Direct Ad Factory began as a passion project. The world of local advertising, especially in the digital realm, seemed like a world of snake oil and swamp creatures to many of the business people I spoke with.
I am Brian Geddes and this is my story.
I graduated high school and went directly into selling used cars. It was a brutally adversarial ecosystem pitting the salesman against the client. The more you paid, the more I made and be damned if the vehicle ran right or suited your needs.
This kill or be killed sales belief system went from cars to door to door coffee sales to Florida real estate (I was based in Canada) and finally computers. Computers were new then (think IBM AT) and my selling style slowly evolved into something more consultive.
I finally ended up in the nascent world of online advertising as the Internet took shape and International advertising networks started evolving. We bought ad space on commercial websites and resold it to companies like Classmates.com and Netflix.
This was another brutally competitive world where the difference of a few cents could make or break your online success. Consultation, 2-way transparency and fanatical customer service was simply the minimum requirement for success. Relationship selling was the key and a personal sales result of 44 million in ad sales in one year was achieved.
Programmatic ad buying (algorithms and robots) changed my beloved relationship based sales model so I went into digital marketing consulting for Canadian and US companies. After a 2 year NAFTA consulting gig in Santa Monica I came back to Canada and to my families ancestral home of Nova Scotia.
Direct Ad Factory was launched to help local business improve their marketing, especially digital marketing, without losing money or without horrific results. The stories of money spent on marketing with little or no results were rampant. This led to “no thanks” thinking and status quo results for many businesses which hurt their results.
The pandemic changed everything. Suddenly digital was the saviour. Online was the panacea. Companies started an online store and sat back to watch the money role in.
Nothing happened. The golden goose laid decidedly non-golden eggs. It was predictable but yet another huge disappointment to many local businesses.
Think of a billboard being erected on a huge super highway, thousands of cars stream past it every day, a cornucopia of potential customers. But then we put the billboard facing the wrong way.
Digital marketing is a mix of art and science. Experience with how to use it best is critical. Visibility is the paramount goal. No matter how great your business is, it will fail if nobody knows you exist.
A Shopify site is great but how do you let anyone know it is alive? Thousands of sites go live on the Internet every day. There was a Tsunami of companies going to the digital side all at the same time. The competition is ruthless and businesses had no idea how to gain visibility.
The combination of “Art and Science” for driving traffic was unknown to many. This was a moment tailor made for someone with over 20 years of digital sales and marketing experience.
That was the journey to Direct Ad Factory, why we exist and our passion for helping.
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