[Podcast] From A-Z: Building a Winning Digital Marketing Strategy (Josh Becerra)

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Ryan

Every marketer listening or watching today’s episode has experienced the ups and downs of developing a digital marketing strategy that wins repeatedly. Michael and I are thrilled to have Josh Sara with us today. Josh founded a digital marketing agency here in Minneapolis nearly ten years ago.

Josh, you have a lot of experience we can draw from. First and foremost—welcome to On the Record. How are you?

Josh

Yeah, great! I’m super excited to be here. Thanks for having me. I’m not an audiophile like you guys—we were talking about that before we started recording—but I have listened to this album, and I’m excited to talk about at least two tracks.

Ryan

We’re not going to bury the lead today. This record in front of us—Beyoncé’s Lemonade—is prolific. It represents so much, and it’s easy for us to tie it back to digital marketing. This record came out of thin air and made a seismic impact.

Michael, you’ve broken it down a little. What did Beyoncé do here?

Michael

There are a couple of compelling angles. This was an incredible rollout strategy in general. It started with exclusivity on Tidal and evolved into a multifaceted campaign for what is, ultimately, an audio record.

But the visual components? You couldn’t miss them. They had a global strategy to reach a wide audience.

The other interesting aspect from a marketing strategy perspective is that the goal isn’t to acquire the customers you already have—it’s to reach the next rung of potential customers.

Beyoncé does this in a sophisticated way. Through her collaborations and references on the album, they were clearly trying to bring in new demographics that may not have been Beyoncé fans initially but could be drawn in through those connections.

Josh

I love that. When you’re thinking about your digital strategy, you’ve got to think about your core versus your edge. Once you’ve developed your core strategy—the one that delivers consistent results—you manage it to make sure it doesn’t fail.

Then there’s your edge strategy, where you A/B test, experiment, and try to improve. I agree—some of the collaborations on Lemonade were definitely edge tests for her to see if she could bring in a new audience.

Ryan

What I love, too, is how her digital go-to-market motion with Lemonade set up the Formation tour. This wasn’t just a splash release; it was meant to serve a greater interest. She went across the globe and had a smash success, which only amplified her initial motion of new music and a new sphere of influence.

Let’s break the record down a bit. Lemonade is possibly some people’s favorite Beyoncé record. Michael, what stood out to you?

Michael

I hadn’t listened to the whole album until now. I’m still not a certified Beyoncé fan, but I found some interesting moments.

When I got to track two, Hold Up, there’s a lyrical reference to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Maps.It’s sung over a Caribbean melody. It felt like she was reaching out to a new audience—myself included—and bringing in references from my indie music background.

Then, the next track features Jack White. It’s an unusual choice, but it works. Later on, there’s a James Blake track where Beyoncé barely sings at all. It’s surprising that someone like Beyoncé would give that kind of platform to an artist like James Blake. But in the context of the album’s story, it fits perfectly. James Blake is an artist I’ve respected and followed for a long time, and I never expected to see him on this record.

Ryan

It’s interesting. I want to ask you a quick question, Josh. Do you think it’s Beyoncé’s reverence for these artists, or is it simply her trying to appeal to an audience that’s not currently hers?

Michael

The cynical side of me wants to say it’s probably a bit of market research. Her team likely has an enormous amount of data and can tell who’s on the edge of her sphere of influence—who is a convertible listener. It felt like these were very clear choices. The thinking was, "If we have them on the record, will we get more listens?"

Josh

It must’ve worked because her most recent album was clearly positioned to acquire a whole new audience.

Ryan

Interesting. There’s one song I want to call attention to—Daddy Lessons—which I believe has two versions. One features The Chicks (formerly known as The Dixie Chicks), but the album version is very folksy and country. It sits alongside tracks featuring Future, Kendrick Lamar, Jack White, and The Weeknd.

It felt a little out of place, but I enjoyed it because it’s such a wide tapestry. There’s everything going on in this record. Some might say it lacks continuity, but I love where she was willing to go.

It was almost like a precursor to her cowboy-carter era, which she’s since been successful with. Lemonade came out in 2016, but clearly, she had already envisioned a future audience she might embrace.

Give her credit for seeing around corners. Her core audience may have thought, "Beyoncé doing a country song? Really?" But she got to places she hadn’t been before. We often talk about that on the show—you’ve got to go where you aren’t right now.

Michael

That might have been a test that led to where she is today. While the album brings together diverse influences, there’s a consistent core message.

That’s a key takeaway for marketers: this wasn’t just about throwing Jack White on a track or referencing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. There’s a theme of resilience, and no matter how diverse the sounds, that theme is consistent throughout the album.

Ryan

Great callout.

Josh

Daddy Lessons was one of the tracks that stuck with me. I’m new to the album, but as a girl dad—I have three daughters—that track resonated with me. It’s about resilience and mindset.

It’s the same in digital marketing. You have to stay strong and shoot your shot. The other track that stood out was Sandcastles. There’s a whole undertone of "don’t make promises you can’t keep."

For digital marketers, that’s a core message. Making promises you can’t deliver on is a surefire path to failure. Those were the two tracks that stuck out for me.

Ryan

I love that they were on the fringe but still showed an appreciation for her core audience.

Formation was wildly successful—over 334 million plays to date. Six Inch with The Weeknd caught my attention, too. It had a driving beat and felt like the more rap-oriented version of Beyoncé, which I loved.

That leads into the track with Kendrick Lamar, Freedom, which is a standout moment on the record.

I’m a big Kung Fu Kenny fan—that’s one of his pseudonyms. His performance on Freedom is so sophisticated. The way his flow creates a crescendo on that track is just exciting. It shows this isn’t just flat pop music. There are dynamic elements that even non-Beyoncé fans can appreciate.

Michael

Yeah, and it’s consistent. You don’t always find that on pop records. Often, there are a few high points, but Lemonade maintains its quality throughout.

Ryan

No question. Absolutely. So, I think we’re all saying 4 to 5 stars for this one, right?

JoshAbsolutely!

Ryan

In the past, we’ve had some polarizing three-star reviews, but I think we’re coming to this record and calling it a classic.

It was a smashing success musically, but we also talked about its release and impact. Now let’s turn our attention to digital marketing strategy.

Josh, at your agency, you serve a lot of clients with different needs. What are some of the foundational blocks you need to implement to ensure digital marketing strategies can win and scale?

Josh

Yeah, I feel like we think about it as four key pillars: strategy, process, data, and communication. Those are the four pillars that make up a successful digital marketing strategy. If you’re missing one of those, it’s like the legs of a table—take one away, and the whole thing falls apart.

We can unpack those individually, but strategy is all about alignment. For us as an agency, we need to really unpack the business knowledge of our clients and understand their overarching goals—not just their marketing KPIs.

When we know what they’re trying to accomplish at a business level, we can bring our best selves into the conversation and help them achieve their broader goals, rather than just focusing on hitting specific KPIs. Strategy is a key component—without that alignment, the leg of the table collapses.

Ryan

Where do you think the light bulb goes off most often? You’re sometimes hired to act as the marketing function for a business that doesn’t have one internally. Is there a specific pillar or moment where you see that light bulb click on for clients?

Josh

The light bulb moment happens most often in the process pillar. When we take over accounts, it’s usually because the client had a poor experience with their previous agency or lost confidence in what the current team was doing.

Where we excel is by having a clear, transparent process with a high degree of accountability. We say, "Here’s our strategy, here’s what we’ll do in Q1 to support it, and here’s what we’ll do in the first two weeks that rolls up to that quarterly goal."

We also clarify who’s accountable for each part and whether it’s on track or off track. When clients experience that kind of transparency and accountability, they often say, "Wow, this is really different."

Ryan

I love that. And I think accountability is a key word here. Michael, you’ve brought that idea of proving results through accountability to Leadpages. You talk about pace a lot. How do we think about creating accountability and pace within our strategies?

Michael

Absolutely. Often, we make a plan, execute it, and move on to the next one. But there are always forks in the road—decision points—where you have to pause, assess, and adjust.

When we talk about pace, we’re not talking about moving fast. We’re talking about having milestones and decision points built into our process. In a campaign, you might hit on something that’s working and double down on it, or you might find that a message isn’t resonating and need to pivot before moving forward with phase two.

By building in check-in points, we can stay adaptable. You don’t actually know what works until you get out there and perform. Being adaptable means having high communication, constant evaluation, and the ability to act on new information.

That’s what makes a great strategy. Take Beyoncé’s Lemonade rollout, for example. They launched it exclusively on Tidal—a platform that wasn’t a huge player at the time.

Ryan

Interesting choice for the hub.

MichaelYeah. There had to be some reason for it—maybe to drive subscriptions or create exclusivity and build up the mythology around it. If it worked, they might have kept it on Tidal longer. If it didn’t, they could’ve pivoted to major platforms faster to increase reach.

Ryan

I love it. Pace has become such an undercurrent at Leadpages. It’s a byproduct of failing fast, learning quickly, and creating a culture that embraces that.

Sometimes, teams slow down because they’re hesitant to act or analyze results—they’re afraid the results might look bad. But pace can only be accomplished if we accept failure, learn from it quickly, and keep moving forward.

One trap marketers fall into is just going fast and doing a lot. But we rarely give ourselves the time to analyze what’s working.

One thing I’ve learned from you, Michael, is to find what’s working and keep doing it. It seems obvious, but marketers are notorious for working iteratively without always repeating what works. That burns us out.

Marketing is a demanding discipline—it’s always front and center. There’s nowhere to hide. That visibility can be exciting, but also a little scary.

Josh

I have two things to add here. First, around learning—one of the things we always emphasize is that we should be building learning organizations, not ride-or-die KPI-chasing organizations. If we don’t hit our KPIs, it’s not Thelma and Louise, where we drive off a cliff and fire the whole marketing team. You lose a lot when you make those seismic shifts.

If you approach things with a learning mindset, you can constantly analyze what’s working, what insights you’re deriving from your results, and how those insights are driving future recommendations.

The second thing about pace that’s important—and where marketing teams sometimes get into trouble—is moving so fast that they’re constantly reacting. The sales team shows up and says, "Hey, we’re hearing this—we need to pivot!"

Process, which is one of those pillars, can help support this. We say, "That’s great—we’ll put that in the parking lot. There’s a time and place to evaluate new ideas, but that time isn’t today."

If you have something in-market, you need to focus on understanding if it’s working. Setting boundaries around when to take feedback and when to act on it is key to maintaining a productive pace.

Michael

I think that decision-making process is key. It’s almost a matter of taste in leadership—a skill you develop over time. Too much process can make you miss opportunities because you’re locked into arbitrary timelines.

One of the reasons we’ve moved away from traditional agile development is that it locks you into these rigid sprints where you can’t take in anything new for two weeks. But process can also be what gives you pause at the right moment.

Finding the balance between opportunity and execution is critical. If you lean too far into process, you miss the human element—the ability to recognize something truly important when it comes up. That could be the difference between a winning and a losing campaign.

Josh

Exactly.

Michael

There are moments when you need to make a decision. Sometimes, that decision could make or break a campaign.

Ryan

I love that contrast between your two perspectives. It might spark a different discussion because we’ve done some unconventional things here at Leadpages, which I really appreciate.

Silos can create barriers between teams, especially in communication. That’s often where digital marketing strategies go wrong. Product marketing can fall flat if we don’t bring them into the conversation early.

At Leadpages, we’ve started putting people in roles that don’t fit the traditional organizational structure. I’ve seen that lead to winning strategies and, more importantly, conversations that inform team success.

Michael, can you talk a little about your philosophy—how a product marketer might live in RevOps or how a product designer might sit within marketing—and what that means for us?

Michael

Yeah. We were pretty siloed before, to be honest. Every solution needs to be catered to the company and the challenges that company is facing. So, this isn’t to say that every marketing manager should live in RevOps or that every product designer should live on the marketing team.

What we were trying to do was create touchpoints across the organization—not just at the top management level. When we placed a PM within RevOps, it created vertical and horizontal communication.

Previously, information was staying within the silo where that position was placed. Now, you’re hearing about product decisions because they’re coming through that design discipline. Stacy is learning more about the PM function, which relates back to product. And we’ve brought you into that conversation as well.

Everyone is more informed. It’s different than just sharing that information at the executive level. When we share it at the team level, it creates connective tissue across the company.

For example, you and Stacy have a great relationship, but that doesn’t mean that everyone on your team knows what her team is doing. As we build those connections, it breaks down silos. More planning happens across teams, not just within departments.

Before, there were moments where we’d find out a product was already at version 3.0, and we had no idea it existed.

Ryan

Shocking.

Michael

Yeah, that communication happens a lot faster, and that was the idea.

Josh

On the agency side, we need to operate as an extension of the in-house team. When I talked about the strategy pillar earlier, that’s what I meant. If we show up, and our in-house counterpart says, "This is what we’re doing," without providing any higher-level context, it’s a losing proposition.

As an extension of their team, we need to be brought into that connective tissue so we understand what we’re trying to accomplish—not just, "Get me this many leads." That’s not what we need to do.

Michael

That connective tissue relates well to Lemonade. How do you naturally have Jack White on a Beyoncé album? You need to find the elements of both their work that blend together. What do you leave behind, and what do you bring together that works?

You’ve seen collaborations that don’t work—it’s just two distinct artists stuffed onto a track. But when you find that connective tissue, you can create something new and unique.

Ryan

I couldn’t agree more. Building a winning digital marketing strategy isn’t about claiming it’s yours alone. When you involve others, you build something scalable. It’s the "one team, one mission" approach.

Having others alongside you to support your mission creates stronger strategies and more informed conversations that impact not just marketing, but the entire company.

Josh, I want to talk about your use of data. You mentioned it’s one of your key pillars. How deep do you go? Do you use executive dashboards? What role does data play in creating repeatable success?

Josh

It ties directly into what we were just talking about. The biggest problem is that the marketing team has one set of data, the sales team has another, and the executive team has a third.

Then, you show up and say, "We’re having great success," and the sales team says, "No, those leads are trash." Meanwhile, the executive team is looking at a different dashboard entirely and saying, "These numbers don’t match—what are we even doing here?"

The key is having an agreed-upon, trusted source of truth. Without that, we’re sunk.

Ryan

You’re beholden to data, as everyone is. Michael, can you walk us through what you’ve implemented at Leadpages to improve how we share and align on data?

Michael

It’s exactly like Josh said—we all need to be looking at the same data points. The tricky part is deciding what those data points are. It’s different for every company and even for different phases of the same company. A KPI that’s great for one season might not matter as much in the next.

The important thing is consistency. We’ve tried to do a better job of looking at the same metrics every week. What I’ve seen in some teams is that when there’s fear, people start pointing to whatever metric is going up and building their story around that.

That’s how you get one team saying, "We’re driving all these leads," while another team says, "No, we’re not." Both teams are incentivized to protect their narrative. If sales numbers are down, the sales team will blame the leads. If marketing is driving lots of leads, they’ll say they’re doing a great job.

The reality is that there’s usually an interlocking KPI—something like qualified leads. Finding those connected KPIs is key to getting everyone focused on the same goal.

When we review the same metrics every week, we stop being beholden to only the metrics that look good. We start affecting the ones that actually matter.

Josh

I think you mentioned fear, and yeah, that is totally the driver. If people don’t have the psychological safety to say, "The leads we’re driving aren’t working," they won’t share that insight.

We have to create a space where they can say, "Here’s what we’ve tried, and here’s the data showing the failure." There’s data in failure, and those insights need to inform future recommendations.

If people are afraid, they won’t show that vulnerability. But when we all commit to being a learning organization, that fear starts to go down.

When marketing teams, sales teams, and executive teams are bought into that mindset, the barriers come down, and that’s where the magic happens.

Ryan

Yeah, I love this. We’re talking about how sometimes digital marketing strategies fall apart because of fear.

Josh, after ten years of representing great clients, how do you manage the perception of failure? A lot of listeners and viewers may struggle with the fear of presenting a strategy that doesn’t land well. What advice would you give to help them get over that scary moment?

Josh

The biggest takeaway for me is to start seeding that conversation early—laying the groundwork for the fact that we are a learning organization. We will have wins, and we will have failures.

The first time you talk about failure shouldn’t be when you’re failing. Otherwise, it feels like damage control: "Are you bringing this up because you believe it, or because things aren’t working?"

We need to have that conversation even when we’re crushing it.

Ryan

Yeah, I love that. It ties back to what Lemonade teaches us—trying different things is critical. I imagine Beyoncé’s team had some very interesting discussions around process and data to get to the result we’re celebrating today. We’re giving it a five-star review.

Michael, as we wrap up, are there any ties back to Lemonade or lessons for building A-to-Z digital marketing strategies for the future?

Michael

Yeah, I think this conversation took a different direction than we anticipated, but it’s been great.

Tying back to fear—Beyoncé could have made a typical Beyoncé record. She could’ve stuck to what worked before. Sure, maybe results would’ve declined over time, but she had enough brand cachet that she didn’t need to take a risk.

But she did. Her team clearly had the psychological safety to iterate and take calculated risks. Those risks paid off. They were most likely based on listener data and aimed at bringing in a wider audience without alienating her core fans.

The team behind Lemonade likely embodied much of what we’re talking about today. While we didn’t break down every marketing tactic, we did focus on what an organization needs to look like to even have a shot at building a winning operational strategy.

Josh

For sure.

Ryan

Josh, any final thoughts before we wrap up?

Josh

I’ve really enjoyed this. You’ve got me listening to Beyoncé again. This conversation reaffirmed for me how important it is to focus on foundational things. As marketers, we often jump straight into strategies, campaigns, and data. But if you skip over the foundational elements, you’re not setting yourself up for success.

Ryan

I love that. We could’ve spent these 30 minutes exploring all the tactical things marketers should try to be successful. The challenge is that those tactics are unique to each organization.

Staying at a higher level makes sense because without these foundational blocks, those tactics might not produce the desired results.

What Lemonade showed me is that repeatable success matters. Beyoncé’s surprise album wasn’t the first, but it encouraged others to follow suit.

By 2020, we saw more artists dropping surprise albums, trying to replicate her success. Did they reach the same heights? Maybe not, but some did draft off her coattails. Marketers always try to stand on the shoulders of giants.

Despite the tactics, these repeatable behaviors—building learning organizations, embracing failure, and fostering collaboration—are what strengthen your marketing efforts.

Josh

Absolutely.

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