Our top creatives, Brian Hettler (VP Creative & Strategy) and Ezra Schaefer (Head of Design) attended Webflow Summit in Toronto. Dive into this interview as they unpack key takeaways, the hottest trends, and what impressed them most.
Transcript
0:00
Brian Hettler: That’s what we should start with. Are we allowed to talk about that?
0:05
Brian Hettler: I’m Brian Hettler, the VP of creative and strategy over here at mute six. And this is
0:13
Ezra Schaefer: I am Ezra. I am the Head of Design at MuteSix. I have been at MuteSix for about almost a year and 10 months now, and in my time here, one of the longest running projects that I have been working on is building a partnership, an agency partnership with Webflow.
0:31
Brian Hettler: That is correct. So we needed a solution right for our clients who are like, Okay, well, we’re driving traffic to your website, but once people get there, we’re having some problems. And you know, Webflow was the perfect partnership for us in doing all of this.
0:50
Ezra Schaefer: Yeah, they have been great partners to us in the short time that we have been able to sign the contract with them. So we just signed our contract back in late May, right at the end of May. So it’s only been not even three months, really, but we’re moving super quick, with lots of leads and a lot of learning, getting the team trained, getting everyone certified on the Webflow platform, taking workshops on how to be a good storytelling partner, how to sell Webflow, how to build it into our business. And so it’s all been a big, a pretty big learning curve, but so just so fruitful and so productive. And I think this is going to be so great for the agency.
1:33
Brian Hettler: Something I’ve been talking about, and I actually came up with this, and we’ll talk about this in a little bit, is when we were at the Webflow Partner Summit up in Toronto, I sat down, and I was like taking notes, and I wrote down the words, closed loop marketing infrastructure, right? And so much of what we’re trying to build and what we’re trying to assess right now is as MuteSix evolves its creative service, offering as more of a holistic partner to our clients, is, where are there gaps right in where we can find creative solutions to also own the the data loop, right from introduction, right at the high level awareness of for your brand, to education and conversion, which will happen in deeper video experiences on places like YouTube or on your website, drive them to conversion, then move them into retention, right? And, and, you know, email, SMS, lifecycle products, and then kind of bring them back around. And how do we own that entire loop from the consumer standpoint.
2:41
Ezra Schaefer: Yeah, was that a term that you heard in one of the workshops at the summit, or was this kind of like it came to you?
2:46
Brian Hettler: It just kind of came to me because I was like, Oh, this is we’re filling gaps. It’s also kind of like how we’re finding partnerships right now for influencers, celebrity partnerships, experiential anywhere or we can fit creative into that full funnel experience right to solve for our clients problems. That’s what we’re trying to solve for. And Webflow fills a major gap in that loop.
3:09
Ezra Schaefer: Yeah, and admittedly, we weren’t really filling that gap very well before Webflow came along. Well I mean, this was before your time, but you know, the way we were approaching landing pages was, there really wasn’t a lot of strategy behind them. They were kind of an afterthought. And, you know, like, media is Mutesix’s bread and butter, and that’s and that’s great, but, like you’re saying, like to close that loop, like, what is that missing component? And it is, it’s marketing pages, it’s landing pages, and it’s how, like, successfully tracking the data on how they’re performing, the strategy behind how they fit in the larger frame of, like, a funnel, right? And we’re really doing that. So now that we have that capability, it does feel like, now, okay, this is full funnel. Like, this is it like, this is it, yeah, yeah. Partner Summit was really great. There was a, I don’t know if you were, you were in this one workshop, but it talks about how, like, the ways partners can show up in relationship to their clients. And it was a graph with, like, kind of four quadrants, so it has high strategy, low strategy, low execution, high execution, yeah. And when you are kind of in the high strategy, low execution quadrant, you’re a trusted advisor, right? You’re mostly just advising on what they should do, but not actually helping them do it, right? Low strategy, low execution, that’s a service provider, and that’s admittedly where it’s fallen.
4:45
Brian Hettler: It’s where we have been, but it’s not where we are going, right and and I think that’s the beauty of the evolution of this place, and we’ve recently built out an entire strategy offering.
4:58
Ezra Schaefer: Well to that, to that point, that’s where. That’s where we want to be, is in the high strategy, high execution quadrant. We want to be that like trusted partner, yeah, because then you also, you know, don’t want to be in like the low execution, or like the low strategy high execution phase of where you’re just being a producer, right? You want, you want that partnership, that breakdown of how like agency partners can show up for their clients was really helpful to just kind of see, see as a visual. That was really cool.
5:29
Brian Hettler: Can you tell me, because I wasn’t here when it happened? Right? When did the relationship between MuteSix and Webflow begin?
5:37
Ezra Schaefer: June of last year. So June of 2023, we started, it really just started out of a conversation of the design tools that we are using were not sufficient to create good quality landing pages. These were just not industry standard tools. I don’t know if I can legally say what they are. They were just not up to, up to industry standard. And I realized that we can, we can build a much more lucrative pipeline if we were using like proper tools and proper like data analysis to just build better and stronger. So that’s how the conversation started.
6:19
Brian Hettler: As just you have known of them, but prior to working?
6:22
Ezra Schaefer: Oh, yeah, I’ve used Webflow many, many years ago, and I actually have a couple of friends that are back end coders at workflow. So do have some friends over there, but, um, it started out as just kind of like a one to one swap for a simple design tool, and it actually turned into a much larger conversation of like, how Webflow can show up to like, show up for us as a partner. Their partner program is super new. It just launched earlier this year, so we are one of the very first partners in the program. It’s cool to you know, have a presence on the Webflow site and be have trusted team members like throwing leads at us and setting up phone calls with potential business ops, and it’s been super helpful to not have to do all that heavy lifting ourselves, especially since we are like, this is such a new business pipeline for us.
7:14
Brian Hettler: Well, can you talk about how, like, once we forge that relationship, right, and then we’re like, okay, we’re going to do this. Then we obviously had a team of designers, right? And what was it like getting them trained up on all of this, and what was that timeline like, and what was it like to get the certification?
7:34
Ezra Schaefer: Yeah so we had our entire design team go through four weeks of training to familiarize themselves with the Webflow platform. A couple of them already were familiar with Webflow, which was very helpful, and now we are Webflow certified.
7:47
Brian Hettler: I love that. Well, it was amazing, and we’ll talk more about this, right? But we went up to Toronto for the Webflow Partner Summit, to hobnob and meet and greet the whole team and all the c-suite. But when we were up there, one of the things that I loved learning about, actually, was the amount of education that is available through Webflow University, right? That not only makes it easy for their partners to learn, which made it easy for our designers to get certified, but also for our clients, right? I think one of the biggest pain points for clients is when they have a website that they can’t go in and make easy updates, right, or a little copy adjustments or swap out a photo, and then they’re getting like nickel and dimed, right? Which, to be fair, the industry built it that way so that web design and web development companies could make money and be profitable, and they could charge $100 to $1,000 every time that something like this was needed. But in 2024 we all know that that’s not viable, and that people know better, and that there should be more efficient and cost effective options for them to be able to go in and make these adjustments so it allows them to be a partner right in coming in and having like, a certain level of access, right for making updates or or making small changes without completely, you know, pardon of my French, but like, f*cking the whole thing up, right, and breaking up and breaking the whole website. And so there’s education available, not only for the internal teams that are developing the sites, but also for the clients that are going to be the end user.
9:20
Ezra Schaefer: Yeah, yeah. And the collaborative nature of web flow is one of the things that this made it so attractive compared to other website building platforms was like, the client can be directly involved, at different levels of involvement, different levels of expertise, if they if they want to be, and also just just being, just being, being in the partner program, as you know, as an agency, really makes it so much more affordable for us to execute on these projects that would otherwise be $50K, $60K, $70K for the client to do on their own. So it’s a win, win for. Everyone one thing that I was surprised, and I we already talked about this, but some one thing that I was kind of surprised once we got there was we were one of the only, if not the only, performance marketing agency that that is a currently in the partner program, which kind of blew my mind, because I was like, Why aren’t there more? Like marketing agencies like incorporating landing pages web design into their service offerings? To me, it’s so obvious and to just and like the overwhelming majority of the agencies that that were there are strictly dev agencies, web agencies. They like this is what they do. They only do Webflow, so we were a little unique in that space. But I think it was great for us, actually.
10:48
Brian Hettler: Well, it was great for us, it was great for them, right? I think that’s part of this, is it really is a reciprocal relationship, yeah, my perspective on this is that when people think, when marketers think about performance marketing, so often, they are thinking about conversion focused metrics, yeah right. They are focusing on revenue and they are focusing on robots, goals. Yeah right?
11:15
Ezra Schaefer: Yeah, CTR, which–
11:17
Brian Hettler: Yeah, exactly right. We have to zoom out right. We have to think more holistically. We have to think full funnel, right. And we have to think about consumer experience. Because if you were only hyper focus down there in conversion land it can be. It is not always, but it can be kind of a race for the bottom right. And it I mean, and so what we’re starting to do is zoom out and understand right, the need state of like, how do we actually convert right? How? And that takes a lot of steps, right, the consumer journey nowadays, especially with skeptics right in in the millennial and Gen Z generations, where we don’t purchase the same way that past generations have purchased, our mindset is different, and the timeline for pathway to purchase is a little extended, even into loyalty, right, Beyond Past purchase, right? And so I think when I was talking with their c-suite, right about the product and about our needs state, they were like, This is so interesting and compelling to be thinking about this from this standpoint, because we’re used to talking to only web development agencies, and you’re thinking about our product from a completely different standpoint. And so I found that not only were those conversations valuable for me, well, those conversations were also valuable for like, their chief product officer, right? And their chief sales officer, and having access to like their CFO, their CEO, CCO, CPO, right? Like all the CCS, right, like all the C’s, right, like that was so rad. Because how often do you access to those individuals face to face, right over cocktails or over dinner, right to engage in a meaningful capacity? And I thought that they were really intrigued to hear how we are thinking about this, because integrating right particularly working in e-comm right, integrating tools that allow for Shopify integration, right for our data collection and tracking all those metrics, as well as when you move into the loyalty phase forms right that could potentially attach to partners like Klaviyo right, or other email tools and service tools that build that full pipeline for us, right? Like that’s going to be really important for us and for our client partners, is to be able to integrate those things and create that workflow. And so having those conversations, I think that they know kind of where they’re at when it comes to the E comm of it all. And we’re also trying to solve that, because long game, right? Like, that’s going to have to be a priority, but, but talking that out with them and being like, I don’t know. I always tell people day to day here at eight, six and like, come to me with solutions instead of just problems, yeah, right? And so I was like, and here’s how I would do it, yeah.
14:25
Ezra Schaefer: As a designer, I look at things for like, I like, these are brands, right? Like, I’m looking at like, like, how the brand is showing up. And for so many brands, especially ones that we work with at music that are smaller, they’re emerging brands, they’re kind of like new in their vertical spaces, their website is their brand. Like, the website is how the brand shows up. It’s all digital. It’s like that, that is the North Star. It’s not like, kind of the old days of like, print ads and out of home like, like, that’s not really how brands show up anymore. Or it’s their website. And so like, like, we it needs to be like, an experience where you can seamlessly shop and learn about the products and engage with it in a meaningful way.
15:15
Brian Hettler: Let’s be honest, attention spans in 2024 are down hard, right? So like, if your website is not a good experience, and the UI in the UX is bogus, and you’re not leading with the key points of information, the key value propositions, right, and you don’t have the education that I’m looking for to inform me about what I need to know about your product for me to make that decision about whether or not it’s right for me, whether it’s a supplement or a fitness solution or clothing, right? And I can understand, like, where was all the source from, and or do you have FDA certifications I need? I want to know all that stuff, right? That’s that kind of middle point of the funnel where I’m like, okay, I’m snooping around. I’m doing all the due diligence. And I want to know, like, Is this something I want to make part of my day to day, or not? And that needs to all be there, right? With some compelling design, compelling video, right? Maybe some loyalists that come through with quotes, right, that tell me how it fits into their lives. Like it all needs to be built in, you know? And if it’s not there, I’m gonna be like, well, this is all like, sad.
16:24
Ezra Schaefer: I mean, we’ve, we’ve seen that at meet six with other accounts, where we have just funneled hundreds of dollars, if not millions, of dollars into media, and the things still don’t convert at the website, like the sales are still flopping, and it’s just like, Well, maybe it’s not the media plan, maybe it’s not the strategy that we revised a million times. Maybe something is happening on your site.
16:50
Brian Hettler: Yeah, AND, OR, and, you know, let’s go there, right? Maybe there are larger band issues. Maybe you don’t have a perspective. Maybe we don’t understand where it’s coming from. Maybe they don’t understand who you’re servicing, who your end goal client is. Maybe your logo is bad, right? Like, there could be a million problems. Maybe there’s not brand trust built in. So we need to do some like influencer partnerships, or, you know, experiential for people to test it. But like, that’s where, you know, diagnosing those problems and understanding where people are falling off and why they’re not converting and then developing hypotheses around that is so critical for all these brands.
17:29
Ezra Schaefer: One way of diagnosing like bigger brand issues is through like personalization on the website and testing different audiences with different content, different CTAs, and it’s so easy to do that with Webflow now, to just be able to populate different versions of the site and and figure out, like, who they’re reaching and what audiences are responding to. I think the most valuable takeaway for me was just seeing, I mean, like the product education and like the new tools are great. I think, like the design team specifically, will be more excited about those, because those are the ones actually those tools. For me, I think it was just so fascinating to see how mute six fits into, like, the larger context of the partner program with with Webflow and the advantages that come with that, and also the advantages of of not not just partnering with but with Webflow, but partnering with other agencies that need like media partners as well. So I think, I think what we brought to that summit was not more of the same, like just just a different POV, different offerings, different ways to like, connect with other people there. So that was, to me, was really cool to see. I agree we were pretty unique in that space.
18:49
Brian Hettler: There was a guy that I met that owns an agency in Ontario, and he built dashboarding tools. And so from a market science standpoint, building dashboards and having a partner to build those custom right for us and our clients. I was just like, God, that’s a very valuable partnership down the road that I could see us doing as well. So it’s always nice to meet new people and to meet people from all over the country. Meet people internationally. There are people there from England, from Italy, from Eastern Europe, yeah, from New Zealand, from all over the place. And to break bread with those folks and to have real human conversations about them and their businesses was so nice and always so valuable. So, yeah, I don’t know. Also, I will say one of my favorite things was the last night getting to have cocktails with Allison, right, who is our sales partner? Great. Yeah. She is so lovely and just having the conversation about kind of what they’re trying to accomplish as a business in tandem with what we’re trying to accomplish. And, I mean, that’s, that’s like half the time. Conversations I have every day with all of our clients. It’s like, well, what are your goals? Like, what are you trying to do? And how can, like, we help you get there, because we also have goals, and we’re trying to get there. We’re trying to expand our service offering to be a real partner. So tell us what you need, and we might actually have a solution for that.
20:20
Ezra Schaefer: Yeah. And that’s, that’s their, that’s their, their whole, I guess, like, motto in working with us, they have always just been, like, tell us what you need, and like, we will figure it out. We will get it for you. If, like, you know we can’t solve it, or, like, offer something, we’ll figure out how to get someone else to, yeah, they’ve always been so proactive. And like, Yeah, I mean Allison especially, but shout out to Sean and Michael and John and everyone on that side really just like, like, multi efforts over there to really get us what we need. And sometimes I come to them with real dumb questions, I’m not gonna. And they are so patient and so nice.
21:08
Brian Hettler: Well, okay, you know you’re kind of leading this here, right? Like, I’m a sales guy, right? I’m over here. Like, song and dance, yeah, but you’re in the trenches, right? So, like, what do you see as, like, what’s next for us with Webflow?
21:23
Ezra Schaefer: I think we’re going to be pretty successful in building out a pipeline for us within the next year. I mean, granted, we’ve only had our contract signed like, two and a half months. We already have many leads coming through, lots of calls on the book. So that’s kind of where you could just kind of have to start, right? It’s just by talking to people. So looking forward to that, and also just looking forward to all of the CO marketing ideas and events that we have coming up with Webflow. I don’t know if I can talk about any of them, but we do have a couple of CO marketing events in the pipeline coming later, throughout August, September and October, that I’m really excited for, that all I think will expand upon, like the part, like our partnership with them, and how we are working with them, and also we’ll just be really good exposure and hopefully inspire more performance marketing agencies to Think about how they show up in this space. Think about what they’re using for their website tools. I kind of, I really want us to be like a pioneer in that space, and inspire other agencies to start thinking like this, and thinking about how, how to engage, you know, if not, web flow, some other, you know, like web partner, about like, how they’re showing up in the web space.
22:43
Brian Hettler: I think you have to be thinking this way in 2024 right? If you’re not thinking about how to consolidate all of your branded marketing efforts, right, so that they’re working to support each other, if you’re thinking about them as separate, right? If you’re thinking that digital and social are separate right from your website, or separate from, you know, out of home or so like they you have to have connections, right? That it’s bringing everything together and being able to measure it, to being able to measure impact, right, so that you can forecast and you can project, like, what’s next, right, and be strategic.
23:29
Ezra Schaefer: So was it helpful for you to attend that conflict? Because you’re still, like, pretty new. So was it helpful for you to attend that summit and kind of get a better idea it?
23:31
Brian Hettler: Like, half of, half of my gig here is the song and dance, right? And so I think, from my perspective, I feel like I am much more well spoken about the product. I understand where it fits in. And I’m also formulating the larger creative narrative here at mute six of like, you know, where are we going, really? Like, the fact is, in the last four months, a lot of change has happened here. We’ve completely restructured our department. We’re working in cross functional pods. We’ve completely redeveloped the entire product, right? So we have all of these strategy products. We have, you know, cross functional, like always on creative teams. We have full end to end production services right. And now we’ve got web and we’re doing partnerships for influencer celebrity and, you know, you need out of home. We got it. You need experiential. We got it. You need something outside of the box. We’ve got partners, right that, do you know tech innovation, right? And so that’s what we’re scaling to, so that we’re actually solving your problems, right? We’re not just being like, Oh well, we can run a little bit on Meta and we can run a little bit on Google.
24:58
Ezra Schaefer: It’s going back to being that trusted part. Partner instead of, you know, yeah, just the advisor or a producer, SAS.
25:05
Brian Hettler: E-comm, yeah, right, search and social, bread and butter, right? But like, that’s not solving all of our clients problems, and that’s not what they’re looking for. Every single time recently that I’ve gone into a client call and I’ve been like, this is where we’re doing, this is what we’re doing. This is where we’re going. They’re like, that’s exactly what we need. That’s exactly what we’ve been looking for. And I’m like, so like, it’s exciting, because they get excited. And that’s, I think, where marketing needs to be going. So tell me a little bit what you thought about Toronto. Did you like Toronto?
25:36
Ezra Schafer: I love Toronto. Yeah. I have been to Vancouver a couple times, been to Victoria, quite a few times. It’s different. The vibe is different. It feels like it has, like, the density of New York, but like the cool vibe of like the Mission District in San Francisco.
25:56
Brian Hettler: I was gonna say it’s like New York and San Francisco’s like, clean and nice sister. You know, but, but also, like, everybody’s speaking different languages, mostly French, I heard like 20 different languages. It was so international. It was dense with small businesses, very walkable, very young, very fashion, right? At least certain the districts that we were like spending most of our time in were, I it’s also a massive city, and we were only there for three days, and we barely left the we were really just going back and forth. But what we did see, it was pretty cool. And I ran into the only person that I know that lives in Toronto the first night, very randomly sitting in 3 million people. Didn’t coordinate I ran into the one person I know. So weird. You know, we’ve been rambling on for a while now, we should probably close it up. But I would, you know, I would be remiss not to do a hard sell at the end and to go if you out there need a partner in all of this, and you are looking for strategic audience, led innovative performance marketing solutions if you need a website and are having conversion problems, if you hate your CMS tool because it’s expensive and inefficient and you’re looking for some nice, fun people to talk with to solve your problems that you know who to call and Come on, come on. Down to MuteSix, you know, because we have solutions for you.
27:28
Ezra Schafer: Well, cool. This is, this was a great chat. Thanks for your time, Brian and yeah, looking forward to just seeing you know what the future holds for us in Webflow.
27:38
Brian Hettler: ‘Til next time!