chance that we’re going to bring that 1, 2, 3, 10, 20, a hundred clients that are forever going to change your business if we’re just given that opportunity? And that’s the big piece. But the owner has to be an investor, they have to be confident in themselves, they have to be confident in their money, and they have to kind of just want to grow.
Brad Burrow (23:30):
And I feel like there’s momentum to that as well. I mean, when you come out of the gate, it’s like the train starts slow, but then it starts to speed up a little bit and it’s not zero to 60 in one second.
Joe Jaap (23:48):
It’s not. And it’s funny, I think in my years at Emory Day, the concept of momentum has been clarified for me. So I’ll share with you two kind of thoughts. We call it the Big MO at Emory Day. Everybody else calls it the big mo, but we just commonly refer to it as Big Mo and Anne-Marie Warner, who’s our director of marketing, is famous for saying, don’t break the momentum. Because I have seen countless examples in marketing where someone goes, Hey, let’s just, I don’t know, lower the budget for the next five weeks and see what happens. And the momentum just goes and it falls on its face. Momentum goes both ways When you have it, keep it double down on it smartly, but be very careful and precious that you don’t break the momentum because it’s a special thing.
Brad Burrow (24:44):
Yeah. Can you talk about some of the other platforms I was talking to, Brie? LinkedIn is obviously a place where B2B, and it’s a place where I feel like it’s good. And she’s like, well, it’s really expensive. Talk about some of the other platforms, TikTok even, we’ve got videos on TikTok that, I’m not running ads there, but we’ve got one that’s got 20,000 views and they’re just a little short deals. But talk about some of the different platforms. And even I was even going to ask you about email. I’ve got automated email things that are happening, and I get hardly anything in response on those these days.
Joe Jaap (25:27):
So there’s a lot to unpack in there. Email’s not dead. I think it’s very good for transactional emails. I think sometimes making new connections over emails is challenging and there’s a whole piece of AI written emails personalized, and whether it’s over personalized, personalized, just the right amount feels good. Email, we’re just going to take it and put it over here because we got too much to unpack in terms of the platform. So if we started the Mac daddy of them all, it’s LinkedIn right now. I think all of us B2B folks were sitting there going, yes, LinkedIn finally a platform for us. But I think LinkedIn has sorely disappointed most people
Brad Burrow (26:12):
Now,
Joe Jaap (26:13):
It’s got great targeting, but it’s priced for the Inc 500 Inc. 1000.
(26:20):
It is priced for the companies who have budget. If you want to throw $60,000 at LinkedIn because you’re Cisco, knock yourself out, LinkedIn will reward you. But if you are bringing $5,000 to the puzzle, it’s tough. And LinkedIn ads have just been kind of that relationship where you’re like, I want you to work so bad. I want you to work so bad and you’re so expensive. LinkedIn boosting, just hot tip, pro tip, 10, 15, $20 for a post a day. Love it. You get great targeting, great results, and a fifth of the cost of LinkedIn advertising. I still think there, there’s reasons to do LinkedIn, but we have been stunned and humbled by the Meta Universe and Instagram and Facebook. Their targeting is amazing. Their platform has really grown quite a bit, and we’re making a lot of hey for the right reasons. And it’s funny, when I say meta, I always have to say Instagram before Facebook because if I say Facebook before Instagram, I get this. I’m not on Facebook, I’m on Instagram. Sorry, sorry. Okay, that’s cool. I don’t have any problem with that. But TikTok, same thing. So TikTok is the TikTok. Teenagers are becoming the TikTok 20 something.
Brad Burrow (27:39):
That’s right.
Joe Jaap (27:40):
So every generation kind of claims their platform. Different platforms are slightly better. I tend to a little bit more of the Instream video. It’s just a little bit more relaxed in the short form reel, but some of it depends on your product. And the number one thing is just test, test, test.
Brad Burrow (28:04):
Yeah, I think that TikTok is really, really interesting from an algorithm standpoint, but I wonder what’s going to happen with the US taking over the US version of that, if that’s going to change. I wonder about all that. I’m sure you’re kind of out ahead of some of that stuff, or maybe we all don’t know what’s going to happen with that.
Joe Jaap (28:27):
Wherever there’s big money, you just always have to suspend your belief that what is happening is logical. Yeah,
(28:35):
Because sometimes when the money’s too big, it’s kind of like, look over here, but don’t look over there because what’s happening over there is what’s really happening. And I want you to focus on this. I don’t know what’s going to happen with TikTok. I will tell you, and this isn’t an overly political statement, I think we all have to be careful whether you’re on the blue side or the right side of the aisle, how much the algorithms influence popular thought. Because I think the one thing that’s come out of this is it’s not so much, does a foreign company own my birthday? Does a foreign company care that I like Toyota Land Cruisers? Are they going to weaponize my passion for soccer? They’re probably not. But whether it’s a domestic us, a global, maybe a country that we’re a little bit at odds with, we have to worry about how that algorithm isn’t influencing people because it’s influencing them for real. And there has been a lot of great debate over the past two, three years. Again, nonpolitical, but let’s face it, we’ve all had that experience where you pass a video and you’re like, oh, I stayed there a little too long. I don’t want that in my feed. It just made you glazed out. And you’re like, wait a second. And then next thing you know that that algorithm is saying, oh, this is you. And if you’re not careful, it’ll very much be you in a couple of weeks because it has that capacity to mold minds.
Brad Burrow (30:09):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a little scary. I’ve heard that. I know you’re a military guy. I mean, heard the defense contractors or the Department of Defense talking about TikTok and how dangerous it is and all those things, but really all of the social media platforms have that ability to impact us that way, right?
Joe Jaap (30:30):
Yeah. I think relative to, again, we see, and again, I don’t want to stray too far off the track, but it would be very easy, and we’ve seen this for someone at Twitter or at TikTok or at Meta, to put their thumb on the scale in terms of favoring a particular ideology. Maybe it’s steering everybody to soccer as a national sport and steering away from football. I mean, it doesn’t even have to be something nefarious. It’s just the fact that that repetitive content, it hits so much of our dopamine center. How many times have you been in there? You open up a reel and all of a sudden you’re like, whoa. Oh my gosh, I think that’s been like 20, 30 minutes. What just happened to my time? And in that time, you’ve probably consumed no less than a hundred videos, but someone is determining the video content that you just saw because technically you are, but you’re not really in control of that next video.
(31:36):
So it is just a powerful thing. But to bring it full circle, that means of course as B2B and B2C marketers, video is where it’s at. It’s at. That’s why you’re in a catbird seat. That’s why your services at real media are so incredibly valuable to companies. Because here’s one thing, when you put that big beautiful imagery that you guys create on the regular, you become part of what makes that video that much more valuable. So a crappy video versus a real media video with the lighting and the editing and the amazing work that you do that’s going to get more views. More views means more views. It is a very cyclical thing. When you invest a little bit of money in your video production, it’s smart money. And that smart money takes you right to the stratosphere. And I’m not even talking about trying to go viral.
(32:36):
Emory Day is not the company that tries to make you viral. I think there’s other companies that they’re on the pulse of TMZ and everything that is pop and sugary in our world, and they know what hits. We’re blocking tackle marketers. We deliver leads, we connect people. And when you invest a little bit of money, like in real media, and you get the good quality video, here’s what happens. And nobody talks about this. Your ad costs go down because your ad costs, your CPC costs per click is directly related to a combination of two things. The video quality relative to your target audience and how those interplay. So we can do all the targeting in the world, we can nail your prospect, but if that video is subpar and it doesn’t hit and it doesn’t kind of get paused on, it doesn’t get the engagement, you’re actually going to be paying more. So here’s a perfect example. If you look at a media budget of 10, $15,000, you can really quickly make an argument that a $5,000 investment in a video shoot is going to make that $15,000 go that much farther and quietly. And if you stretch that out over a bigger budget over a few months, like 30,
Brad Burrow (33:59):
40,000,
Joe Jaap (34:01):
That investment in having it professionally shot, and I know this isn’t really a commercial for you. This is just much how passionate I am about what you bring to the world, that small investment, wow. I mean, you’re talking about you can amortize that investment across the lifeline of the ad spend, and you get your money back right there.
Brad Burrow (34:22):
So Joe, I’m preparing an office for you to move to Kansas City right now. It’ll just be right around the corner, come in for a couple weeks a month. We have great barbecue.
Joe Jaap (34:32):
I love it. You do have great
Brad Burrow (34:34):
Barbecue. That was awesome though. But it’s true. It’s like why is it so hard for people to really grasp that? You and I understand that, but you said it so eloquently. It’s like, yeah, you’re spending money on production, but you’re actually saving money because your ads are so much more effective
Joe Jaap (34:55):
In the digital world. So think about this, if you have a dollar a cost per click that’s a dollar, and you have, let’s say a 50 cent drop in that cost per click. So you go from $1 to 50 cents, and that happens all the time, that makes a $10,000 ad spend investment frees up that $5,000 for your video shoot. It’s just simple math. It’s a no brainer.
Brad Burrow (35:21):
Yeah, yeah, that’s very true. It’s amazing. I wanted to talk a little bit about boosting contents. That was one of the things that kind of opened my eyes, and you mentioned it on LinkedIn as well.
Joe Jaap (35:35):
Yep.
Brad Burrow (35:36):
Why would Facebook, LinkedIn, meta, why would they allow that? I don’t think I’m ever going to buy an ad on Facebook now. I’m going to create the ad. I’m going to put it, I’m going to upload it. It’s a piece of content, and then I’m going to boost it.
Joe Jaap (35:49):
So there’s no wrong strategy about boosting versus not boosting, but for your audience, let’s talk about what boosting really is.
(35:57):
So a couple concepts. When you go to a business’s Facebook page, you look at the number of followers they have, let’s use a round number like 300. So your average Midwest manufacturer has 300 followers. So Sally or Bobby or Billy, their digital marketing person, spends two and a half hours putting together this beautiful post, right? It’s thoughtful. It hits all the things. They hop into Canva, they do a great graphic, they get it approved. The boss says yes, and they post it without boosting. It’s only seen by some number between 50 to a hundred people if they’re lucky
Brad Burrow (36:37):
Because
Joe Jaap (36:37):
There’s that much competition for those 300 eyeballs. So if you get out a little bit of coffee money, we’re not talking big money. We’re talking Starbucks, coffee money. If you put a little Starbucks coffee money on that post, all of a sudden now 5,000 people have seen it. So the difference was organically a hundred maybe saw it a little bit of Starbucks money, 5,000. So I believe in boosting. I believe in one central concept. If it was worth your time and energy to write the content, it is worth it to boost it. All you have to do is look at your hourly rate and think to yourself, yeah, I should put some money behind this. Now, having said that, I’m still not. I’m an advertising guy, not because we make any money in advertising, but because I like to bring a lot of ammunition to the party. So I’m still an advertising guy. I love your boosting concept. There’s no wrong, and that’s the beauty about marketing. You can really test. But it’s a fantastic time to be in business. It’s a fantastic time to be doing video, whether you’re boosting or ad spend, doesn’t matter. The platform, one of the things we haven’t talked about is YouTube, right? Yes,
Brad Burrow (37:54):
Exactly.
Joe Jaap (37:57):
What we try to do, we try to tell people, every platform has a little slightly different nuance. You can’t get paralyzed and baked in the squat that you get the perfect nuance for the right platform. We like to test our stuff on meta, and then as soon as it shows promise, it’s headed over to YouTube to start that journey there. And then you talked earlier about local TV not being the same thing,
Brad Burrow (38:23):
Right? Yeah. That’s where I was going to go next.
Joe Jaap (38:26):
So let’s talk about local tv, right? So it’s amazing because back in the day when you and I were growing up, I’m guessing you had Yellow Pages when you were growing up. There was a very simple formula. You call your Yellow Pages very expensive two. By the way,
Brad Burrow (38:41):
Remember how much Yellow page ads were how expensive Yellow Page ads were?
Joe Jaap (38:45):
Yes.
Brad Burrow (38:45):
It’s crazy. Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt
Joe Jaap (38:48):
You. No, it’s okay. So you would call your yellow page ad, let’s dial, let’s dial it back. It’s, it’s 1993 and there’s 13 yellow pages in, let’s call it Southeast Virginia. And you want to be the number one plumbing company. So you go take out a full page ad, and when people see your full page ad, they’re like, whoa, Mr. Got bucks. That’s big time. But you would pay a big number. It could be five or $10,000 a month. Back then it was real money, real money. But all you had to do though was answer the phone, do a good job. And in a few years, that investment literally made you the number one company in your area. Very simple formula. And that also applied to local radio and local tv. Well, a couple things happened. We used to have three channels plus two kind of oddball channels like Fox.
(39:48):
What is today, Fox today? How many channels do we have? But with that breadth also becomes amazing opportunity because in digital marketing, we can take an ad unit and do an over the air, buy OTV and put it on any number of platforms. If you’ve ever watched a Hulu and you’re sitting there going, wait a second, that ad is a little too targeted. It’s because it is targeted. It’s targeted directly at you, and that also makes budgets and advertising very democratic. You couldn’t even approach local TV with anything resembling less than, let’s say a 20 or 30, 40, $50,000 ad buy. $5,000 would get you Sunday at 6:00 AM today you could take $5,000 and crush it in. The difference is you’re not broadcast messaging you’re targeting. So your hit rate with your target audience has gone up tremendously.
Brad Burrow (40:54):
Yeah. What platforms are you using to do that? Joe Vibe, and there’s other ones out there. Do you guys have one?
Joe Jaap (41:01):
Yeah, we have a couple that we prefer. Vibe has certainly done a great job doing their advertising. And again, a perfect example. You’ve probably seen Vibe on YouTube, so now you can take $500 and advertise on tv. That’s the power of video, who Vibe is not because of what they offer a vibe, because the videos that they targeted you as a marketing professional, I can tell you my wife, who isn’t technically a marketing professional, she doesn’t see those ads. She doesn’t know Vibe exists. You and I do though, because of that targeting, but there’s lots of great platforms. One of the things that we don’t really talk enough about is geo-targeted ads,
Brad Burrow (41:43):
Right? Yeah. Talk about that a little bit. That’s a whole nother area, and I’ve been seeing ads on the social media platforms about that. It’s like, you can serve up an ad in this neighborhood, that kind of thing.
Joe Jaap (41:57):
We do a lot of work with manufacturers. We love manufacturers, and there’s a line in one of our videos that we put out there that says, trade shows are dead. They’re not dead. They have a purpose. But for manufacturers who used to put it all on the line for one or two big trade shows a year and put $150,000 into a trade show today, they’re better served scaling back that budget a little bit and spreading that money digitally over the rest of the months. But one of the things that we’re doing to support all of our manufacturing clients today is we are Geotargeting ads. So let’s go to Vegas. So you’re at the MGM Grand and you’re having the local Plastics Extruding manufacturing conference. So we draw circles over the MGM Grand and three or four or five or six hotels around it. So when your phone realizes that you’re in the MGM Grand, you’re squarely in our sites and we’re serving ads directly to your phone. It is an amazing concept.
Brad Burrow (43:02):
Yeah. Yeah. I’ve heard of, we used to do a lot of work with the YMCA here in Kansas City, and so they would do that with competitors. So some of the fitness companies that are around, they would put geotargeting to serve up a Y ad when somebody went into that fitness company.
Joe Jaap (43:21):
Well, and that’s a great observation, and we should extrapolate on that just a little bit. Your competitors are a big piece of the puzzle. Also in account-based marketing, who do you want to win? So we have a client that’s an amazing company by the name of Entech. They do. And so if you’ve ever seen a Coca-Cola bottling line, it’s no joke. They could run a million cans a day, they can run 6,000 cans a minute. So those cans have to go fast, frictionless, can’t get marred up, can’t get beamed up, can’t bind. So the art of making those cans twist and move and rinse is something that Entech fabrications has taken to the next level. There’s no better rinser on the market, hands down. So Coca-Cola has about 135 different bottling lines, 13 franchises, Mexico and Canada. Wouldn’t it be neat if we were serving ads right on top of every Coca-Cola maybe, right? So account-based marketing takes you into that world where you have the opportunity to serve right on top of your competitors. If you can take your competitors’ traffic or serve on top of your aspirational customers in account-based marketing.
Brad Burrow (44:44):
Do you find yourself, and we will wrap up here pretty quick, Joe, but do you find yourself on the strategy side really getting involved? Because what I’ve found with the companies that we work with, they have a general strategy in mind, but they haven’t really thought through some of the basic things that we need to know to create great content, even target audience. I find some of the smaller companies haven’t even thought about target audience pain, all these things that we can build a content strategy around. Do you find that that’s the case with companies you’re working with, or do they come with you? Here’s the strategy. I just need you to execute.
Joe Jaap (45:22):
So I think with the best clients, that’s a little bit collaborative because they have an idea of what they want,
(45:30):
But they’re not holding so tightly that they’re saying, this is only what I want, and they’re not open to ideas. I have a philosophy in life that as adults, we have Swiss cheese learning because everything that we do is on the job. So it’s not like we went and sat in the classroom for 80 hours and learned something, we found a problem, solved the problem, but that also means there’s a hole right next to us that we don’t know because we didn’t solve that problem. The reason why I say that is the right company comes to us and says, listen, here’s my business. I’ve got an idea. Let’s make this collaborative, and we can get them to where they want to be. But we can also do this because every once in a while, I find myself in a conversation with a client. I’m like, that account manager that you’re talking to, she manages a lot of clients, and as she’s seeing a lot of stuff on a day-to-day, that really makes her a tremendous asset. And you pop in and out of marketing, and you’re only looking it from your perspective. So we hope that our clients allow us to do what we think is in their best interest, but collaboratively because everything that we do is that the client has signed off on. I want to just chat about AI before our conversation completely wraps, if that’s all right.
Brad Burrow (46:47):
Yeah. Great.
Joe Jaap (46:48):
But Emory Day’s always been a no contract company. You can stay as long as you want. You can cancel it anytime. So that’s always put us on the bubble for results. Ai. Couple thoughts. Yeah, it’s here now. So I did a presentation a little over a year and a half ago for my clients, and I said, listen, AI paradigms have changed. A year ago in 2023, people would ask questions like, you’re not using AI to write content that would be cheating. Then a year later, they’re saying things like, well, of course you’re using AI to write content. I mean, that’s only smart a year. From there, it’ll be like, well, I’m not paying for that content. You’re used ai. So we talked about a lot of things in the changing paradigm so quick over the past couple years, blue Ocean, red Ocean concept, who Moved My Cheese.
(47:45):
One of the things that Emory Day is deeply embedded in ai, all aspects ai. So we’re using AI to improve results. We’re using AI to create better campaigns. We’re using AI to help our clients close more business. And as an agency leader, my number one task is to bring Emory Day along this AI paradigm, because I think in general, people will be in two or three years not paying for work. They’ll be paying for results because some of the stuff that we think of as valuable effort today as AI streamlines that people will find a resistance to pay for that, but they will always pay for the results that you create.
Brad Burrow (48:32):
One of the things too, I think that’s great. One of the things I think about AI, because I’m diving into it as well, I was a full-time musician for 15 years. I’m really into this app called Suno right now where you can write music, and it’s amazing. It’s unbelievable. But I think the key to AI is knowing how to use it. And I think a lot of people say, well, I’m just going to have AI do this. For me. There’s a whole expertise on, I mean, you’ve got a lot of capability there, but if you don’t know how to use it correctly, you’re not going to get high end results out of it. Now, I think that’s one thing that maybe we can help businesses with is they know they need it, but can they actually get it to produce results? And then the other thing I think about it, it’s like it’s a really great tool, but the human aspect of what we do from our side of it, from a content and shooting all the things, that’s to me, always going to be important to keep it, because we’re smart. We can start to recognize when content’s, you can already see it happening. Stuff that’s out on the social media platforms is ai. And when you start recognizing the little nuances of what’s happening, you’re starting to realize, okay, that’s not real. And to me, it’s like, let’s use it as a tool, but let’s focus on real. Does that make sense?
Joe Jaap (50:03):
It does. It does. And for your industry, you’re in a wonderfully interesting cross section because what you do can’t be replaced by ai. And what I mean by that is AI can’t show up with a camera and capture the essence, but you’re also at a juxtaposition. You’re struggling with the fact that AI is trying to replicate some of your end product. And I think there will be, I don’t know if it’ll be a revolt or if it’ll just be a quiet acknowledgement, but I think the authenticity that comes through when it’s shot for real and it’s intimate and it’s real, not too polished, just enough to kind of take ’em in the factory, show them the team, show the humanness of it. I don’t think that that’s something that AI does very well. And I think that’s the real connection that people want to make with a video.
Brad Burrow (51:02):
Right. That’s exactly right. I want to wrap up. Where would somebody find you? I know how I found you guys. I’m trying to remember how I originally found you, but probably an ad.
Joe Jaap (51:14):
Sure.
Brad Burrow (51:14):
But tell me how somebody would connect with you and what that process would look like.
Joe Jaap (51:20):
Absolutely. Well, we’re easy to find. It’s Emory day.com, E-M-O-R-Y-D-A y.com. And if you visit the website, you can book a conversation with our team. It’s really just that simple, no stress, no fuss. We just want to learn about your business, share with you a little bit about how we might solve your problems. And we’re crazy and expensive. I mean, most of our clients are under $5,000 a month on a month to month retainer, and they get, we’re just a tremendous value. So we’d love to connect if you’re interested in learning more. And the nifty thing is if you come to our website and leave, you’re probably going to get an ad from us on Facebook or Instagram, whichever your favorite is. So yeah,
Brad Burrow (52:02):
Love
Joe Jaap (52:02):
It. You’ll probably see us before too long.
Brad Burrow (52:03):
Yeah, yeah, that’s great. And I do want to give a shout out to you and your team. I mean, Brie specifically has been so great in helping me and the rest of your teams. She’ll like, Hey, let me hold on a second. I’m going to get somebody on the phone. And that’s always, everybody’s kind of there to help, and I really appreciate that. For a small business like us, I feel like we’re getting treated like royalty, so that’s really awesome.
Joe Jaap (52:29):
Well, you’re too kind because the street goes both ways. We love having amazing clients like you. It allows us to practice our craft, and when we can create the results for you that drive your business forward, we establish long lasting relationships, and that’s the backbone of good business. So we want to say thank you for your business
Brad Burrow (52:49):
As well. I’ll talk to you offline, but I have maybe a good lead for you also in the protein shake business, by the way. So interesting area. The last thing, so this is what I always have everybody do on the podcast, is our podcast is called In a World With Real Media. So you get an opportunity to do the movie voice, and this could be a new career for you, Joe. So you basically just need to go up close to the mic and say, in a world with real media, and I’ll pass that on to some agents and see if we can get you some extra work.
Joe Jaap (53:23):
Do I put anything beyond in a world with real media or
Brad Burrow (53:26):
Just you can do whatever you want. If you want to just start with that and go right into the movie trailer, that’s totally fine.
Joe Jaap (53:34):
In a world with real media bringing the video directly to you and expanding your business and growing it to great heights, visit real media because it’s in the world with real media. This is Joe signing out and saying thank you.
Brad Burrow (53:52):
Awesome. That’s what I got. Awesome job. Well, thank you so much for being on. I learned a lot today. Really. We may have to do this again. I may go back and get some other questions for you, but I really appreciate you being on here. Yeah, luck, and I’m going to close here, but everybody, I would just hope you reach out and share this content with your audience. This is really great content. I mean, every business owner needs to watch this podcast and understand how they need to move forward with marketing in the digital world. And Joe and his team are amazing, and they will help you navigate that. And we just want to be right in the middle of what they’re doing. So thank you for joining us. Share it like it. Tell your friends about it. Listen to it at night, whatever you need to do. We really appreciate it and look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thank you. This has been in a World with Real Media. Thanks for joining us, and be sure to subscribe on iTunes and follow real media on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. So you never miss an episode.