Bootstrapping a Highly Profitable Company in Social Media Marketing: Brand Networks CEO Jamie Tedford (Part 6)

Jamie Tedford: Acquisition was strategically important for us because it completed what we thought was an important part of our story and what the market was telling us, which is that brands and agencies wanted to work from one platform. There’s this converged media phrase that had taken hold at that time. We really believed it and started to see our customers asking for it. The idea was we wanted to be able to take a piece of content from conception and approval to the analytics around that piece of content and follow back up to the ROI of that piece of content.

Sramana Mitra: What are your assumptions around that? Are you producing that piece of content or is that content being produced and marketed through your platform but the agencies are producing the content?

Jamie Tedford: It’s a combination. We started out having to produce that content because it broke a lot of agency models. Having come from the agency world, I was keenly aware of the scars of trying to repeat content, whether it’s an ad or not through the system. It took a while for the agency infrastructure to catch up and be able to manage content at the speed of social. We have a content planning unit that does that for customers. Our goal now with our platform is really to welcome collaborators from the agencies, brands, and from studios, and help manage the processes and make that more efficient versus having to be in the production business for the content.

Sramana Mitra: I see. So you are now selling to the social media marketing agencies and advertising agencies?

Jamie Tedford: Correct. I would say we still have a really solid blend of direct-to-brand and agency relationships, but more and more agencies are licensing our platform to manage their content and spend across the platform.

Sramana Mitra: What does the platform cost?

Jamie Tedford: It’s based on a couple of factors. First is in the case of a multi-location and multi-page retailer, there’s a licensing fee for number of pages. In the case that there’s multiple versions of our handheld mobile software, the fee’s on a per user basis. In the case of advertising, there’s a licensing fee to have access to the platform. Then you typically have an incentive program where we share in some percentage of the overall media spend through our platform, whether that’s coming through an agency or in some cases, direct-to-brand. Those are the three ways that we make revenue on the platform.

Sramana Mitra: Very good. Congratulations! I’m delighted to see that your bootstrapping strategy worked really well and you’ve built a substantial company.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Bootstrapping a Highly Profitable Company in Social Media Marketing: Brand Networks CEO Jamie Tedford
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