What You’ll Learn in This Episode
Amos is the founder of Elevate Digital, a Singapore-based agency helping SMEs grow through SEO, social media, and paid ads. In this episode, he shares why he raised his prices instead of competing on cost, how he tailors services by business stage, and his hands-on lead generation process.
[00:00:00.27] – Speaker 1
Hi there, welcome to The Digital Jayasty Show, your go-to podcast for digital marketing insights that drive business growth and career success. I am Jayasty Anandan, your host, and this podcast is brought to you by Digital Jayasty. That’s my digital marketing consultancy, helping businesses worldwide. You can check it out at digitaljayasty.com. Whether you are a B2B business looking to expand your online presence or a professional in a full-time job or freelancing, this podcast is designed to help you learn from top marketing efforts and make smarter, more strategic decisions. If you are watching on YouTube, subscribe to my channel and hit the bell icon for updates. If you are listening on any podcast app, follow The Digital Jayasty Show, and if you like the show, leave a rating. All right, let’s jump right in.
[00:00:46.14] – Speaker 1
We have with us Amos, the founder of a digital marketing agency based in Singapore that helps SMEs grow through SEO, social media, and paid ads. In this episode, we’ll dive into how Amos structures his agency, manages a global team, and uses hands-on outreach methods like personalised cold emails, Google Ads, and relationship-driven networking to consistently bring in new clients. So if you are a business owner, agency founder, or consultant looking to learn how to attract quality clients and grow sustainably, this conversation is going to be full of practical insights. Amos, welcome to the podcast. Glad to have you here.
[00:01:24.28] – Speaker 2
Hi Jayasty. Yes, thanks for having me on this podcast.
[00:01:29.03] – Speaker 1
You’re welcome. Okay, so let’s get started. You have mentioned that you charge higher so you can serve clients better. So how did you come to that realisation, and how do you communicate that value to clients?
[00:01:41.21] – Speaker 2
I think it’s everybody, as an agency or as a freelancer; everybody started with zero portfolio, right? I mean, everybody has the skill sets to add value to the world and to different companies. But when it comes to choosing you or another party, it all boils down to, in the Singapore market, who’s cheaper. So at the start, it was a price war. Afterwards, when we got some few clients 5 years ago, we got a handful of clients and we realized that no matter how much you price your services, people would want more. Right? Even if you go as low as $500 or $600, people will always want more. And then you’re stuck because the value that you agreed on only allows you to do so much. You can definitely do more, but when you do more, you are stuck because it becomes a losing business, right? So I learned along the way that no matter what price point you charge, someone would want it, someone would think it’s valuable, someone would think it’s affordable. It’s just a matter of how you position yourself, whether you’re valuable for that specific price point that you put or not.
[00:02:52.14] – Speaker 2
This, this, this tagline that I live by is value— price is always an issue when value is absent, right? So I realised that along the way, about maybe after the first year of me being an agency owner that I can always find better clients, and value will not be an issue if price will not be an issue if value is present, right? A Ferrari costs millions, right? But no one complains that it’s expensive. I always complain— blame— I’ll blame myself for having no money to buy it, but I would not say, hey, why is a Ferrari so expensive? So yes, I’ve cultivated that thought after I would say dealing with many, many clients and dropping my prices just so I can get more for my portfolio. Then I realised that, you know, no matter how much I drop, it will never be cheap. It will never be cheap. So instead of dropping, I have changed my model to increasing and finding customers and clients that see value in my services. Yeah.
[00:03:56.10] – Speaker 1
So have you lost any prospects because you charge a premium?
[00:04:00.00] – Speaker 2
Yes, definitely. It’s not a matter of— I always tell my team and myself, it’s not a matter of having more clients under your belt, right? It’s about having good ones that pay you well. You, to earn $10,000, you can have, let’s say, if you charge $500, right, you can have— you need 20 clients to earn $10,000 in terms of revenue. Am I correct in terms of the math? Yeah, $500 times 20, correct. Or I can just have 5 clients who pay me $2,000 each. So, managing 5 clients, I can pour more work into it. I can get my team to do— go the extra amount. And sometimes clients require more because, in marketing, you can’t have a structure or framework and expect results because every client has different requirements and is in different stages, right? So every client will have different needs and ask for different things. And the additional budget allows us to go the extra mile and deliver better results. So I would say yes, we probably drop a few clients along the way.
[00:05:03.17] – Speaker 1
And I’m assuming that you are able to earn more and be sustainable. Yeah, that’s a great strategy, but I’m assuming that you are able to convey your value to the prospects as well, which you are able to close deals with them.
[00:05:18.04] – Speaker 2
Yes, definitely.
[00:05:19.10] – Speaker 1
All right, so you work with clients across 3 stages: early startups, growing businesses, and scaling companies. So how do you tailor your services accordingly?
[00:05:29.14] – Speaker 2
So this is the second part of, like, value, right? Where the first question was, you know, how to find— how to match your value to different people. So along the way, we realised that we categorise these businesses in general into 3 different stages: level 0, level 1, and level 2. Or stage 0, stage 1, and stage 2. Stage 0 is where there are early startups under 1 year old. These people have a very, very tight budget. Of course, there are a few who have started their own businesses and are creating new ones, still at level 0, but with a higher budget. So with these people, right? We often tell them straight up, say, hey, if your budget is this low, this is— we can’t do that much. But we focus on one. We manage expectations from the early, early stages of conversation, right? We let them know that if you only have X amount of budget, you can’t expect to get that kind of standard anywhere. Even if you hire your own team, they can only produce that much in terms of effort, results and outputs. And then there’s stage 1, right? Those who are in the business for more than a year to 3, these people have passed the growing stages of figuring out who they are, what they want, and are trying to get revenue.
[00:06:42.25] – Speaker 2
Revenue is key. Whatever it gets revenue, whatever it is, the main goal is revenue, right? For some of these people, it’s easier because they have a specific budget in mind that they can spend, and they only have one goal, which is revenue. So we have a revenue model catered for this stage 1. And then the last stage is stage 2. These are people who are scaling. They are no longer just looking at revenue. They’re looking at opening new markets. They’re looking at getting more market share, right? So it’s a different ballgame from these people. And our strategies for marketing are tailored according to these different stages. I can— I will never give stage 0 a stage 2 strategy because, for one, they don’t have the budget. For two, it’s too early on for them. It doesn’t work for them. And also, I won’t give a stage 2 a stage 1 strategy because they’re looking at scaling. Sometimes when you’re scaling, revenue is not important. Revenue is not the KPI to measure. For example, if you are in that market for 5 years, right, and you want to increase market share, sometimes market share comes in a lot of other measurables like brand awareness.
[00:07:57.15] – Speaker 2
Do people know you well enough? I mean, a lot of consumable industry- I call it like cleaning services, aircon repair. All these are B2C services that, if you want revenue, it’s a totally different approach. Like just running ads, SEO, and stuff like that, you can get your fair share of revenue. But if you want to scale and be a top 3 in the Singapore market or worldwide, it’s more than just running ads and, you know, making sure your website gets searched. appears on the first page of Google, it boils down to a lot of other factors. That’s why we tailor our strategies and our services to these different groups of companies or stages of companies.
[00:08:38.28] – Speaker 1
Okay. So I understand about stage 1 and stage 2 because they’re already doing well. That’s why they have been around for so many years. But when it comes to stage 0, they are less than 1 year old, and they don’t have a marketing budget either. So whatever products or services they have, they don’t have a marketing budget. So how do you approach these clients? Do you get such clients? And why do you want to do marketing for them? Because they don’t have a budget in the first place. So why do you have that as a prospect for you?
[00:09:11.03] – Speaker 2
I think it’s more of like my, my enjoyment in serving these people. So as a startup founder, right, I used to be a startup founder, right? Wherever, wherever we are at, we used to be like bootstrapping and starting ourselves. So I know where the pain points are. I know their goals and dreams. Sometimes it’s not about— not— sometimes it’s not about budget only; it’s about the direction. So for stage 0, right, stage 0, we usually go more of consultation and advisory. I become more of their fractional CMO, right? Sometimes the services, for example, could be just having me as a consultant inside, nothing else. Me telling them what to do, what their business model is, how they should get their first customer, what they should focus on for marketing, and then me telling them what they should do on their own. So sometimes it becomes that kind of service where they get me to guide them on how to go to the next steps so that they can get to stage 1.
[00:10:08.29] – Speaker 1
Okay.
[00:10:09.06] – Speaker 2
It might not be like a service, like, oh, social media service and all that stuff and stuff like that, because I have like people coming to me For example, just, just last, last week, this guy created— I’m gonna, I’m gonna be generic about this because it’s, it’s his idea, it’s not in the market yet. Basically, it’s a platform, right? But it’s not, not 100% up yet. The app is not even up yet. And he was, he was referred to me by my existing client. Like, hey, I got a friend who needs marketing; he wants marketing, can you help him? So after hearing his story, I realised that he has nothing for the world just yet. If he invested in marketing, there weren’t many results. All the leads will probably drop off because there was no call to action. There was nothing to visit. There was no destination, right? So then we worked together. I basically became his fractional CMO. That means I’m just like a CMO in his company, an outsourced one, of course. I’m not— I have no shareholders in the firm. So I guided him on what to do, what the steps are that you need before we even talk about marketing.
[00:11:17.26] – Speaker 1
That’s a good strategy. Okay, so what’s the biggest marketing myth you see among SMEs in Singapore?
[00:11:25.18] – Speaker 2
I would say the biggest one in my mind is that marketing can be outsourced 100%. So I believe this, I believe that no marketing can be outsourced 100% because imagine this, right? So I used to be a consumer of marketing agencies before I started my own. I was like, hey, I’m gonna pay a sum of money; you handle everything, right? The collaboration did not really come up with any good results, and I learned from that that, you know, hey, no matter how much you pay, no one can market you unless they know you 100%, like, unless they are you. And that is largely impossible. No one can be you, especially if you have a, like, new brand, new idea. If you’re a startup founder, your model is new, you know, no one understands it. No one can market you because you have your own values, you have your own story, you have your reasons why this product or service is so good. If you outsource to a marketing vendor, they have a framework to work with, and if you don’t feed them enough information and give them the time for the interviews to collect the required info they need, it will actually go wrong because they are based on existing market trends, existing market ideas, existing market things that work, and executed marketing.
[00:12:45.21] – Speaker 2
And even if you’re an existing service that has already sort of, like, let’s say it’s a marketing agency looking for marketing. Let’s say I don’t know how to do my own marketing. I hire a marketing agency to do my own marketing.
[00:12:59.03] – Speaker 2
They might market it in their own way as their own marketing agency, which might not be what I want, right?
[00:13:05.24] – Speaker 1
Yeah.
[00:13:05.29] – Speaker 2
So I think the biggest myth in an SME is that you pay X amount, hands-free, hands-off, and you handle everything for me, right? And I’ve worked that style before, and I would say the success rate is, it’s high because of how familiar those industries are. But if you want to stand out, which a lot of founders and owners want their services to be branded differently, that’s one point. The second point is that a lot of companies have different margins in their services. Some services would give them more results if you just basically do that more than others. And that information I wouldn’t have, like how their P&L is, how their margins for each service or product are, right? What are the target audiences? Those, those are the information we have. But P&L margins, this kind of information is usually what I ask from them just so I can tailor a strategy that helps them scale and get revenue. So if any SME hearing this wants to outsource their marketing 100%, I would say it might work, but it’s definitely not going to work to its fullest potential.
[00:14:24.12] – Speaker 1
Okay. So basically, marketing cannot be outsourced 100%. You should have some in-house team members also who are actually working for your brand and know the ins and outs of the brand so that they can bring out better results. Okay. And also, I think that if they outsource to other agencies or marketers, they are already working with multiple accounts, so they are not going to focus completely or be accountable to your one company, right? So that’s also there.
[00:14:58.25] – Speaker 2
So yeah, you are right. That’s why we charge more, so that we can come into your business.
[00:15:04.04] – Speaker 1
Yeah, you find the loopholes that they miss. Yeah.
[00:15:06.29] – Speaker 1
Yes, correct. So only selected agencies which are outsourced, or marketers, will take ownership of understanding your brand at a core level and bring out better results, which usually your in-house team would do, and which is quite difficult to find, honestly. And expensive.
[00:15:25.11] – Speaker 2
Yes, correct. So you run Google Ads, send personalised cold emails, and even do follow-up calls. That’s a very hands-on approach. So can you walk us through your full lead generation process?
[00:15:38.12] – Speaker 2
So, lead generation, okay, I started this agency. I think this point that you mentioned, as you go from the top. So I started this business because, one, it’s out of passion, definitely. I love to solve difficult problems, and revenue is a difficult problem for all businesses, right? If everybody has revenue, then the world will be easier to do for any owner. So one is passion. Second is that it’s a recurring service, right? Everybody needs marketing. Everybody. It’s just how much they believe in it and whether they have a structure and a framework for that. So just like you mentioned, I run Google Ads, send personalised cold emails, and even make follow-up calls. So my team and I, we do lead gen very— I wouldn’t say any differently. It’s like most people do. But okay, for the Google Ads part, it’s very simple. I would say I don’t need to speak so much more about Google Ads because it’s just running ads and getting inquiries. Emails and follow-up calls. So we like to hunt good customers. We like to figure out, hey, this customer looks like one who will pay us well, 2, understands marketing, and 3, seems to be able to work with us to achieve something else, like a goal they have in mind.
[00:16:53.19] – Speaker 2
Why we send a lot of cold personalised emails and follow-up calls is that we hunt people who already understand marketing. So there are 2 groups of people, right? One who doesn’t know marketing and— or doesn’t do marketing. When they do marketing, I sort of categorise them as someone who doesn’t value marketing and doesn’t know what marketing can do for them. Second thing, second group is people who have already done marketing, and we can easily find them, like if their website is on like page 1 or page 2, or they’re running ads. These people are already doing marketing. Okay, so the thing about selling to the first group of people who haven’t done marketing before is I have to sell the concept of marketing. Okay, after that is done, I have to sell myself. Why me? Why not someone else? So it’s a 2-step, right? Versus going to the latter group where they have already done marketing; I just have to sell myself. I don’t have to sell why you have to do marketing. Oh, why do you have to, you know, do SEO? Why do Google Ads? You know, how can it help you? I skip that process entirely because they are already doing it.
[00:17:55.15] – Speaker 1
Yeah.
[00:17:56.14] – Speaker 2
My approach is I go in and say, Hey, I see you’ve been doing this. I believe I can do better. Can we arrange a call and let me just run through with you, you know, what my findings are and how I can assist you? And here’s my portfolio and my, you know, my clients I work with. So that makes the selling part easier because these people who are doing it, they have a benchmark. Like, hey, I have been doing this for 1 year. This is the result I got. Some guy just reached out to me and said, ” Hey, they can do better. Okay, you tell me. Let me hear from you how I can do better. It’s a free call anyway, right? Just hearing out. So I find that the response rate for the second group of people seems to be higher, and it helps us find, again, customers who are willing to pay, customers who are willing to work with us, right? So that is the lead generation process that we have. The Google Ads run on its own. Collects, you know, whoever wins this marketing. And then the more hands-on approach: we basically hunt.
[00:18:56.27] – Speaker 2
We hunt for stage 1 and stage 2. We don’t hunt for stage 0. We hunt for the people who are already dabbling in marketing, and we come in and we prove to them why we can do better.
[00:19:06.26] – Speaker 1
For the second set of audience, uh, the prospects, since they’re already doing marketing and you feel that there can be more improvements done, and that’s why you are reaching out to them. But they might have an agency; they might be working with some people already, because of which you can see that some marketing has been done. So how are you able to convince them? Because they also have to think, right? They might be working on a retainer basis with their agencies, or they might have outsourced. So they have to close their deals with their existing agency and then come to you. So there is a friction out there. So how do you convince them to leave their existing marketers and work with you?
[00:19:51.14] – Speaker 2
So I have lost clients because they want to work with other agencies. So I come from that point of view. So how it works is planting seeds, right? They don’t have to work with me today, but I’m constantly there, you know, every 2-3 months. Let’s say, yeah, you’re right, I’ve encountered some before where they just renewed their 1-year contract with the agency. Fine. If you just renew for one year and you tell me that, I will wait one year for you. I’ll mark it in my file and say, hey, this guy just renewed for one year. Let’s follow up every 3 months, not selling them, but just reaching out and saying, I found this thing that might be helpful. I dare to say most agencies in Singapore don’t care much about customer service unless they’re small. When they have just 1 or 2 clients, then it’s easier to have customer service. Because when you see money, you constantly chase money. When you have 1 client, 2 clients, 3 clients, you focus on the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th. You’re constantly growing, and that’s how big agencies work. They have so many clients; they don’t really care about that drop-off rate.
[00:20:57.27] – Speaker 2
Definitely, internally they care about the churn rate, but they definitely will lose some clients now and then. Right? And then I’m there just waiting for them to drop.
[00:21:09.09] – Speaker 1
Okay.
[00:21:10.27] – Speaker 2
So it’s not a matter of: I reach out today; I want something today. It’s a matter of reaching out today; you know, at least I get a connection. The maximum is 12 months. The maximum is 12 months. If you win it today, okay, 12 months. Who knows, it could be 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, 4 months. You know, I trigger that thought. People get complacent when I sign a deal, right? I used to be. Definitely, we would drop clients because we got complacent. Like, sign, you know, their clients, you know, we don’t manage them as well as other people could, just like dating. So yeah, we are like a third party in a relationship. So basically we nurture them first. 12 months is the longest I have to wait.
[00:21:50.23] – Speaker 1
Okay, so basically you’re nurturing the prospects without trying to close them sooner, and eventually when they feel that the existing market, their agency, doesn’t work well for them, doesn’t provide them the results, then they, you are the, in the top of mind of them so that they can come and work with you. You have built a hybrid team with local Singaporeans and overseas freelancers. So how do you manage performance and maintain quality across different time zones and pay scales? Okay.
[00:22:22.14] – Speaker 2
Singaporeans are very expensive. As much as I want to hire them, it’s very expensive. In marketing, I would say that most people accept a few big companies; they all outsource their work, right? As a business owner, it only makes sense because to hire one Singaporean, you can hire 3 to 4 wherever you are looking, right? Our neighbouring countries. But local Singaporeans play an important role in playing. We definitely still have to hire them because of the brand. Like, if they come to me and say, ” Hey, I’m the only person in Singapore, they lose trust because so many people get screwed over by outsourced talent, right? Because they’re so cheap. They’re so cheap. So people just spend. And then, of course, when, you know, you get what you pay for, you get what you pay. So I built a team where I focus on higher roles— I hire Singaporeans for higher roles like managers. And for the operational staff, I hire overseas. Performance-wise, it’s fun because you don’t see them right there at all. How we manage performance is we have a manager who speaks to these people daily, like a standup, just to make sure that things are done.
[00:23:37.09] – Speaker 2
I think before you even go there is the hiring process, who you hire, because it’s not about hiring cheap. It’s about hiring good and cheap. I don’t mind hiring someone a bit more expensive. But I guarantee this person has the qualities of a good employee. So performance-wise, it comes down to hiring, the interview. Actually, once that is done, once you hire a great person, the performance actually just— we don’t really manage much. We don’t micromanage. They ultimately value us because sometimes it’s hard to find a job in India, in those areas. They value us. And we just need to show them that, hey, being with us, there’s growth, there are ways to earn more, and performance comes automatically. Time zones-wise, we don’t really hire people who are in the US or Russia, where there are significantly different time zones. It’s all in Asia. So time zones-wise, we don’t have any issue with that.
[00:24:39.09] – Speaker 1
So you manage, like, hiring manager-level people locally so that you can give the salary and you also get a good value out of them. And you hire and operate— overseas people for operational stuff, which is superb.
[00:24:57.16] – Speaker 2
I wouldn’t say outsourced, but offshore hiring, so that it makes sense for me as a business owner. I would love to hire a full Singapore team, So you prefer performance-based incentives over high base salaries.
[00:25:13.21] – Speaker 1
So why do you believe this model attracts more serious talent?
[00:25:17.14] – Speaker 2
If you pay high base salaries, it’s attractive at the start, but along the way, they will always get complacent and comfortable. And there’s always a higher salary out there. Salaries are like, there’s no one who can pay a higher salary because once you get a higher salary, Someone will have a higher salary once you leave the job. So people often job hop. If you perform 60% today, you get that amount. If you perform 40% today, you get that amount. If you perform 100% today, you get that amount. So, as a smart employee, why do I need to perform 100%? I mean, if I’m not performing, I’ll get the amount. If I know how to talk my way out of it, I’ll get the amount. Right. Why do I need to perform my best? If I’m going to get that amount eventually. All right, so knowing this, we structure our pay— you can say payroll— I would say my pay structure in a way where if you work 80% or 70%, you get that. If you work 40%, you get less. If you work 100 to 120%, you should be well paid. You should be deserving of a higher salary.
[00:26:28.06] – Speaker 1
Right.
[00:26:28.25] – Speaker 2
So that pushes people to actually work harder and work more. If they don’t, I have a reason not to pay like X amount. If they do, I feel like I jolly well should reward them for their efforts because they help the company. Might not be revenue, but could be customer retention, customer satisfaction, which ultimately is growing the company to better to a better place. So I will always prefer performance-based incentives over high base salaries or something.
[00:27:00.23] – Speaker 1
Okay, so for someone starting, what’s a realistic outreach goal per week to get consistent clients?
[00:27:08.26] – Speaker 2
For someone starting, you just ask, um, email, ask, whatever. Don’t depend on ads because you probably won’t have budget for it, right? It’s just that the first sale I got was one year later. 12 months later, after I started my own, right, that was the first deal I got. First official one, I would say, that I really— not from referral, not from— it’s really constantly asking people. Opportunities are everywhere. How many businesses are there in Singapore? Hundreds of thousands, right? And even a free— even a home-based owner is a business owner. Even a real estate agent is a business owner, right? I don’t just structure SMEs as the business owner. Most people next to you and me have a business idea in their mind, right? They might even have executed that business idea at a very small scale. When you’re starting out, you need a portfolio.
[00:28:02.06] – Speaker 2
As much as people on social media have said, ” Oh, you are worth this much; don’t drop your price, you know, like what I said at the start, you’re worth this much; don’t drop your price. But sometimes, at the early stages, you don’t have a choice. No one would trust you until you have the results.
[00:28:20.25] – Speaker 1
Yeah.
[00:28:20.27] – Speaker 2
Right. Whatever I mentioned at the start was like, after a while, right? So if you have zero today, you have zero portfolio today; start looking at contacts. Who over there is a business owner that you can reach out to? I mean, if you can do lead gen, can you do it for real estate agents? I mean, real estate agents love lead gen; they need lead gen. Can you do it for a discounted price for them? Financial agents can’t do it for them. It’s a bit more complicated, but look around your own warm circle first. The next thing is networking. Go out and meet new people. You never know who you’ll meet. Every day that you spend on your own is one day wasted meeting someone new, and that someone new could have brought you to somebody else or referred you to somebody else.
[00:29:06.27] – Speaker 1
Yeah.
[00:29:07.17] – Speaker 2
Okay. And the last one is just knocking on doors, sending emails, you know, finding social media, reaching out to their DMs, and just, just like reaching out to people. So if you do all these 3, I don’t believe you won’t have a single lead in 1 month. I didn’t do all these 3 at the start. Um, I had my own doubts, and I also feared.
[00:29:30.19] – Speaker 2
Those first 2 months were like, okay, I’m gonna try and reach out to some; I’m gonna send out some cold emails. I sent 5 today. It feels like a job well done. But 5, it’s— you’re not gonna get a second reply. Do you see 1,000? 1, 2 to 3% will reply if you send to 1,000. So you send to 5, 2 to 3 is less than 1%. So it will take ages before someone even replies to you. So I would say you do those 3 things in the first month, you definitely have leads coming into your pocket.
[00:30:00.27] – Speaker 1
Thank you so much, Amos, for joining us today and sharing your From how you started your agency to the systems and strategies that drive your success. It’s been a really valuable conversation. Before we wrap up, could you share where people can connect with you or learn more about your work?
[00:30:17.02] – Speaker 2
So how can they connect with me? My company is Elevate Digital. We have been around for 5 years. I’ve been in marketing for 8 years. So we do social media, we do SEO, we do Google Ads. Of course, also do advisory and consultation work. You can Google my website, or you can follow me on Instagram as well, on @amostanel.
[00:30:36.28] – Speaker 1
Yeah. Thanks for sharing. I’ll drop the links in the description below.