Sebastian: You're also fed up with scammy online marketing gurus who promise you superficial hype strategies as a way to success?
Niels: As independent online marketers who consider the daily grind their absolute comfort zone, we've made it our mission to expose the online marketing bullshit. With us, you get the unfiltered truth about the current state of the online marketing world and which strategies really work.
Sebastian: Your hosts Niels Stuck and Sebastian Vogg will present new online marketing topics in each episode, such as SEO, Facebook Ads, Content, and much more, to take your online marketing success to the next level).
Sebastian: Hello and welcome to the No Bullshit Online Marketing Podcast! Today in the interview with Markus Kellermann. Hello, Markus.
Markus Kellermann: Yes, hello, thank you so much for having me on your great podcast.
Sebastian: Yes, very, very much so. We got some good feedback from you. But first Niels. ... #00:01:06# you?
Niels: Once again! Welcome, welcome, folks!
Sebastian: Exactly. In fact, it's quite exciting: Markus left a post on Facebook. And he told us a bit about the podcast he listens to. And then we were quite surprised that you also mentioned us. And then like, okay, cool. And if Markus listens to our podcast, then he must also be interviewed in our podcast. And accordingly: Cool that you're here, cool that you have time, on a Saturday, classic, as an entrepreneur. Yes, Markus, why don't you tell us a little bit about-, I mean, it's God and the world again, but what do you-, how did you get into digital marketing and-, yes, how did you get into it?
Markus Kellermann: Oh, where should I start? Well, I'll get started-, current status: I am one of two managing directors and shareholders of xpose360. We are an international online marketing agency and specialize in search engine optimization, PPC marketing and partner marketing, including video marketing and influencer marketing. We are active in twelve countries, have 45 employees in Augsburg and Nuremberg, and serve customers from various sectors, for example from the travel sector, Singapore airlines or Ab-in den-Urlaub, from the retail sector customers such as Peter Hahn and Norma, customers from the telco sector such as NetCologne or Tarifhaus. So customers across the board, including B2B companies and, yes, ultimately we are a classic online marketing agency and-, yes, so much for today's status.
Sebastian: Yes, cool, very, very exciting. But there was somehow a journey there or-, well, you were still somewhere else before you joined as managing director, right?
Markus Kellermann: Yes, there's actually a very long history. I follow your podcast, among other things, because when I see and hear you, I always have to think back to myself when-, I think you're 22 and 23, and we actually have a very similar biography, or rather I have a very similar biography to what you're doing now, which is why I find it quite exciting. Well, originally I started an apprenticeship as an office clerk in 1995, was in the company-, I was also promoted a bit, because I was very interested in the topic, yes, technologies. That is to say, I was also responsible for the intranet at the company and then also for setting up a website, which was of course at the time, 95, 98, right at the beginning, when the Internet was just starting out, so to speak, and the first companies had their home pages, and I familiarized myself with the subject myself. I learned how to program HTML, how to program Java Script, CSS and so on, and then I built up the homepage for the company and came into contact with search engine optimization, at that time of course for search engines like Fireball and AltaVista, which probably nobody knows anymore. (Niels: History.)
Exactly, those were the old days when SEO was still relatively simple with keyword stuffing. And within 24 hours you were in first place for every keyword you wanted. And then in the year 2000, Erwin Müller, which is a large mail order company here in our village, was looking for someone who could also look after their websites, so to speak. At that time, they completely rebuilt their e-commerce division. Those were the early years, when mail order companies also started with e-commerce, and I was then responsible for the online store. We entered all the products into Excel files in the traditional way, then uploaded them and used them to create the online stores. It was also the early days of online stores in general, and I was there for five years. Was there then also responsible for search engine optimization. During that time, Google came along, which means that I also did a lot of SEO for Google. Fireball and Altavista were then relatively quickly no longer relevant. I was also responsible for PPC, which was still called Goal Tool at that time, when there was no Google AdWords. Came then also only so from 2001 to 2003, and was then also responsible for affiliate marketing, at that time still for networks such as AdButler and Webmaster Planning. These no longer exist. And then I was there for five years and then in 2005 I changed to one, to Augsburg, to Explido, which is now called iProspects. And at that time they were looking for someone to do affiliate marketing, and the industry is relatively dynamic, fast-moving, and then I-, was then seven years at Explido and then built up the affiliate department there with-, there were almost 30 employees at that time.
During that time, we somehow managed 70 customers with affiliate marketing. And of course you saw a lot during that time, learned a lot. I was promoted quite a bit, and in 2012, after seven years at Explido, I thought to myself: Okay, what do I want to do, how should I continue? And then I decided, yes, to become self-employed, because I just kept noticing, and this is probably similar for you, that I somehow have a self-employed person slumbering inside me, and I'm actually more of an entrepreneur than an employee. I think that you somehow notice inwardly that you don't want to be the employee, but that you really want to work for yourself, and then I worked alone for a year as a management consultant, advised a company like Peter Hahn, and also other companies, and during that time I also got to know Alex Geißenberger, who founded Xpose-414, an agency for search engine optimization, back in 2009. And Alex considered at that time to move into a larger office in-, at that time it was still the Silbermann Villa, a small city villa in Augsburg. And, yes, after many discussions, we then decided to merge my know-how and his, and this then resulted in xpose360 GmbH in 2014.
And this year we're celebrating the company's tenth anniversary - I've only been with Xpose for five years - and we've grown enormously over the last few years. And that was just a quick rundown of the last few years. I could tell you a lot more about that, because I was always working as an affiliate at the same time. Parallel to being an employee, I was also active as an affiliate SEO myself. Where I was still young, the hours were sometimes 80 to 100 hours a week. But it was always fun in the end because I never had the feeling that it was somehow work, it's all a passion. And everything you did was fun, and you see what you accomplish. Especially in SEO, when you suddenly then get top rankings, then it's really awesome. And, yes, that was just a brief excerpt from the last few years.
Niels: Okay. I have now also been able to determine that, because not only on LinkedIn your biography already reads powerful, it also sounds like that. And I think a big difference is now, of course, in addition to the several years of experience, the many years of experience that stand in between, so is, you have now made yourself independent at a rather later point in time, and I and Sebastian are then quasi directly from school so a bit in the self-employment felt purely started. And you were able to gather a wealth of experience and take it with you, including from companies in which you had leading roles. And we would definitely be interested to know how you manage such a large agency with this wealth of experience?
Markus Kellermann: Yes, so of course you have to say that with such a development and such rapid growth, there's always a lot of luck involved. It's always easy to say that you're in the right place at the right time. But often it is like that. But what has helped me a lot over the last few years has always been networking, that is, I have always been a networker. I just like making new contacts, getting to know people. And when you've been in the online industry for, let's say, 20 years, then of course you know all the players, even the big players. And it's of course easier to get to customers if you know who to approach and if you simply have a lot of contacts. And that has certainly always helped me and us, it really did when we were developing xpose360:
When Alex and I joined forces in 2014, the plan was never to grow to 45 employees, but the idea at that time was actually-, so the xpose414, at that time three permanent employees, so was a smaller SEO agency. And the idea was actually that we bundle our know-how, so to speak, everyone brings in his wealth of experience, and we just solidly support our customers that we have and just have fun doing it. Which we still have, of course, but the fact that we grow year after year like this was never really the plan. That is to say, there was never a business plan or anything else, the planning to grow like this, but we were simply overrun again and again by our own success, so to speak. And what is certainly also related to the fact that we have a corresponding company philosophy, that we say we want to look after our customers extremely proactively. We place a lot of value on quality, we place a lot of value on transparency and innovation, which are our values, which we also live, which all our employees live, and which have also always accompanied us, and which were the most important building blocks for our growth. And what is also certainly a factor is that we have always been very upfront in terms of advising potential customers. In other words, when we receive inquiries from potential customers, we do a lot of advance work. So, to give you an example: We now receive an inquiry from a potential customer who says: I now need an affiliate marketing agency because I perhaps don't have internal know-how, or because I would like to change the agency, then the first thing is that we deal intensively with this customer, make an on-site appointment directly, because we then want to speak directly, if the customer is already interested, personally with the customer.
And then we also create a very comprehensive audit of his current situation, that is, we look at: Where does the customer stand now? And what potential does he have from our experience, and how can we support him? And we give him a lot of input, which is also, I would say, an investment on our part, both in terms of time and money, but with which we can usually convince a large number of potential customers that we are the right partner for him. Because of course he then sees in the appointment that we have concrete proposals and ideas on how we can grow together with the customer. And that is certainly one of the reasons why we have grown so much, because we always deliver a lot of content, which helps us in acquisition, but also in external presentation. That means we regularly create industry benchmarks. We do competitive analyses that we make publicly available. In the SEO area, we analyzed various toy manufacturers and looked at why they are so successful in SEO or not. And in the end, that's all the free content that we make available, which ultimately draws customers' attention to our agency.
Sebastian: Yes, very exciting. So just the topic of content, free of charge-. Well, I mean, we just had Daniel Zoller on the podcast the other day, and he emphasizes again and again that it's not just about the sell directly, and that you simply also have a long-term strategy, that you simply think long-term with your own content, and that it also brings something to people. Exactly, you meant, the success has you again and again. You were surprised again and again by the fact that more and more people came. But at a certain point, it was probably also the case that you thought to yourselves: Okay, we have to scale this somehow, in quotation marks, or-, or we have to deal with the situation. We have to hire new employees, whatever. How did you approach that, the scaling? So, in that case, did you somehow consciously put emphasis on certain things? How did you do that?
Markus Kellermann: Well, I would say that the most important factor for us and for scaling is ultimately our employees. Ultimately, they are the most important thing in the company. You need good employees to be able to grow at all, because the customers who come in ultimately need someone to look after them. That's why it's our most important guarantee that we have good employees and that we train and develop them accordingly. And when it comes to scaling, we ultimately base the whole thing on several building blocks. On the one hand, we naturally try to keep all of our employees in the company as much as possible.
The second is that we always try to find experienced employees who already have several years of experience. And the third factor is training, which means that we have our own trainee program, that we have apprentices and that we really try to build up our own employees in the medium term. And that's the whole basis as far as employees are concerned. And the second thing is, of course, that the employees also have to be paid.
That means, of course, that you need existing customers. And we are happy that the majority of our customers stay with us for several years because they are satisfied with us. But of course you also need new customers to keep growing. And here we also rely on three pillars: One is, as already mentioned, external presentation, which means that we offer a lot of free content, be it in the form of white papers, professional articles that we publish, blog articles, or books that we publish. And the second area is that we work with various cooperation partners. That means that we have, for example, agencies that provide other Services However, we have customers who also need support in SEO, PPC marketing, and partner marketing, and who bring us on board when they have customers in that area, and we bring them on board when we have customers who now need a creative agency or a display agency. And that's how we get customers. And the third factor is that we also give a lot of talks at conferences and are active at trade fairs. And these three building blocks are ultimately the factor that either gets us invited to pitches to big clients or gets us inquiries from clients. We don't really do any cold calling, but most of the inquiries are actually inbound leads that come directly to us and have a certain interest in a certain service we offer.
You have a mixture of good employees with experience, good employees that we are building up, existing customers, and a steady stream of new customers. And with that, you can ultimately scale such growth further and further. Of course, you need an appropriate strategy. You must never stand still. You always have to look at our three core areas: How are the areas developing? Do you need to adapt your services? That means that in the SEO area we now also offer content marketing. In PPC marketing, it's not just Google ads, but also social media and Facebook ads. In partner marketing, it's now not just affiliate marketing, but also influencer marketing. In the end, you always have to cover the needs of the customers and then also offer services from other areas to the existing customers that we have, including cross-selling. If you see that you have a customer who still has growth potential that he is not currently using, then you have to advise him accordingly. And every customer who is advised free of charge, and you show him what potential he still has, you definitely already have a conversation with him.
Sebastian: Yes, exciting in any case. Perhaps very briefly, just to hook you in: I'll now read out the one question: The topic of employees, finding good employees. I mean, we, from our experience now, we have-, I work largely at Online-Marketing Vogg with freelancers together, but I now also note halt, ... #00:19:18# (?mine) starts with me as a permanent employee in the area of performance advertising, trade-off design and just also Facebook advertising. But finding someone like that, well, you can see when people are looking, of course, it's really not that easy, so just putting a job ad in the newspaper, you can't do that anyway, no matter in that area. How do you do it? Do you do Facebook advertising now in order to reach potential ... #00:19:45#? Do you go to the university? Or how do you go about it when you're looking for people now?
Markus Kellermann: I can actually remember a very good job interview with a so-called Sebastian Vogg (laughter), (Sebastian: Oh yes!) at our Silbermann Villa, who unfortunately didn't want to come to us, but then unfortunately went somewhere else, although I would have really liked to have you, because I already recognized your potential at that time. But we now have our own HR manager, because when you reach a certain size, you can no longer deal with the issue of personnel on the side, but need someone to take care of it professionally. And that's why we also have various measures that we implement for recruiting. One is, of course, that we actively place Facebook ads, advertisements on Xing and LinkedIn to promote our job ads in general. We now have our own career portal. That means we want to take the topic of jobs and careers to another level, and not just publish the job ads on our website, but really back it up with content. We now work together with a university in Munich, which means we offer a dual study program. We - Alex - are now working with the Chamber of Industry and Commerce on a new apprenticeship program, specifically for the e-commerce sector.
We have now launched our own CEO trainee program in the German Digital Industry Association in order to show trainees what level of experience they need in order to move more quickly from trainee to mode. We do a lot of internal training. This means that someone who is now working in affiliate marketing, for example, can be internally certified as a PPC manager or SEO manager. There are various levels of further training for this with us. And then they get homework and can take their exams with us. And then he just gets a certificate to become a CEO manager. We attend a total of 35 conferences a year around the world, where we then simply-, or the employees continue their education, then bring this knowledge back to the company, and the colleagues then pass on this know-how internally. We have a training session for all employees at least once a month on various topics.
So the topic of training is very important for us. And in terms of recruiting, as I said, our HR manager is just in the process of recruiting via job ads, which works very well, by the way, is advertising on Xing, but also on onlinemarketing.de. These are two portals that work best. But, I say, especially with experienced online marketers who currently have a good job, there it is of course extremely difficult to get such a job. And the only way to attract attention to yourself is to present yourself very well to the outside world, and to create a very good employer branding. That's why we do so much self-marketing to position ourselves. We don't just do it to show that we're somehow the coolest, but everything I do on Facebook or Instagram is ultimately a kind of employer branding, to show potential applicants what everyday life is like here, and to minimize the hurdle to simply applying to us. And to simply drop by and meet for a cup of coffee. And that's a whole host of individual measures where we simply position ourselves in order to ultimately come into contact with employees.
Niels: Okay. The sheer madness. So, I think many people who have heard this now-, the question arises: How does he do it? So many things at the same time: He fights on all fronts. And I would definitely still be interested in that: Because we've really talked a lot about employees and training and how you manage such a large company on so many levels. What are your top learnings from your now almost twenty years or more than twenty years of, correct me if I'm wrong, management experience? Awesome.
Markus Kellermann: It's actually similar to you guys. You always have to work hard. Nothing just happens. I think as an entrepreneur you're always present somehow and you're actually always working somehow. It's not like an employee who has a nine-to-five job and then doesn't do anything in the evening; I also check my e-mails briefly at ten in the evening or on the weekend. Because at the end of the day, you live your vision 100 percent in the company and are actually always working on the company. What's extremely important, of course, and I see a lot of parallels with you, is that you always need a balance. That's the same for me as it is for you with sports. Because if you don't have a balance, then of course there's a risk that you'll get bogged down and end up in a burnout spiral.
You always have to take care of yourself a little bit. I've never had that situation, because I've always had a balance. But, as I said, in my early years, when I was your age, it was just the 100 hours a week, but now I'm already 40, you also have a family and children, so of course it's a little different. But, ultimately, the lessons of the last 20 years: You always have to work. I have always worked according to the EKS principle, and I can recommend two books that have always accompanied me. One of them is the "Einmaleins der Erfolgsstrategie" (the basics of success strategy). EKS means yes-, is ultimately a strategy to specialize in a specific topic, to pick out the target group that you want to address, and to really just focus on a topic. And that has always been my philosophy: to specialize. In my case, it was the topic of affiliate marketing, which means that because I have now written two books on the subject, organize my own conference, have a blog with Affiliate-Blog, and have my own podcast with Affiliate-Music, many people who deal with the topic of affiliate marketing are then naturally aware of me. And if you specialize in a topic for decades and have your expert status in that area, then you automatically become successful in that area. And it's similar with Alex Geißenberger, who is just that in the field of SEO. And I think that's one of the most important success factors, that you simply specialize in one topic.
Niels: Interesting.
Sebastian: Yes, no, so that is-, I can also only say so from my own experience. I mean, if I now-, I have also, when I then did not go to you, but what would have happened in any case, because independent things have always been there. And the stopover, let's put it this way, in the other agency already brought me a lot, but in any case also pushed me clearly in the direction: Okay, do your own thing. That you then realize: Yes, so what suits me more? Because I started out a bit like that, and before that I did everything across the board, but then I realized that performance advertising, social media, e-commerce, that's really where I can achieve really good results and have a lot of fun. Then I met Niels- I've known him for a bit longer now, we got to know each other.
Niels has been doing SEO for, I don't know, since you were 17 or so, so it should be roundabout now, right? So also already mega early. Yes, and then you just notice-. (Niels: Yes, now four years.) Yes, four years, yes. Yes, you just notice-, I mean, we also have a web developer on board, he's a NOGS freak, and he just loves the topic, the other one is a search freak in the Google Ads area, and then there's someone else for(?Annison). And that's just the cool thing, and when a team emerges from it, and everyone does their thing, what they enjoy, then it's of course much, much more cool for the customer in the end.
Niels: So, I think that's a really interesting point, because for example, it's also really interesting to observe with us, because if you look at our team, look at our small group, Sebastian in performance advertising, me in SEO, Simeon also totally crass in the web development area, really absolutely-. We are absolute nerds in our specific areas and have somehow all come together. And that's why we can cover every area pretty well and always have someone there for the needs, who actually deals with this topic even in his spare time, even on Sunday and 365 days a week. (Sebastian: The week even!?) (Laughter) That is in any case-. (Sebastian (whispers): The days of the year, of course.) (Laughter)
Markus Kellermann: I also think it's extremely cool, as I said, what you're doing. I am sure you will go your way. I also know the guys from Marwave. I think you know them as well. They were also in Augsburg in the past. They've now moved to Munich with their agency, and, well, I think it's extremely cool when you start your own business at such a young age, like you are, and have the courage to just do it. In retrospect, I would have liked to have started my own business earlier, although, as I said, the question is whether I would have gotten to know so many managers and companies with such a large agency as Explido, so everything has its time and everything has its reasons. From that point of view, I don't look back on it negatively. But I think it's extremely cool how you do what you do. And now, of course, in contrast to back then, there are completely different possibilities with social media to position yourself than was possible back then. But I think it's extremely cool how you do it. And I'm sure you'll become enormously successful. Or you already are. (laughs)
Sebastian: Yes, that's definitely very, very-, to hear that from you now is very, very cool, as always. Yes, and-.
Niels: One more thing in the end. Of course I had a look at your site and took the liberty to enter it into the wayback machine to see how it looked like in the past. And then I found your sub-item Agency. And what you now know quite typically with quite a lot of service providers and agencies is this: my-, our skills. And then there are these bars that are filled. Where people write in what they are particularly good at. And I found it very funny, because with you it says here: Foosball, cart driving, barbecue, soccer, marathon running and poker. Well, soccer and marathon running are the least strenuous, so I can understand that. Those are also the most exhausting things (laughter) of them. So what about those skills in 2019, for you guys, for Xpose?
Markus Kellermann: So, our web site is actually already a bit outdated. It's like a carpenter. I think the saying is: The carpenters have the worst doors or something like that. (Niels: Or the cobbler has the worst shoes.) Yeah exactly. (laughs) Or something like that. That means, it's about time that we do a relaunch, that's also planned for this year. But actually, in the meantime, we also have a ping-pong table and a trampoline. That means a few more skills are added in the meantime. Running comes from the fact that we take part in the company run in Augsburg every year with the team.
From that point of view, the skills have certainly become a bit more for everyone, the coffee consumption has become more because we are also more employees. My Red Bull consumption has increased because, unfortunately, I'm a Red Bull addict. But of course that's now also a point of employee retention. You have to, especially with such a young generation as you are, Generation Z-. And I'm actually by far the oldest employee, the only one who's older than me is our room attendant. Of course, you have to offer a lot to retain employees. And your generation is completely different from mine. It's happening so fast now that the generations are different, and you simply have to offer a lot. And these are just a few of the things we offer. In addition, with ... #00:32:45# a masseuse, how do you say it, or a massage expert, physiotherapist, (laughter) exactly, comes into the house and cares for the employees. And you just have to offer something like that by now as an agency, because it's just standard by now.
Niels: I hope that in any case on the trampoline has not yet resulted in a sick bill, by itself. But it sounds-.
Markus Kellermann: Not that, but we actually have an employee-, Malte, greetings- who no matter what sport he does, he gets hurt. (Laughter) It started with the home kicker that we did, where he got hurt. Then, last year he went skiing once and then tore his ACL. So, Malte, you know the drill!
Sebastian: Oh man! But still-.
Niels: But you are very strongly equipped, so-, sounds excellent.
Sebastian: Yes, definitely okay. Markus, I think it was a very exciting podcast for all people, especially for self-employed people, who are now also beginners and so, to hear your experiences. Therefore, thanks a lot that you were there.
Markus Kellermann: Thanks to you
Sebastian: Thank you for your time and-.
Niels: We really thank you for your time. Very, very interesting, a lot of added value in it. (Music starts) Thank you.
Markus Kellermann: Thank you, until next time. See you soon. Ciao
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