31. Lawyer Andy Cabasso Turned 7 Figure Digital Marketer and Sass Business Owner

Burhaan Pattel: [00:00:00]

Welcome to the marketing stack podcast. And in today's episode, I'm talking to Andy Cabasso, who has actually a very, very fascinating story.

[00:00:09] And I'll get in, we'll get into that a little bit. But he's the founder of Postaga, Postaga?

Andy Cabasso: [00:00:14]

Yeah

Burhaan Pattel: [00:00:15]

was launched on product hunt about 10 or 11 months ago. And, also very interesting concept. Very interesting idea. And we'll get into that in the episode. Andrew, thank you so much for joining me for the podcast.Obviously you reached out to me and so I will go into the psychology and the, and the reason for that, in the episode, but welcome and, great to have you here.

Andy Cabasso: [00:00:37]

Sure. Yeah. Thanks for having me here.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:00:40]

So, Andy, do I call you Andy or Andrew

Andy Cabasso: [00:00:43]

Andy is good.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:00:44]

Okay, cool.

Andy Cabasso: [00:00:45]

So on my LinkedIn profile, I say Andrew, because I think that sounds maybe a bit more professional, but everyone calls me Andy for the most part.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:00:52]

Cool. Cool. Cool. So Andy, you're, actually a lawyer. Well, you're qualified as a lawyer, then

Andy Cabasso: [00:01:00]

I am a lawyer. Idon't actively practice, but yes.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:01:05]

And then, and then you went into sort of marketing and then you launched this product. So tell me what, where did your journey start? Like.How does this all happen?

Andy Cabasso: [00:01:20]

That's a great question. I don't know how it all happens.But we are here aren't we? So, as a student I studied marketing and entrepreneurship and I always kind of wanted to, start my own business someday.And I had started several like small businesses that didn't, didn't end up going anywhere.

Andy Cabasso: [00:01:42]

And after university, I went to law school, thinking I'd godown the path of being a lawyer, but turned out I really wasn't particularly like, I, I learned that I was not necessarily cut out for it. I wasn't, excited about it , but at the same time I was applying to work at different law firms to, just as it kind of, it was.

Andy Cabasso: [00:02:03]

And I was realizing that all of the law firms that I was applying to work at had very bad websites and it was the norm more than anything else that every law firm I was applying to had a bad website. So , a friend of mine, , who  was my roommate in college and university.  He was a freelance web designer and we kind of started talking and I was thinking, there is this market here.

Andy Cabasso: [00:02:25]

There are a lot of lawyers with, without a web presence or with a bad web presence. And we could fix that. You do web design and I can speak legal, ease and speak lawyer language. And. This kind of, it started out as like a side project of doing web design, specifically for the legal industry. And it kind of took off.

Andy Cabasso: [00:02:46]

And what started out as a side project side hustle ended up becoming a growing full-time business that, eventually got acquired by a larger much larger company in the legal space.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:02:59]

Yeah, I believe you sold that company for what was reported is over seven figures. So that's a major achievement and I love that you identified your strengths and your are, I don't want to call the weaknesses, but just the things that made you bored, I guess, which was the legal side of just being a lawyer or whatever.

Andy Cabasso: [00:03:20]

It just, it wasn't for me. I, maybe I like, in hindsight, I wish I could have learned that sooner. Cause it was inexpensive lesson. But yeah. Yeah. I, I kind of found my path.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:03:33]

But then, but then it became a profitable lesson too, because you know, like the by-product of the research and, and being in contact with, or being close to, you know, through the student, through the studies, I think a lot of people, you know, like what happened with me is I was born in the first year of university.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:03:56]

But I ended up finishing my degree anyway, just out of necessity of just having the thing, became an entrepreneur after that. But I think the same as you, it was like, I have to finish this thing. I've committed to it. I paid my dues. I paid my fee. I've got my debt, whatever the case maybe.

Andy Cabasso: [00:04:13]

Right.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:04:13]

Might as well get it done. Very cool. And so, so the fascination around, around digital, like you know, lawyers work mostly offline.They don't necessarily have, like you said, a web presence. What's what's been your, so how long have you been doing this work now?

Andy Cabasso: [00:04:32]

Since, I guess I started kind of , in, at the tail end of my experience in law school. So since about 2012 or so, so,  Yeah. Nine years or so, professionally in and at least, and, one thing, I guess, I, that I had it, it took me a while to learn, but was that, there were, there were some lawyers that I w I was speaking with that even though they had no web presence, they kind of like what you were saying.

Andy Cabasso: [00:04:58]

They dealt very much offline and they, are customers were coming from referrals and word of mouth. They didn't see any urgent need to have a web presence. And so I had to kind of calibrate for that because when I, when I come across a prospective customer and I see that they have no or minimal web presence, to me, that is heartbreaking and shocking, but for them sometimes it's, well, I don't see the need for it yet.

Andy Cabasso: [00:05:26]

Then then again, like sometimes I would, well, often what II found was when I would reach out about this they'd say, yeah. Even though like I get a lot of my business from word of mouth still, I'm finding that I'm learning that all of my perspective customers look me up online. And so I, it turns out I do need a website.

Andy Cabasso: [00:05:45]

I need a very minimal polished web presence because my website is my businesses online business card. And so they need to check up on me because if they're like, if you're a lawyer, like someone's going to pay me thousands of dollars or decide whether they're going to hire me over another law firm. In this practice area , they need to know that they can trust me.

Andy Cabasso: [00:06:08]

And one easy differentiator is having a polished website.  And especially if it's going to be , you're dealing with clients which are charging, giving you, like giving you thousands of thousands of dollars it's should be a no-brainer in terms of this being a worthwhile investment.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:06:25]

Yeah. And I, and I see that in a lot of different niches as well. It's right at the moment, I'm working with a lot of functional medicine and naturopathic doctors and you know, private practice owners and they have a very similar. I wouldn't say attitude. It's like, they know they need it, but they're always blaming time.

Andy Cabasso: [00:06:45]

Yeah. But that's where you come in because you can save them time. Actually an early experiment, early experiment of mine that went wrong.It went down went went wrong, but it was a failed experiment. And we learned from it, early iteration of my business. We were trying to make a self service platform for building a website for, law firms. And we launched it and no one was taking us up on it.

Andy Cabasso: [00:07:10]

And we asked and asked, for the people who like tried it out and asked for feedback and they said, listen, I'm charging hundreds of dollars per hour to clients. And, my time, I know what my time is worth, and I know what my skillset is. I'm not a web designer. And even if you give me beautiful templates, And things like that.

Andy Cabasso: [00:07:29]

I still need to populate the website and figure it all out.And even if it's going to take me five hours or, or even a couple of hours, this isn't a skillset that I have today and it's going to take me time. So I would rather pay someone else with experience to give me a good product. And so yeah, whenever I hear people say like, well, I, I don't have, I don't have the time.

Andy Cabasso: [00:07:55]

Well, As a web agency, hopefully you can make the process very much easier for them. typically like what my process was as an agency was,I, I want to make this as hands-off for you as possible. And so if you are a ,if you're playing professional services, I want to like, for us a big bottle neck was getting content, just information about the practice biography information and stuff like that.

Andy Cabasso: [00:08:19]

So we would, we would roll into our packages, content writing. So all we would need from the client would be something like head shots and we'd have an initial kickoff conversation where we'd ask them questions and get information from them any login or any information that we needed from them. And then from there we can go do our work and come back to them with a, ready to go website that meets their specifications.

Andy Cabasso: [00:08:44]

Because yeah, if you need materials from your client , you know, like they, I had a lot of clients where even like getting a headshot was, was a big hurdle because they said, all right, I know I need new headshots.This is on my to-do list. Months pass. I had clients that, that owed me a headshot for several years, plural.

Andy Cabasso: [00:09:08]

And we would regularly follow up with them and say, Hey, can we just get a headshot or even, not a placeholder, but we'll put something else on the website for now and later you can get it to us, but yeah, the, yeah, the easier you can make it for your clients, the better.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:09:25]

Yeah. So it's funny though, because you know, with,  they say that when you, when you solve one problem, you open up a whole bunch of other problems.

Andy Cabasso: [00:09:34]

Yeah

Burhaan Pattel: [00:09:34]

right? And so, you know, with having now this fancy website or this website, that's at least functional and it's credible, and it's putting you on the map,  from an SEO point of view. And we'll, we'll cover some of this a little bit later as well. The , the need for constant maintenance and production of content then becomes the challenge and in today's world video. So talk about that a little bit.

Andy Cabasso: [00:10:01]

Yeah. So, so from the customer, and it depends if you're like an agency serving the customers or you are the, you are the customer and you are going, or you're the person managing your business's website. Yeah. So, once you have the website , it can like Sometimes a misconception that, okay, our website is live.

Andy Cabasso: [00:10:19]

Therefore we should immediately start ranking in Google and every and everything like that. But that doesn't necessarily happen, especially if you're in a competitive,  industry in a competitive location. And so like, well, we saw with lawyers, for example, it would very, very much by the practice or whether you're like.

Andy Cabasso: [00:10:36]

For example, the most competitive practice areas where a personal injury in the United States, because that's just the big money making, area. If you getting into a car accident , or something like that. It could, the amount of money that you may end up winning in a settlement or a court case could be a lot of money for you as well as the law firm.

Andy Cabasso: [00:10:57]

And so the law firm , is going to recognize that there's a lot of potential money on the table here. So they put a lot of investment intoSEO. And so, for, for any business to show up well in Google, It's important to recognize that for you to show up on the, on the first page of Google, the number 10 spot, the very bottom of the page, you are going to have to displace someone else.

Andy Cabasso: [00:11:23]

And so it's very, it is competitive. And so if you knock someone off the first page of Google, then, then they're going to probably recognize that very quickly. They've already put investment into it to get to that first page of Google. And if you knock, and if you can somehow knock them off the first page, they are going to do what they can to fight their way back onto the first page.

Andy Cabasso: [00:11:44]

And so, If you start, if you launch a website today you are playing catch up with the people who are already on the first page of Google in your industry and in your location if you're a local business. So , there, there is effort that effort and investment that needs to put into getting you there.

Andy Cabasso: [00:12:01]

And I think it's something that not necessarily a lot of people are thinking about when they launched their website, they're thinking, all right, great. I launched my website. Now I should show up in my city, for my business type.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:12:12]

And, and, and what does that mean? So that means constant production of content blog posts.

Andy Cabasso: [00:12:19]

Yeah. There are, there are different

Burhaan Pattel: [00:12:20]

effort,

Andy Cabasso: [00:12:21]

the effort. Yeah. So , it's everything from, you know, producing quality content to, doing , link building, to get other websites, to link to your content. Since, there are many hundreds of mysterious quote-unquote ranking factors that, that affect whether your website shows upon the first page of Google.

Andy Cabasso: [00:12:41]

One that we've seen in studies that corre that at least correlates very highly with a better position in Google is the number and quality of links to your website, into your content and, producing, producing great content can help your website rank, but also getting other websites to link to your content can have a big impact as well.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:13:04]

And so that actually leads me into this question, which so you're, you're, you're obviously I mentioned early in the introduction that you reached out to me for the, for the interview, for the podcast.

Andy Cabasso: [00:13:16]

Yep.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:13:16]

Which, which would invariably give you a link on my website or on my podcast?

Andy Cabasso: [00:13:21]

That's right

Burhaan Pattel: [00:13:21]

back to, sorry. I keep saying that wrong. Or maybe to your personal blog, wherever you want to link to. So there's effort required. Right?There's there's so, so tell me the strategy or educate me on

Andy Cabasso: [00:13:36]

sure.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:13:36]

How this whole process works.

Andy Cabasso: [00:13:39]

Yeah. So yeah. Yeah, happy to talk more about that. So yeah, this was like, For me and my brand, for example, part of, part of what my strategy involves is, basically, finding relevant websites, businesses, blogs, podcasts, that I think would be a good fit for, either promoting my, my blog content or.

Andy Cabasso: [00:13:59]

Promoting content that I can give over a podcast or something like that. You know, with the, in, you know, in full transparency with the end goal of being, getting a link back to, my website and my brand, there sometimes there's conflation of a few different terms, like link building, as well as like digital PR.

Andy Cabasso: [00:14:17]

But for me, it's all under the same kind of umbrella because it's, it's a similar workflow, no matter what, which is, we're going to start from the position of, we want, we want more, a bigger audience.  And so whether it's reaching out to websites, to share with them, our blog articles to see if they can link to them or to reach out to, blogs, to see if they can review our product.

Andy Cabasso: [00:14:40]

Which will get us, I guess it's pressed, but it's also getting that back link, or to reaching out to a podcast to talk about something related, related to our area of expertise and then get a link. It's all under that same umbrella. And so like what my workflow looks like is I have kind of different strategies and different, areas that I'm, that I'm going after, depending on what my goals are

Andy Cabasso: [00:15:03]

So for reaching for doing podcast promotion, for example, I searched first, I'll like search for, podcasts in my area of expertise. So marketing agencies, and things like that, or business operations and, I'll find podcasts. I'll then find the, email addresses for the contact people at the podcast. And it's important.

Andy Cabasso: [00:15:25]

If you can find deem an email for the right person. It better ensures that you, get a response as opposed to finding a generic email, like a contact at, or an info at, and then, having a good pitch because, so many, emails that,  that I get and that I see in this space are just so.

Andy Cabasso: [00:15:46]

Bland that it's just not compelling. I've been on the receiving end of a lot of pitches on everything from, you know, like content.And I'm sure that you've probably seen them too. Like, Hey, I came, it's like something like, Hey, I came across your article. I wanted to let you know thatI wrote an article that is similar and relevant to your topic.

Andy Cabasso: [00:16:04]

It would be great. If you could link to my article in your article. Well, I I'm glad that you would get some benefit out of it, but what's the benefit for me, right? So when I reach out to podcasters or anyone, I'm very mindful of that, they may not know who I am. It'd be great if they did.

Andy Cabasso: [00:16:24]

But I want to focus on what is the benefit that their podcast is going to get and their audience is going to get. And so I'll. I'm sharing with you? My, my, my pitch now it's Hey,  I came across, your podcast and I have a few episodes queued up and I'm excited about it. I wanted to reach out and see if you are, If you're accepting any new guests in the next month or so I have a few ideas for topics that would be relevant to your audience and then list the specific, ideas that you have that are unique to your area of expertise, but also very relevant to your, that, podcast audience.

Andy Cabasso: [00:16:59]

And so, you know, making sure that, like, if you're reaching out to a podcast about marketing, that you have, that your topics are marketing related, or if you're reaching out to a podcast, that's all about agencies that it's agency related. Cause just giving an irrelevant pitch. Like you've.Hopefully you've gotten that email opened.

Andy Cabasso: [00:17:18]

And if they see the pitch and they're like, okay, they don't know anything about our podcast that's due, like you blew it.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:17:25]

Yeah. You only get one chance.

Andy Cabasso: [00:17:27]

And then, beyond that, I'll, you know, try and give a little bit of credentials, like a bit about me and why I'd be a good fit. Here's my relevant experience. I and like brag a little bit, like, but like make it enticing. So like, I sold a marketing agency, and  here and like, like the bullet points that I have are relevant to my talk topic.

Andy Cabasso: [00:17:48]

So, if I'm pitching how to grow and sell an agency, in myparts where I'm, I'm mentioning. I sold an agency, so I have relevant experience here. One other thing that I think is also important is I mentionedin my pitches, also, I, I have an audience, of, of people, of digital marketersor an email list as well.

Andy Cabasso: [00:18:10]

And I'd be happy to share the episode with them. I also see in some, some pitches, if you are like a lot of podcasters go on other people's podcasts. And so in the pitch, they'll say I'd also have my own podcast and I'd be happy to have you on as well, offering some something reciprocal of value to the person that you're reaching out to.

Andy Cabasso: [00:18:30]

Is also a big win, and makes them more likely to want you on their podcast because you're not just in it for you, and you're not just in it for the exposure that you're going to get, but you want to help them and their audience as well.

Andy Cabasso: [00:18:42]

And that, gets a much better response. And so, yeah, with all of my outreach pitches, I try and be mindful of that, but about, this person that I'm reaching out to has no idea who I am, And I'm reaching out to them because I want something, but what can I provide for them? What is the benefit that they're going to get?

Andy Cabasso: [00:19:01]

And so if I'm like pitching them to get them to link to apiece of content of mine, I want to show why, like what benefit their audience will get from this. Like, so I saw that you linked to this article, but that article is from 2015 and it's outdated. This article that I have is from 2021, it shares all this stuff.

Andy Cabasso: [00:19:19]

Oh. And also, by the way, if you're interested, we do have an affiliate program, if that's a benefit to you. So let me know about that.So. That's kind of an approach I like to take.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:19:30]

Yeah, it's interesting because I have seen a number of emails that come through. And it's, it's kind of nuts. Cause sometimes, you know, they'll, they'll send you one email and they're clearly you're using aCRM with some sort of automation or whatever, and

Burhaan Pattel: [00:19:44]

it's like, Two or three days later, almost on the minute it's like, Hey, Hey, I didn't hear back from you. Can I, can we get in touch or whatever? And it's, it's just a little bit mindless, in my opinion,

Andy Cabasso: [00:19:58]

there are some like pitches that stand out to you. And so,I'm, I'm like, I'm curious now, like, well, so in general, like what do you stands out as particularly good or particularly bad?

Burhaan Pattel: [00:20:09]

For me it's, I mean, it's easy to spot that the person just doesn't know who you are. Right. So it's like, they'll put my company name in there or they'll put my website in, in the, you know, in the copy. And then,

Andy Cabasso: [00:20:20]

yeah.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:20:21]

And then it's like the next sentence. Clearly doesn't say anything relevant to what they've just written it and then the line above. So it's clearly a field or something, or they've just got one line that they need to fill in. Then the rest is all just copy paste.

Andy Cabasso: [00:20:36]

Yeah.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:20:37]

But I, I sometimes take it a step further. So, you know, sometimes they'll, there'll be something that's interesting that comes through not overly interesting, but it's like, okay, let me have a look. And I'm very curious as well. I'm just both that way. And so I'll open up links and I'll go and find the websites and I'll go find the LinkedIn profiles or the Facebook profiles or all the things, and make a judgment on my, on my own, in terms of.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:21:05]

You know would this be worthwhile or in some cases it's a little bit selfish. It's like, what can I learn from the person? That would also be of benefit to my, my audience. And also make clients because there's some, in some instances where I learned something on an, on an episode, which I then can pass onto my clients because, Hey, this is also an opportunity for us to get free advice.

Andy Cabasso: [00:21:29]

You're not the first person. I've heard that from also a friend of mine. Jimmy Rose, who, runs company called content snare, who also has a podcast about, agencies. I was on his podcast a while back. I kind of cold pitched him and he was like, yeah, absolutely. And, I recommended a friend to him and he said, well, here's what I'm like.

Andy Cabasso: [00:21:48]

Their, their experience is interesting, but would you mind if like, would they mind if I like basically had them on and ask them to breakdown my business? Because I, like, I find that I'm a better interviewer whenI'm more invested in the topic and my audience is going to find it interesting too, if we have a real example here.

Andy Cabasso: [00:22:05]

And so show me your secrets kind of thing. And that makes yeah, it makes for a better interview for sure. And you have like a real practical example, like here, we're talking about specifically how to reach out to podcasts in an effective way. And stuff like that, but yeah,

Burhaan Pattel: [00:22:19]

with the goal of building SEO for a backlink

Andy Cabasso: [00:22:22]

yeah.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:22:23]

In, in that specific, question, they asked you just now, but it's like, there's also relationship building. So I've made a few friends through just this process and, and I think you and I connected on matchmakerdot AFM. Yeah. Which is also like a podcast it's kind of like a match making tool for podcasts and guests.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:22:43]

Really fascinating thing. I, I can't even remember how I found it but kind of from the first day that I've put my profile up on there,I've had a few people reach out like yourself and in a few others. And again, I think it comes down to. You know, with all of these tools, with all of these apps, whether you're on social or these matchmaking type of services, it comes down to writing a good headline.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:23:06]

Or something that's going to grab somebody's attention. And obviously the marketing stack has the word marketing on it, so that's probably how you found mine.  

Andy Cabasso: [00:23:14]

Yeah.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:23:14]

So I'm glad that little bit of SEO is working for me.

Andy Cabasso: [00:23:17]

Yeah. I think I, like, I like searched for like a marketing category and you popped up and I like, I'm like, like, Oh, like, Oh, this is agreat, this would be a good fit. Yeah.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:23:26]

Yeah. So, I mean, on my, on my case, in my case, it's, you know, the podcast is more of a learning exercise, more of a what RussellBrunson calls a, exploratory. He uses a different word actually. It's, it's more of like the, the researcher.

Andy Cabasso: [00:23:43]

Yeah.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:23:44]

You're using the using other people's time, but also again, giving benefit of the audience. So I wish I had done started my podcast sooner, like years ago.

Andy Cabasso: [00:23:55]

Yeah.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:23:55]

But you know, it's one of those things where there's still opportunity. And that brings me to my next question. So you've been doing SEO for a couple of years now. Eight years building websites and now, and now you've got your company where you're also working with it still.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:24:11]

What have you seen in terms of the ebbs and flows of it, ofSEO. And obviously, you know, there's pandas and hummingbirds and all of these things flying around. But. What have you seen so far?

Andy Cabasso: [00:24:25]

I mean, the main trend is that it it's gotten more difficult. It can consistently has getting more, gotten more difficult and more competitive. Although I wasn't doing SEO back in the early, early days. Like I hear war stories from veterans, veterans of SEO, who. Say things like, yeah, I could just stuff, a bunch of keywords in the footer of my website.  

Andy Cabasso: [00:24:47]A

and I would automatically rank or, I got a WordPress website in 2005 or something that when they first launched and WordPress was automatically optimized and my WordPress site would. Just shoot to the top of the rankings past any Drupal or Joomla or any other CMS website.

Andy Cabasso: [00:25:04]

And it just, it worked and I'm just thinking, Oh man, that sounds, that sounds wonderful. And like the same for like appearing in like maps and like local search. It was super easy, but like over time as has there more entrance into the space and as Google were finds its algorithm, it gets more and more competitive.

Andy Cabasso: [00:25:24]

Which really means that if you want to rank better, you have to put more effort and potentially investment into that. So whether it's, you know, better quality content, because it used to be that you could just write a bunch of 500 word articles that are relatively nonsense about a topic,

Andy Cabasso: [00:25:43]

but if you have the right amount of keyword density, and you mentioned the term that you're going after, you could rank for that, even if your article was garbage and not helpful to anyone, but now your content and your visibility, you're competing against more and more people. And so, you have to be much more. Thoughtful and methodical about, your strategy.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:26:08]

And of course, like, I think if we, if we did like a history and we won't go into too much of it, I think part of it is yes, there's a lot more people publishing content now than there has ever been. And it will belike that probably.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:26:22]

Forever.  But in, at the same time, it's like Google and all these other services, I would say, evenFacebook, even Pinterest, even all of these other social apps while they're notall SEO, heavy tools, they do rely on some sort of search, to function.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:26:40]

And so, you know, bringing that around is they've all gotten smarter at creating or giving the user experience a good experience, because if you're getting shitty articles showing up on the first page and you're not, you click on it, and you bounce.

Andy Cabasso: [00:26:57]Yeah.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:26:58]

Google is like, Oh, that wasn't good for that person. And so let's change things up and so while it is more difficult. I'm also happy that it is getting that way because it cleans out with filters out a lot of the, garbage and nonsense that is also out there.

Andy Cabasso: [00:27:14]

I agree, for most everything, except for recipes and cooking. Have you recently ever, have you done any searches recently for trying find a recipe for anything?

Burhaan Pattel: [00:27:26]

I don't cook so

Andy Cabasso: [00:27:27]

you don't cook. Oh man, I, do you like have like a cook for you. I like that sounds great.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:27:34]

I live in Thailand. Like we just buy everything.

Andy Cabasso: [00:27:36]

Oh man. I. I'm I'm super. I am super, I'm just, I'm sorry. I don't mean to go off tangent, but I'm just, Oh yeah, that's right. You live inThailand. I'm super jealous of you. You have like really amazing food.

Andy Cabasso: [00:27:51]

So. All right. I don't, I don't, we'll we'll come back to this later. Maybe I'm gonna have to ask you about Thai food.  But all right, so let's say, I want to, let's say, let's come back to cooking.

Andy Cabasso: [00:28:03]

I'm doing a search for, I want to find a recipe for a chicken tikka masala and, invariably, the first. The top ranked article that shows up is something that is very optimized in a particular way to satisfyGoogle.

Andy Cabasso: [00:28:20]

And that's, you know, that's what everyone does, but it's particularly burdensome. I find with cooking and recipes. So if I click on that article, there is going to be paragraphs of the chef's life story. Before I can get to the recipe. It's like, all right, here's an article for chicken tikka masala.

Andy Cabasso: [00:28:40]

My grandfather was a plumber and he lost both of his legs and like it's paragraphs and paragraphs. Like some of them now thankfully have like buttons at the top. It's a jump to the recipe. And then it goes down three quarters of the page follow, like in-between, which are, ad sense blocks and affiliate links and things like that before you can actually like win.

Andy Cabasso: [00:29:03]

For cooking in particular, all I want is the recipe and maybe some star ratings and user comment. So I know some advice about things I might want to change with the recipe, but this particular subject matter it's99% terrible.

Andy Cabasso: [00:29:19]

Just because everyone sees how in this space you need to compete. And I think, it's like this little microcosm of what SEO broader used to be like for every industry. Cause it used to be, you could keyword stuff and you had a certain formula that you'd follow and, you'd have poor quality content

Andy Cabasso: [00:29:41]

And that would rank high, but it wasn't good for user experience. And somehow today, recipe and cooking blogs have. Like being competing with very bad user experience,

Burhaan Pattel: [00:29:54]

I would say that's partly true in the marketing or digital marketing space as well. It's like, you know, there's always like, let me tell you this thing before I get into the content and like.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:30:05]

When it comes to blog posts for me, it's like, like you said, there's maybe a button where there's a, a table of contents or something, and then you can click and you can go all the way through, or you just scroll, you just like go to the end, you see the paragraph you need, you consume whatyou need and you, and you leave.

Andy Cabasso: [00:30:21]

Right.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:30:22]

What's interesting to me is YouTube on the other hand.

Andy Cabasso: [00:30:26]

Yeah.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:30:27]

When people don't get what they came for in the first three to five seconds.

Andy Cabasso: [00:30:32]

Yeah.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:30:32]

They, they leave and the comparison to the blog is you can go find what you're looking for on the blog, but on a video player, you're not quite sure where that is. And so you just rather leave the video to go find somebody else who's getting into the content.

Andy Cabasso: [00:30:48]

Yeah. I, I'm not, I'm definitely not an expert in YouTube.I'm still I'm still very much trying to figure out YouTube, but like, there are things that I read and seeing that people do like that have success with it, which is like in the first three seconds, say what this video is about and what people are going to learn.

Andy Cabasso: [00:31:05]

And I try to be mindful of that. Like, Hey, in this video about link building, I'm going to talk about link building. I'm going to show you a strategy. So people know what it's going to be in the video.

Andy Cabasso: [00:31:14]

Another thing that I I've seen also like which works well, I think is you can in the description, have timestamps of different things that you cover at different sections, like a table of contents. And I need to do more of that for sure. I'm saying this now kind of like committing myself to it because I know I don't do it as well as I should.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:31:32]

Yeah. And that, that does help, except it's really like, depending on the device that you're on to go click that number. Sometimes it's is very tricky. Like if you're like me, it's you, you end up going to the wrong place or,

Andy Cabasso: [00:31:45]

yeah. And especially if you're, if you're consuming on mobile, right.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:31:49]

Yeah. Yeah. But it's, it's very interesting. I mean, likeI've dug into SEO, like I would say on a surface level and I understand like link building and I understand why it's beneficial. But in terms of like, my background is in advertising.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:32:06]

So when I started my digital marketing work on Upwork as a freelancer, most of my clients just came to me for advertising because, well, that was the quickest and cheapest way.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:32:16]

For traffic and build authority and sell stuff. Like basically that's, that's what everybody wants and SEO is kind of like this long, slow tortoise game where there's really no guarantee that anything is gonna work because, you know, you need to optimize things like over and over and over and over again.

Andy Cabasso: [00:32:36]

Yeah.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:32:37]

But, but it is, it is possible, but it requires a lot of time investment. And for lawyers or doctors, who are super busy. It's it, they'd rather just pay the money to Facebook and, and get the clients that they want today.

Andy Cabasso: [00:32:50]

Right. Yeah. So yeah, absolutely. It can like advertising, like definitely like. For like, I offered a paid search as well as SEO and like paid search. We could get results much quicker, but, in, in legal, in particular, getting those clicks was very expensive for sure.  

Andy Cabasso: [00:33:08]

So I think I read an article a few years back saying, I think six of the top eight, key, most expensive keywords are in the legalindustry. Like,

Burhaan Pattel: [00:33:16]

yes.

Andy Cabasso: [00:33:16]

Mesothelioma or Houston personal injury or something like that, like terms that I, I was trying to bid on, you could spend hundreds of dollars for a single click.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:33:27]

Yeah.

Andy Cabasso: [00:33:27]

And that's where conversion rate optimization really was important, but yeah, like with, with SEO, it's like, all right, so this is going to be a longer longer-term place. So we need to. We need a temporary expectations.

Andy Cabasso: [00:33:41]

And I have to, as, as if I'm the agency, I have to, set realistic expectations, but also make the client understand that. You're probably getting pitches from other marketers who are saying like cold pitches for marketers saying they can get you top ranking on Google in one day or something like that.

Andy Cabasso: [00:34:00]

And I have to, you have to do a lot of education to let them know, listen one that's that's either a lie or it's a trap. The trap being thatI could get you to rank number one, for your name or something. Very long tail, very specific like, Personal injury, lawyer who wears suspenders and slacks and has a great haircut,

Burhaan Pattel: [00:34:22]

which nobody is searching.

Andy Cabasso: [00:34:24]

No one's searching for it, but I told you, I'd get you to number one in Google. And I did so pay me kind of thing. And it's like, all right, well. And like, and a lot of businesses, have been burned by overpromising, under delivering marketers. And so, it's important that you can, if you're doing marketing for someone.

Andy Cabasso: [00:34:44]

Like understand where they're coming from, understand that they, your client has probably been burned before, or at least knows other business owners who have been burned before.

Andy Cabasso: [00:34:53]

From, from what I, what I'm, I I've heard, many people who are happy with their marketing agency. Don't share that information with their friends.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:35:03]

That's funny. That's so funny. It's it's yeah. It's one of those, a chicken and egg type of situations because yeah, in my well, so sinceI started and I started this, sort of work seven years ago, and back then, it was just about being able to deliver.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:35:19]

What you, what you said you were going to deliver. Whereas now it's, you know, people have gone through a bit of a cycle, so they've worked with other people or they've been burned before, like you said, and, and now it's a constant,

Burhaan Pattel: [00:35:32]

Like they've got this barrier against marketers where it's like, you have to be selling yourself and prove proving expectations all the time.

Andy Cabasso: [00:35:42]

Right.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:35:42]

Which is really difficult, obviously, if you're good with what you do and there's consistency. Which there invariably isn't ever, becauseSEO things, change rules, change, Facebook changes their rules with advertising.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:35:56]

There's so much, there's so many things going on that it's, it's one of those constant, like as a marketer, you have to be marketing and selling all the time. Like this is just the role. This is the job that you're in. So, let's get into Pos Postaga.

Andy Cabasso: [00:36:11]

yeah.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:36:11]

I keep getting stuck on that word.  You then launched this product on product hunt.

Andy Cabasso: [00:36:17]

That's right.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:36:18]

So tell me, tell me a little bit about that. Like working directly with clients and then now building this a SAS product, right?

Andy Cabasso: [00:36:25]

Yeah. So, kind of from the, from the experience of running a marketing agency, after I had sold and left, my co-founder and I were like, trying to talk about like what the next steps were and next projects and ideas and things we wanted to do.

Andy Cabasso: [00:36:39]

We my co-founder was like thinking like, you know, one problem that we had, a challenge that we had was we want to do, you know, SEO for our clients and there's things that we can easily build in our processes for like content writing, for example, or on page SEO.

Andy Cabasso: [00:36:55]

And we have our checklists and things like that, but a very big component is getting, getting links and content alone doesn't do that for us as well as it used to. So we need to. What we need to be doing is, is doing outreach to different blogs that can link to us, but also in a scalable way for our clients.

Andy Cabasso: [00:37:17]

And they're really what we were seeing was there, wasn't a lot of options out there. Other marketers that we spoke with had very, disconnected systems like they would hire they'd either.

Andy Cabasso: [00:37:30]

Like use different research tools or hire VAs to do research for them to find relevant opportunities and websites and build spreadsheets and lists, and then go through those in a.

Andy Cabasso: [00:37:44]

In, either like have VAs, manually prospect each of these websites to try and find the right person and then find their email address and then use software to validate those email addresses and then throw all of that into a CRM and then build these email templates and personalize them.

Andy Cabasso: [00:38:03]

And it was just very, like, it just didn't make sense, for, for a business or for, to do it scalably that you could offer it to a client so

Burhaan Pattel: [00:38:14]

You just described my process right now

Andy Cabasso: [00:38:18]

It's a, and it's a very common process for sure.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:38:21]

Painful.

Andy Cabasso: [00:38:22]

So we wanted to build, and maybe you should check out my software because we, we, so we wanted to build a way to streamline and automate the tedious parts. So, so we. We did that. And so, basically kind of like what postdoc is, platform and workflow is, is first you choose like goal with your campaign type.

Andy Cabasso: [00:38:43]

So like, for example, if I want to do, if I want to get my product reviewed, I want to find blogs that have reviewed my competitors and reviewed other apps and businesses in my industry.

Andy Cabasso: [00:38:56]

And we have a search engine that does that. And then after we retrieve those results, you can kind of choose which of them you want to reach out to. Then our platform will find the right contact people through an integration we have with LinkedIn.

Andy Cabasso: [00:39:11]

Then, the next step is we find their email addresses and we validate them because if your email bounces and if too many of them bounce, you're going to get your domain going to spam. And that's no good.

Andy Cabasso: [00:39:24]

And then we have the last step is kind of the CRM where you choose an email sequence and, your emails and follow-ups and personalizing them for your contacts. And that that's the, in essence, what our platform does.

Andy Cabasso: [00:39:37]

And so, we have different campaign types for different goals, what you're looking for. So if you're looking to promote your blog content, we have ways to streamline the skyscraper technique, which is a very popular link building outreach technique.

Andy Cabasso: [00:39:49]

We also have ways to find other articles that link to. Let that basically I have like that link to tons of resources on a particular topic so that we could reach out to them, as well as a bunch of other things from getting you reviews,

Andy Cabasso: [00:40:02]

to getting your blogs, articles linked to, to, building your brand and getting you on podcasts and things like that. And, Oh, and the last thing is also, we have a way to do cold outreach for, sales, too.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:40:15]

Yeah. That's that was going to be the question is like, can it do sales as well cause yeah. What you just described is, is this whole painful process. Exactly. Almost to the T hiring a VA and then not getting the right data.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:40:27]

In fact, I just ran a whole bunch of contexts throughNeverBounce, yesterday and found that 30% of the emails that my VA gave me worked garbage. And I was like, why are my email's not going through from pipe drive? It was just so weird. And so I did this exercise and I was like, ah, right. Prep emails.

Andy Cabasso: [00:40:50]

Yeah. And there, the thing is, there are a lot of, email finding apps out there, but for some reason, just a bunch of them, they don't automatically validate because they're their deliverable is they give you email addresses.

Andy Cabasso: [00:41:04]

And if they were to cut out 30%, then, then they're giving you fewer results in your thinking, Oh, maybe that's not so good. But like, our platform, like find finds, invalidates, I think about 90% of the emails that, emails for the contacts,

Andy Cabasso: [00:41:17]

which is like, they're like, all right, well, it's 90%.That's not a hundred percent, but. We can, if we can find email addresses for, and that work for 90% of the people, then that's, I think that's a win.

Andy Cabasso: [00:41:29]

And so, all right, maybe you can't reach out to this website cause we can't find an email address, but here are all the other websites, if you're, and if you're doing this at scale and trying to reach out to as many people as possible, making sure that you can actually get to inbox is, is, is a big thing.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:41:43]

Yeah. So, thank you again for being on the podcast, where can people find Postaga and how can they get out get in touch with you if they have questions.

Andy Cabasso: [00:41:52]

Yeah so I'm pretty easy to find. I don't think there are any other Andy or Andrew Cabasso's out there in the world. So well, my website is Postaga  dot com, P O S T A G A .com.

Andy Cabasso: [00:42:04]

You can also find me on Twitter at Andy Cabasso. On LinkedInas Andrew Cabasso.  And, I also have aFacebook group on, link-building and outreach and digital marketing. It's called grow together, SEO, and check us out there. It's a really, nice, vibrant community, where we share, everything from like guest posting opportunities to answering questions that you might have about, link building and outreach.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:42:31]

Cool. Well, Andy, thank you so much for being on the episode. I definitely learned a lot and hopefully the audience did too.  That was awesome, man. Thank you.

Andy Cabasso: [00:42:39]

Awesome. Thank you.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:42:40]

Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode with Andy.  Andy was a very fascinating guest and I wish him all the best. If you want to all the links to Andy's social and also Postaga, will be in the show notes below. If you enjoyed the episode, definitely hit the like button. If you're watching this on YouTube, subscribe to the channel, and if you're listening to this on Apple or any of your podcast providers, definitely subscribe or follow, depending on where you're listening to this.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:43:07]

And this has been the marketing stack podcast. I really appreciate you listening in and I look forward to see, you on the next episode.Bye bye for now.

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