Omer Menashe, CEO at eMojo, explains why Israeli companies must think global from the start – with a small population there just isn’t room for growth.
Over the last 10 years, he’s gone from owner of a start-up in Tel Aviv servicing local companies to now being based in New York City and managing over $10 million in ad spent each year. He expanded globally by reaching out to people in his network to schedule 45 meetings for his first week in New York.
He admits the first step is the hardest yet if someone wants to grow, they can do it.
Links:
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/omer-menashe-251a4b35/
- Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/omermenashe
- Website - https://www.emojo-digital.com
Connect with Wendy - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendypease/
Music: Fiddle-De-Dee by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
ATTENTION: Below is a machine generated transcription of the podcast. Yes, at Rapport International, we talk a lot about how machine translation is not good quality. Here you see an example of what a machine can do in your own your language. This transcription is provided as a gist and to give time indicators to find a topic of interest.
[00:00:34] Wendy: Hello listeners. Thank you for joining another episode of the global marketing show podcast. You know, it's really interesting after I published my book, the language of global marketing, some leaders of ad agencies read it and they used to said to me, you know, I never thought about it. We could be a global company too.
[00:00:57] And so this episode is going to really [00:01:00] enlighten you about how yes, it, global ad agency of every size should be talking to their clients about the opportunities of going global. We've got a really interesting guest today. His name is Omer Menashe and he is an owner of an ad agency. He's a digital marketing professional with over 20 years of experience, he's founder of a leading digital marketing agency.
[00:01:26] That's influencing over $20 million a [00:01:30] year in ad spend. He's created global, go to marketing blueprints, digital growth strategies and data analysis frameworks for. Everything from funded startups, fortune 500 enterprises and everything in between. So Omar, welcome to the global marketing show. I'm so happy to have you here.
[00:01:52] Omer: I am also super happy to be here. Thank you for having me.
[00:01:56] Wendy: So you started your [00:02:00] company in Israel, right?
[00:02:01] Omer: That is correct.
[00:02:02] Wendy: I have heard through all my international connections that if you start a company in Israel, you think global from the start, would you agree with that?
[00:02:16] Omer: Yeah. I definitely agree with that.
[00:02:19] I think that comes with being such a tiny country. If you want to achieve any sort of success at scale, you have to think [00:02:30] outside the borders of Israel. We do a lot of things really well, R and D we're very technical and technological, but what we don't have, if there's nothing we can do about it is a lot of people in Israel.
[00:02:41] So the market is inherently just small physically.
[00:02:45] Wendy: Where would a company from, or a startup or a company in Israel? Think about going first.
[00:02:52] Omer: Well, the, the immediate suspect is always the United States. For two reasons, one it's [00:03:00] generally the most interesting market. It might not have the most, the country with the most people in it.
[00:03:05] India, China are larger of course, but the amount of capital that the us has is, is not matched. Right. So that's that's one thing. And second is. Speak English from a very young age. And so when we're ready to extend, we can already communicate with our target audience, whereas we don't speak mandolin or any of the other languages generally.
[00:03:28] So that, that [00:03:30] is another hurdle we would have to pass. If we did want to seriously infiltrate a different.
[00:03:36] Wendy: Okay. Yeah, that's really interesting. So it's language and capital. So it's a, a good market going there. What about like, what other countries do Israeli companies usually go into
[00:03:49] Omer: is geographically.
[00:03:50] And so obviously the UK is a target a lot of times from the UK being kind of going through the rest of Western Europe. [00:04:00] So France, Spain, sometimes even though, again, from a capital perspective, they're a little less attractive Germany. And then as a second step, sometimes Eastern Europe, of course, I'm speaking very broadly.
[00:04:13] It really depends on what their solution or product is. And that also dictates where your target audience might be.
[00:04:19] Wendy: So recently you moved over to the United States and you've got clients here. Have you noticed a difference with how us companies [00:04:30] think about going global?
[00:04:31] Omer: Of course. I think the main difference is that they don't think about going global until much, much, much later than companies from Israel.
[00:04:40] Generally at the enterprise stage, even it's, it's pretty rare to meet an American founded in based startup saying, Hey, we'd like to target Southeast Asia unless there's a very good reason for it. So I think that's, that's probably the biggest difference..
[00:04:56] Wendy: And how, how do you see that? I mean, you've come [00:05:00] from two opposite sides in your work.
[00:05:03] Omer: Well, I think in that sense, American startup founders, or, or even, you know, regular business owners they're lucky in the, from the aspect of where they were born and where they get their soft start. It's never easy to start a business. It's much harder to start a startup, of course, but at least what they have going for them is that they were born in the right concept, so to speak.
[00:05:27] So that's one thing they don't have to worry. [00:05:30] Whereas a lot of times, and that's not unique to Israel. It could be from any small issue, European country, they all know that they're targeting the United States. There are many accelerators as part of which uh, mentor app where their whole reason of being is to guide European based companies to market penetration in the U S so that's always a goal for any company.
[00:05:54] That's not US based really.
[00:05:56] Wendy: And what would your advice be? So, yeah, so us companies, our [00:06:00] leaders are lucky that they're born in the United States. Do you think it's an advantage for them to just stay in the country or is it an advantage to think global.
[00:06:09] Omer: I think before you start thinking about extending outside the box, you should probably leverage everything that box has to offer you.
[00:06:17] Right? So that's why it's rare for my experience to see us companies target global expansion very quickly. So they would, after they raised a certain round or when [00:06:30] they want for a specific business reason, To extend globally, but it's never the first thing in the agenda. Whereas for a lot of other companies that come from other countries, it definitely is a lot of times.
[00:06:41] And, and I'll speak from the startup perspective, startup on specific in an Israeli environment. A lot of times when you raise capital, your investors would prefer that you don't actually get any traction in Israel because that's toxic to the startup. You started getting traction. It is. And start getting any product requests.
[00:06:59] [00:07:00] You start building your product that becomes more geared towards Disraeli market, and that actually moves you away from the actual market that those folks have invested you for going after, which is the U S market. So it's not uncommon to, to, for investment vehicles, to shy away from investing in Israel.
[00:07:20] Startups or companies, if they have too much traction in the Israeli market,
[00:07:25] Wendy: it's fascinating to me. So they don't want to do it in the home market. They want you to [00:07:30] create something that you can sell on a completely different market.
[00:07:35] Omer: They want you to be a unicorn and you can't be a unicorn in Israel, no matter how you flip it.
[00:07:39] Wendy: Yes. The statistics that come out from the federal government do show that the companies in the U S that export have on average 20% higher revenues than their domestic counterparts. They're 30% more likely to stay in business. They pay higher wages and they're more stable. What [00:08:00] point in a company do you think it is good for them to start thinking about global?
[00:08:04] Omer: Well, truly a matter of. Where you are in your roadmap and what are your client acquisition slash growth trajectory looks like if you've realized that you have now covered a lot of your market in the U S sure. You need more people, you need more. By all means expand globally. But a lot of times the low hanging fruit is to continue expanding domestically [00:08:30] simply because it's easier, quicker, cheaper, and much more lucrative.
[00:08:34] Wendy: So tell me about the story of how you started your digital marketing agency in Israel and how you ended up expanding.
[00:08:43] Omer: So I, I have always been a nerd from a very young age. I think I started learning programming at the age of. Probably 10. My father sent me to the one of those children's classes back then.
[00:08:56] And I found, I fell in love with, I think I [00:09:00] always had a computer or computer games, what you can do with computers. And so, as I grew older, I became what some people would call today a hacker, but not really. I was a kid, I was running various scripts. I found online and tried to get. Uh, to happen with that.
[00:09:16] So one of the things I can talk about publicly is how I managed to get access to servers for universities and installed game servers for the games we were playing in high school back then. So I was actually hosting the [00:09:30] game server on university servers, and back then the internet connection was not good enough to do that at home, which is why we needed this external help.
[00:09:39] And, uh, to this day, I thank them for their, uh, once I grew up a little bit, I became obviously an adult and I did things that would be considered more e-commerce. So I, that eBay and Amazon 15 years ago, 14 years ago. Sold various, both virtual products and physical products. [00:10:00] And then I had to decide what I want to do my degrees and in Israel, it's not exactly the same way it is in the, in the U S you can go do your law degree immediately.
[00:10:13] And you know, being a Israeli. My grandfather wants nothing but lawyers in the family. And so I was, uh, promptly shut off to law school and I combined that with a business degree. And four years later, I emerged at [00:10:30] potential lawyer afterwards. I had to do a year of internship and then the bar exam, which I did.
[00:10:35] And today I am a lawyer. I have never practiced a single day in my life. A single day after I passed the bar, I started my first company, which was an mobile app development firm that also did courses. And so very quickly we took over, uh, the mobile education portion of one of Israel's largest technical.
[00:10:56] And I, I was leading these courses how to develop for iPhone, how [00:11:00] to develop for Android all throughout the country. I think we had about 10 courses simultaneously at any different. Very quickly, uh, back then mobile development was not as common and easy. And so we got pretty big ticket clients back then we worked with banks.
[00:11:18] I was, I was 24, 25 results. So that was a big thing for me. We worked with banks, big companies, public companies, and it was very interesting. And I ended up selling that company. [00:11:30] After I solved the development company, I created the emoji, which is the digital marketing agency that I'm part of today.
[00:11:39] And emoji is a full scale is no marketing performance agency. We have a studio in house. We produce videos, landing pages, website. But we're most proud of our work in go-to-market and performance strategy and implementation. So we do a lot of paid search, paid social SEO, automations of all [00:12:00] kinds of content marketing.
[00:12:01] And that was 10 years ago that I started that company now being Israeli, we're traveling people. So they're Israeli except for the word. And it's very easy for Israelis to work with other Israelis. And so we found ourselves getting a lot of leaves, a lot of business interests from a COO who is Israeli, but works in a Swedish company in Sweden.
[00:12:25] And just like that, we had our first Swedish client, uh, the same happened in Sydney and [00:12:30] Australia. The same happened in Germany. The same happens here in New York. And then five years in, we realized basically what I said in the beginning, Israel is a small market. We became pretty known in Israel. We were already working with public companies in Israel, but.
[00:12:48] There's a glass ceiling that is very hard to break if you stay local. And so we decided to actively pursue international business development. At the same time we had two major client hubs. So one [00:13:00] is Sydney Australia. One was in New York, the east coast and Sydney is a way longer flight from. So I started flying to New York.
[00:13:10] I used to come here every month, the month and a half, I would spend seven to 10 days here. I would have meetings from the morning until night I would come home exhausted, but we, it worked. I mean, the business kept growing here. We got more and more. We have clients [00:13:30] refer us to other people. I met a ton of super interesting people and definitely built a real network here that today is, is priceless.
[00:13:39] And that's what I've done for about five years. And at that point, my son was. And my wife would
[00:13:49] Wendy: not appreciate it. Let me, let me stop you there before we get into this really interesting personal story. So you started it about 10 years ago, and for the first five years, you really did focus [00:14:00] on Israel.
[00:14:01] Omer: We focused on Israel and we had these kind of drips of international clients coming, just because we were known in Israel and the decision-makers were Israeli and their respective counties.
[00:14:11] Wendy: Okay. And so then you notice that you had, so that was kind of a trigger, is that you noticed you were kind of flooding the market or hitting the glass ceiling, but then you also were paying attention to where customers were coming in from.
[00:14:27] Omer: Of course. I think that the main [00:14:30] revelation that we've had is that when we get paid in dollars or in euros, even after converting it to Israeli shekels, it's still worth five times the amount.
[00:14:42] And so it became very attractive for us to get more and more international clients and kind of start pivoting away from targeting Israeli market.
[00:14:51] Wendy: Okay. And so you work, you know, the two main ones were Sydney in New York where they both speak English, you know, that might be a little bit [00:15:00] different and way bigger D accent difference.
[00:15:02] But you also mentioned Sweden. What other countries were you picking up clients from?
[00:15:12] Omer: We had one in Mexico, we had Sweden, we had Germany, we had friends. Of course we had Spain. Uh, we had one in Brazil and Australia, I think these are might've missed a country or two, but it was always very sporadic. It was one person in Brazil. One person goes through.
[00:15:27] Wendy: And where you're, how did you deal with the [00:15:30] languages?
[00:15:31] Omer: So they would all speak English to us mostly. My mother is French and so I speak French and that helped with the French clients, but we also had native French speakers in the office in Israel.
[00:15:42] Wendy: So your clients spoke English, but then they were asking you to do marketing. That would have been another languages.
[00:15:49] Omer: Correct. And that's something that we had to hire outside assistance for, for the, uh, for the language part of it.
[00:15:55] Wendy: So w who did you hire or what did you do?
[00:15:59] Omer: Again, [00:16:00] we're lucky that we were Israeli in that respect because Israel has a huge community of Olin Kardashian, which is the definition for people who are Jewish, who are allowed by law to receive citizenship in Israel.
[00:16:13] And a lot of them come to Israel to live. And so in Israel, you find people who were born in pretty much any country in the world, and they are constantly looking for employment because. Sometimes a little harder for them to find jobs, uh, than native Israelis. And so these [00:16:30] translation jobs or digital marketing jobs were great for them because it played to their strengths and it really helped us.
[00:16:36] We needed someone who is native resilient, for example.
[00:16:41] Wendy: So they spoke. So they spoke English to.
[00:16:45] Omer: Yeah, generally. I mean, we can work with them if they didn't also speak either English or Hebrew so we can communicate with them. But yeah, generally anyone who makes Alia, relocates, Israel would know their native fund plus English.
[00:16:57] Wendy: Okay. Okay. Cause that's what I was trying to figure out [00:17:00] whether you were talking to them in Hebrew or English, because you're not talking to them in Portuguese or Spanish. Her French. Yeah. So a lot of the people spoke English too because they had an understanding. What your client needed in March.
[00:17:16] Omer: Yes.
[00:17:16] But again, if they found themselves in Israel, I mean, forget the employment part. They have to live in a country. Nobody speaks Portuguese and they would have to speak English to get by. So I think that's a pre-qualifier they wouldn't have [00:17:30] come if they didn't speak at least basic English.
[00:17:32] Wendy: And how did you find the people down?
[00:17:34] Omer: There are, so I actually own the largest group on Facebook for international jobs. So that makes it very easy for us to post posts and recruit people. But there are, there are many websites like similar to indeed here in the states, uh, where you can just post a position and you will get a ton of, uh,
[00:17:53] Wendy: Okay, so you just hire individuals and bring them into your company, or have them work as a subcontractor to, to
[00:17:59] Omer: translate [00:18:00] exactly on a per project basis.
[00:18:02] If we need them. Now, I should probably say that since we've kind of put our focus on the U S we are much less geared towards taking new projects from random countries as one-offs.
[00:18:15] Wendy: Okay, which is a good global marketing strategy is, is that you're not taking things from anywhere you've defined your target market as to where you want to be.
[00:18:24] Omer: Correct. I think focus is extremely important. And I think that's even in global marketing [00:18:30] that really does bring success. You have to have a certain differentiated.
[00:18:34] Wendy: So what about the agencies that are in the U S that could be doing global marketing? What do you think about them?
[00:18:44] Omer: So I think that it's not very different from any company in the U S that could be expanding globally as an agent. If someone who owns an agency, I can't imagine any reason why a US-based agency would want to expand globally.
[00:18:59] The market year [00:19:00] is infinite. Um, And much heavier lift to work with clients in a different time zone and at the front that, that has a different mentality. And that's something that we had. I mean, personally, I had a it's called the challenges or difficulties kind of align myself with the American mentality of doing business.
[00:19:21] It's very different from doing business in Israel.
[00:19:23] Well, Israelis are very direct. So if you're sitting across the table with someone and you tell [00:19:30] them, hi, I think I can help you with a, B and C, and it's going to cost you deep. They will tell you if they think D is worth a C or if they're ready to engage or not. And this is a story I tell quite often, the first time I came to the.
[00:19:44] I had a bunch of meetings lined up. Somehow. I managed to get myself a meeting in a fortune 1000 company, cyber security. And I was sitting across the table from three people and their marketing division, and I've been pitching and I was showing them graphs [00:20:00] and their analytics and opportunities of where I think we can help.
[00:20:04] And at the time it seemed to me like they were super into it. They were like, oh yeah, that's very interesting that that's, that's so cool. That's great. And I never heard from them again. I reached out, they never answered my emails and that had to happen to me a couple more times before I understood that the feedback you got face to face in these meetings doesn't mean a lot.
[00:20:28] I mean, [00:20:30] The closing rate for new clients that I have in the U S is similar to the closing rate I have in Israel. But whereas the Israelis will tell me if it doesn't fit. It's not a fifth grade. We know not to speak to each other again, because it's just not. In the U S it's much more polite. And I learned to take it for what it is.
[00:20:48] It creates a nice atmosphere and then either it works or it doesn't work other than need or don't need it. But it's a very it's hard to explain as an outsider. It's very correct. It's very, I think [00:21:00] polite is the best word. Maybe.
[00:21:01] Wendy: You're talking about, what's known as ghosting is they have a very nice conversation with you.
[00:21:08] You enjoy, you think things went well and then they just disappear.
[00:21:14] Omer: Yeah.
[00:21:14] Wendy: Yeah. Which I guess you could argue is plate. They don't want to hurt feelings, but on the other hand, it's a lot harder to deal with than somebody telling you, right. Where you stand.
[00:21:24] Omer: It's true. And I was confused at the beginning, but I take it for what it is now.
[00:21:27] That's, that's how they do business and I'm a guest here, so [00:21:30] that's how I have to do business. And today it really doesn't bother me anymore. I mean, I, now I understand the rules of the game better than I did before. So I know that this is the framework. That's how we do.
[00:21:43] Wendy: That's a very common statement from people who do international business is that you have to understand the rules of the game in the country. And there is a learning curve of understanding that because you have to step outside of your own expectations a hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. [00:22:00] Okay. So what about your clients?
[00:22:02] Do you talk to them about going. I mean, I see so many agencies that are working with companies that could, could have phenomenal growth by going internet.
[00:22:13] Omer: So we're actually starting to attract, and that, that happens organically. And naturally we're starting to attract is really companies who come to us because they want to grow into the U S now for some of our clients, it's irrelevant.
[00:22:26] We work with law firms, for example, in Israel and [00:22:30] they, they will not attend. Expanding to the U S so it's not a relevant proposal, but for a lot of our clients today, they come knowing that their tests running in Israel. But if it works, we can make them a global brand and we have done so many times.
[00:22:45] Wendy: That's fascinating. So that's the angle that us companies could really take. Ad agencies is making connections with companies in other countries that want to come into the United States.
[00:22:58] Omer: Of course, and that's [00:23:00] actually very, very common, a lot of accelerators that they're come from enterprises, like the Intel program, like Microsoft program, they support startups.
[00:23:09] And again, I know that I'm very Israel specific, but that's just the market. I know best, uh, Israel is very known for R and D startups start in Israel, but then they need funding. They need the connections, they need the enterprise sales process to be able to actually. Which is why these, uh, huge enterprises like, and felt like Microsoft, [00:23:30] like Oracle have programs in Israel to catch those startups, right.
[00:23:34] As they're starting up, scooping them up into their internal programs and kind of groomed them until they're ready to penetrate the U S market.
[00:23:42] Wendy: Which is it? It's so interesting because you're, you're coming from Israel and you understand the potential of the U S market. Now the U S imports. So many products and services that we have empty container ships going out all the time.
[00:23:59] And so the federal [00:24:00] government offers. Free money and free consulting to help companies that want to export. So it's really interesting to get your perspective on how hot it is to come into the United States.
[00:24:12] Omer: But a hundred percent. I mean, yes that's and I think it meets both countries at exactly the point where their needs are both met.
[00:24:21] The, I believe that the biggest export industry for Israel is actually startups making exits and getting sold [00:24:30] to American companies, or I could go in or stuff like that. Um, I mean, it's real neat stuff. That's it. That's a part of our, uh, of our budget. Whereas the U S as a very large country with a lot of capital needs, these agile dynamics quick.
[00:24:51] The Israeli startups in this example, to kind of disrupt a lot of the things that happen in the U S and I mean, I don't have [00:25:00] to tell you so many products that every American knows originated in Israel.
[00:25:06] Wendy: Oh, there's huge numbers. I, you know, when I hear a lot about it, of life sciences companies, you know, medical device and biotech, there's a ton technology that come out of this.
[00:25:18] So it makes a lot of sense. And that's, Israel's just, or Israeli leaders are just geared to opening in other countries. And so companies in the United States, what you're talking [00:25:30] about is this very full opportunity here yet. The balance of trade is so far off. That's why there's all these people that'll help American companies.
[00:25:40] And plus they're, you know, they become stronger, like I said before, but I want to go back to your personal story. You had talked about, you know, how much, how you were doing traveling, coming into the United States building the market here, and then you had a baby. I did have a baby.
[00:25:58] Omer: And that was two [00:26:00] years ago now, but when add, my son was born my wife made it very clear to me that the lifestyle that I had before no longer works within the framework of a husband and wife and a child.
[00:26:13] And so we had to decide what we're going to do either. I stopped traveling so much or we simply. Now at that time, we've had crazy momentum with new clients. Uh, and had I decided to stop [00:26:30] traveling and kind of put these, uh, this a U S expansion on the back burner. I don't think we would have been where we are.
[00:26:37] I know we would not have been where we are today and it would have been, you know, taking everything I've worked for. Four or five years and putting in the bent basically. And so we didn't want to do that. And honestly, living in the U S is not so bad. It's it's okay. And we decided to, to, you know, make the, make the leap to move here.
[00:26:57] And that decision was made in December of [00:27:00] 2019. COVID was a whisper in small articles in various newspapers, nothing to worry about back then, but the moving date, the relocation date was I was supposed to come on. March 17th, 2021. And my wife was going to come with our son a week later after I've kind of organized everything.
[00:27:22] And I can tell you, and you probably remember that March 17th was full blown, pandemic, panic. Nobody knew [00:27:30] anything, but everybody knew that the world is over. And so the week before, between the 10th and the 17th, we had a lot of conversations, both between her and myself, as well as with other people. What do we do?
[00:27:42] Do we go through with this? Do we say, you know, F it, but everything burned, we'll buy new stuff. Cause everything was already in containers on its way to the. We already gave up the apartment in Tel Aviv. We already took an apartment in the upper west side here in New York sight unseen. So it was very inconvenient to, to pull the plug at that [00:28:00] point.
[00:28:00] But I mean, obviously there were bigger concerns and we, I can honestly say today that was really, we decided to make the move evidently, but it was 51 49 and would have just as easily. The other way, in retrospect, best decision of my entire life. And I'm really glad we did it, but things were pretty dicey there in the beginning.
[00:28:24] And the funny thing is that Israel was always about two weeks ahead of New York in [00:28:30] terms of dependent. And how it was and how people reacted. And so when I came, I came gloved up, masked up super kind of protected. And I remember walking, uh, around the upper west side and I was seeing people and they were like, they were obviously completely unprotected or they were looking at me as if I was the crazy one.
[00:28:51] And then two weeks later, they all joined me from the craziness. So that was. That was fair
[00:28:57] Wendy: eight, right? What a, [00:29:00] what a time to come into the United States
[00:29:02] Omer: with a five month old baby. That was, um, I don't recommend it.
[00:29:07] Wendy: No, no, well, hopefully we won't have to go through this again or we'll figure out a better way.
[00:29:11] Yeah. So I'm curious. So, you know, And Israeli national we've got listeners from over 40 countries. How did you go through the process of being able to move into the United States?
[00:29:24] Omer: So we, because I had been going back and forth and rowing the [00:29:30] business internationally specifically with us companies, the There was an option for a visa.
[00:29:36] That's called the E one visa and that's a visa for international trade. So if you can show that you've been doing significant trade with us companies, you are allowed to get that visa and live here and your spouse can work. And it's very, very,
[00:29:51] Wendy: how long did it take you to get from application until getting the visa?
[00:29:57] Omer: So it took us about [00:30:00] six months. From the moment we landed here because of COVID, uh, everything, the embassies were closed, the everything was a backlog. I think it generally takes, I don't know how much it takes now, but it should take, uh, for, for free pandemics, uh, periods three to four months. I think it was.
[00:30:18] But we came in my, my wife is actually was a famous reporter in France. And so she had an I visa, which is a journalist. Where she can just come and go pretty much as she pleases.[00:30:30] So that's what we arrived on. I as her spouse plus one force. And then once we got the one switch and now she's on mine.
[00:30:40] Wendy: Okay.
[00:30:40] That's so interesting. Cause I don't think we talk to a lot of people to find out how they came in and there, so there are ways to do it, um, that are not that difficult. I've heard the other way to do it is to buy a business and then you can get them into the United States. But that does take some capital, but [00:31:00] that's the two.
[00:31:01] Okay. Good. So I want to go back to the translation you were doing in the hiring the people, because you're heavy duty into marketing when you had to. Create content in languages where you creating it in English and then you'd have the people translate it directly. And how did you handle cultural adaptation?
[00:31:25] Omer: Yes, so we did exactly that. We created in English or Hebrew, [00:31:30] depending on what the other language of the person the person spoke, but we were a hundred percent counting on that person to make the cultural attitudes. Uh, which is why we insisted on not just hiring the person who spoke Spanish, because they watched a lot of TV in Spanish.
[00:31:46] We insisted on hiring a person who is native from the relevant countries, Spain, Argentina, whatever. And that was very, very important for us. Of course, before anything went live, we rented by the client and the client could point out any gaps [00:32:00] or, or, you know, requests for amendments and things like that.
[00:32:03] Wendy: Oh, okay. And what mistakes or growing pains did you see with clients that were trying to, to market.
[00:32:13] Omer: Oh, so many. So the question is about companies outside of the U S trying to penetrate the us market.
[00:32:21] Wendy: Yeah. That, or you know, any of the global marketing that you were doing. Cause you mentioned a bunch of other countries.
[00:32:27] I worked with.
[00:32:28] Omer: Right. And I think actually [00:32:30] my answer is going to be the same because it's, it's always the same problem. They assume that things are in the target country as they are in the origin countries. So if they come from Israel, they try to market the jury. Or Swedes for Americans the way they would market Israelis.
[00:32:47] And that just doesn't work. The, everything is different. The creative is so much different. The, the audiences that you're targeting a lot of times is different, are different. Uh, that's, that's the [00:33:00] biggest issue. If you don't know your target audience and you don't do deep market research, which was by the way, one of our big challenges in this, in these international projects, we needed to actually know the audience and we would not be okay with running campaigns, just like, Hey, you know, guys, you run campaigns.
[00:33:20] So just do this campaign for. And we'll be all right. It's not going to be a ride. And it wasn't all right, because if we don't understand how to speak to parents in Belgium, [00:33:30] then it's not gonna work. So I think that's the challenge. Number one, challenge. Number two is a little more technical I'd say or tactical because.
[00:33:40] Marketing costs and ad spend is vastly different across different countries. Depends on a lot of things. Depends on the competition. How many other advertisers the seasonality in that country. So for example, Christmas is expensive to advertise in and most countries of the world, but in some, including [00:34:00] Israel, it's not at all because we don't celebrate Christmas.
[00:34:03] You need to understand that when you build your marketing budget and build your KPIs and executives results, because if you don't and you're not aware that there is a no Chinese singles day, and you're not going to understand why you're spending more on ad spend and not driving the results that you committed to your client.
[00:34:23] So that's another thing I would suggest looking into
[00:34:26] Wendy: it's. So yeah, when you're doing your, your target audience [00:34:30] research, you really need to know about holidays and the ad schedules. That's a, that's a really good point
[00:34:35] Omer: and you want to know how they behave and what they care about and what influences them.
[00:34:39] Because parents in Belgium are not the same as parents in Belarus.
[00:34:43] Wendy: Well, you know, you got to tell me the difference between the two.
[00:34:48] Omer: Well, it can be anything from a fresh parents. So this is, this is a topic that I that I've been living, but at the end of the day, There are different countries have different ways [00:35:00] in which it's accepted to do certain things.
[00:35:02] Right? For example, when do you, uh, li wean babies from liquid foods and move them into solids that the first country to country. So if you're going to market baby food, you should probably know that when you choose the age range of the kids of the parents are targeting, right. Same way, how they look at formula.
[00:35:22] Versus breast milk, right? There's so many, it's true. They're all parents and they all love their children very much. That's all true. [00:35:30] But when you get into the ins and outs to the bits and bytes, the behavior changes, and you need to know those things. If you were trying to sell them something, you know, they marketing a psychology.
[00:35:39] If you don't understand the psychology, you can't make them do what you need them to do.
[00:35:43] Wendy: Yeah. That's so true. That's just, I look back to, you know, my kids are teenagers now, but I look back to the whole, uh, like co-sleeping and what do they call it when you keep the baby on you all the time?
[00:35:59] [00:36:00] Co-sleeping yeah, that's at night and then there's also the day, but my son had a. Preschool teacher that was from Peru and I was talking to her about co-sleeping and she started laughing. She was like, yeah. And a lot of other countries, parents co-sleep with their children because they don't have enough bedrooms.
[00:36:17] It was just a very practical thing. It's like now put them in their own bed. So I always think fondly of Doris was her name. My son learned so much from her. [00:36:30] So tell us more about your company. Exactly. Give us some stories about client successes and what you've done for
[00:36:40] Omer: them. Well, I like to say that our biggest success is a company called Ravello that we did part of their marketing.
[00:36:48] They sold to Oracle for half a billion dollars. And it wasn't just our marketing, their product was okay. But that's, that's probably the biggest success and the most recent success as a company, we do their marketing. It's called volt [00:37:00] platform. It's for HR clients. If you, if anything bad happens to you in the workplace, it provides a safe space for you to report that anonymously to the HR department.
[00:37:09] Uh, and they recently, I believe a month and a half. Raise their a series, a almost a million dollars primarily from Google, and we've done everything in between them. And we specialize in taking startups from pre-seed seed to a, to B, uh, and hopefully to a successful exit or an [00:37:30] M and a.
[00:37:30] Wendy: Okay. And what did, what are you doing for them?
[00:37:32] Because you do so much in the marketing realm.
[00:37:37] Omer: Correct. So the way it works, if you're asking specifically about startups, they know what they need to do to get to the next round. They might need a hockey stick model. They might need 10,000 paying users. I mean, they know what the metric is that we have to achieve.
[00:37:52] And so we work backwards. We find out what the metric. We help them to find it. If they don't know, we do have a lot of students that field as well, and we [00:38:00] worked backwards. So we built a media mix for a plan on how do we get those 10,000 things. It could be a paid search, paid social to be SEO. We liked the holistic approach where we do several different things, automatic outreach, either on LinkedIn or by email to deciding factors in the target companies could be a lot of things.
[00:38:21] But I think that's part of the value of emoji that we are. An SEO agency or just doing paid social. We look at the big picture and we [00:38:30] can build a puzzle where every piece fits perfectly with the other pieces to maximize your chance of reaching that next goal to get to that next stage.
[00:38:39] Wendy: Okay. Okay. And so you have lots of.
[00:38:43] Tools in your box that you can pull out. So it's not just doing a website, but it's optimizing the website and then driving the pay-per-click to the landing pages. That's going to bring the people in if
[00:38:54] Omer: that's yes. I think there's another advantage that we have is that I, [00:39:00] myself am a technical, um, I'm a developer which makes it easy for us to build tools.
[00:39:06] On an ad hoc basis per project. So we can build specific scrapers for specific databases that are only relevant for that one client that just signed up. And we tell them that before they sign up as one of the one of the perks of working with the mojo. So we can always get you better data or do the process itself, the marketing process better because we are half human half machine we have.[00:39:30]
[00:39:30] Mm, like in house tools that we've built to help us do our job better for
[00:39:36] Wendy: love that half human and half machine. That's what, you know, so much is going towards now, even in the sales process, you've got to learn how to automate part of that, you know, a good number of parts of that, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So what kind of clients.
[00:39:56] Would you work with.
[00:39:58] Omer: So we, [00:40:00] I mean, COVID happened and with it arise of an infinite amount of e-commerce stores, uh, some of which are very good at some of them became very successful. And so we were, we were kind of pulled into e-commerce direction. Uh, there was a lot of interest. We do a ton of. So that's definitely one kind of client, otherwise, uh, startups, both B to C and B2B.
[00:40:22] Uh, we're very strong in the technological fields, so that's something we can help a lot with and the enterprise dimension [00:40:30] B2B.
[00:40:31] Wendy: Okay. Okay. That's good to know. All right. So you know, I'm going to switch it back to some personal questions now. And I always like to ask my favorite one. What's your favorite foreign word?
[00:40:44] Omer: Wow. Wait foreign in which language
[00:40:49] Wendy: I purposely leave that open so you can pick any language you want.
[00:40:55] Omer: Well, you know what? I am going to say. The word is Adam. Adam is the word of [00:41:00] my son. Human and Hebrew, it is the first human from the Bible. Uh, and Adam is my first son. He's also the first Bennett son in the family.
[00:41:11] So he's like first and everything. And so the name was very fitting. That is my favorite word for the purpose of this episode.
[00:41:18] Wendy: Oh, that's really special about how it has all those deeper meanings. I love that. Yeah. Two is such a beautiful age too. I was not terrible. [00:41:30] Two is it's terrible.
[00:41:32] Omer: It's always, it's always something.
[00:41:34] It's the terrible twos. And then the tremendous threes and then the formidable as there was, there was always something.
[00:41:40] Wendy: Yeah, there is, there is, but I just love that age. All right. And how about your favorite vacation?
[00:41:47] Omer: Favorite vacation. I like vacations where I can just tune everything out. We just went to Cancun a week and a half ago.
[00:41:56] So definitely these kinds of vacations, but my absolute [00:42:00] favorite was my honeymoon in the moldy. That was like nothing else I've ever done.
[00:42:07] Wendy: Oh, that's great. Tell us a little bit more about.
[00:42:11] Omer: So it was a, so the moldings is made of a lot of different islands and each island is the resort. So our resort was, uh, a couples only resort we didn't have then obviously, and you have this kind of concierge that drives you around the island for anything you need your room.
[00:42:27] Basically a combine. I it's right [00:42:30] on the water. It's a huge bed. That's facing the window. You have an infinity pool. And right after that, the ocean, uh, you see dolphins in the morning, jumping outside your window, you snorkel, you take the stairs right down your cabana. It's a private terrorist thing. You see all sorts of, you know, Marine, wildlife.
[00:42:50] Uh, we did scuba diving with a water sports. We did. I mean, it was just unbelievable. It's the most resting vacation I've ever had. I actually slept better there than anywhere else in [00:43:00] the world. Yeah. Oh,
[00:43:01] Wendy: that sounds fantastic. And I was waiting to hear if you went scuba diving, cause I've heard that's a good place.
[00:43:07] Omer: Um, I'm a big, super diverse, so I try to scuba dive when I go to these places. Oh,
[00:43:13] Wendy: yes. I'm headed to looky soon for the kids. It's supposed to be a top 10 place to dive.
[00:43:21] Omer: Oh yeah,
[00:43:25] Wendy: I will. It's my son's just getting certified. So it'll be his first [00:43:30] dive trip, so. Okay. So back to you though, how about a, a crazy or a memorable cross-cultural experience you've had.
[00:43:40] Omer: I mean relocating in the middle of the pandemic or a fighter role, does it count?
[00:43:45] Wendy: Yeah, I think that absolutely does count.
[00:43:50] Omer: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:43:52] Wendy: That's good. And how about final recommendations for anybody that is interested in doing global market?
[00:43:58] Omer: The first step [00:44:00] is always hardest. Uh, when I decided to, to start flying out here, I knew nobody in New York. I reached out to all my network, both close and semi-closed and just ask them to introduce me to people in New York, no matter what they do, who they are, how old they are, where they're from.
[00:44:19] It doesn't matter. I just want to have coffee with interesting people. Send me up. And that's, that's how I started the whole thing. This, this mentality was worth [00:44:30] millions of dollars for us today, six years later. And I mean, I was thinking when my partner and I made the, this. To actively pursue international business elements specifically here.
[00:44:42] Okay. So we decided to do that. What am I doing now? Like how do we do it? That I've always been the business person. So that was obviously my task and I've never done anything like that. And so that was a tall order and that's what I did. I just reached out to a bunch of people. I came for a week. The [00:45:00] first time I had 45 meetings Uh, I, you know, I had like 15 minutes.
[00:45:05] I calculated how long it takes me to get by subway, from meeting to meeting, to meeting. And I knew all the addresses and the times and all that. And if I had just told myself, listen, this is too hard, or this is too much for, or I have no idea how to start. It would have never happened. And nobody knows how to start in the beginning.
[00:45:22] So you just have to do, and you will see that it just, there was momentum to it.
[00:45:27] Wendy: It is, you really reached out through your [00:45:30] networks and just met people. I mean, you did. I mean that must've been quite the organization to get all that in. And I know we met through EO, which is a global organization. And so did you leverage that network a lot?
[00:45:45] Omer: Not at all. I had only found out about EO after I had arrived in the states. I then found out that there is a chapter in Israel, but I didn't know about that. And the reason why I joined EO to begin with is because I, I was [00:46:00] lonely during the pandemic. I was stuck at home with a baby. I knew the power of networking organizations, and I was looking for organizations similar to the ones I knew of in Israel.
[00:46:11] And I found EO and a few others. I spoke to all of them. EO made the best impression. I've been a member for a little under a year now. And that was also a very, very good decision. I have very good friends in.
[00:46:23] Wendy: Yeah. So for listeners who don't know what EO is, you want to tell them
[00:46:28] Omer: about it. EO [00:46:30] stands for entrepreneurs organization.
[00:46:32] It's basically a membership organization for business owners who have revenue of over a million dollars a year from all sorts of all kinds, all types of businesses, which creates a very interesting group of people because we're all like-minded individuals, we're all business people. We all understand how.
[00:46:48] Businesses work and we care about that sort of topics, but we all come from very different worlds at the same time. So we have roofers and tech guys, and there's a marketing agencies [00:47:00] and hospitality people, and it's just, it's just amazing. It's a great support group. It's a great networking group. I get clients from EO.
[00:47:08] I provide clients that people I met in EO. It's kind of like an instant intimacy facilitator because, you know, you can trust this person they've been pre-vetted and they're thinking when you're thinking kind of,
[00:47:20] Wendy: yeah, that's fantastic. I joined right after the world shut down, so I wasn't planning, but my first, you know, year [00:47:30] over year was.
[00:47:31] With everything was virtual, but it is. I mean, if anybody is thinking about crossing the borders you know, you own a company and want to expand globally. EO is a great place to start because just like Omer was talking about his, his, he set up a bunch of meetings in one week. You could do that through EO chapters, anywhere in the world.
[00:47:52] Omer: Honestly, if I was any EO back then, it would've been way easier for me to do what I did. It's a matter of sending a message in the [00:48:00] slack channel. We have EO members from pretty much every country in the world, really every country in the world. And it would have been so much easier to do this. Had I had access to the.
[00:48:10] Wendy: Thank you Omar so much for being with us today. It was really interesting to hear your story about coming into the United States and the different things that you've done to build your successful business. So thank you.
[00:48:24] Omer: Thank you for having me. I had a lot of fun.
[00:48:26] Wendy: Good, good. Yeah. And little listeners.
[00:48:29] [00:48:30] Thank you for joining us for this episode of the global marketing show. If you enjoyed it or learn something today, make sure to follow us and maybe forward it onto an app. That you might know that wants to hear his story about coming into the United States, because a lot of the suggestions or experiences that he had could certainly be used for expanding to other places.
[00:48:53] So appreciate you tuning in and we'll talk to you next time.
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