Navigating Business Growth: Amber Gage on Effective Marketing Strategies

: 00:02:06

Hey there Freddy D.

Here in this episode 85, we're joined by Amber Gaige, who is a third generation entrepreneur, certified Story Brand Guide and a founder of Far Beyond Marketing. Growing up in a family of business owners, Amber learned early the values of resilience, hard work and adaptability.

Qualities that have shaped her journey into becoming a sought after marketing strategist.

Over the past 15 plus years, she has worked across industries like home services, construction, SaaS, beauty, health, manufacturing and more, helping businesses simplify marketing and build systems that create steady growth. Amber is the creator of the four Cs of effective marketing, a proven framework that has transformed hundreds of businesses nationwide.

She's also the author of the international bestseller the Far Beyond Marketing Guidebook and a speaker known for making marketing accessible, strategic and even a little fun.

If you're an entrepreneur looking for clear, actionable advice to grow your business with confidence and purpose, especially if marketing has felt overwhelming, you're in for a real treat today.

Freddy D: 00:03:24

Foreign.

Amber Gaige: 00:03:27

Welcome Amber Gaige with Far Beyond Marketing to the Business Superfans podcast. We're excited to have you here. Welcome Amber.

Freddy D: 00:03:36

I am thrilled to be here Frederick. Thanks for having me.

Amber Gaige: 00:03:40

So tell us a little bit about your backstory. How did Far Beyond Marketing come about? What's the story?

Freddy D: 00:03:46

Oh my goodness, what a journey it has been. So my story is one of school of hard knocks.

I actually have a background in international travel and music, but I was born into an entrepreneurial family. A very humble entrepreneurial family. My parents have four businesses that are all successful now, but in my childhood none of them were successful.

They started with three children and no customers and very little money. So growing up I was raised to value a dollar and to work very, very hard.

So in my background of watching my parents grow businesses out of our home, to eventually finishing high school early, to traveling the world, I would never be in business for myself because I wanted to sing internationally and then coming full scale back to work in the family business, only then to start my own business, sell it to private equity, work in private equity, and then relaunch my brand after becoming a mom.

So it has been a twisted and eventful journey that has brought me to where I am today and that is to serve clients to the very best of my ability with marketing that actually works and to help them achieve their goals.

Amber Gaige: 00:04:57

How did international Travel formulate your mindset on marketing and the world of business?

Freddy D: 00:05:04

I think everyone should travel internationally if they can.

We take so much for granted when we become self centric and international travel allows us to experience not only different Cultures, but different people. You get to see that there are many different ways of accomplishing the same goals.

You become open minded to different perspectives and different cultures. You become tolerant and respectful of people that look and sound different from you.

All of these things are hugely important, whether you're a solopreneur or an entrepreneur or as I was a international traveling business executive for many years, I believe that there is strength in diversity and power in respecting our differences.

Amber Gaige: 00:05:54

Oh, absolutely. Because I was in charge of global sales and I was in Japan at a trade show demonstrating our product.

I had a master distributor that was interested because they would have had the ability to market our technology throughout all of Japan. They loved the technology. We talked about the technology, the contract, the business potential and everything else. But we were never going anywhere.

I was spinning my wheels. I was in Australia, meeting with one of my resellers there. Paul. We're at DY beach at a restaurant and I'm going, Paul, what am I doing wrong?

It's been six months we've been talking with these guys and they say they're interested, but nothing ever happens. He told me, what are you talking about? I was talking about the business potential, the contract, the product, the technology and all that stuff.

He goes, shut the heck up about that stuff and ask more about them, their culture and everything else. Like, huh, really? The next time I went there, I said, okay, tell me a little bit more about Japan. Show me around.

So they took me around and gave me a tour and everything else. And then they came here to Arizona.

We met in our office in Scottsdale, had a two hour meeting, and the rest of the day I got him in the car and took them around the whole valley, showed him around. They took pictures, did a multitude of different things, and then they went back and said, we'll get back to you.

Two months later, I ended up getting the contract back and an order for $200,000 because I got myself out of my own way and I started to look at it from their perspective.

Freddy D: 00:07:28

I love that. And you experienced a win win because of that.

Two very important things you just hit on get yourself out of the own way and look at it from their perspective. Hugely important.

Amber Gaige: 00:07:41

So let's go into a little bit of a deeper dive into what differentiates far beyond marketing versus other marketing agencies.

Freddy D: 00:07:49

I'd like to say that we tend to be the antithesis of a typical marketing agency. We have a beautiful team of 14, a global team. Four ladies are here locally and the rest are international.

I don't hire based on Anything except for talent and our team is truly a servant. Leadership white glove organization. Our company phone number is text enabled. Our clients text us all day long and all of us see it.

We serve our clients to the very best of our ability. No one is in a standard package of services that we do exactly the same for another client.

While we do have the fundamental elements of a traditional marketing agency, we follow best practices for SEO, paid media, branding, social media.

Of course we have our set packages, but we consultatively meet with every new client, establish their business goals and then create a unique a la carte menu that marries our capabilities with their goals. We work with them in 90 day intervals to ensure that their goals are being met.

We have a very high retention rate, but everyone knows that they are not happy. They still own all of their assets. We make no claims on their website or their profiles. Everything is work for hire. They can get out at any time.

We really strive to be absolutely customized in the deliverables because every company is different and the life cycle of every business is different. We want them to win at the stage that they come to us and need to make some solid accomplishments.

Amber Gaige: 00:09:27

Yeah, because it's important to, you know, things pivot, things change and you guys are re engaging with their customers every 90 days. It's really important because in their business things could have gone in a different direction and you can adjust, pivot, tweak, et cetera.

So that's really important because when I was running a particular company several years ago, the marketing agency we had in place before it took over, nobody really checked into them. We kept getting an invoice, no reports, no idea of what was taking place. And finally I called these people in and said, where's our data?

Where's the analytics?

Freddy D: 00:10:11

What's happening?

Amber Gaige: 00:10:12

And we're paying this money. And they couldn't produce anything. So I ended up getting rid of them because we had no data and the money was going out the door.

We got a different agency and that completely changed the game for the company. We ended up redoing the website two times. The people doing it before, horrible. Then we redid it and it was better.

But then we redid it one more time because it needed a couple of evolutions to really get the message I wanted for the company.

And that's what I was able to scale the company by a million dollars in a year and position it for sale was the fact that we changed the whole branding, the whole messaging, everything else to change the whole dynamics of a business that's been around for 30 years.

Freddy D: 00:10:59

I love that.

And you saw it with fresh eyes and you were able to look at the client's goals and look at where they wanted to go and really give it the lift that it needed. I mean, with $1 million sales improvement, I would call that a win.

Amber Gaige: 00:11:12

Yeah, yeah. This was a small chunk deal because this is an interpreting and translation company.

So we're not talking $5,000 deals, we're talking $200 or 100 deals at a time. But the whole messaging changed and my focus was on what I would call attraction marketing.

Freddy D: 00:11:32

So.

Amber Gaige: 00:11:33

So that when people look at the site, I look at the website today as a validator of who you are as a business, more people go to it to say, okay, is this business really as good as I hear it is? And the site is the validation with the testimonials and everything else.

Freddy D: 00:11:50

You're right. It really is an online business card of who you are and what you do.

And most people bounce off of a website, statistically speaking, four seconds or less. If they can't tell what you do and how it's going to benefit them, they're out.

So could you imagine how maddening that would be if you're spending thousands of dollars a month to drive traffic to a website, only to have them bounce off without the opportunity to interact?

Amber Gaige: 00:12:13

And if you don't track that, you have no clue.

Freddy D: 00:12:16

Absolutely, yes. It baffles me how frequently people have no idea what's going on on their website.

We partner with a brilliant consumer data scientist and through her Pixel, we're able to offer our clients real time insights every 30 seconds about who's coming to their website and what pages they're visiting. This is the kind of data that AI and real time machine learning is making possible. The game of marketing is changing.

Amber Gaige: 00:12:42

Oh, it's totally changed.

And you've got to be able to adjust and tweak and pivot and adjust again, as I said, because like you just said, people are coming and you've got the data right there. And so you need to be able to analyze that data and then put that data into play.

Freddy D: 00:13:03

Make real time, informed decisions. That's what I tell our clients all the time. Gone are the days of the wizard of Oz style of marketing. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

That used to be what people expected from their marketing agencies. People expect more news.

They expect full transparency to understand what you're doing with their dollars and how it's benefiting their business operations.

Amber Gaige: 00:13:27

charge of global sales was in: 1997

So I went in and said, well, I can't screw it up. So I redid the site. And then some of our distributors said, hey, who redid the website? It said, I did.

So I had a part time gig because they all wanted me to redo their websites. At the time, it was really just a business card.

It's a mindset back then was that you at least had to have a website that described what you were doing. And that was it. There was no more strategy beyond just being out there so people could read. Oh, okay. This business has a website.

This is what they do. Great, fine. That was it. So as you just described, Amber, it's completely changed in 25 years. Actually, 28 years.

Freddy D: 00:14:28

Well, let's not even get started on the impact of Yellow Pages versus online listings. And what happened in the industry when Google, my business was introduced. And the metamorphosis of Google business profiles.

The shift from print to digital to now AI has been just honestly a paradox. And those who early adopt survive and thrive. And those who get intimidated and dig in their heels quickly lose market share.

Amber Gaige: 00:15:01

God. Yellow Pages. I used to have an ad in the yellow Pages because I used to own a commercial office cleaning business when I was in my teens.

Freddy D: 00:15:08

Look at you, serial entrepreneur.

Amber Gaige: 00:15:10

So yeah, that was. Wow, I forgot about those guys.

Freddy D: 00:15:14

You were another young entrepreneur whose parents probably said, go make some money for yourself. I was 8. I made the mistake of asking for a puppy and I had to write a letter to my dad, the banker to borrow money to buy a puppy.

And then I had to turn into a dog breeding business. I got to keep a puppy, though, so that was good.

Amber Gaige: 00:15:29

There you go.

Freddy D: 00:15:30

Never ask your parents for a puppy.

Amber Gaige: 00:15:32

Yeah, we got a German shepherd two years ago and he's been a cool dude.

Freddy D: 00:15:37

My Rottweiler is my baby. He weighs more than I do, but he's the best dog I've ever owned.

Amber Gaige: 00:15:43

He's our kid. He comes into bed with us and all that stuff. Life changing.

Freddy D: 00:15:47

Oh, absolutely. Well, I spent a lot of time singing over in Europe like I told you before the call. And so my dog's name is Avik von Sentry from my eternal guardian.

Amber Gaige: 00:15:56

Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. We call our dog Gaston. French name.

Freddy D: 00:16:01

Very appropriate. I love it.

Amber Gaige: 00:16:03

She's that type of a guy. He's a Gaston Kind of guy.

Freddy D: 00:16:05

Gaston. Yeah, he's so regal.

Amber Gaige: 00:16:09

Share a story of a company that you guys walked into and was a train wreck and you in turn transformed them.

Freddy D: 00:16:18

Let's see. For the sake of privacy, I will omit names. We really specialize in working with a couple of subsets of businesses.

Entrepreneurs will always be my people because of my family background.

And a subset of entrepreneurs is franchisees because I find that many men and women buy into a franchise system under the promise of a business in a box. And effectively what happens is they buy themselves a vocation.

But they have grossly overlooked the challenge of getting that business launched, leveraged, growing. In this example, I'll tell you about an entrepreneur or a franchisee who had entrusted their marketing to two different parties.

One was the franchisor and the internal support system of the franchisor's marketing team. And the other was a large national agency that was an approved vendor of the franchisor.

All seemed to be fine until a Google algorithm change happened. They lost their accreditation on Google Business Profile. They lost their Google local search ads, which was was 90% of their inbound leads.

They were not well diversified in their local marketing. So apart from being listed on Google, nobody was finding them because no one had talked to them about guerrilla marketing.

As they talk about in marketing is more by recent drought. Great book by the way. No one had talked to them about the importance of diversifying online presence of paid ads, SEO, blogs, backlinks.

They had just talked to them about Google. So when we stepped in, this company was down, absolutely down, probably 45% down year over year and just really struggling.

We met with them, reassured them that we would work with them to get them diversified and up and going. It took a whole month to clean up the mess of very poorly cobbled together Google Business profile and online optimization. We cleaned it up.

We finally wrestled away the access of their website from the national agency that had it under lock and key.

And we're able to access the backend, clean up the meta tags, clean up the SEO, clean up the keywords, get the client access to an asset that they had paid over $10,000 for. This is your business asset. How do you not have the keys?

Amber Gaige: 00:18:49

I mean, it's mind boggling how some agencies do that because I had a digital marketing company for a while and that was often the situation where people were locked out of their assets as you just described, and more importantly, it was held as hostage. They wanted thousands of dollars to get what they already paid for.

Freddy D: 00:19:11

It does baffle me. I Can't believe you don't know what you don't know. As a business owner, you're great at providing a product or service.

You shouldn't have to be a marketing expert to know that you need to ask for your GoDaddy credentials as well as your WordPress credentials who think that.

Amber Gaige: 00:19:30

True. It's one of the things that agencies like yourself have the credibility and the character to be transparent and share.

Here's the data that we set up for you. Here's your information and it's yours. You own it. I want to make sure you've got it. But if anything happens, if I get hit by a bus, you're covered.

Freddy D: 00:19:53

That's what we tell every client. Every single client. Some appreciate it, some take it for granted. But those who have been burned certainly appreciate it.

Amber Gaige: 00:20:03

So let's go on with the story.

Freddy D: 00:20:04

Yeah. So to wrap up the story, after about three months worth of work, the leads started flowing. We had consistent leads. Their dispatch board was full.

They were diversified across the Internet. We had updated their website and their landing pages for optimal conversions.

We had story branded their business so that people now knew better what they did and how they did it underneath the guidelines of the franchisor. And they're thriving. But it took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get them back on track.

Amber Gaige: 00:20:36

So you could say that those guys are superfans of how you transform their business.

Freddy D: 00:20:41

I think we could call them superfans for sure.

Amber Gaige: 00:20:44

Yeah. Because superfans are. It takes work to create them.

But once you've created superfans, they're the biggest marketing force you could have because they blow away all the digital marketing aspects and everything else. Because it's social proof when someone is telling their friends and everybody they know that you're the agency to deal with for marketing needs.

Freddy D: 00:21:11

The owner of that company called me on the phone because all of my clients have my cell phone number. He said, I want 10 copies of your book and I want at least 50 business cards.

Because he was going to the convention and he said every fellow franchisee needs to talk to you.

Amber Gaige: 00:21:30

That's a die hard super fan.

Freddy D: 00:21:32

Let's talk about your book.

Freddy D: 00:21:34

It's the Far Beyond Marketing Guidebook. How to Stop Being Duped by Bad Marketing.

And intended to be a guidebook for busy business owners who don't have time to learn how to market, who just need a back pocket guide to understanding the basics of marketing. And they need a roadmap to grow their business effectively. International bestseller in four countries. We have an E course Based on it as well.

And I do keynote speaking all over the United States to help business owners implement the four Cs of effective marketing.

Amber Gaige: 00:22:07

What are the four Cs?

Freddy D: 00:22:09

The first C is clear copy. How to talk about your business in a way that people will listen and understand what you do. The second C is consistent branding.

Knowing how and where to brand your business and to keep it consistent. Don't get distracted by all the pretty colors and fonts if you confuse you loose. The third C is customer demographic. Who is actually your customer?

Should you niche down or not? What products or services are you offering to help your customer? And the fourth C is channel management.

How do you establish a rinse and repeat so that you can serve those valuable customers again and again? Avoiding a turn them and Burnham approach like that.

Amber Gaige: 00:22:51

Because there is a mindset of Churn and Burnham which is transactional and that does not create super fans. The superfans are the people that are passionate about your business and what you've done for them. And it really stems back to company culture.

I believe that if you have a dynamic team that's energized, happy about where they're working, they're excited about what they do, that energy transcends to prospective customers as well as existing customers and that becomes attractive and more importantly it becomes contagious. And so now you've got your team that's energized, empowering customers, suppliers, distributors, all stakeholders.

The whole ecosystem of a business that's transformative and provides more marketing power than any money you could ever have spent on marketing.

Freddy D: 00:23:56

100%. And you're right, it is such a company culture. I tell my project management team every week in our meetings, we're either far beyond or we're not.

We have to be far beyond our clients expectations and far beyond just marketing.

Your culture of your company and how you serve your clients needs to exude in everything you do from picking up the phone to writing your emails to the fulfillment of the most grueling services. Because people can tell when you make it about you versus them.

Amber Gaige: 00:24:29

Exactly. And that goes back to leadership in a company and you having the international background and you mentioned that part of your team is international.

You have a different perspective on things. So you empower your team because they're thousands of miles away.

But you have to have the effective management style that engages with them, empowers them, recognizes. And one of the quotes of my book is people will crawl through broken glass for appreciation and recognition.

Freddy D: 00:25:07

That's so true, isn't it?

Amber Gaige: 00:25:09

Think about it. It's global.

Freddy D: 00:25:11

Absolutely. It transcends culture.

Amber Gaige: 00:25:14

Doesn't matter.

Freddy D: 00:25:14

I tell my team every day on Slack, you are loved, you are prayed for, you are appreciated. Have a great shift.

Amber Gaige: 00:25:23

My other saying is the little things are the big things.

Freddy D: 00:25:27

True.

Amber Gaige: 00:25:28

If you think about it, the little things saying thank you, I appreciate you. Thanks for the extra effort. Thanks for working through the weekend on this particular project.

I know you didn't have to, but you did and that changed the outcome.

Freddy D: 00:25:41

Yes, absolutely true. I try to teach my 8 year old that. I hope it sticks.

Amber Gaige: 00:25:49

So what are the things that. Let's come up with a couple takeaways for our listeners. What are some of the things that people should look for when they're looking at an agency?

Freddy D: 00:26:02

Well, the first thing you should look for is transparency like we've already talked about. Is it work for hire? Because everything that they do for an entrepreneur should be owned and retained and controlled by the entrepreneur.

The entrepreneur should be the one, the business owner, the business operator. It doesn't have to be an entrepreneur. You know what I mean?

Amber Gaige: 00:26:21

Right.

Freddy D: 00:26:22

They should retain the steering wheel at any time. You can kick anybody off your bus. Same way in life, you either get the privilege of being on the bus or you don't.

So I would say it's the same thing for an agency. The thing I would say is how complicated is the contract?

Are you absolutely locked into a contract regardless of the results that you're going to get? That's not such a good deal. Right?

What the opportunities are for holding them accountable for their deliverable than an agency that doesn't want to be held accountable for deliverables may not be the best long term partner for you.

Amber Gaige: 00:26:57

Right?

Freddy D: 00:26:58

Yeah.

Amber Gaige: 00:27:01

How often should an entrepreneur slash business owner check on what's going on?

Freddy D: 00:27:10

Well, I think you mean with their marketing specifically. I think the best partnerships are the ones that have great communication. Right.

Our project managers are talking to our clients daily, seeing how things are going in their business. We might have a couple clients that say don't bother me and I'll just talk to you at our monthly calls.

So I would say at minimum a monthly call to check in on the metrics and see how things are performing month over month.

But really you should have an open, transparent relationship with your marketing partner so that as things are changing in your business, you have some controls that you can pull on as needed and you.

Amber Gaige: 00:27:50

Can see what's happening. So you can make pivots and adjustments because everything is Google. Wait five minutes and they change the algorithm.

Freddy D: 00:28:00

It's so true. Dashboards are a huge thing.

Making sure that you have access to real time data and dashboards for every aspect of your marketing, whether it's SEO or paid ads or website analytics.

Amber Gaige: 00:28:13

And people focus on Google. But everybody seems to forget that there's this other big search engine called Bing.

Freddy D: 00:28:21

YouTube actually one day eclipsed Google searches.

Amber Gaige: 00:28:27

Wow.

Freddy D: 00:28:28

There's all kinds of things that are impacting Google's monopoly.

Amber Gaige: 00:28:35

So it's really important to make sure that you're in all the places that you need to be and making sure that you're engaging with your audience in a authentic way.

Freddy D: 00:28:47

Hugely important. Well said.

Amber Gaige: 00:28:50

So, Amber, as we come closer to the end here, do you have another story that you can share?

Freddy D: 00:28:58

I actually have a story of a precious marketing manager who asked to join our team because she loved being a client so much that when her life circumstances changed and she found herself looking for another job, I was the first phone call she made and she said it was such an amazing experience being a client of Far beyond that. I just wondered if you had any openings for someone like me. And we hired her.

Amber Gaige: 00:29:29

We just did. There I'm going to package in.

My verbiage is you had created a super fan of her for the services you had provided her to the fact that she wanted to become part of your team. Think about that. You know how transformative that was that you've empowered that particular individual to want to become part of your organization.

Freddy D: 00:29:53

Yeah.

Amber Gaige: 00:29:54

So she's got to be your biggest fan.

Freddy D: 00:29:56

She's phenomenal. You know, she really does a great job.

Amber Gaige: 00:30:00

There you have it.

Freddy D: 00:30:01

I say culture is everything, isn't it?

Amber Gaige: 00:30:04

It is. It is. So, Amber, how can people find you? How can they connect with you?

Freddy D: 00:30:10

Oh, we'd love to connect with your listeners any way that's convenient for them. We're on social media. All the platforms. Far Beyond Marketing is probably listed. We have a Strong presence on LinkedIn.

Our website is far beyond marketing dot com. You can get a copy of our book, the Far Beyond Marketing Guidebook, or Amazon.

If you're interested in learning how to market your business, you can sign up for our course on farbeyondmarketing.com, the Entrepreneur's Toolkit. Learn how to market your business.

Amber Gaige: 00:30:38

Excellent. Great conversation, Amber. Lots of tidbits for our listeners and insight.

We definitely look forward to continuing the conversation down the road and having you on the show again.

Freddy D: 00:30:50

I would love to come back. Thank you so much for having me. And kiss Mr. Gaston for me.

Amber Gaige: 00:30:54

All right. Thank you, Amber.

Freddy D: 00:30:59

Hey, superfan superstar Freddie D Here. Before we wrap, here's your three A playbook Attract, advocate and accelerate your business power move for today. Here's this episode's top insight.

The brands that survive and thrive are the ones that make customers feel something unforgettable. Because loyalty isn't bought, it's earned through emotion. So here's your business growth action step.

Craft a bold promise that stirs emotion and review every customer touch point this week to ensure it reinforces that promise with absolute consistency. If today's conversation sparked an idea for you, share it with a fellow business leader who would benefit and grab the full breakdown in the show.

Notes let's accelerate together and start creating business super fans who not only champion your brand, but accelerate your growth.