Digital Consulting Services CEO Doug Sabanosh Interview on Consumer News TV
Gary Atencio:
This is Gary Atencio with CNTV, and today we’re in Denver, Colorado. I am here at Digital Consulting Services. Since 2019, they’ve been helping companies translate business goals into reality by executing a digital business strategy to attract customers in your market. I am here with Doug Sabanosh, who is the CEO. Thanks for joining us here today.
Doug Sabanosh:
Well, thank you.
Gary Atencio:
Let’s start off a little bit about yourself. I mean, you were formerly educated at the University of Boulder. You received your MBA at University of Colorado, Denver. You have an extensive background in digital sales and marketing, spanning back to the late ’90s.
Many roles in the marketing, sales divisions. You’ve served as everything from head of marketing to marketing manager to account executive. You’ve delivered high percentage increases from multiple companies throughout the years. Really for nearly a quarter of a century.
Share with us a little bit how this passion of marketing got started for you pretty much early on.
Doug Sabanosh:
Well, I was given a really great role at a subsidiary of Time, Inc. back in the late ’90s. I basically was in the right place at the right time with the right attitude. I had a skiing background from the time I was three years old and the Mountain Sports division I worked for needed someone who knew that world.
So I landed kind of bass-akwards working for Warren Miller Entertainment and SKI and Skiing magazines. At the time, the titles were really looking to get online for the first time. In 1999, 2000, the internet was big, or getting big. It was gaining traction and every magazine needed their online presence. So I was tasked with the job to take the two magazines, SKI and Skiing, and Warren Miller Films and put them online, which entailed building websites, generating traction, and getting subscribers. It was all about the bottom line; sell advertising and get subscribers.
Gary Atencio:
Those leads generating for the company.
Doug Sabanosh:
Absolutely.
Gary Atencio:
I mean, I’ve sat down with many entrepreneurs and business owners. I’ve found that these owners are very good at what they do, but most of them are not good at marketing, and they admit it. I mean, is this something you’ve experienced? And do you think most of these small business owners today need help with marketing from a professional?
Doug Sabanosh:
I do. And to be honest, owning a business myself, it’s really difficult to manage the business and to market it myself. Every so often I take a gut check and ask myself, am I doing for myself and my business, what I’m doing for my clients? And a lot of the times the answer’s no. So take two or three weeks to look into the business, check the state of things and develop content and programs to create interest and to stay relevant. Writing articles, checking SEO and website performance and examining the business as a whole is something I really have to make time for – I do it for my clients, but sometimes I don’t do it enough for myself.
As a business, you have to continue with your thought leadership and you have to keep telling people how your solutions can help their business. So as a business owner and a marketer, I certainly understand the juxtaposition of the two seats – a CEO and a guy or a woman or, whomever who’s really running the business and trying to grow the business at the same time.
Gary Atencio:
You’ve experienced both sides of it from an owner, as well as a marketer. I mean, business owners are busy. Be it a lawyer, an accountant they’re wearing many hats out there. It’s been said that 50% of small businesses do not have a digital strategy. Would you say that most of them, I mean, don’t know where to start. Are they kind of overwhelmed by the whole process?
Doug Sabanosh:
I think it’s a combination of both. I meet a lot of business owners that don’t know where to start, so they kind of throw everything at it without a plan, without a strategy. Some simply hire an agency at top dollar. And many of them I meet are disappointed because the service they get is not personal and focused on their goals, it’s more of a shotgun approach. Whereas, other owners I meet don’t know what to do – they have a marketing strategy, but they simply can’t make a plan and execute it because they just don’t have the time or resources. They don’t have the people who are familiar with their product and know how to market it. Or they’ll hire a couple junior, green marketers who are getting their feet wet, and they’ll shoot from the hip and try the most newsworthy marketing trends. So it’s a combination of both and I help them both because I can take you from not having a strategy at all to developing one with you, integrating it and putting it into action. Or I can work with the one you have, refine it a bit and carry out the plan.
I can help you analyze your business, audit/take a look at everything you have, all your assets in terms of the marketing and sales side, and get an understanding of your goals, who your target market is and how to find them and match them with your products or services. So it’s not a shotgun approach; it’s more of a targeted approach. And with all the data available, it’s easier to find out who your buyer is, what problems they’re looking to solve and match them with the solutions you provide. Setting up your website for effective SEO and with lead scoring abilities certainly helps with that, and that’s something I can do quite quickly.
Gary Atencio:
I want to delve into that part, cause that’s something you do. That’s kind of unique. It’s not a shotgun approach. Like you said, let me ask you this. I mean, gone are the days of simply hanging up a shingle and a sign and putting it on your store, waiting for the customers to come. Why would you say online marketing through the worldwide web is really one of the most valuable tools, really as an equalizer for the small business guy to compete even against the big boys.
Doug Sabanosh:
Well first of all, you have to have an online presence, which is that hanging sign outside of your business. If you’re not online, the trust of the consumer is gone. A: they can’t find you. B: They have no idea what you do or who you are. And if they do, they only have a perception of the products you sell or the services you provide. So being online is that sign.
Consider it an online elevator pitch or an online business card, whatever you want it to be, however deep you want to go with it. Attracting people to your website, whether it’s B2B or B2C, eCommerce or whatever, you really need to set it up to allow your target customer to easily find you. To do that, I set up the website so it provides the backend data that identifies your website users, breaks down who they are, tracks their user behavior – where they enter your website, and sometimes, more importantly, where they exit your website. In addition, knowing what content they’re engaging with, what products and/or pages they’re looking at, what their demographic is, what’s their location, things like that, help you discern your audience. This allows you to more effectively understand and target your ideal consumer and deliver them the information they need based on the data provided.
Gary Atencio:
Right. So it’s a sign like it was on the building, but this is a sign that gives you some information that never would have before. I mean, not only are professionals out there overwhelmed by that idea of investing their time and their effort in marketing, but let’s face it, they’re concerned about the amount of money needed to invest. Are they surprised many times that as little as five to 10% of their annual revenue can actually give them some results?
Doug Sabanosh:
Absolutely. They’re very surprised because marketing, when I first started, was the party throwing department. They were the money spenders of the company. Marketing had to not only perform digitally, they had to coordinate trade shows, buy magazine ads, work with PR firms and so on. Some larger businesses still need both traditional and digital marketing.
The sales people were the money generators. So the sales people got everything, all the credit. And to be honest, they deserved it. The sales people closed the deal and that’s fantastic. But what we’ve done at Digital Consulting Services, is align sales and marketing to enable sales teams to sell more effectively by providing them with the data and materials they need. They can use the information about the customer and what problems they’re experiencing and deliver them the content marketing creates and take more of a consulting approach with them, rather than a, “you need our product, and you need it now,” type of conversation.
There’s no force selling with my methods. It’s a direct and informed approach. We can alert sales to, “call this guy because he’s looked at these three pieces of content and he’s watched these demo videos. He’s obviously experiencing ‘Problem A’ that we can solve. So give him a call, ask him a couple of these formatted questions and then follow-up with call or or offer a live demo.”
We set up the sales enablement system to provide the salespeople with follow-up materials, the next piece of content (blog, white paper, case study, etc.) that’s appropriate for where that prospect/lead is in the buyer’s journey. The lead then thinks, “Hey, this sales person called me. They knows what’s going on with me and they sent me a case study that shows how they solved my problem with another company that experienced the same one.” So there’s really no “selling.” We make it so it’s very consultive.
Gary Atencio:
Not only that, but those two departments are now communicating the information instead of kind of working against each other, whatnot.
Doug Sabanosh:
Yes. Aligning sales and marketing is a must for effective selling these days. I can’t market effectively unless I talk to sales people, customer service, onboarding, customer success, product development and all the departments involved in the products you’re selling. I need to know how the product is made and who it’s made for and what problems it solves. I need to know what’s are being missed (if anything) in the onboarding process; what questions is customer service receiving; what objections is sales handling. All this information gives me a holistic view to create a better marketing plan that covers all the bases, from the introduction of the product to the sale and through the onboarding process of a new client. I can use this information for a campaign about how smooth the transition is once the purchase is made.
I talk to customer service to understand what questions they’re getting from the customers. Then I can create content to answer those questions – FAQs, which is also great for SEO. As a result, the sales team is prepared with a consistent answer when they receive a question from a customer or prospect – they’re all on the same page. They can also use the appropriate content – say a case study that shows how your product solved the problem in question – as a follow-up contact opportunity.
Gary Atencio:
I mean, honestly, you help these companies plan, prepare and execute. Let’s talk a little bit about the process just to touch on here, establishing and building a brand. Is that important for small companies out there? The big guys know it’s important. But are these small companies starting to realize that their brand is a lot?
Doug Sabanosh:
Well, it depends on what their goals are. What I do with a lot of smaller brands is, I set them up with an effective and user-friendly website, dial in the SEO so people can find them within Google or Bing search. I can develop content, run campaigns, provide hosting, and craft a full-blown, data-driven marketing strategy. I do all the research for target customers, competitor analysis, keywords, PPC, and everything else associated with an Enterprise marketing strategy, but for small business.
I really tailor-make a program according to their goals, whether they want local business or a national presence. I have some clients who don’t want out-of-state business. They simply don’t want to deal with it and there’s plenty of opportunity in-state. They know their niche and they hit it out of the park with it, locally. Others want to go national or international. So it’s really about tailor-making the strategy and plan according to what the business wants to achieve. And, to be honest, I’ve gotten a lot of questions from a lot of business owners in an initial phone call about me being a consultant and some of the problems they’ve encountered. I’ve been asked s few times, “Are you just going to give me a plan and leave me alone with your plan and have me figure out how to do it?”
Well, no. If you have the resources, my goal is to teach your marketing department or your marketers and your sales people, how to go through the process and how to execute the strategy from the generation of an idea, to a plan, all the way through execution, monitoring progress and data and adjusting things as needed. I like to follow the old saying, you either buy somebody a fish every day or you teach them how to fish so they can provide for themselves. And that’s what I do, I teach them how to fish.
With some clients, I get a bit of abrasiveness from a marketing director or people in the marketing department because I’m hired by a CEO that has a marketing problem. I make a conscious effort to make is clear that I don’t want their job. I want to work with them and combine what I know with what they know, so we can create the best strategy possible to do what’s best for the business. From there, we can come up with a program that achieves their goals and then bring me on as a consultant on a monthly basis or for projects only – when you need help or whatever.
I love working in different markets and industries – from personal care products to insoles; from startups and SaaS products to professional services – financial, accounting, insurance and legal. The overall marketing recipe is very similar; the ingredients are different.
Gary Atencio:
Yeah. Products or services, the worldwide webs works for both of those types of businesses out there. I mean this, this buyer persona, I see as being the key to a lot of what you do. I mean, truly knowing that target, you can create effective campaigns. You’re also not wasting money on throwing it out there and taking more of a shotgun approach. So I see a lot of companies they’ve given up on marketing because they think it doesn’t work, but they’re throwing so much out there at a target that’s not even relevant.
Doug Sabanosh:
Exactly. When I was cutting my teeth, I really had to hone my overall marketing skills. I worked alongside a lot of very talented people who taught me efficient ways to get the information needed and use it for the most effective marketing strategy. For eample, I learned researching skills to find out what the competition is paying for specific keywords, and what they’re doing to establish themselves as the first, 1, 2, or 3 results on Google. I learned how to make a custom plan to seize the keywords that the compeition is not using or even snatch the ones they are using. I was shown how to identify attainable keywords and commonly searched expressions, medium- to long-tail searches, that are low cost – you just have to find them. My process does just that.
Gary Atencio:
You basically got to let it get a little creative, not go after the easy picking ones that the big guys own. But you’re talking about getting creative of what you’re actually targeting. That’s kind of exciting for a small business owner. If you have a new business out there, maybe a startup that built a website rather quickly rushed into it to get into business, then later on, they started realizing that website is more powerful than I’m giving it. They want to do maybe an overhaul. Are you able to basically provide an analysis or maybe a website audit and what will that show them?
Doug Sabanosh:
Absolutely. I’ll do a complete audit or website inspection (no one likes the word “audit”), for free and give a business the intelligence they need to make smarter decisions. So within that website inspection, I’ll glean a lot of keyword information, page indexing details, user experience data and all the key aspects search engines use in their ranking algorithms. I’ll compare your site to your top 3-5 competitors to understand the market as a whole. I’ll provide you with a traffic analysis – who’s visiting your website, how users are finding your site and what pages are most popular. I can map a user’s journey within your website to see what content they’re engaging with and pages they’re visiting, which can give you a clue into what solution they’re searching for. This information can also tell you what’s working and what’s not working, so you can use your budget and assets wisely. All this data drives your custom “website refresh” plan I can create to make it the ultimate tool to display what your company does, who it serves and what problems your products solve, while establishing you as a though leader and solution provider.
Gary Atencio:
Interesting. I mean, the digital marketing has expanded beyond our homepage website customers, they expect to engage now. Can you tell me how social media is a vital tool in that arsenal and is that somewhere you can help with them with as well?
Doug Sabanosh:
Sure. Social media is a powerful tool for both B2B and B2C businesses. While B2B focuses more on LinkedIn, and Twitter, with some Facebook and Instagram use, B2C is almost the opposite – it’s focused more on Facebook and Instagram, with less focus on LinkedIn. However, if I service a real estate agency or a personal care products company, it’s important to hit all four of those platforms, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter because potential home buyers, as well as personal care customers are on all four of those platforms, both social and professional. I taylor the messaging differently according to the social platform. I also focus a lot on setting a proper cadence according to what the data shows me. Overall, these are great platforms to distribute content, sell products and establish thought-leadership.
Gary Atencio:
You have, I mean, really 20 plus years, you have grown with the internet. I mean, in your services, you provide are vast, be it a website or a marketing campaign, social media, even email marketing for you. At the end of the day, this is about connecting the consumer or the other business to a particular business. Do you enjoy getting to know those businesses and finding out exactly what they need and then create a custom plan for them?
Doug Sabanosh:
I do. Every business has its niche, they all solve problems. I love to study a business, understand the problems it solves and match those solutions with the people who have the problems – the consumers or busineses that could use that solution. I’ve always loved to research and figure out solutions to problems. With my journalism and magazine editor background, I’ve been developed a lot of content such as blogs, articles, white papers, case studies, and the like – pieces that required some research for data points. I usually produce content that’s backed by data because it’s easier to prove to the reader how and why things are. Let the data speak for itself, prove the point that needs to be proven.
Gary Atencio:
That is exciting. I mean, you said before the business owners, the professionals out there, they’re busy, they’re wearing multiple hats. They’re overwhelmed. Obviously, they can choose one area that you can help them with, or test, or basically hand over the whole nine yards. And you put together a very extensive plan for them. And then maybe they hand that off to their marketing team or their marketing guide. Is it rewarding for you to share this knowledge that you have in here and not really just hold onto it and make them rely on you, but really share it and they decide how they want to utilize you. Does that continue to be rewarding?
Doug Sabanosh:
Very much so; it’s very rewarding. I love offering SMBs access to the marketing knowledge I acquired working alongside incredibly talented people at Fortune 500 companies. And I can do that in a cost-effective way. I don’t have overhead for a big office, staff, and the things other agencies have to add into their costs. I like to give small businesses a figher’s chance in a highly competitive digital marketing world.
Since I was young, I had to run my digital department on a strict, mostly small budget, and yield fairly lofty profits. As a result, I learned how to set up, manage and use data and analytics to make the most informed decisions to make the most with the least. I provide that to my (small business) clients. I wish I could give more, to be honest, which motivates me to study more and to have more conversations with business owners and market leaders, so I can learn about their experiences and what questions they need answered to make their companies better, more profitable.
The rewarding part is, at the end of each quarter or month, when I do the sales and marketing status report, to see the teams get along and discuss campaigns, progress and wins. Because sales and marketing have always been kind of resentful towards one another, so to see the teams get along, work together and share the successes, is awesome.
Hearing a sales person tell a marketer, “Hey, you gave me the case study I sent to this guy and he called me 10 minutes later, saying it’s the info he needed to make the final decision. And we closed the deal.” That’s really cool. To see the program work and benefit the company gives me a feeling that’s tough to explain.
Gary Atencio:
Win-win for both departments. And therefore it’s a win for the entire company. Viewers, let’s take a look at the bottom of the screen, right. That what you’re going to see is the website. On the website, you’re going to take a look at all the different services they’re able to provide for you quite a arsenal. We’re talking about experience that has brought over the past, close to 25 years in different mediums. Be it the medium of time ink, as well as mountain media, all the way up to products, sales services. This is a gentleman that can basically take what you have right now and make it much better. Or if you’re one of those out there that really doesn’t have a strategic plan put in place for marketing, he obviously can create that for you. Also, take to look at the website, you’re going to see case studies, sales sheets. They’ve got checklists for you. Quite honestly. It’s a lot of information that you can learn right there on the website as well. But the best way obviously is to contact them. And they’re going to discuss your situation and find out exactly if, what plan they can put together for you and set you up for success. Once again, that is digital consulting services since 2019, this is Gary Atencio with CNTV. And if you don’t know now, you know.
Contact Doug for a FREE Consultation or just to talk marketing.