The Power of Marketing Philosophy | Shannon Allen

David McBee: Hello, and welcome to Simpli.fi TV, the web series and podcast for agencies, brands, marketers, and media buyers. I'm, David McBee. Our guest today is, Shannon Allen, Chief Revenue Officer of Federated Digital Solutions. Shannon, has been in the marketing and advertising industry for over 25 years. Her passion for digital marketing drives her to help find the best digital solutions for her company and clients. Shannon, works as a true marketer partner with all of her clients and believes that is what makes her agency stand apart from others. She believes that people today are buying why you do what you do and not what. Shannon, is also the co-host of her own podcast Digital Marketing RO Why? which I highly recommend you check out. Shannon, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Shannon Allen: Thanks, David. Glad to be here. David McBee: I'm glad you're here as well. Now, Shannon, you had mentioned in your intro that buying why you do what you do is important rather than the what. Could you elaborate on how this philosophy influences your approach to marketing strategy? Shannon Allen: Absolutely. I'm a big, Simon Sinek, fan so anybody that works for me in a very original training we have to watch the old school 2010 finding your why video, which is one of my favorite from him. But it's really a philosophy I think a lot of businesses probably really are encouraged... That are doing it already. But we believe that when you find somebody who believes what you believe the process is a lot easier. They don't always understand it, but they believe and understand that the reason we're doing what we're doing, the consumer journey, how everything's tied together. That's that true partnership's, so that's what we're always looking for and I think if you're an agency out there or you're a media company. Those are the type of clients that you want to work with because boy, it just makes everything a lot easier. The education can come, but they got to believe in it. David McBee: It reminds me of a story I often tell about my financial planner. He came into my life in a time when I had no understanding of the stock market and Roth IRAs and all those things. But I just really bought into his passion for it, and I believed in him personally and that is why I chose him and we've been working together for 30 years now. So I totally get that concept of helping the advertiser to understand that you get it. They don't have to totally get it, right? Is that kind of what- Shannon Allen: 100%. And even in the 2010 video, Simon Sinek, talks about the people that believe in what you do and he talks about Apple. He talks about the people that are really into Apple, they're buying it for them. They get so excited they run out and buy the latest one. He talks about how that is so important to them, they don't have to do all the what behind it the why is there. They just believe in Apple products and if you're an iPhone buyer, you're not an Android person, right? Because you believe in one versus the other, it's not the what it's the why. David McBee: Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, let's shift gears a little bit. What, in your opinion constitutes the most common mistake that is made by marketers and what steps should they take to course correct if they find themselves making this error? Shannon Allen: So I think what the most common mistake that we are seeing some of our clients sometimes make even in businesses agencies and media companies, is that they are reactive and not proactive. Right? So I would say for the last two years, kind of our slogan for my sales division and my campaign team is exactly that, is be prepared, be proactive with what we're doing don't be reactive to it. And really what I mean by that is we tend to pivot quickly and that's good in digital, but you don't want to react to a situation that's happening. And the best example I can give is when a client they're seeing numbers down, right? Something's not going right within that month, and they start to question the strategy that's sitting in front of them. What we can always do is layer in more strategy, but you don't want to just stop the strategy to fix one little problem. That is to me always a thing I have to tell everybody, just let's think this through, let's not react to it and let's really come up with a strategy behind it. So that would be my advice to any business owner out there, any agency that's... It's okay, to tell your client hold the phone, let's walk this through, let's make sure we're making the right decisions for your digital marketing plan. David McBee: I like that a lot. Do you have a favorite advertising story? Like a success story, maybe something programmatic for our audience? Shannon Allen: I have so many stories I could give. As you know, I'm a huge Simpli.fi fan. I've been with you guys now since pretty much the very beginning of my career here and so just always believing it, right? I always have believed in what we do from a programmatic standpoint, and even though we know it brings leads I do categorize this under our branding category. Right? Because through the funnel and I go back to all the tactics that we utilize within Simpli.fi, is there's all stages of that funnel. Right? We have this scenario that we're starting here and we're coming down here. So I have a car dealer that I've been working with now for over six years, and they're probably my biggest success story. I mean, they were working with Dealer.com. I had met with them, I'd worked with them in my newspaper days and after about a year and a half after I met with them originally they were working with Dealer.com and I came back to see them because they called me and they said, "We're ready to talk." And there was a couple different reasons why they wanted to maybe move directions, but the biggest thing I can remember is they were doing almost all search engine marketing. Right? The bulk of their budget went into SEM, which we see total value in but they were not doing any branding. But he was a big traditional TV and radio at the time, mainly TV though. He's like, "I've got my branding covered." And I had to really explain to him with digital it's not about branding as much who you are. We know who you are, you're doing a great job with traditional, but with branding when it comes to digital and specifically programmatic we are able to have more one-on-one conversations. So now we can move from their name and why you want to buy from them, which you can still do, but now we can move down to their products. Right? We can look at each one of their brands, looking at a Subaru brand, looking at a Volkswagen brand, and go specifically find their top sellers. So one of their top sellers is the Subaru Outback. I showed him how by utilizing branding we can go find the Subaru buyer out there, not the buyer that wants to buy from him. He's already handled that with traditional, but we want to go find the Subaru buyer first and then make sure they come to him. So it was kind of an aha moment for him when he was like, "I do need branding." Because he always thought very, very upper funnel and only about what his name is and yeah, that's a big part of what we do. But sometimes it's the layer we do after we show him the ROI and that's what I love about that story, is I always want somebody to be running a campaign on why me. I wouldn't be a, Simon Sinek, fan if it wasn't about the why. Right? But I still got to go out and find and bring him a return on investment on each one of his brands that he sells the most of and find new buyers for that. So he went from a 360 of only believing in SEM, to now running with me for over seven years and growing his business by over 15% year after year and now his spend levels with me max out what you would see a big manufacturer may be spending money on. David McBee: So what I heard from that is he was in the high, high funnel of awareness with TV and radio. Shannon Allen: Yes. David McBee: He was at the bottom of the funnel with SEM. But what you used programmatic for was to kind of get him in this middle upper funnel where it's like interest, because they've shown an interest in Subaru specifically. Shannon Allen: Yes. David McBee: I think that is truly where programmatic plays a huge role that sometimes people miss. So I thank you for sharing that story. Shannon Allen: From even day one, I mean we talk about it in all our presentations but it's about the consumer journey. So there's so much going on in the consumer journey before that decision is made that you're missing out if you're only hitting that traditional media of awareness. I'm not saying don't run traditional, I think it's a partnership but you have to mesh it all together like the perfect piece of the puzzle. David McBee: Yeah. All right. So this is the part of the podcast where I would normally ask you if you have a favorite podcast or a book. But instead I'm actually going to assume the book is, Simon Sinek, and I'm going to ask you to talk about your podcast if that's okay. Tell us about RO Why? Shannon Allen: So this was really a brainstorm because we do a lot of content marketing just to help with education, right? I see the value of our blogs just to help our clients understand digital can be such... It's such a broad topic that we really try to break it down within our blogs. Well, we are also doing a lot of webinars and I am not a big fan of a webinar. If you meet me in person and I'm doing it here, I talk with my hands, and if I have to go into a room and a webinar, shut the door and talk to a screen that I can only see myself and my notes and I might have 30 people on that webinar. I'm not at my best and so I really started to think about everybody's time of myself and I'm looking at webinars, I struggle with it. But what I really love is listening to a good podcast and a good podcast to me can be anywhere from 15 minutes to 30 minutes. My true crime ones I'll go a little longer. But from an education standpoint I really took my webinars and some of my blogs and said, "Let's turn this into a 15 to 30 minute podcast." And I don't want to overwhelm it. We do the bigger, longer ones, twice a month and very specific topics and then we do what we call Tip Tuesdays. Which are just quick little hints that come from all of my sales and campaign team and myself that are two to five minute conversations of something that a business owner can think about. And everything has to bring it back to ROI, right? What's in it for me and why should I care? Which is actually what I wanted to call it, but my creative director wouldn't let me call it that. That's what I say to my sellers all the time, you have to ask yourself from a client's point of view what's in it for me and why should I care? David McBee: I love that. Whiff them, right? What's in it for me? Shannon Allen: Yep. David McBee: Awesome. This has been amazing, I really appreciate you, I hope everyone goes and checks out your podcast. Real quick, what is the best way for viewers to learn more about you? Shannon Allen: Go to our website federateddigitalsolutions.com, we've been around for over 10 years now. To me, that's still a starter company, right? But we are a digital media agency only, but we're here to help our clients with all their needs. But really I just love this part of my job, this education. So even if you're an agency out there that wants help, we're all in this together. Right? We're all doing this to try to grow our business. David McBee: Yes, we are. Shannon, thank you so much for being my guest today on Simplified TV. Shannon Allen: Absolutely. Thanks, David, it was super fun to see you again and catch up a little bit. David McBee: Thank you, and thank you guys for watching. Simpli.fi TV is sponsored of course by Simpli.fi, helping you to maximize relevance and multiply results with our industry leading media buying and workflow solutions. For more information, visit simply.fi. Thanks for joining us today. I'm, David McBee, be awesome and we'll see you next time.