Jeremy Weisz 18:10
That started as websites at that point, shockingly, looking back, it may have not been like an easy sell, even for someone like what do I need a website for? Some people were thinking, but started with websites? And then what were the next services that you layered on after that?
Clint Thompson 18:31
Sure. So I started to talk to clients, I did a lot of research on social media at the time. And social media 10 years ago, of course, is very, very new, it was very, very much a communication tool for younger people, it was not necessarily proven at that point as being a business tool, or a networking tool of any type. And I mean, Facebook, any of those LinkedIn, any of those different platforms. So I created some packages and some programs around those Facebook, LinkedIn and I guess at the time it was Instagram, I just really sort of started it up. So they’re all fairly new. And when I went to clients, that’s kind of what the next layer after website was, the natural move was social media.
So we needed to determine we meaning I and whoever else needed to determine the what and the how’s so what would we produce that would be valuable to clients? And then if this is the case, whether it be you know, curated content that we’re taking off the web, which was again 10 years newer, and are created content, how are we going to publish it to make sure A, we don’t upset anyone who may have been the original user that or creator of that and make sure that there’s value there for our client. So a lot of things had to be sort of sussed out. So the biggest challenge of websites actually wasn’t the biggest challenge. We got to talk to new clients.
Social media was, it was a bit of a hoot, actually, because for me, it’s more of a challenge than anything else. When I walk in and talk to a client about social media, they laugh at me and say, no, my kids play on stuff, that’s not for business people. That’s not for real people.
Jeremy Weisz 20:16
And by the way, it’s funny to look back, because the same patterns are today exactly the same patterns, a new social media comes up, no, that’s not for business. My kids are on it. And then slowly over time, businesses, the early adopters tend to win. So it’s the same pattern anyways, yeah, keep going.
Clint Thompson 20:40
Absolutely. But yeah, it’s 100%. It kind of goes through that cycle. Right. So, you know, early majority, and, you know, the early adopters, early majority, and kind of goes through that cycle. But that’s the reality is that it was for, people thought that they didn’t need to be on that it shouldn’t be on that. And it was the wrong audience. The reality is the early adopters who did enough research to find out that, you know what, maybe I’m a physiotherapist. And my business deals with a lot of athletes. These athletes are young and younger now, they’re in their 20s, and late teens, these are the people I want to get involved in my business.
And all of a sudden, it started to take root and started to get some traction. So people would get on board, and we’d show them listen, here’s some of the results from some of our current clients without getting into names and specifics and stuff. But here’s the stuff you can expect. And this was not something that was very targeted back then at all, because this was just organic. This was not advertising was just organic, social media for them. So that kind of was the next step. Beyond that, then we started to grow things, once we had, new personnel, we were able to grow into, and educate ourselves as well into how to do things properly, and to sort of learn from the best, and to sort of take and saying, okay, we can use this no, we’re not going to use that doesn’t work well. Then we started to build things, SEO, and so on, and so forth.
Jeremy Weisz 22:10
What about, so I can see that kind of evolution of the services from web places, social media, social media, gets into content and also gets into paid advertising? Talk about staff. So you started you and your wife in the corner? And then you bring on a developer? What was the evolution of the staff after that?
Clint Thompson 22:37
Sure. So we brought on a developer, and the developer was new, and really wasn’t a developer was a fantastic person. And he was learning while I was learning. As we started to grow, and we needed once we got in, say, a dozen or so new clients, of course, one developer can handle that work. And I was also assisting with I was basically doing the social media myself, my son got involved, and my son who is our marketing director. And he got involved in an early stage. And I guess the big win for me was that he was very technically inclined. And he’s just a voracious reader loves, can’t get enough information. And really, really dug his heels in and started to help us build out a platform that could work that we could scale to work for our businesses to come in and come on board.
So whether it be a platform for web development, creating sort of blocks of documents that can be used, or using certain different types of framings for different frameworks and different types of verticals, a business, or whether it be using utilizing, creating social media content that can be used contextually in different areas, different verticals, he sort of started building all that information, she was very, very instrumental in helping us grow. So that’s kind of where and when he kind of went from a developer to serve a marketing guy who grew into a developer designer, you know, social media expert, and sort of build it from there.
Jeremy Weisz 24:23
And then what about after that?
Clint Thompson 24:25
Well, after that, once we started to grow, we got to the point where we were probably somewhere north of 40 or 50 clients, and then we were like struggling, like most businesses do when you start to develop, and we needed more personnel. So what we started to do is we started to look for more developers and we got more developers and more social media people. We had a proper system in place where we can hire, train, and bring on board slowly, people that can assist us with servicing clients on an ongoing basis. A lot of our business is a repetitive business. Because we put them, we typically have our clients on a program that can help them grow strategically. And that, of course, is growth over time. It doesn’t happen overnight, especially with online and digital search.
So we grew to four or five developers, social media people, three or four or five social media people. And even to the point where we had a production manager, who would manage everything, and ensure that when we started to bring on board, larger clients, that we were doing all the contract work for, she would be involved with ensuring that all the different pieces were in place, new contracts would come in, it would go to the department that would break them apart, whether it be social media, whether it be web developer, whether it be content blogging, the video, and she would break it apart very strategically they ensure and then we would manage that she would manage it that would oversee the whole operation. That’s kind of where we grown to.
Jeremy Weisz 26:09
Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I’m wondering, you mentioned a system in place for onboarding clients and staff, what is the tech stack look like, are you using different project management tools for this using digital platforms? What does your tech stack look like?
Clint Thompson 26:25
So having a marketing director that’s very, very savvy in the online world, we use a number of different first of all, we need to ensure that our communication tools are in place. So we use the typical loans like Slack, and so on. But we also use tools like monday.com, because we’re sort of a one stop sort of sales organization, we don’t have multiple salespeople out in the field, we deal directly with partners and I deal directly with clients myself, we tend to use an in-house proprietary platform as well, that sort of pulls those two other platforms together, that we can manage. We also use other workforce tools that assist us with making sure their stuff stays on schedule.
Jeremy Weisz 27:17
I know, before we hit record, we are talking about partnerships and how important partnerships are. Just talk about how partnerships work into and play a role in DigiHype.
Clint Thompson 27:34
Yeah, partnerships are an essential part, I think of a boutique store like us, simply because we don’t have a salaried or commissioned sales force out there. But we do want to provide the services, not on mass, but to the general SMB, small, medium businesses out there, we want to still be visible, we can do that strategically through a partnership, to use an example of one partnership with a company that’s Canada wide, in fact, North America wide that we deal with, we can actually insert our programs and create certain facilities specific to their clients needs based on their other advertising platforms that they have, because they do have other things other than digital.
So we can assert our products, and their reps can ensure that that becomes part of their strategy when they go forward. And we’ve been very successful in billing that we even deal a lot with IT companies that partner with us, simply because you know, people think that if I’m a programmer, I know digital way. I — you know, digital programmers are very, very intelligent people, very smart people. But at the end of the day, programmers aren’t web developers, programmers are not social media experts. Programmers don’t curate and create content, they don’t blog, many of them don’t. So many of these things content-driven, are done through digital marketing. So we’re able to partner with companies like that, that have those needs. And they run into them all the time. I mean, most IT companies, and we have many of them that we deal with, most of them can’t, don’t have the facility to do any of the social media, any of the web development, any of that sort of work.
So it’s very, very easy for us to step in and have those conversations and we have the conversation in the same boardroom as again a partner. So DigiHype Media is partnering with this IT development company. And we sit down and we speak to their customers needs based on what they currently have, based on a budget that they may have talked to us about or maybe there’s something that we say listen, I basically a budget, this is what we think you should step up to. Or maybe you don’t need to spend that much, which is something you don’t hear too much in the advertising field. But maybe you should look at doing this first and step to the next level, a year from now. So it’s very easy for us to step into a partnership role, and be that sort of professional source of advertising and branding information. And we’ve done many, many different jobs, some even just a branding base. I mean, we’ve won many awards and they call us an advertising agency.
I sort of smile, because there’s a very, very different sort of feel when you say that someone is an advertising agency. I always joke with my clients that we don’t have a cappuccino machine, you have a drip coffee maker in our office. And I say that because, I’m not saying that advertising companies are but you know, we’re, we’re not pretentious. I mean, we’re essentially just, we’re regular people running a small business. And our main goal is to help you succeed, right, the old weekend, we should, we will, sort of motto. And it’s kind of changed us, though, anytime, anywhere at any one, right? Because now we’re dealing with things like programmatic advertising, and so on. And digital out-of-home advertising, which is sort of the next level that we’re, we’re the next step we’ve taken in our evolution.
Jeremy Weisz 31:07
I know people Clint handle partnerships differently with our partners, and maybe some white label. So they don’t know. And some, they’re just open about, yes, this is our preferred partner. And then the other side is, what have you found works and doesn’t work when you’re incentivizing partners to refer you? Because I know people have different programs where here’s what we offer, maybe they work out some kind of compensation model, what have you found, works and doesn’t work when it comes to partnerships?
Clint Thompson 31:49
So, for us, typically, there’s two parts, two answers to that question. One is, is that if we can’t brand to jive media, we’re not interested in partnering. So we’re very different. Now we’re not going to white label, we’re not a white labeling company. We’re a digital marketing advertising company. So we want our brand out there. The second part is we’re going to make it very easy for you to be able to approach us for your clients and with your clients, we’re going to do that, because we’re going to be able to offer up all our pricing specific to your client needs. So you can come to us and say, listen, here’s the areas that we’ve had interest in, right? We know you offer this ABCD, we have clients that want a, b and c, can you assist us with that, I will actually put together a service plan and a pricing plan specific for their company that they can either mark it up however they want, or they can get us involved.
And we can come to an agreement that listens realistically, don’t go beyond this percentage, because you’re going to lose that client, right? Or let us approach the client on your behalf. Anything beyond this is going to be yours anyways. So it’s kind of a very easy way to deal with bigger companies. And for us, it’s worked very, very well, we can be very hands-off, or we can be as hands-on as they want us to be. And either way, our staff is very, very well-versed. So, dealing with clients and being able to talk one-on-one, customers, even partners love the fact that, if someone needs to talk to one of our web developers, Alicia, they can literally call her up, they can send her an email, and she’ll respond. She knows the protocol, we’ve been doing it for years.
And it’s very easy for clients, and they feel good, they may not even have had that experience dealing with their current company, but we make them feel comfortable. But this is the right thing to do, that we are assisting your company to sort of get you to the end result. So partnerships tend to work very well, for us, we sort of set them up that way.
Jeremy Weisz 34:00
From a pricing perspective, it sounds like they could pass along that discount to their client, or they may mark it up because they may do extra services or something alongside with what you’re doing.
Clint Thompson 34:13
Yeah, and we give them that flexibility, right. So, we tend to suggest a certain amount of a markup, if they want to, don’t go beyond this from our experience, you’re not going to get the results or the response you want from your client, which is to go ahead. So don’t go too far beyond these numbers, but most of them will sort of stick to that number and they’ll get the results that they want to know get the client on board that digital piece. And if they need help with it beyond that, again, we’ll jump in we’ll sit in on the board meeting and say listen, folks, here’s the reason why. Here’s the value. Here’s the result you can expect. This is why you need to do this.
Jeremy Weisz 34:54
I want to talk about sales. You have a, if you look at your track record, okay, you have a lot of experience in sales, the sales manager, director of sales throughout your career. So I’d love to know some lessons. And it’s funny because if I just looked at your background, I’d be like, I guarantee you, they have like just a rockstar, huge sales team, because you have a lot of experience doing that. But it’s actually the opposite. You have more partnerships. So it’s interesting, but I’m sure you still employ those same concepts with you and your team when you’re talking to clients. So I love to hear just some of the lessons in sales that you’ve had over the past 20, 30 years.
Clint Thompson 35:43
Yeah, and we are different and unique in the fact that we tend to work with partners, as opposed to direct, we still do a lot of networking through the chambers and different things like that. That’s kind of part of our business, plan or program. But the reality is we always and I as a business owner, tend to try to train and ensure our people are trained somewhat in selling, and that’s kind of an internal thing, right? I can sit there with a web developer and see, here’s a six-step selling process, it’s gonna go on one air come on the other, it means nothing. But at the end of the day, I want them to understand that the money that comes in door feeds all of us, this is the growth that you will expect, when you ask me for a raise, or when you want the company to buy this or more equipment, or better equipment or new equipment, whatever it might be. These are the things that keep us growing. Right? As far as us being able to — sorry, I missed the last part of the second part of your question.
Jeremy Weisz 36:50
Just like any lessons of sales that you’ve had. It’s like, you’ve led big sales teams, I mean, you work to the Yellow Pages, called Genie and more. So I just want to hear the lessons you picked up along the way in sales.
Clint Thompson 37:06
So I, as a salesperson, I guess, having a certain sales protocol, when you’re going to see a client, I’ve always maintained sort of in the back of my mind when I deal with a customer. But I generally, and this comes with experience, and it’s not for everyone, but I generally tend to sell but I don’t sell I educate, right? The realities are, the digital marketplace, and the advertising marketplace, is consumed with information. There’s so much information out there, it’s very confusing for most business people to sort of go in there and figure out what’s right, what’s wrong, what they should stay away from what they should stick to. So for me, it’s all about education.
And I in a lot of I’d say 99.9% of the time, when I sit with a client, I have to be properly prepared, and I’m always properly prepared with the information I need to know about them, I need to know but what they do, I need to understand that and equip myself with what their competition does all that sales strategy stuff is always in the back of my mind, right introduction, you know, do all your prospecting, do your rapport building all that stuff. When I walk in, you know, I walk into a client’s office, and he’s got trophies all over the place. And they’re all about, with cars and stuff. And personally, I’m gonna ask him as well, you race cars, so the sales process never leaves me. But what has changed and with anyone I work with, I always tell them, listen, this is not a strategy.
This is our livelihood, we need to ensure that we’re educating our clients, that what is current, what is right, and what will work. Those are the things we have to be able to do. And then we support that with value and results. With service and results. That’s how we support it, if there’s no results. And if the work that they’re doing that we’re doing is not at the level it should be level of expectation, then we’re not going to keep the business. It’s as simple as that. Right. But those are the things that’s what I typically use, as an in as a sort of a continuance to be able to work with clients long term is simply by educating and keeping them up to date and abreast of what’s going on in the marketplace. And where we should change gears as well.
There are a lot of clients out there that have been with us for a long time, that honestly, you know, they’ll sit back, they’re happy to just keep spending what they’re spending because they’re seeing results. But from time to time, I’ll call up and say listen, John, I haven’t heard from you in five months. I know you’re reading reports, I see you open it up. But at the end of the day, we need to talk because there’s a couple of things that you may want to look at investing in, digital out-of-home, programmatic advertising, these are all new things. I know you’re expanding to Ottawa. Let’s talk about that, what do you need there? So these conversations have to go on. And these are all part of sort of what I do with current clients, is there enough hours in the day, generally not. But with COVID has changed the landscape, as you know, dramatically. So, people being virtual has actually helped in that regard to be able to talk to them.
Jeremy Weisz 40:26
There’s a difference between, thanks for sharing that, just stuff that’s rumbling around, a lot of stuff that you forgot, is more than what some of us have learned. So I appreciate you just sharing some tidbits there. But from a sales perspective, it can be also a lot different from a sales manager perspective. And so if an agency is listening, and they do have a sales team, and they have sales managers, what’s some advice that you have found that has worked as this because you’ve also worked as a sales manager for large companies, what’s worked for you when you’re managing a sales team?
Clint Thompson 41:03
So if I’m working with an organization that has their own internal sales team, the first thing I need to do is ensure that they’re, again, educated on the service that we’re providing. It’s not about having it as an add-on. Many organizations give information to their salespeople, and they send them out into the streets, this is worth $500 a month, this is worth $10,000, this is worth 200 bucks. It’s not about that, it’s about finding out where the needs are. So a bit of it, a lot of it actually is training in the forefront before they even hit the streets with the information. So we don’t release any pricing. If we’re partnering with someone, we ensure that the company does not release any pricing information at all to the salespeople until they’re properly trained.
And I’ll do the training myself, along with typically Bradley, or maybe a web developer, one of our web developers will also get involved in training. And they’ll generally be about four to five days long the training, we’ll sit down and sort of do a zoom meeting like this. And we’ll talk about how you approach a client with this, how this becomes part of the portfolio that you’re presenting, why it’s part of the portfolio presenting, and how it’s going to make a difference your clients results at the end of the day, it’s not about taking away from their spend is about enhancing theirs. So that’s a big part of what we do is the training aspect of it before they go up. And then once they’re trained in that aspect of it, then we can shoot them all the prices, and then they can sort of go away and determine how they approach their current client base and any new clients that they may have coming in the door.
Jeremy Weisz 41:05
So I guess I take my statement back, you actually are a sales manager because you just have a fleet of people that are not staffed by you, it’s partners, and you’re serious sales management experience goes into your partnerships we’re doing selling for you. Really?
Clint Thompson 43:02
Yeah. So it has to extend. Yeah, absolutely. So for me, it’s all about ensuring everyone is on the same page and presenting the same message. So yes, it is very much sharing that information and ensuring that everybody’s presenting the same stuff. So yeah, I was managing.
Jeremy Weisz 43:21
I have one last question. Before I ask it, I want to point people to check out DigiHype Media digihypemedia.ca to learn more. My last question is just resources, some of your favorite resources. It could be books. It could be mentors that you’ve learned from either personal or distant. What are some of your favorite resources that you’ve gone to in business and marketing? Because I know that’s a topic you really geek out on?
Clint Thompson 43:56
Yeah, well, there’s two. I mean, business is clearly a big part of it. My father was very, very big into marketing. And of course, he’s a director of Chicago-based company, Georgia asked me for many years. And so I followed in his footsteps. So I’m a big fan of Dale Carnegie in a read all his books.
Jeremy Weisz 44:19
I’m trying to get my girls to read How To Win Friends and Influence People. They’re nine and 12. But I’m like, this is one of my favorite foundational books of all time.
Clint Thompson 44:31
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And another piece of that I loved was another book I loved was The Blue Vase. It’s probably a 100-page book. It’s a small book. Yeah, it’s an old, very old book, but it’s about a salesperson who wanted to be a salesperson who kept knocking the door on this knocking on the door of this business wanted to be there soon. This person, and the guy sent them on a task. He said, If you can do this, get this for me, you will, I don’t want to take away the story. But at the end of the day, he was given a task that was nearly impossible. And he was able to pull it off. And this Blue Vase became the sort of the pinnacle for success for many business organizations, we won that my father worked at NCR for many, many years.
And The Blue Vase was only given to the top point 5%, like the best of the best ever. And my dad has one of those blue bases, that is his home. And so I’ve always been inspired by kind of the Dale Carnegie stories of movie stories, but I’m also very, very inspired by sporting stories and so on, because I’m an ex-cyclist, my son is a do-athlete, you know, always been involved heavily in sports. And, you know, the date, David Goggins is the world and stuff like that their, their stories are pretty amazing to read and to listen to. So yeah, so those things, very much motivational discussions around the human factor, and sort of going from zero to hero. And stories I listened to your Pain 90x story, Tony Horton.
Yeah, Tony took that business from nothing and his beginnings were, it’s incredible that a human being can take things that are so good, that’s why he’s as successful as he is, right? So, because he has the written determination to do it. So there’s many, many different I sort of have very eclectic taste. It’s kind of all over the map. But anything is either motivational, marketing related, and even new technology kind of inspires me obviously, in the line of work that I’m in, so yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 44:33
Awesome. Yeah, the David Goggins Can’t Hurt Me is a great, fantastic book. And, Clint, I just want to thank you. Everyone, check out digihypemedia.ca and check out more episodes of the podcast and we’ll see everyone next time. Clint, thanks so much.
Clint Thompson 47:05
Jeremy, thank you so much. All the best. Pleasure to talk to you.
