Leveraging Digital Marketing

Brian Beck:
Hello everyone. Brian Beck here, author of Billion Dollar B2B Ecommerce. I'm thrilled to welcome you to session six of our Virtual Book Tour series for my book. I wrote this book to give B2B companies a playbook for eCommerce success as they engage in digital transformation. So you can find out a little more about the book here at billiondollarb2becommerce.com. The book is also available on amazon.com in paperback, ebook and audiobook formats. So really excited about today's session. We've had quite a few sessions so far. Here's the series at a glance. We have five sessions we've already gone through, really everything from leadership and alignment through aligning sales channels. And we had some great guests on these sessions. So I hope you take a look at them and share them. You will learn a lot as you listen to practitioners who have been successful in their digital transformation.

Brian Beck:
Today, we're going to be talking all about digital marketing, and once you have the foundation established for your business in eCommerce, what do you do next? How do you drive traffic and engage with customers in places where they're looking for products, services, and expertise in your industry? A lot of that we're going to be talking about, and I'm thrilled to be joined today by Dan Gdowski from Big Ass Fans and Greg Lord from Elastic Path. I'll introduce Greg and Dan in just a few minutes, but first I want to share some context. Today, we're going to be talking again about marketing. This is chapter eight in the book, and there's seven chapters prior to this, and there's good reason for that. The organization and foundational elements of building an eCommerce foundation are critical before you engage in digital marketing. But once you get to that point, we're going to talk about all the things you can do to drive relevant traffic and stay in front of your customers. I'll share some context first, and then we're going to get into our discussion.

Brian Beck:
So the B2B marketing funnel is now very heavily digitized, and many B2B companies don't realize just how active their customers are in using the web for things like searching. 90% of B2B buyers use search in the process of engaging with companies, as well as finding products. Up to 70% of the buying processes already completed before a buyer even contact a supplier, and 55% of B2B buyers will make half or more of their purchases online in 2020. These are things that some businesses are surprised to find, but if you think about it, 75% of the workforce will be millennials within just a few years. These people are digital natives, and they go to the web first to find products.

Brian Beck:
Digital marketing channels and tactics. What's in your toolkit as a digital marketer? Well, there's actually quite a few and many of these channels have been proven in the B2C side of things for many years, two decades in fact. Things like search engine optimization. This is on Google primarily, and it's a way for companies to make sure that your products are showing up in Google search engine results when people search for your product name, your brand name, or your category of products. Paid search, this is paying for click, it's paying for positioning inside of Google, and it's done on a keyword by keyword basis. There's a whole science around this. We'll talk about this with Dan.

Brian Beck:
Content marketing. How do you use content in a digitized format to really reinforce your authority in your industry category and reach new buyers through these digital marketing channels? Online display and remarketing. If you've ever been followed around the internet by an ad after you visit a website and see that product following you, let's say you're on cnn.com or something, that is called retargeting, and that's a technique that's used to keep your product and brands top of mind with your customer.

Brian Beck:
Email is something that many B2B companies use regularly, but often don't use it in a way that really can be fully leveraged for driving sales through an eCommerce channel. We'll talk about that. Amazon and other marketplaces have become a primary place that B2B buyers go to buy products, but also to research. So it's an important part of a marketing mix. Affiliate marketing is a way to provide a commission and almost create a digital sales force for your company across the web. These are companies that refer traffic to your website and you give them a piece of the sale. It's an interesting way to reward influencers and authorities in your category and industry. Social media has application, things like LinkedIn. How do you maintain and reinforce your authority in your industry category by leveraging even Facebook and other social media channels?

Brian Beck:
Loyalty is a very important part of any marketing mix and that's true of digital channels as well. And then finally marketing automation. Buyers these days have very little patience, if you think about your own activity and you're on your mobile phones constantly and you're being distracted, well, you have to really connect quickly with your customer and maintain their attention and engage with them, and marketing automation helps you do that, through drip campaigns and other types of approaches that allow you to stay relevant to your customer with great content and products. Digital marketing really reaches buyers at every level. Those tactics I just talked about and the marketing funnel here on the right, which again is awareness all the way down through advocacy for your product. Those tactics I just mentioned map to different stages of the buyer's journey and working with your product and learning about you and your brand.

Brian Beck:
Even down to the point of advocacy, how do they use these digital channels to, for example, share their great experience with your brand and your products? There are real ways to leverage these throughout the entire process to deepen your customer relationships. So we're going to talk about those. And in the book I have... This is actually my longest chapter I think. I have a lot of detail about how to use these different marketing tools for your business. And marketing budgets are shifting towards digital. This is a study from a few years ago from a company called Selligent. They interviewed several hundred B2B executives and wanted to understand where budgets were shifting, and really the results are dramatic, this is straight out of the book. Email marketing, social media, online display, digital channels are growing in the amount and attention they're getting from an investment perspective, whereas traditional channels are getting less dollars. So you're seeing a shift here towards digital channels, and there's good reason for this. Again, it's where the customer is and companies are realizing they need to stay in front of the customer in these digital channels.

Brian Beck:
And the marketing mix is important. And I'd love to tell you there's one silver bullet that you do this and your website and your brand, and all the rest will get lots and lots of attention on the web, but quite frankly, it's a mix of things. And this chart on the right here, this is information from eMarketer, which shows that the channels that are used by both B2C and B2B marketers are remarkably similar; email, social media, SEO. The point here is at a balanced and diversified approach is necessary. And you want to leverage the best practices from B2C. And we're going to find out more from Dan on how Big Ass Fans is doing that in a few minutes.

Brian Beck:
Email though does remain one of the top-performing channels. A lot of folks don't realize that email gets a 40:1 return. That means a dollar spent generates $40 in return to you, a very efficient marketing channel. But again, to my point earlier, marketing really needs to begin after you have a solid digital foundation, you don't want to send traffic to a website that is not optimized for eCommerce or for your other purposes, such as lead generation. One of the things that are happening in this mix is that marketplaces are growing very quickly. A good case in point here is Amazon Business. A lot of folks don't realize what's happening there.

Brian Beck:
Marketplace it's a marketplace on Amazon that's dedicated to customers and sellers of B2B products. It's not a separate website, it's the same website. You get a B2B login and you can then experience different things like pricing differences, discount pricing, buying on terms from Amazon, et cetera. Amazon is accommodating traditional B2B workflows. Amazon's Business was founded in 2015 and it's grown dramatically in just four years. They crossed 16 billion in sales. It's growing at 20% a month and it's expected to reach over 52 billion by 2023 according to RBC Capital Markets. That makes it, guys sanity check, makes it four times the size of Granger. Okay?

Brian Beck:
So this is becoming a major influence and it's not only Amazon, it's really the value that a marketplace model brings to sellers and really to buyers of products in this new B2B eCommerce driven economy. Amazon Business has over two million registered buyers, are adding quite a few weekly. They have very large corporate accounts. They signed up US government, universities, municipalities, large buying groups, they've integrated to over 80 procurement systems. So what is this resulting in? Well, 50%, this is as of August last year, 50% of B2B buyers make at least 10% of their work purchases on Amazon Business. So look, this is an example of how the world is evolving, right? And changing. And we're going to talk to Dan in a few minutes about what Big Ass Fans is doing with Amazon, but with other channels as well.

Brian Beck:
So I've been talking for a while now. My name is Brian Beck, as you know I'm the author of Billion Dollar B2B Ecommerce. I'm also the managing partner at a company called Sabio. And that last slide I showed you is right on point with what we do. We help companies manage their Amazon Business programs. In particular, we have a focus on B2B and I also do advisory work through Beck Ecommerce helping companies with their overall income strategy. So I am so thrilled to be joined today by Dan Gdowski. Dan and I have, I don't know, five, six years of history together. I've worked with Big Ass Fans several times, Dan. So I'm super excited, because all this stuff is right on point with what you live day to day. You want to say hi to everyone and introduce yourself.

Dan Gdowski:
Hey guys, as Brian said, my name's Dan Gdowski, and I'm the Senior Director of Marketing and Revenue Management at Big Ass Fans. Look forward to talking to you about this stuff, it's a very interesting time that we live in and it should be a great discussion.

Brian Beck:
Yeah. Thank you, Dan for joining us. And Greg, I'm super stoked you're on as well, an industry veteran. Tell us about your background.

Greg Lord:
Thanks Brian. Hello, everyone. Really thrilled to be a part of the series and to be the sponsor of this book tour has just been an honor for Elastic Path. As the head of marketing in Elastic Path, I think a lot of the things you talked about in the intro Brian really ring true, right? Having been in the B2B software space for 20 years, seeing the shift in terms of how customers buy and the move to digital it's such an exciting opportunity, but also presents so much challenge in terms of how do we take advantage of it. So that's the world that I live in every day as a marketer in Elastic Path, and really excited to have the discussion today in a way that hopefully be relevant for all the other B2B marketers out there.

Brian Beck:
Fantastic. Yeah, no, Greg, I think we're going to have a great discussion today. So I'm going to put us into fireside chat mode here. We have no buyer, but we have a fan. Dan, what's that behind your head there? That's a Haiku, right?

Dan Gdowski:
Yeah. That is a Big Ass Fans Haiku. It's a part of our residential and commercial line.

Brian Beck:
Yeah. I love your products and I think it's such a fun name too. I often tell the story of, hey, we're working with this company called Big Ass Fans. What's fascinating is a lot of people know the name and it's because you guys are in airports and arenas and all kinds of public spaces, it's not just about industrial use, although that's a big part of the business, right? Tell us more about the business. Tell us about who are you guys traditionally sold from, the products, just a bit about who the brand is, who the company is?

Dan Gdowski:
Sure. So Big Ass Fans is actually the world's largest manufacturer of what we call HVLS ceiling fans. An HVLS fan stands for High Velocity Low Speed. And what that means is we build really big fans, right? Fans that can be 18-20 feet. And with that large diameter even though they're moving at slightly slower speeds, they equate to moving a ton of air. So it's a great way to transform your workplace into a more comfortable environment, one that keeps your team cool and focused on the job. And then the other benefit really is that they help with your bills. So with Big Ass Fans you can save up to 30% on your energy bills. We're in our 21st year. Our worldwide headquarters is located in beautiful Lexington, Kentucky.

Brian Beck:
Good Bourbon.

Dan Gdowski:
Yes. I actually drive through all the Bourbon facilities on the way in on highway in the morning.

Brian Beck:
Nice.

Dan Gdowski:
So it's definitely a nice partner to have in the State. But yeah, we're 21 years in and we've had the privilege of becoming the market leader in that time. And we sold into over 175 countries. So we're most definitely a worldwide company. You're right, most people experience our products at work, in public spaces like airports, auditoriums, distribution centers, and certainly manufacturing facilities are a big one for us. In addition to the large overhead fans that many people have seen around out in public spaces at work we also have a line of directional fans of operative coolers, which are a new addition to our lineup. And then lastly, what you can see over my shoulder here is our residential and commercial lines. So we sell a line of products called Haiku and Isis that fit perfectly in just about anybody's home, but also any commercial or office space.

Brian Beck:
I think that's awesome. And you guys have traditionally sold B2B, right? And then some B2C, but mostly through resellers and a direct sales force, right?

Dan Gdowski:
Yeah, a lot of the story over the first 18 or so years of the company was that we were operating under a direct model, and that's really changed for us in the last two to three years. We've really opened the doors to the rest of the world and great partners like Granger, Amazon, we have a whole league of distribution partners around the country. So it's really helping us get our products and our brand out there to a wider audience and meeting the buyer wherever they may be.

Brian Beck:
Yeah, no, that's great. And I have to ask just because it's... Where Dan does the name come from? Just tell us about the evolution of the name, it's just so funny.

Dan Gdowski:
Yeah. It's a pretty funny story actually, and it's indicative of our wider culture that drives the business even today in terms of listening to our customers. So we originally started back in 1999 as the HVLS fan company, which really rolls off the tongue, right?

Brian Beck:
Yeah, that's right.

Dan Gdowski:
But as the business started to grow we would obviously talk to our customers quite a bit and get their feedback and their voicing on the product and how things were going. And a lot of times when new customers would call the first question out of their mouth would be, are you the guys that sell those big ass fans? So there was really an epiphanal moment for the team back in those days in the late 90, early 2000s of seeing that we had a real opportunity to brand. And it's very rare that a company gets that chance, but we were very fortunate to do that. A lot of times at the office we often joke that that's probably the single best marketing move that any of us will have ever made in the history of the company.

Brian Beck:
Perhaps the history in all business, right?

Dan Gdowski:
Right.

Brian Beck:
That's great, man. That's funny. Yeah. Listen to the customer and that's awesome. But you've also Dan been charged with evolving the brand, right? I mean, that's a fun name and you guys have embraced it, but also you're a serious engineering company. And part of the marketing role is digital and not digital, is to really evolve that. And I know you've done just a fantastic job of that. Tell us about that a little bit from a marketing perspective?

Dan Gdowski:
Yeah. So it's never done, right? It's always been an ever evolving process. And I think that's true of digital marketing in general. The industry has changed so much even over the last five years but it's a fun place to be as a professional because you're constantly learning. At Big Ass Fans we've had probably three or four iterations over the last 10 or 15 years of all of our digital programs, including eCom. You're right, we worked with Brian to settle in on a new eCommerce platform and I'm happy to report that's gone exceedingly well. So, and then we've got a great team internally. We've got an internal in-house model. So we have a group of about 20 people that are all working on our marketing efforts, most of which are digital minded and they help us get through those iterations and develop those programs. I would say we have a really mature program. So we have programs for social, we have programs for digital display advertising and remarketing search engine programs, email programs, all of that winding up into a wider content marketing play. So it's really a full stack marketing channel effort.

Greg Lord:
Love it. That's awesome. Actually, on that thread around the marketing, I'd love to dig a little bit more into that and specifically, so for Big Ass Fans, you guys have been at this for a while now, right? But for organizations that may be really just trying to launch into digital marketing, what are some of the foundational elements that you found a really critical to have in place before you can really go and be successful at launching those digital marketing efforts?

Dan Gdowski:
Yeah, Greg that's a great question. I think we alluded to it a little bit at the front. I think good marketing in any channel is really clear and simple marketing. People that are just getting into this I think often fall into the trap of trying to be clever versus clear. So in everything we put out, we really focus on distilling that message down to its core, which for us is telling our customers that you can have a fundamentally different workplace with our products, we can really help drive comfort and that'll help you with things like retention energy savings and just having a great place to work. So really just keeping things simple I think is where 99% of other businesses can really have problems and run into confusion.

Dan Gdowski:
People are really time-starved, so it's important to get your message distilled down to that basic core value, and then understand how to carry it into some of these channels. The other thing I would say as it pertains to digital marketing is you really want to think about it in terms of the funnel that Brian showed. At the top of that funnel you want a very generalist message about what you provide as a company. But when you're getting into the lower parts of that funnel, you really want to be honing that message in talking about more material things, things like feature sets and tech specs and the good details that are really going to help people pull the trigger and purchase your product.

Greg Lord:
Well, I love that because reality is the channels are always changing, right? And so what I am hearing it's to the core of what's that value prop you're trying to communicate via the channel, focus on that, and then you can figure out what are the right channels to actually get that message out to your target customer.

Dan Gdowski:
Absolutely. So something like social may be something where we really push showing customers that have bought our products and are having a good experience, or some top line benefits of our products, whereas something a little bit more down the funnel, like digital advertising, maybe a little more nuanced to the products that a potential lead is focused on.

Brian Beck:
I shared earlier Dan, this speaks to one of the slides I showed earlier about mix. And I know you guys have done a lot, you mentioned it a few minutes ago with all the different pieces of digital marketing; SEO, PPC, pay-per-click, email, other things. Tell us about that mix for you. How has that played out in terms of the things that have worked well, and just what does your mix look like as you go to market?

Dan Gdowski:
Yeah, I think if you look at the scope of what Big Ass Fans has done on the marketing side it really looks a lot like the B2C marketing campaign. There's this idea in B2B that you can't be outside the lines or that you have to be a little bit more straight and narrow because it's a business offering, but at the end of the day we're selling to people and they all have senses of humor and they're all working hard from nine to five. So for us, it's really been more of a traditional B2C campaign focus. Now you're right, it is a little bit different in the sense that for us we have products that fit into nearly any space. So our overhead fans for example are much more geared B2B, whereas our Haiku product, which is over my shoulder is a little bit more focused for commercial spaces, residences, homes, places where people get home at night and eat and live and are resting.

Dan Gdowski:
So for us, it really breaks out into understanding, okay, what products are we attacking into the market? What does that customer look like? And how does that approach shift? So something like NVLS fan, our powerful fan for example, is a little bit more straight forward and a little bit more geared towards the value proposition, whereas something like a Haiku fan is definitely focused on comfort at home features and settings that help people control those fans in a real easy way.

Greg Lord:
Yeah. It's so interesting Dan as you describe the focus for Big Ass Fans as being almost more like a traditional B2C go to market, right? And as a lot of these lines blur, which I agree, I do believe that a lot of those lines are blurring in terms of how people buy and think about their experience as a commerce transaction. But I'm curious, are there any tried and true tactics that you've found for either audience, as we think about the pure B2B or the pure B2C, just curious if there's anything you've developed in the playbook that would lend really more towards one or the other.

Dan Gdowski:
I love it all, Greg. When you have a really unique product in the marketplace it does a lot of the work for you. But that being said, we've obviously seen a lot of success in more areas than others. For me, I really love email. I'm not sure that we've seen the 40:1 that Brian mentioned earlier.

Brian Beck:
50:1 to 60, of course.

Dan Gdowski:
But we do very, very well there. And it's a great medium to keep a consistent cadence with your customer and show them about the things that you're doing and how you can help them win in their businesses. I still love digital brochures, I love printed brochures. Even if you can't win them over an email or an initial phone call, if you can put them into a cadence where they're consistently seeing your products you can help drive them towards a brand preference hopefully for you. And they may not have the problem with heat in their workplace today, but in six months something may happen and they may think, well, who can help me with this? And that's where we'll be right there on the basis of really having marketed that stuff.

Brian Beck:
That's really-

Greg Lord:
I think that's a key point. Oftentimes we get wrapped up in, well, I'm going to send an email and someone's going to open it and they're going to buy a product, right? That's second, right? And the reality is that's not always how it works, but you're building a relationship with someone over time. And that I think is key. And it comes back to your comment a few minutes ago around really the channels will change, but what's that core message that you want to distribute, and whether it's email or something else, you can get it out to them in lots of different ways. I think that's a powerful way to think about it, for sure.

Brian Beck:
Yeah. Great discussion guys. Yeah, so ahead Dan. Sorry.

Dan Gdowski:
Well, I was going to add that the analogy that we use in-house is that, when you were a teenager and you started dating, you don't propose to the person on the first date, right? You build that relationship. You may date for several years, you may have a longer term relationship before-

Greg Lord:
You get to know them.

Dan Gdowski:
... yeah, you seal that deal and potentially propose or get married or whatever works for you. So I think it's nuts to think that you're going to close the deal on the first attempt. And sometimes that happens and that's when as marketers we all high five and crack a beer and congratulate ourselves. But the reality is we know that there's a lot of effort and a lot of touches through that process. So it's working through the planning of all that and understanding, okay, if we're playing a short to long term game, what things materially work across what channels and markets and how do we develop that mix to be really efficient?

Greg Lord:
I mean, you said before Dan, do it in a way where people today, we're all busy, right? The attention spans are low, the time to sit down and really read something, there's just not a lot of it available. So how do you just really cut through it all and get to the point of why someone should care, right? Like what are you trying to tell them that they should pay attention to? And to me, that is a lot of what the art of this is, is really distilling it down to that core message in the fewest number of words possible, and then figuring out how to get it out there and doing it in a way that builds trust, right? Your relationship example is a good one where you're building trust over time to the point at which someone's ready to buy. They say, I know this company, I trust them, and I believe the product is the right fit for my needs. And that's not something that can happen necessarily in one email sent as an example. So I really liked the way that Big Ass Fans thinks about that. I think it's great.

Brian Beck:
A hundred percent agree guys. I think it's like what I was talking about at the beginning of this related to marketing automation and just it's really in some ways, particularly Dan, and I don't know what you've seen, but in terms of it's developing a relationship, staying in touch and making sure you're top of mind when the need is there and when they're ready to buy, right? And so that's what a lot of this is about. Yeah. So that's good. And Dan I'm curious, we've worked a bit on the Amazon side too, one of the things a lot of folks don't realize is that Amazon specifically is getting now 70% of product search across B2B and B2C segments, definitely B2C, increasing in B2B.

Brian Beck:
And how do you think about when you think about your marketing spend and you think about an Amazon presence for a branded manufacturer like you, and what role does that play with the world of Google for better or worse is now smaller than it was in terms of product search. It's now down to, I think 20, 25% of product searches starting there, which is the reverse of where it was just five years ago, right? Where they were getting the bulk of product searches. And so anyway, how do you think about Amazon and your marketing spend there and your presence there relative to the rest of your marketing mix?

Dan Gdowski:
Boy, they're really coming aren't they?

Brian Beck:
Yeah.

Dan Gdowski:
I think back to when I got started in my career-

Brian Beck:
At my door every day, but seriously, yeah, go ahead.

Dan Gdowski:
... in the early 2000s and Google was the only game in town. And I think since around 2010 give or take a couple of years it's been very apparent to anybody that's a professional in this industry that the rules are changing and they're changing very quickly. So for us, it's really convenient because we want to get our name out there in every channel that we potentially have a customer in, and knowing that Amazon's built a fantastic platform that they are just taking over the world in terms of logistics and smarts and planning around those things, it's a great opportunity us. So it you're right, it has impacted how we plan particularly in the last three or four years on the B2B side. Our attitude is if a customer is happier buying our product on Amazon, we're happy to meet them there. If they'd like a little bit more of a direct experience, we've put a lot of time and effort into our website. We've got a fantastic team out here at Big Ass Fans in Lexington and around the world that's happy to talk to them.

Dan Gdowski:
So it's a relationship that requires a little bit more time and discussion. We can facilitate that. But where we love Amazon is that it really helps us bang that hammer faster. And so in sum I would say it's really a piece of the bigger puzzle. If you've got a relationship with Granger we sell through Granger and they've got some fantastic people out there that have been a great help to us and their customer base. And as I said earlier, we've got a team of distributors around the country. So yeah, that's the wrap up of that.

Brian Beck:
So it fits in a part of the mix, but it's not the only channel, it's one of several, right? It's interesting. Yeah. I like to say that if a manufacturer differentiates on product like you guys do, Amazon in some ways is the change in distribution. And it's just another distributor, basically, right?

Dan Gdowski:
Absolutely.

Brian Beck:
There's some nuance behind that, but I think it's a healthy approach you have there.

Greg Lord:
So Dan would love to talk about content, and that's something with the marketing team at Elastic Path is a big focus for us, focusing on B2B buyers. Curious, we talked a lot about the message that goes into the content, but how do you think about the craft of content marketing, and maybe a little bit of how that's evolved for Big Ass Fans over the last few years?

Dan Gdowski:
Yeah, the way it's evolved is consideration of that buying funnel. Greg, I think one of the big changes for us has been that in the old days it was a little bit more what we call spray and pray. We have that core value proposition and we just blasted across every channel we can get. And as digital has matured, as our capacity to target customers that are in consideration through different phases has changed, these channels really allow you to have more nuance to your approach. So as I said earlier, we can start very broadly at the top of the funnel with something like social. And then as we see the moving through that funnel, we can get a little bit more complicated with, for example, we may know that they're interested in directional fans, and from there we have a good feel probably where they're going to be in the country and what problems they're going to have in their business.

Dan Gdowski:
And so really it becomes a logical extension of what's common in our sales calls. In fact, a lot of times we spend a lot hours with our sales team talking about, hey, for the ERI, which is one of our mounted and pedestal fans. What common problems do you see with your customers putting these in, how is it helping them? What are they running into in the course of getting these things in and hearing from their employees? So we really take that and work backwards to work through our content plan and figure out, okay, at each level of this funnel, in each of these channels, what's the messaging that works? And so that's been a big change for us. And I think that's where you graduate to being a true professional in channel marketing and B2B marketing from being an entry level program.

Greg Lord:
I love that. It's interesting because it aligns to something similar we've done it Elastic Path, where I had the team read a book called They Ask You Answer. And really the spirit of this is, yeah, I can see you may heard this one. The spirit of this is, figure out all the questions that your sales team or your support team gets asked by prospects and by customers, and then create content that answers those questions, right? Because as Brian talked about so much of the research and the education happens before they even talk to the vendors, that if you can put content out there that answers the questions that we know buyers have, by the time they talk to you, you're already going to have built a relationship with them, they're going to know you and you're going to have been helpful to them through that journey.

Greg Lord:
I just think that the comment you made about really identifying all the common questions that they get asked in the support process, right? If you can address those things throughout your content, it really does give you the upper hand in the market because people are going to find you sooner, find helpful answers to the things they're thinking about, right? And then you'll be able to hopefully engage with them in a purchase opportunity. So yeah, love, that makes a ton of sense.

Dan Gdowski:
Yeah. It really just boils down to know thy customer, right? And I spoke a little bit at the front about the idea of you really have to have a product with a strong value proposition. And the only way you get to that on the engineering side is to really listen to what the market's telling you on the front side. And so many businesses maybe get a little success at the front and they think they've defined what they are, but really for us it's an iterative process, we're always going back and challenging the assumptions that we've made and thinking about how that's going to inform our marketing pitch specifically in digital knowing that it's an environment that we can really test in and get quick feedback. And so definitely agree with you there.

Greg Lord:
Agreed. Yeah, I love it. So we talk a lot about digital, but I'd love to maybe take a broader view for a few minutes today Dan and really talk about traditional marketing channels, like maybe print or trade shows and how you figure the right balance of those more analog or offline marketing channels versus some of the newer digital channels and finding the right balance between all of those, the full mix.

Dan Gdowski:
Sure. And I think with the tremendous change of digital over the last 20 years it's easy for people to think that it's an either or proposition. Digital is really, really attractive because you can see everything that's going on. You can attribute your revenue coming in through those channels in a much more accurate way that than we could in traditional media. And so that is really a big stake in terms of understanding where it used to be over the last 80, 90 years of, hey, I'm going to put a billboard up or I'm going to put an ad in the newspaper and I'm just going to hope that revenue goes up. But I think the reality is, is that a discipline marketing program is really going to counter off both traditional and digital approaches.

Dan Gdowski:
For us, we are very digital heavy but we still do a lot of traditional, there are a lot of trade publications that are great for our products. We advertise in a lot of home living magazines. We've done billboards. We've done a lot of media buys in terms of television and set top box or the air placements. For us in the more recent history of things we've really focused on digital. And again, that's because we just get such great granular detail. It really drives efficiency of spend. But I think the important thing to remember is that you can't go too far to the digital side because at the end of the day, people don't just consume digital media, right? We still watch as Americans a lot of TV every day, so that's an opportunity. We still have a lot of trade magazines, so that's an opportunity. So going back to our earlier point, it's really blending all those touches in across a consideration cycle that you want to keep in mind and be thinking about.

Greg Lord:
I like that approach. And I'd love it if you would be willing to talk a little bit about how Big Ass Fans thinks about the measurement attribution for those more traditional channels, because as you mentioned, the digital stuff, that's the beauty of it, right? Everything's so trackable, but a lot of things I hear from my peers at other businesses is they're struggling to get buy-in with our leadership team because there's always this belief of like, well, marketing is a waste of money, how are we going to know if it's actually working or not? So I'm curious to hear how Big Ass Fans has measured things that are not your pure digital activities.

Dan Gdowski:
Yeah, there's a great quote from Drucker, who's one of Warren Buffet's guys, it's what gets measured gets managed, and that discipline in corporate America at times can slide and knowing that digital is a predominantly new platform, it's really a struggle for a lot of companies. For us in terms of attribution, we build in the plan to measure things at the front, as easy as it is to light up a Facebook campaign or a Google Ad Words campaign. We don't do that until we see that the test numbers that we're putting through match the reality of our financial reports. So it's really critical to make sure that you're getting good data at the front, otherwise you can't make good decisions.

Dan Gdowski:
So for us, that boils down to discipline of planning and then it also really boils down to your people. A veteran in this industry is typically been working in it for 20 to 30 years, max. So it's pretty new industry in a lot of respects. And if you don't have a good partner, whether it be an agency or somebody locally, a smaller regional agency or an internal team like we have a full of people that you trust it's a great way to spend a lot of money very quickly and not be guaranteed a result.

Greg Lord:
Agreed, yeah.

Brian Beck:
Let's look back on that last point there a little bit, you talked about having resources, right? And for a lot of the B2B companies that I'll encounter they'll have they'll have maybe some basics in place. Maybe they have a website, content website. Maybe they have an email marketing program they're sending a newsletter every three months or something. But they're not really doing anything beyond that, that's the extent of their digital. How do you get started? Like what resources would you suggest both in terms of things they can read and look at, but also in terms of agencies and other kinds of resources hiring for this, getting started, what do you need?

Dan Gdowski:
Yeah. If you're just getting into the game and you want to have a very basic understanding of what these different channels and opportunities are, there are a ton of great resources online places like YouTube, you can just go in and type digital marketing, you can type retargeting. And there is some kind soul out there who has spent a half hour putting a video together to explain the very basics.

Brian Beck:
Rights.

Dan Gdowski:
I highly recommend your book. I think you did a great job in then working from that process and talking about the channels.

Brian Beck:
Shameless self-promotion.

Dan Gdowski:
But there are also places like LinkedIn Learning, Udemy, Skillshare, your local Barnes&Noble, if you still go to Barnes&Noble, is a great resource. 20 bucks you can get pretty great resources that will explain how to get into this stuff. If you're looking for stuff more on the marketing and brand side, I love Seth Goden stuff. You can Google Seth and that'll come up. He's got a great book called the Purple Cow, that really talks about the nature of brand and value proposition. Emily Heyward is a new one. She's got a book out called Obsessed. Emily worked over at Red Antler which is a company behind the branding for Casper and Allbirds. And I'm sure most of this audience has probably seen over the last couple of years. That's a fascinating read of how to take the idea, cultivate it, and then push it into channel.

Brian Beck:
Awesome. And so that's educating yourself, and then if you think about what resources do you need, you guys have a team, right? You've also worked with agencies obviously. How would you think about resourcing this once you're getting smart on it. Starting with agencies, leverage them to get going, then hire first, or what are your... These are very specific skill sets, digital marketing, managing Google campaigns, email marketing, you know what I mean?

Dan Gdowski:
Yeah. They can be really complex systems and they can take a lot of time to learn. I liken them a lot of times to engineering, it's a different complexity. I'm certainly not an engineer, but I know that looking at our digital marketing campaigns there's a lot of time and thought and process and testing that goes into these things. So in those cases, an agency can be a really great partner. If there's an opportunity cost to you getting up and running and competing, that's a really great option. We're fortunate enough to have some great people here and we've spent the last two to three years really building out our internal agency. If you can get good people and a lot of times it depends on where you are and what the market will bear, it's a great way to go because you get a crew that really understands the product and a crew that really understands the method.

Dan Gdowski:
Another option is to use both, they don't have to be mutually exclusive. We've had situations where we've seen opportunities in the market and we've brought on an agency, told them about the product and said go while our core team focuses on some of the day to day matters. So there's really just a wealth of knowledge out there, and if you know where to look you can get a good answer.

Brian Beck:
And I'm sure hiring people in the Lexington you'd probably sell the Bourbon too, right? It's a little Bourbon.

Dan Gdowski:
Yeah. There's a running joke in Lexington that if you're anywhere near an agency, it's hard not to be in a situation where you have two or three Bourbon clients. At my last job actually I had the opportunity to work for Four Roses Bourbon. So I'm very partial for anyone out there that wants to get into Bourbon I highly recommend them.

Brian Beck:
Awesome. Thank you for that recommendation taken from a man who is living in Kentucky. Yes. That's authority. Awesome. Well, I like to ask, I ask this of every person who comes on our virtual tour here. So a lot of the folks that are listening on this are just getting into their digital transformation. Maybe they started a few things, they're at stages one or two in their digital maturity. And so then if you had a piece of advice for a CEO who's just getting started in this, what would that advice be?

Dan Gdowski:
Hire experience. Again, you can spend time learning the stuff, you can become very adept at it, but it's really going to eat a lot of your time. And as a CEO, you have a lot of fires and things to pay attention and to mind. Getting a good agency partner, bringing in a consultant to do an audit will really get you from one on the dial to four or five very quickly, because you don't know what you don't know. And if you can have the discipline as a business to bring in an expert and let them help you'll really get up to speed faster. And the second piece is read everything, right? It doesn't hurt to spend 20 minutes a night looking at some of the stuff on YouTube, buying a couple of books, getting yourself educated. It really can make a material difference in how fast you can move into these markets.

Brian Beck:
Yeah, that's good advice. And Greg, I'm curious, I mean, you've been in the business for 20 years. You got to see all kinds of companies. I mean what piece of advice would you give on the B2B side to a CEO?

Greg Lord:
Yeah, the thing that I think is really critical is for the CEO and really top down through the whole organization to be maniacal about how and why their customers buy. The how we've been talking a lot about this with digital transformation, it's constantly changing, right? So I think a lot of business to take for granted. I know how my customers buy, I know the channels they want to use, I know the process they go through. But as Brian talked about, as more and more of the workforce becomes millennial, digital natives, the how people want to buy things is rapidly changing. And so it's not just a point in time, like, "Oh, let's just go do an analysis and then we understand it." Like always constantly understanding how your customers want to buy.

Greg Lord:
And the second piece is why you, right? Like there's a lot of choice out in the market and you really have that handle on why they choose you versus competitor. If you understand those two things, that's to me the foundation for a marketing strategy, right? How do you need to reach them? What's the process you need to take people through and how do you design it in such a way that you're being very clear with them about why they should choose you versus someone else, right? It's not just enough for Big Ass Fans to say we sell fans, right? You've got to do it in a way that is unique to the value prop you're offering, right? And in every business that's unique. So maniacal understanding of how and why people buy, that's my piece of advice.

Brian Beck:
Yeah. That's great too, Greg. I mean, and Dan did you have something to add there? Did you want to add something?

Dan Gdowski:
No, I think Greg's right on the money. I think at the end of the day we're still selling, right? It's just in different contexts. And so the sooner that you can get into this stuff the more comfortable you're going to be in understanding that the picture is constantly evolving. You can't rely on any one channel anymore. So as you place those bets out you're going to have a better feel for what that messaging needs to be and where it needs to be.

Brian Beck:
Yeah. It's interesting guys as you say the customer, right? And I heard that throughout everything you said Dan, and everything you just said Greg, and if I think about who have been some of the most successful businesses in digital. I mean, of course I talk about Amazon, right? And one of the things that Bezos talks about, Jeff Bezos is putting the customer at the center and I'm consistently amazed, they have almost a million employees and I'm consistently amazed at how much they actually really do that. And so I think that is a recipe. And Dan I know you guys have done a fantastic job in doing that. I watched you do it for six years now. And so congratulations on the success you guys are having.

Brian Beck:
So thank you Dan and Greg very much for participating with us today, it's been a great session. My contact information is here, my email, it's my cell phone and feel free to reach out or text me. That's the book website there, you can go and find out more. And then Dan and Greg have been kind enough to list their profiles here, so if you want further information you can go there. So our next session is session seven and it's about creating an online experience in a successful manner and we have Cardinal Health on this session. It's going to be a great one. Matt Wingham is joining me.

Brian Beck:
This session will air at 8:00 AM, as you know the next one all of them are airing at 8:00 AM, and we've got one more following session seven, which is our digital future with Illumina. We're going to be sharing what's coming next in this world and what you can prepare for today, and that's going to be a really, really exciting one as well. You have questions, my email is at the bottom, Meg Purcell from Elastic Path her email is at the bottom. So please reach out. Thank you for joining us and look forward to seeing you next time on the next session of our Virtual Book Tour. Thank you.