August Blankenship - A2B Digital

Mishawaka, IN

217-550-3171

admin@a2bdigital.net

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Blankenship's Background

I’m 19. I moved out from my home in Chicago when I was 16 and originally was just planning on getting a job at a retail store and I found this job application on Facebook. It was for a social media internship and so obviously, being a young person who’s been exposed to social media my entire life, I applied and I met with the CEO at that agency and I was definitely under qualified didn’t have any previous experience, nothing at all. But I was very driven to learn and I knew that if I put my all into it I would be able to do great things. And so we’re interviewing and at the end of that interview he actually offered me a full-time position instead of an internship, which was crazy because he had previously interviewed someone who had just graduated from Notre Dame for social media marketing. And so he took a chance on me which was appreciated so much because it opened me up to this entire world of marketing and advertising and what it means to tell a brand's story. I stayed with that company for a couple of years and just back in March (2020), so a week before all the stay-at-home orders were put in place, I launched A2B Digital. I felt as if I needed to create something that, within the Mishawaka area and everywhere else, is youthful, it’s young, and we’re always striving to tell a story that is memorable and resonates with an audience in today’s world. Oftentimes what I would see is the majority of these agencies within our surrounding areas do creative work, which is great, you know, you’ve got to be creative. But it’s not memorable work. So we’re always striving to create campaigns and advertisements that really resonate and are memorable to our clients’ audiences for years to come.

Q: Are you currently in school?

No... I think people should go to school, it personally wasn’t for me, like college I mean. I found the way I learn the best is from networking and making connections with other people and that has really gone a long way for me being able to be friends with some of the top CEOs in the industry of Fortune 500 companies. It’s been super great to just see what they do in the real world and just seeing like ‘oh they did this, how can I do that my own way?’ That’s been the way I learn, and of course books and stuff.

Q: Was working in media ever something you thought about or considered before?

It was honestly completely new. For me as a young kid I had always loved business, like I loved businesses. I would often watch ad replays, so I knew of advertising but not really. I didn’t know what it was, what’s marketing, what’s brands, you know, all that stuff, until I got that job. But while all my neighborhood friends were playing like cowboy and cowgirls, superheroes and stuff, I was...in the front of my yard building a lemonade stand to sell to people in our neighborhood. It’s [having a business] just something I’ve always loved and always dreamed of doing for the rest of my life.

Q: Did you have experiences at that first job that excelled you to starting A2B?

I was the social media director, so I was in charge of all social media accounts for our clients at that agency. And the agency had clients who were six figures of profit to nine figures so its all these different companies and so I was in charge of the creative vibe, the content we were sharing and making sure that we were building a community around those companies online. So I quickly grew their social media following. That’s one thing a lot of people look at is like, how many followers do you have or how many likes do you have and that stuff, and when I first started I think one of our clients was at 72 followers and that’s about it. And so, after about three months of hard work and all that, we quickly grew them to 25,000 followers and continued to grow them. And then I started dabbling in running digital ads through Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, the whole things. And so obviously at first I had no idea what I was doing... And I learned so much more about how to optimize things, how to really get things going. There was a client at the time who, their main goal was to onboard people, onboard drivers, so they could deliver RVs. As you know Indiana is like the RV capital of the world. So the team and I, we thought of some ad copies and creatives that we would be able to do and so I created the digital campaigns and also really worked on the ad copy myself. And we were running ads to optimize for drivers and each driver that they would onboard was worth, lifetime... around $50,000 to $150,000. That’s how much the company would inevitably make after hiring people and they were previously spending around $90,000 plus a year to get maybe a few hundred quality applicants. And not every one of those applicants would onboard. So we created a campaign that was true to who the company was, the copy, the creatives, and we had a small budget. And what I found out later on was that a lot of these companies were spending from $100,000 to $150,000 a day on digital ads but this company was only spending $30 to $50 a day. So how can we really optimize that? And so we created conversion based ads that were really focused on targeting the right people for this industry. And instead of getting 100 quality applicants a year, they spent probably 85 percent less of that $90,000 and had over 5,000 quality applicants a week, which was a huge plus for that company. And so after that I was like okay this is good, but working with RVs and the medical field and all that, it wasn’t something I was really in love with. And I had applied at other agencies because I was just like let me keep growing, let me keep learning. But everyone was scared of my age and scared of my ambition. Which inevitably they would be like, "yeah we want you but we don’t like the fact that you someday want to start a business of your own" which is understandable... but for me I was like, "okay, what’s the next viable option because this is something that I truly love, what can I do?" So I started A2B and we’ve just been growing ever since.

Blankenship currently has two other employees, Dillon Slagle, CMO, and Thomas Smith, Creative Director. Blankenship is looking to hire more people in the near future as the business grows.

In order for us to really grow and get to where we want to be we need to hire on quality people who know what they’re doing and love what they’re doing.

Blankenship's daily tasks include meetings with clients in the mornings and assigning tasks to the team using Asana.

Going through all those tasks, it can be looking over certain campaigns that are currently running, making sure they’re not going over budget and they’re fully optimized online, and then creating ideas for our clients. [If they] are launching a new product, we’re creating a new campaign surrounding that product and maybe making a funny one or making an ad that draws you in emotionally, so we hash out ideas for that every once in a while.

Q: In terms of those campaigns for your clients, how does analytics fit in?

Analytics is super important for me. I love data, I just love looking at all these numbers and comparing things…I love it. I love making reports. So for us, especially in the digital world, it’s super important. If you’re creating a campaign, knowing who to target and when to target is super important. And that’s really hard for start-up companies to obtain that data just right off the bat because, let’s say you have this new jean that does everything for you, right? You have an idea of who your audience is but you don’t really know. So creating a campaign that’s very broad just right off the bat and seeing “okay who is interacting with it"and inevitably you gather all this data and it's like "okay, people from the ages 24 and 35 are the ones who are really engaging with this content." So now [we know] the age range of the type of people we’re reaching, we know the gender, we know some of their interest, so we can then create campaigns that are more aligned with those people, resonate with them more. And then also after you have all that...it’s super important to be looking over previous campaigns that you have run and the one you’re starting now to determine your ROA...over a long period of time. So we had a client who was generating, before they signed on with us, generating like $2,000 a week in sales. They had running ads so we were able to utilize that to see "okay, who is engaging with it what had been the target CPA at that point" and we recreated the ads and implemented formulas that I personally have created for digital ads and they quickly went from making $2,000 a week to making over $250,000 a day in sales just through Facebook ads and everything else. Another thing we’ve been testing out is our newsletter campaigns for our clients. It’s something we found to be great for overall brand awareness and some conversions. But if you know your audience for your brand and there’s a specific newsletter, like let's say The Hustle or Fortune, you know the type of people who are reading that because those companies have insights on their readers. So you can get even more targeted and write content that specifically interests them. Because if they’re reading The Hustle and The Hustle has such a unique sound so they’re able to create campaigns or ad copy for us, that’s just super great to see. It’s funny, it’s engaging, and it converts.

A2B Digital currently has eight clients.

A lot of the clients that we try to go after are truly involved in culture, if that makes sense. They’re not hesitant on speaking out on social issues and they’re not hesitant on trying out different things within the digital world. Digital is constantly changing and every week there’s a new feature, there’s something removed, there’s a tweak to something that you have to be reading up on constantly because it can make or break a digital campaign in an instant. And so we really strive to find clients who are just...[aware of] what’s currently going on with the times. And if they have a great product and a great overall brand message, those are determining factors for whether or not we will be up to work with a brand. Because I’ve worked with companies who are, you know, multimillion dollar businesses but do very little for society and they’re main goal is just to make money. Which is every company, but for social media now it’s all about communities. And so if you’re focused on growing a community then we can really help you with that.

Q: I know with campaigns it's more of a longer term thing, but do you have certain contracts or when a job is done then you guys are done?

We try to sign on our clients for month-to-month really. We not only just create campaigns and stuff but we also optimize digital campaigns and that is a 24/7 job. There have been times where I’m up until 3 a.m. monitoring a campaign just to make sure things are going smoothly, monitoring comments and stuff because if something happens on my end 12 a.m. Eastern time, that’s like 9 p.m. Pacific time so that is when people are online in the pacific so we've got to make sure things are running and working there. That's oftentimes where some conversions can come from.

Q: How are you able to manage your clients' data? Do you use any other programs to help manage it?

There’s an application called Notion which we really like. It’s nice for if you’re creating a campaign and there are certain tasks that need to be done. So if it’s a video production it's like "okay, who has hired the actors, who has written the script," stuff like that. It’s super great just to see the visual side of things. I personally love Excel for any data stuff. I like to use Office 365 applications because even though I’m on an Apple computer I also have a PC, so switching between the two is super great because if one of our employees is an Apple fan and they’re computer breaks, they can just go to the library and get a file from the computer. It's already on the cloud compared to if you don’t have any Apple device you’re screwed. So we try to do things like that. And then for data and stuff I like making charts and graphs so if our client just gave us raw numbers I’ll create a graph for it because I’m a very visual person. And like for Dylan, he’s a visual person but he’s also a very analytical [person]. He wants to look over every single bit of detail, so I try to incorporate all these different things for everyone because I know for me personally it was super important for me to have the ability for someone to teach me the way that I can be taught. Not just speaking at me but can actually visualize things.

Q: Back to analytics, what insights have you found to be most valuable for your clients?

Definitely conversions is a super important thing. That’s what’s going to make the client money. Making sure that you’re staying under their target costs per conversion is super important. But we also look at impressions and reach. Because if you’re just bombarding your audience with ads constantly it's unfair to them. It’s not something that they’re necessarily going to trust your company for the long run. They’re just going to be like "they’re constantly in my face, they’re annoying." You never want to be annoying to your audience so we also monitor that we’re not oversharing content. People aren’t continuously seeing the same ad over and over again. They may see different variations of it but they’re all specialized for that person. Which is great because we’re able to see like "oh, we’re getting a ton of visitors from people in Florida" so now we kind of know how people in Florida talk and we can really resonate with them. So we will create ads that are specifically for them. We can do geo-targeting. We can do campaigns as well. Engagement, even though it's not important for the overall, it is important for people like you and me. If you’re scrolling through Instagram and you see an ad that really interests you, the first you’re either going to do is click on the ad [and] look at the product or service and look through the website of the company, then you’ll go through and look at their Instagram account to see "oh, are people liking this and engaging with this, is this a fake brand?" And if you have 10,000 followers and 20 likes, that doesn’t look good for your brand. We really try to make sure that your following and your engagement is up and the content that those brands are sharing is quality because not everyone is just going to see this and be like "I want to buy that." They’re going to inspect, they’re going to look at your Facebook page, they’re going to look at your website and all these different things. If you’re a startup business and making sure everything across the board is clean and crisp, it's going to make or break your company and your social relevancy.

Q: What are some of the analytics tools you use?

We use Google Analytics. I like Google Analytics. I always advise against companies that are like "oh, you can track all of our data from here and we’ll just make it look pretty." It’s the biggest scam of all time. I understand that you may not understand what all these numbers are in front of you and they just make it look simple, but at the same time why are you spending $5,000 a month just to make something look pretty? That’s the dumbest thing. So I personally utilize Google Analytics a lot. Facebook analytics is good since they have their family apps, currently Facebook and Instagram, but you can manage all that information. I trust the companies who are actually giving us access to the analytics rather than other companies who are just like "connect your account and we’ll make it look pretty."

Q: How do you think your company is unique in terms of the way you analyze the data and the way you’re helping your clients?

Honestly, the way we’re more unique is the fact that we’re so young. I was just talking to Dylan about this the other day, we’re young and we know we’re going to make mistakes. We know we’re going to have to learn, we know we’re going to have those failures, but we’re okay with that because we know that after we make a mistake or after we fail, we are going to learn from it and we are going to grow from it and what we are going to do after that is going to be even better. This is something I personally struggle with is oftentimes I’m a perfectionist, so making a mistake can be hard for me. But I’m learning to accept it. But any time I have learned from a failure or mistakes, the next time is always better. And also the way that we approach clients. Oftentimes people just go after anyone and everyone just starting off because we have to make money, which is good, but you want to be very specific with who you can help. If I was to go to a health care clinic or whatever, I would not be able to do good work for them because that’s not something that I’m passionate about. I’m passionate about retail stores, e-commerce and tech companies. Those things I know we can do and we can make great campaigns for them, advertise and market for them well. We’re really focused on culture as a whole. We realized that with digital media and advertising, things are constantly changing...and being on top of that constantly is super important... We saw an ad yesterday, not one of ours but from another competitor, and they had said like "these jeans are the new black" which is not something that you want to say right now. It's not good timing and just with everything that is going on it's not a good thing to say. So being socially aware of what's going on is something we’re really good at. We love connecting with people because honestly people are what build companies. You see like in 2008 Apple was not super popular until everyone started buying Apple products. And then everyone started seeing "Apple looks like a cool brand, I love what they’re doing" and now everyone's buying it. And now they’re involved in their ecosystem. People are advocates for Apple, shoot content for Apple, so Apple is a collection of people.

Q: I saw on your website a quote, it said "what worked yesterday won't necessarily work today." That seems to be something you really focus on.

This is something that since we’re so young we’re still learning, is if a client comes to us with a short term goal, we can do it. But if their idea is "oh, I’m going to start this company and then in a year I’m going to sell it," we’re not going to be a good fit because we’re looking at long term, like how, through the process of these campaigns that we create, we’re going to make you guys not just another brand but a global brand that people resonate with and relate to. Do you remember those super trendy backpacks that were super popular a couple years ago? Like the super small ones? Everyone was talking about it. Everyone was like "oh my gosh, this brand is so cool" but no one really talks about them anymore because they were trendy, they were cool. They should have done something completely different and made their brand about their people, about their audience, about their customers, because then, if they could do that, they would have a customer for life. And that’s something we’ve learned just from contractors too. I used to work with a contracting company and one of the first things that they said was that what makes them different from their competitors was that they focus on the people they serve. They said people go to their competitors and they’ll be like a one time thing and then they never come back because they didn’t have a good experience or they didn’t really connect with the company and the brand. But they have had clients or customers who have come back to them time and time again for over 50 years. That’s because they’ve built a culture around their brand that people really resonate with.

Q: In your opinion, how can analytics and data management be more efficient in the future for you to help your clients better?

I think making a lot of this data more accessible to people is going to be good. Even just for companies starting off too because oftentimes if you want certain data about certain groups of people, you have to spend like $5,000 to get that and that’s crazy expensive. If I was to go out when I started in March and say "I need that but I can’t afford it," that would be awful. That’s something we need to be able to grow. I think just making it more accessible to startups and giving them accurate data is good. A lot of these platforms I noticed as well, some of the data just doesn’t line up with other stuff. I think there needs to be more clarity involved in how they’re tracking things, whether it be a website visitor or a person of certain interest, having that data is super important. I also believe in doing focus groups. I think that’s very important to do. I haven't personally done it yet because we haven't needed to do something that involved like a focus group. If Snickers was coming to us and we were making multiple versions of an ad, we would do a focus group because they’re a global brand. One mistake and they’re done. So focus groups are super important.

Q: Is there anything you would want to tell someone who is wanting to get into a media field and work with analytics or marketing?

Just [expletive] do it! Never hesitate. If it’s something that you’re interested in doing, you’ll never know if you really enjoy it until you do it. If you’re wanting to get a job, for me personally, if someone is to come to me and approach me for a job or ask me for a job, I would one, look at their portfolio. If they don’t have a lot of work but I see that they’re driven and I see that they are actually wanting to learn and actually wanting to grow and and it’s something that they’re like "I love this, I’m passionate about this, I’m going to do this," then I would hire them instead of someone who may have more experience. But I rather have someone that I know at the end of the day is going to put their all into it and not half-ass something.