Bogomil’s Digital Marketing Journey
Ryan: I’m your host, Ryan Davies, and I’m hosting today’s discussion on marketing in the digital age with Bogomil Stoev. Thank you so much for joining me here today.
Bogomil: Thank you very much for having me, Ryan. It’s an amazing pleasure to be here.
Ryan: I’m already excited. We had a good chat already coming into this. We’re both dads with young ones, and everything the energy is high already, even before starting this podcast. And so I’m really excited to go through this one about Bogomil in the start, you know, 15 years ago, he really got into digital marketing, and that’s what he still loves to do. He’s been an affiliate marketer, a digital marketing specialist, and a consultant. He’s
really an expert in conversion rate optimization. He’s worn the CMO hat and hosted podcasts—this is his thing. But what he truly found fulfilling in his career is creating Commenter.AI, an AI-powered platform for meaningful LinkedIn comments that grab attention and boost brand growth. It’s a game-changer for marketing in the digital age, especially with how fast things are evolving. Now, over to Bogomil—is there anything else you’d like to add or highlight from your background or bio?
Bogomil: You almost covered everything. I’m not here to show off or anything like that. Just a little. So, the one thing that we should add is that I’m also a best-selling author about e-commerce digital marketing. So, as you said, my life has always been around digital marketing, but e-commerce digital marketing has helped me tremendously grow. Thanks to it, I have been able to build and scale two of my brands, which I consider a big success in my experience.
Defining Digital Marketing in the Internet Age
Ryan: That’s incredible. Let’s start right with the basics, right? What is digital marketing? So it’s been around for decades now. Since almost all existence is firstly the evolution of the internet, it’s using the internet to promote products and services. But for you, how do you see digital marketing? Let’s start with the first basic building block for people here, with that side of things.
Bogomil: Yeah. Absolutely. So, digital marketing is everything that is happening online, like every activity that you are doing, trying to attract people to your website and your offer just to come and buy from you. This includes content marketing, writing articles, SEO optimizing your content to be picked up by Google, social media marketing, and all types of activities that you can do to grow and expand your business. With the recent how-to-say trends of AI, digital marketing has changed tremendously, and it will be changed even more in the future when more and more marketers start using it.
The Impact of AI on Digital Marketing
Ryan: So, we’re going back to what the first search engine was. What was it, Archie? In 1990, the first clickable ad was in 1993. This isn’t something new. We’re 30 years into the history of digital marketing, but the evolution has been quite different in terms of how brands are using it to attract people to target and retarget things along those lines, right? So, how have you seen the evolution? We don’t need to go back to 1993, but even in the past few years, what you see is the evolution of digital marketing and where people are getting the most value out of it.
Bogomil: Yeah. So, from what I see, it started with Facebook taking a good piece of this pie like Facebook advertising, people jumping there and making tons of money with simple ads. Then it moved to more types of content, marketing, and people engaging more with each other till we reached the point today where I have a feeling that people need to have more trust in the company. They need to get more value from the company before they buy. Of course, some products are exceptions, but most of the products need this sort of value-building before you start selling to them. And we know from marketing. And this has been for many years that actually when you start advertising, there are probably not more than 5% of people that are ready to buy from you and the other 95% they just don’t know that they have this problem or they just don’t know that there is a solution for their problem. And when you are trying to be hard with your ads that are saying bye-bye, you are actually attracting only this 5% and losing the other 95%. So if we imagine what this means in numbers, like if we say that you can make 1 million, you’re actually making just five of 5,000 or something like 50,000. Yeah, actually, yeah, you’re losing the other 950,000 to focus on this 50,000. I’m not the best in numbers, but I’m great at writing the things to convert. But there is something very interesting that I want to mention. Of course, I’m not talking about how AI is jumping heavily in on the marketing side and how it is helping us tremendously to make our lives better and easier. I would say, from the marketing point of view. But I have noticed something very interesting. Since the beginning of the sunrise of Facebook advertising, we can say it this way. There have been more and more marketers who have been talking about going back to the basics of online marketing of selling mail to your mail. No, not to your email but to your mail and music newspaper ads, for example, magazine ads and things that have been working tremendously well in the past. But since the digital era has started, only or at least most of those who have been using such type of advertising have been the old school marketers, and not that many, like me, for example, are from this digital era generation. But now, more and more markets are actually going back to that for one reason or another. So this is a very interesting finding that I see as quite exciting.
The Power of Personal Branding
Ryan: very interesting. I mean, fashion trends come around, music trends come around, and maybe even marketing trends come around again, right? But I could see that because, in the offline world, that’s, like you said, now underutilized. It could be a differentiator. You could stand out there in digital marketing; what a crowded marketplace to try to stand out. You can see that Google makes a quarter of a trillion dollars a year because they can charge for ads, and it’s higher and higher cost per click and cost per impression and everything else. With that in mind, digital marketing is a two-sided coin, right? I always like to say that first, you have to get found by somebody before they’ll ever choose you. And then, once you’re found, where your expertise also comes in is why they would ever choose you. You have to convert those people that have found you? So tell me a little bit about that journey and the challenges that people, I think, maybe some people are just, it’s good enough to be found, and I don’t really care or, you know, hey, I’ve built this great thing. I know why people would choose me, but I’m invisible here. So tell me about that journey for digital marketers as well and how you have to, you know, how important that is for brands to embrace.
Bogomil: Yeah. Absolutely. As you mentioned first, people should find out that you exist. There are different ways to do that. The free and the paid way: the free way is through different types of content. It can be your website, or it can be using social media where there is already the traffic. You just need to find your way there. The other way is the debate way. There are many ways to utilize advertising, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn ads, Google ads, and all types of ads. But something interesting that I’ve also seen recently, especially when we are always talking about AI these days, I have a feeling that even taxi drivers are very familiar with AI. They are thinking about how they can use it.
in their day-to-day lives. This means that AI has become mainstream. So because of that, we know all the fears around it, like you’re going to lose your job, It’s going to replace you, and things like that. But actually, we know that with AI, there will also be many opportunities, and when we talk about digital marketing, look, the reality is that now, because of AI, your digital marketing activities can be replicated just like that, in one day or even one week if it is that complicated. So it’s very hard to be different for one thing. That’s the problem that I see these days. That’s why when I consult companies these days and people who are companies or just entrepreneurs, I tell them this: people are looking to do more business with people. There was a research that I checked very recently, but I don’t remember when it was, which is saying that people are less and less loyal to the brands these days. They often jump from one brand to another. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that, but there is research about it. So what I’m telling to all this that I’m consulting is that you need to start working more on growing your personal brand. You have a great company. But people want to do business with the people from this company, not with the company, right? One of the ways to get noticed is to show that you exist on these social media platforms, be a human person, and start growing your personal brand. And when people see how great humans you are, they will jump on your company if, of course, what you offer can solve their problems.
Ryan: It totally makes sense. I mean, I think everybody’s looking, especially in today’s world, right? We’re talking about inflation, we’re talking about everything else that’s going on, wages, and as you said, job security value has replaced brand loyalty these days, right? So, using digital marketing to express the value that you can provide to customers, whether it’s a B2C or a B2B, whatever it is, is a huge thing. And you talked about trying to stand out, right? How difficult that is in terms of being original and whatnot. And I know you said you’re not always about a sales pitch or anything like that, but I want to talk about Commentor.ai because, for me, that’s the definition of a differentiator, right? So we don’t have to talk about it specifically, but also a little bit specifically. But let’s talk about the idea behind having a product or a service that can help brands network and do something different from a digital branding or marketing perspective. So, I am not going to put words in your mouth, but is that the thought process that you came up with for how brands can really elevate that digital marketing game?
Bogomil: At the beginning of the year, around December of the previous year, my co-founder and I noticed a growing trend of people achieving their business goals on LinkedIn through comments. The catch? Neither of us had been active commenters for almost two years, and unsurprisingly, our LinkedIn progress was limited. We saw this as an opportunity to explore the potential of commenting. After a few weeks of brainstorming, my co-founder came up with a solution, and we began discussing how AI could play a role in addressing our challenge. Then, of course, we started working on that, and we discovered that if you want to grow your personal brand, there is no way to do it without comments; it’s not possible, which is great. On the other side, most people don’t know that they think that LinkedIn is a resume website where you write how great you are, and then people jump on your profile, start sending you connection requests and DMs to start working with you, or hiring you. But the reality is that even if you are the best sales, let’s say, in the world or if you have the solution for the biggest problem that the world has, nobody will find you because nobody knows that you exist the way to, right? The way to make people notice you because this is what we talked about. The first step for people to notice you to know that you exist is to start posting content or comments. But the problem with the first is that, like in your forwards in the beginning, they are going to be your friends, your family, and your colleagues. And I doubt that in this community, they are your buyers or your investors or whatever you’re looking at on LinkedIn, right? So even if you write the best post in the world about something you do, your reach will be very limited, and the chances others will notice you and your content and how great you are are very slim. That’s why I have been preaching this for a long time. Of course, I have been researching this for the last nine months, and I can 100% stay behind my words. And it is that when you’re starting on LinkedIn, it’s actually better to start commenting than writing content. And this may surprise many people. But let me repeat what I said a few seconds ago: when you post the content, and you have a small forward base, your reach is limited, but with your comments, you can grow your reach exponentially because with your comments, you can go in the audience of every person that you engage with and this is your opportunity to shine. And when you engage with someone, they see part of your headline. And if you write it in a great way, you attract them to your profile. And this is how you start the connections, and the opportunities will start knocking on your door. And that’s why commenting is getting more and more needed. Suppose you want to achieve some goals on LinkedIn. But if you just want to post content because you’re right, you love writing and things like that, forget about commenting. It’s not for you, even though you will become a better content writer when you start commenting, and it’s just one of the benefits. But if you want to achieve your business goals, you need to comment more, and I’ll give you one more reason recently: There has been an update to the algorithm of LinkedIn. Now, it has more than a billion users, and it has been getting more and more people writing content, and because of that, their impressions are going down for almost everyone. And second, LinkedIn has started pushing its premium program, which is the paid program, paid subscription to LinkedIn. And because of it, when you start on LinkedIn, you can send just ten connection requests per month. So, if you want others to use their ten connection requests, go and engage with them, and then they will come and use their ten connection requests to connect with you. And this is how you have an unlimited amount of connection requests.
Ryan: I love that because, yeah, I mean, we’re talking about marketing in the digital age right now, right? We talk to great people; maybe we’re talking there are listeners here that are part of huge enterprises, Fortune 100 corporations, and things like that where you go. Well, this isn’t necessarily an issue for me. Still, a lot of our listeners are in start-ups, they’re in small industries, maybe they’re a dentist’s office that’s trying to level up their digital marketing, or they’re part of a, a med spa or part of a, whatever it is. There are all sorts of different ways where you go. Well, I need to do this cost-efficiently, or you’re a small tech company. I’m starting up; I need to do this cost-efficiently. I need to get my message out there. As we said, you have to get found, and you have to have people choose you; this kind of combines those two things of being able to be creative in ways where they can find you because you’re putting yourself out there more and more, and you’re creating exposure. But then, it also shows why people should choose you and talk to you and connect and network with you, right? So, that’s a lot about the evolution of digital marketing. It used to have a web page, then it had a web page and optimized it correctly. So now you’ve got to optimize it, create content, and show expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
All these pieces that Google loves to see so that you rank. So it’s leveling up and up and more and more. We’ve talked about it with AI; what else do you see the future of digital marketing holding? Like you’re now when you are consulting with people, what are the things where you’re saying? Great. If you really want to get ahead besides the things like commenting and using all of the tools that we’ve discussed, are there things out there that you’re noticing that are, hey, great? These are really tools that should be table stakes these days, but people haven’t quite embraced them yet.
Bogomil: Absolutely. I won’t start listing specific AI tools, but here’s the deal: AI won’t replace you; it’s the people who effectively use AI that might. When I offer advice, I always emphasize the importance of learning how to use AI properly. Soon, just relying on traditional methods might not cut it, and those who harness the right AI tools will likely outperform and, unfortunately, potentially take over your role.
AI won’t become the ultimate marketer and handle everything on its own—at least not in the near future, maybe in 10, 20, or 30 years. But for now, those who master its use will be the ones replacing us. One thing to note is that due to AI and the growing number of enthusiasts incorporating it into their digital marketing, replicating marketing campaigns has become easier and more cost-effective. It’s a changing landscape, for sure. But there is one thing that no AI can’t replicate because you can hire the same influencers. In most of the cases, you can hire the same websites to post your ads. You can hire the same guest posters to write the guest post for you when you know what your competitor is doing. But there is one thing that no competitor can do, and it is steal your personal brand. No AI can do that, and there will be no AI that can do that. That’s why it is getting more and more needed to start building your personal brand now and not just count on your amazing product with your amazing features. Because your product can be replaced in one week, there are very small chances that it will not be able to be replicated by an AI tool. So that’s why it is getting more and more important for people to start showing up more and more, no matter if it is LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter, but to be out there and show their authority, knowledge, experience, tips to the world so people can start falling in love with them.
Conclusion
Ryan: I love it. That’s fantastic. I wanted to wrap up there, but now I have another one I have to ask because it’s just so incredibly important to brand identity; building your brand is easier said than done when you’re coaching someone to do that, right? We’re focusing on what your purpose is, first of all. And who are you? But it comes down to communicating that story, right? And how do you coach people to do that? Because there are a lot of pitfalls. There are a lot of people who know what they do, but they don’t know how to communicate it or whatever it is or tell their story. How do you get someone to start there? I could talk to you for an hour here. So this is it. I promise I won’t keep you for sure. But this question is really important because brand identity, brand purpose, and brand messaging, as you said, are so key. How do you coach someone to start? We could do a whole podcast on it. How do you coach someone to start that?
Bogomil: Yeah. Absolutely. I want to mention before. I answer your question that, currently, I am mainly coaching people about how to be great commenters. I stay away from charging people for consulting about personal branding on LinkedIn because, for me, commenting is the place where I can shine. But what I know has worked for me, and based on my experience over there, is the first and most important question that most people forget. It may sound strange, and probably too surprised everyone is not your brand. It’s not your brand. It will never be about your brand. Actually, the thing that everyone should start if, of course, he or she wants a long-term result is to start with why you want to build this brand. Why do you want to be out there? Answer this question or two, these two questions, and all the questions that start with why and are related to yourself, then start working on your brand. And you will see that it’s very easy to figure out the other questions because sometimes you ask your question. OK. I’m building this brand and how I’m going to show it to the world, and you can’t answer this question. You start researching your competition, you start reading books, you start reading articles, and then you feel that something is missing and that this is not your brand. This is not how you want to look and how you want to present yourself, and the reason is that behind this brand, it’s not you; the research is the competitors, the articles, and it’s not you. But when you have asked yourself the important why questions before you start this research, then you see your competitors are presenting themselves as a solution for the best mouse in the world. But you don’t see that this actually makes sense to you. You want to look and show in front of people as the brand that is helping people protect their hands from being hours on their mouths. So, for you, health is more important than building the most amazing mouse. But you wouldn’t know that if you hadn’t answered the question, why do I want to do that? And when you know, I do that because I want to help people to have better help. And this is what makes me wake up every morning. Then, all the brand questions will come to you very easily. Otherwise, you’ll be struggling, and you won’t be feeling that you are doing the right thing. I was not able to answer your question in the most direct way.
Ryan: yeah, I think that was perfect because, you know, I’ve always gone by that same with whether it’s marketing or sales, I’ve gone by the same thing of the order of questions that you have to again provide value for is starting with why would you choose someone differently? Why now? What would be the impact of doing it now? Why would you wait? And then why us? Why would you choose us not? Why us? And then here’s the, so you’re exactly right. If you can answer why people should change and the impact of doing it now, the why us becomes the natural story underneath it. I really like that. That’s a great point to close on from that perspective. I want to let people know how they can find you, how they can learn more about you, and, you know, tap into that knowledge and learn more about Commentor.ai as well. So, tell our audience how they can get in touch with your LinkedIn, I’m assuming, right?
Bogomil: There you go. Absolutely. I’m online every day on Linked In, sharing all that I know for free with my comments on my posts. So, of course, in my DMs, too. If people want to know more about how to become better commenters, then they should check my profile and then ask me specific questions. I’m more than happy to help them. If they want to become better commenters, they should start commenting more, and commenter.ai has been built with this idea to help people become better commenters. And we have built an exclusive community where I am guiding people and giving feedback on their comments so they can become better commenters faster.
Ryan: Perfect. That’s a great place for us to close on. Thank you so much, digital marketing specialist consultant and commenter AI lead there. That is the perfect guest for us to have for today on this; as I mentioned, we uncovered about another dozen podcast topics that we could continue on. So we haven’t seen the last of each other on here. So we’ll be talking again. I hope I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for joining the tech business Roundtable today,
Bogomil: thank you very much for having me and for the great questions.
Ryan: It was an amazing pleasure. I’m saying this again because I truly feel it. Thank you so so much. Take a minute here to thank Bogomil one more time for this amazing podcast marketing in the digital age. And I also want to thank our listeners. We can’t do what we do without you. So, until we meet again with another TBR episode, I’m your host, Ryan Davies. Thanks so much. Take care out there.