Bo Bennett On Building Business Marketing Authority

HOST: It's good to have you back, Bo. Twenty-one episodes in, and that line you dropped in Episode 1—'it's not difficult to publish a book, it's difficult to publish a profitable book'—has basically been the thesis of everything we've mapped since. Today, I want to pull back the curtain on BusinessMarketing.pro, which seems to break a lot of the rules we've talked about. The homepage says free, no login, no catch. When you strip away the account wall and the email capture, what is this site actually doing for your portfolio commercially? GUEST: That's a good question. Actually, it's uh it's there to promote our other business sites essentially. So you could say that I'm running ads, but they're not really traditional ads. It's more of like a a push. Like, okay, you've used the free tools. Now, here you go. If you want something a little bit more in-depth, or actually a lot more in-depth, that will do more of what you we've have given you for free, click here and follow this link. So really it it's a it's a no-brainer for users. There are a lot of free tools there, and it will cost us uh quite a bit, we're estimating, uh for all the um API costs, but we feel like compared to say paying Google hundreds of dollars a day for for advertising, we're going to get we're going to get more from this uh doorway site than we would from from traditional Google ads. HOST: A doorway site, I like that. So, you're betting that the value of the free tools is high enough to convert people into paid subscribers for platforms like Promoto, which manages that advertising automatically, instead of just running traditional Google ads for Promoto. Where are you seeing the strongest crossover? Are, say, eBookIt authors on this site too, needing marketing math, or is this pulling in a totally different kind of marketer? GUEST: Yeah, we're not really dealing with book customers on this, or at least we're not targeting them. The site is brand new, and I mean we we launched it this morning. So, so I don't have any data whatsoever about the the type of people who are actually coming and using the tools. But it wasn't meant for book marketers specifically. Although there are many tools that the book marketers could use, but for book marketing, I would still strongly suggest those users go to selfpublishing.pro and see those tools there that are specifically created for book marketing. HOST: Fresh launched today, that's breaking news indeed. Since it's so new and you're not targeting authors specifically, let's talk about the tools themselves. Some of them, like standard UTM builders, exist everywhere. Others, like your Schema Markup Generator or the A/B test statistical tools, are definitely more unique in a free offering. Was the drive to build those because you couldn't find good free options yourself, or were you just trying to bring all those workflows together under one roof? GUEST: Yeah, it was a exercise in creating as many tools as possible that businesses can use to help market their website. Uh that fit a few categories. One that it would that they justified being free tools. Like they they couldn't be major services or anything that would that would cost us a fortune. Obviously, that would be a paid service. But something that we could actually offer for free that would cost us very little proportionally, like per use or per site. And the second criteria was basically that it it had to be useful. It had to be something that people look for, that people want to use. And then also picking out some more of the novelties, some more uh specific tools that maybe a lot of businesses have haven't even thought about, but once they see it, they'll use it and they'll say, this thing is great. HOST: Novelties, useful, and keeping the costs low. So, let's dive into a useful novelty: the statistical tools. Your academic background in social psychology deals with how we make decisions. Do you think marketers systematically skip the math on things like sample size validation or CAC versus LTV, and if so, why do you think that is? What logic are they replacing that math with? GUEST: Yes, they definitely do. Statistics is not simple, and critical thinking and logic is not simple. It's something that takes energy, cognitive energy, and people typically don't like to use that energy. They like to conserve energy and go with heuristics rather than some kind of algorithm or some kind of logical decision or mathematical formula. It's just it's just easier to kind of take the lazy way out. But really when it comes to marketing, you you can't do that if you want to do it effectively. But fortunately, you don't have to do all this anymore. I mean, we've got AI to take care of this for us. It's just a matter of using the right tools. HOST: Right, so the AI can handle the cognitive energy part, provided you point the right tool at the problem. You're known for building tools that genuinely serve your own needs first, like PitchBud for press outreach or Promoto for managing paid advertising across your entire portfolio. When someone uses the ROAS calculator or the break-even ROAS calculator on BusinessMarketing.pro, is that simplified math they're looking at, or is that literally the formula you're checking in your morning digest from Promoto? GUEST: Well, it's I would say it's I'm not sure if I would use the word simplified. I'd use the word different because with Promoto, we have many different formulas that then many different calculations that are all combined based on all of the promotions that we're actually doing. So, it it's a little bit different and we have we have different ad networks as well. Whereas this calculator is um is basically just for one. So, yeah, I guess you could use the word simplified. I just don't want to confuse simplified with simplistic because it's still very functional and useful. It's just not the same thing you get with Promoto. HOST: Understood, so the free version is specific to one ad network, whereas Promoto combines and optimizes across multiple. We've now traced your stack from the moment someone has an idea for a book all the way to screen rights, press pitches, and ARC campaigns. BusinessMarketing.pro feels like the first tool in the portfolio that says: here's the underlying marketing math that makes all of it work, and we're giving it away free. If someone uses every calculator on the site correctly—runs the ROAS math, sizes the A/B test—and the numbers still don't work for their book or their business, what's the honest answer you'd give them? What does that tell you? GUEST: Ah! It's tempting to say, "Find a new business." But I don't think I could I could make that call. Um, and the reason why I say that is because competition is hard. It's difficult. And I've, uh, run some sites before, and I've run sites now that despite all of the marketing efforts, they they just don't make any progress. Um, but some of them eventually catch on. And some of them don't catch on like like I want them to. But it's a really good, decent, uh, revenue generating site that's consistent and brings in a decent income. Uh, it it's not what I was going for. I was going for something much more earth shattering, or at least that's what I was hoping for. But sometimes you don't get that. Sometimes you just get the, uh, the kind of website that will is worth keeping on because it brings in some good money and it doesn't take too much of your effort, and that's okay. So, I don't want to be the person to tell people if they've tried things and it doesn't work to give up. Because sometimes you do all this effort, and then you don't see a payoff for like three months, six months, even a year down the road. So, patience is a big part of this. HOST: Patience, consistency, and redefining what success looks like. Even if it's not earth-shattering, it's still generating revenue, and there's value in that. Before we go—for listeners who want to follow up on what we covered, where can they find you and the work you're doing? GUEST: They could always check out archieboy.com. And specifically for the site we're talking about is businessmarketing.pro. HOST: Bo, thank you so much for coming on today. I'm still thinking about that distinction you made between simplicity and a simpler version for different promotions. And thank you for spending part of your day with us. Let's get you back on soon—there's plenty more we can cover. Until next time—that's a wrap.