[Top Agency Series] Maximizing Your Digital Presence in a Franchising World With Kirk Allen

Kirk Allen is the COO and Co-founder of Reshift Media, a Toronto-based digital marketing agency specializing in social media, search engine marketing, and website development for franchises. Under his leadership, Reshift Media has grown from a startup with no clients to an international success story with around 200 clients. Kirk has over three decades of experience in cross-platform media sales within Canada’s largest media companies. With a passion for building long-standing relationships and driving digital innovation, he has also served on many industry boards, including CFA, IAB Canada, INMA, and NADbank.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [03:18] Kirk Allen talks about Reshift Media’s inception and the services it offers
• [04:59] The redesign of Reshift Media’s website
• [07:00] How Reshift Media acquired its first client 
• [11:18] Kirk’s journey leaving a steady job to start a new enterprise
• [16:47] The secrets to staff retention and building a positive company culture
• [19:04] The latest trends in the franchising space
• [24:54] Kirk shares Reshift Media’s lead generation strategies and customer success stories
• [33:12] The Brand Amplifier platform for agency owners 
• [36:44] Memorable social media contests and promotions Reshift Media has crafted 
• [41:42] The value of joining industry organizations and building a personal brand reputation

In this episode…

Have you ever considered the shift from traditional industry expertise to launching your own business in a dynamic, digital landscape? Mastering the art of navigating through these complexities with remarkable prowess is key to success.

Digital marketing expert Kirk Allen delves into his unique journey from the newspaper business to digital marketing and the founding of his successful agency. He discusses the strategic risks he and his partner took in the early days of Reshift Media, including starting with zero clients and relying on initial seed capital to secure their first big customer. With a focus on the ever-growing franchise sector, Kirk reveals the industry trends and how service-based businesses thrive. He shares the pivotal role that the Canadian Franchise Association played in Reshift Media’s growth and the importance of reputation and personal branding in building a sustainable business.

In this episode of Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Kirk Allen, Co-founder and COO of Reshift Media, about transitioning from traditional media to digital marketing entrepreneurship. Kirk talks about Reshift Media’s inception and the services it offers, its client acquisition process, trends in the franchising space, and the Brand Amplifier platform for agency owners.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Kirk Allen on LinkedIn
• Reshift Media
• Brand Amplifier

Special Mention(s):

• Steve Buors on LinkedIn
• Second Bite Podcast
• Canadian Franchise Association
• International Franchise Association
• Dogtopia

Related episode(s):

• “[Sweet Process Series] How to Save Hundreds of Hours a Month Using Top Productivity Tools with Adi Klevit of Business Success Consulting Group” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Most Valuable Advice When Selling Your Agency With Todd Taskey of Potomac Business Capital” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Growth Through Acquisitions – What is Your KPI and Northstar? With Jason Swenk” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Building a Great Team and More Helpful Insights with Jason Swenk Host of The Smart Agency Master Class Podcast” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “All you have is your reputation, and that has huge value on its own.”
• “We’re in business for ourselves, but not by ourselves.”
• “Sometimes the best campaign you think is going to be great is a dud.”
• “We all are brands unto ourselves.”
• “Getting involved in industry associations, you learn so much.”

Action Steps:

1. Leverage social media for targeted marketing: Allow businesses to reach their desired audience efficiently, optimizing ad spend and enhancing lead generation.
2. Engage with industry associations: Foster professional growth, build a robust reputation, and open doors to potential business opportunities.
3. Focus on content-driven SEO strategies: Increase visibility and attract organic traffic, making it easier for potential customers to find your business online.
4. Invest in employee development and culture: Retain talent by creating an engaging and supportive work environment that encourages professional growth.
5. Adopt a localized marketing approach: This enhances relevance and resonance with local audiences, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:01 

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz  0:22 

Dr Jeremy Weisz here, founder of inspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today, is no different. I have Kirk Allen of Reshift Media. You can check them out at reshiftmedia.com. Kirk, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes people should check out of the podcast. Since this is part of the top agency series, a couple really good ones. I had Adi Klevit on. She is an agency. She does done-for-you SOPs, Kirk, you know the non-sexy stuff helps us run the business. So she’ll go and help document all the companies, or whatever companies they want their SOPs with the staff and the owner. So that’s a great episode. We shared our favorite productivity tools, software. Another really good one was Todd Taskey. Todd Taskey helps match private equity with agencies. He helps sell agencies. He’s got the Second Bite Podcast. He talks a lot about the exit and M&A space. And so that’s a really good episode where he talks about the valuations the agency space and everything in between.

Also Jason Swenk. Jason Swenk talked about how he built up his agency to eight figures and sold it and then had been acquiring agencies, which is interesting. So check out that and many more on inspiredinsider.com. This episode is actually brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, the accountability and the full execution. And Kirk, we call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background and make it look easy for the host so they can run their business and create amazing content and develop great relationships. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships, and I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships, and I’ve found no better way, over the past decade, to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should if you have questions, go to rise25.com or email us at [email protected].

I’m excited to introduce Kirk Allen. He’s a former member of the Canadian Franchise Association Board of Directors and a co-founder of Reshift Media. Reshift Media is an award winning digital marketing agency based in Toronto, and their latest accolades include two time winner of the Best franchise marketing firm at the Global franchise awards. And Reshift has actually developed some proprietary digital marketing platform to generate leads, which is designed specifically for franchise companies, and I’m excited to share Reshift Media and Kirk. Kirk, thanks for joining me.

Kirk Allen  3:08 

Well, thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.

Jeremy Weisz  3:10 

We’ll talk about how everything began, but first, just give people a little overview on Reshift Media and what you do.

Kirk Allen  3:18 

Great. Thank you. So Reshift Media is a digital marketing firm based in Toronto. Everything we do is digital, so social media, search, oh, that’s great.

Jeremy Weisz  3:30 

And by the way, if you’re watching, just listening to the audio, there is a video version. And here we are on Reshift Media.

Kirk Allen  3:36 

I’m super happy that you have our website up, Jeremy, if we would have had this interview a few years ago, we had our old website from when we first started 12 years ago, and it wasn’t.

Jeremy Weisz  3:52 

I’ll have to go on the Wayback Machine and find it.

Kirk Allen  3:55 

Yes, in the Wayback Machine, you can, in fact, love that you know that actually, but this is our new website we launched a couple of years ago, and we’re very proud of it, because it actually is something we do. We build design websites, we do apps, of course, and anything do it digital — so social media, SEO, SEM, and there is the award that you just scrolled by that I think maybe your folks found us as a result of this best franchise marketing firm in 2023 and we won again this past February in 2024. So we’re a digital marketing firm, everything from websites, apps, social media, search, anything to do with digital marketing, that’s what we do, sir.

Jeremy Weisz  4:47 

So talk about, now that we’re on the website, and you redid the website after a number of years, what did you make sure to include in this redesign and revamping that wasn’t there?

Kirk Allen  4:59 

Lots of content, lots of testimonials. There’s got to be 40 or 50 of them, but then examples of our work and case studies. So we are very proud that the first client we started with back in 2012 and we pride ourselves that they are still a customer of ours today, and that’s the UPS store that you just scrolled by. So we build long standing relationships, and we love seeing our customers grow so in the franchising space, which is probably where the bulk of our customers lie, they start off with maybe 10, 20, 30 locations, and they all aspire to become bigger and sell more locations and open more locations. So we have many cases where we start with a brand that has a handful of locations, and today they may have two, 300 locations.

And we take pride in being part of that success, designing their website, making sure they’re being found. So you ask about what we put into this? Well, a lot of our leads, new customers, come from the website, where people from different countries around the world will actually find us through our blog. So a blog is a great way of generating fresh content for a website, and we do that for a lot of our customers as well, where we write regular blogs, feed it into the website, promote it on social media, and all of that works together for optimizing a search and helping that brand being found. And it’s no different for ourselves. So the SEO plays a big, big part of the role here on a new website.

Jeremy Weisz  6:54 

How did you get your first client? The first client is pretty big, being UPS.

Kirk Allen  7:00 

Well, I had known the president here in Canada for a number of years, going back to my previous life. So I used to be in the newspaper business, and that’s where I met the president of the UPS store. I worked for a newspaper in Montreal called the Montreal Gazette, and eventually moved up to Toronto at a head up advertising sales and digital sales for Can West. And eventually that became Post Media. And so, newspapers back in the day, they were powerful. So go back to 2012. Retailers would run ads in newspapers, and people would show up at their door. They had great reach, great readership, and they were very, very effective. So 2012 believe it or not, Jeremy, I was head of sales for Post Media, and I see advertising revenue shifting from paper, so traditional media, but I was radio, TV, newspapers into digital. So it was going to social media, it was going to a brand’s website, it was going to Google and a course of the time display.

So the newspapers all built websites, and my current business partner, Steve Buors, who built Reshift with me, he was the one building all the websites for the newspapers, and I was getting the salespeople to sell ads, display ads on the newspapers, but it was really 10 cents on the dollar. So, you’d sell a full page ad in a newspaper 10,000 but you sell a display campaign for $100 or $1,000 so it wasn’t anywhere near the same kind of revenue. So at the time, we were proposing to open a digital arm of the newspapers where we would sell social media, search and build websites. And I won’t name a person, but one of the owners of the newspaper chain said this, in 2012, Jeremy: said, there’s no future in social media. 2012, so I left shortly after that, and Steve Buors, my business partner and I opened Reshift Media knowing that there was monies shifting from traditional media into digital. So when we opened Reshift in 2012 there weren’t a lot of pure digital ad agencies. Traditional agencies may have had an arm that did digital, but they also outsourced a lot of the work because they didn’t have the expertise.

So that’s how we started the business was we knew there was a shift in traditional media into digital, and the way we got our first customer was they were on their phone looking for their own stores, and their stores wouldn’t come up in a search. And I said, we can help you fix that. Built a new website, got all set up on Google My Business back then, it was called something else. Google changed the name every year. It seems, set them up on a proper website with local pages. And now that’s the recipe, right? You have to have local pages for every store help with search. But that’s how we actually got our first customer. Was helping them people find them through Google on a website and rebuilt their website.

Jeremy Weisz  11:04 

Did you take the plunge? Because, again, you were in newspaper for probably over 25 years. Did you take the plunge before or after you got this client?

Kirk Allen  11:18 

Always before, we opened our doors. We had no clients, zero. That’s a good question. No one’s ever asked me that question before. But no, we had no clients, and we had…

Jeremy Weisz  11:33 

Timing’s everything here. I don’t know if you’re married at the time, you have to go back and tell a significant other. Yeah, I’m just opening up with no clients. What does life look like when you took the plunge?

Kirk Allen  11:44 

Very risky, very risky. So, we have some private investors. So we actually went to market to say, hey guys, went to angel investors, basically, and said, we want to open this business. And here is the concept, and here we see the money shifting. Would you be interested in investing? We probably only made maybe 10, 12, pitches, and five people gave us money as seed capital. So we needed some money to get things started. We rent a nice office downtown Toronto. We had six full time staff and zero clients, but we came out swinging. Oh, yeah, we knew we had enough money to get through six months of operation. We knew that it would take us at least six months to find some potential clients, pitch them, do the work and collect the money before we ran out of funds. So, that’s what we did. And at the beginning it was tight, of course, Steve and I didn’t take a salary. But eventually we built up to the point where today we have about 200 customers in 20 countries around the world, and we get a lot of referrals.

Jeremy Weisz  13:23 

So what point did you get the first client then in this timeline? Because I would be worried, like, six months, is not that long of a time period.

Kirk Allen  13:34 

Two months we had a customer. Within a few we had half a dozen customers in the first six months. Wow. That is not all big, right, varying sizes, but we put a lot of sweat equity into all of these customers to do the best we could. And we have such a great team at Reshift. We have fantastic original staff. All but two are still there. And they’re fantastic. They have great teams. They hired great people. And we’re blessed that we have such a strong team. They are leaders in every category. So we have the best social media person, the best search person, the best designer, best IT person in our team. So, we can tackle any problem, and our customers love our team, because when they ask a question, we typically have a solution, that’s for sure.

Jeremy Weisz  14:45 

And in the beginning, you know you are the sales person, so you kind of have to handle the sales and pricing, and then your partner on the kind of fulfillment side. So it seems like you had kind of both covered from the beginning, and then you hired people, obviously, under those categories.

Kirk Allen  15:03 

Exactly. So Steve, my business partner, this guy is so smart, such a great partner. So I’m out seeing customers, and Steve is making sure the workings is being completed. He’s our CEO, and we hired one head of search, one head of social, one designer and one head of it. Those were key pillars for the company. And then they went as we grew, at the beginning, we didn’t have the luxury of having people blow each one of them. Today, we’re probably 40 staff, I’ll, I’ll say, but as we grew, we added staff, you know, some, sometimes we’re hard to get the work out the door, but we were very cautious, and we don’t outsource anything, so everything we do is in house. We don’t offshore anything. So everyone works for Reshift Media here in Canada, we now have the luxury of hiring a few people across the country to get the best possible talent. So we have someone from Vancouver Island all the way to Nova Scotia, and in between, the bulk of our staff are here in Toronto.

Jeremy Weisz  16:29 

Talk about retention and culture for a second, because, as you said, some of those first core staff members, most of them are still there. And what are some of the things you do as a company that helps with the retention and culture?

Kirk Allen  16:47 

Well, I think for one is the staff can learn so much from not only our senior team, but our wide array of customers we have so they aren’t stuck working on a single account. They’re working on multiple brands in different categories. So the amount of learning that happens for the staff because of the variety of customers we have is really key. The learning they get from our staff is second to none, because they really are experts in their field, and they’re very sharing. They want to see their staff grow. And then we try to have some fun too. So, one of the things we do is we have events. We have a winter event, a summer event. A couple of years ago, we rented a boat, went around Toronto harbor. We usually have a barbecue. Every summer we’ve gone axe throwing.

We have a tubing up north, which was a blast. So we all went tubing, and then when had a hamburger and beer after and they went, all went home after that. And then everyone through all we have virtual events. So we’ve had a magician join our weekly call. We’ve done things like that, play different word games online. So we work hard, but we also like to have some fun along the way but I think the real value for our team is the learning we get from the various customer, challenges, and also from the senior team as well.

[Continue to Page 2]