Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping to $10M from Colorado: AdCellerant Co-Founders Brock Berry and Shelby Carlson (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was that business doing that allowed it to grow that fast?

Brock Berry: That’s exactly why we started AdCellerant. The market was really ready for that type of traction and we were bringing these highly-sophisticated marketing strategies to local business owners. We were doing that through the media companies that we worked with, which had thousands of sales people.

Because of the massive sales force and the fact that we are able to leverage that sales force for free, we were able to very rapidly grow that business. Because of that growth, we started to think about some of the other options that are out there. We were not reinvesting in technology the way we should be. We know that this is a highly people-oriented business today. That was the impetus for AdCellerant.

Shelby Carlson: The fact is that eight years ago, there were these incredible new digital marketing technologies that were helping these massive companies. Technology was actually available to everyone, but it was incredibly complicated for the small to medium-sized business owners to be able to figure it out and be able to run it for themselves.

That business and the business we run today is essentially giving the best technology to the local marketer. What makes AdCellerant so different is we want to have the ability to give them the best technology, but at a much less expense than what they’re currently paying. We have this end-to-end piece of software that they can deploy within minutes with no complication and get the best in class technology.

Sramana Mitra: What does the software do?

Shelby Carlson: We essentially go through a three-step process. We call that the proposal, execution, and the reporting process. What makes digital marketing incredibly complicated for a small to medium-sized business owner is that there are so many platforms and they just don’t know what to buy, when to buy, and for how much.

The first step is a business owner could fill out this proposal and it asks for very simple information – your competitor’s website, what your goals and objectives are, your industry, and the time frame of your campaign. It uses smart technology to be able to tell them, “Based on your time frame, budget and geography, this is everything that you should be buying.”

Agnostic of the platform or the technology, we give them a frame of what they should be buying from search engine optimization to pay-per-click, email, and social. It helps them understand what they should be buying. With a click of a button, we schedule and push it to all of those platforms. That way, they’re not working through multiple different platforms. Everything is done with one click of a button. It’s executed by our team.

We have the most transparent reporting in the industry that helps them understand what’s working, return on investment, and how it is being optimized. Ultimately, they are able to understand their digital marketing in a very simplistic manner, all in one platform.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping to $10M from Colorado: AdCellerant Co-Founders Brock Berry and Shelby Carlson
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