Today we have selected Ed Goss to take his Interview. He is the Managing Director of Ten Thousand Foot View Digital Marketing
First of all, how are you and your team doing in these COVID-19 times?
Our biggest struggle seems to be boredom during off-hours. Our group has always been made up entirely of remote workers. This makes our ‘work environment’ inherently safe and has eliminated the need to change the way we operate during COVID. We check in with each other frequently to help each other keep our collective spirits up.
Tell us about you, your career, how you founded or joined this company.
I was working for a medical devices start-up in 2012 when I had my ‘aha moment’ about opening a PPC agency. A few months later Ten Thousand Foot View was born.
Google Ads was replacing SEO as the go-to channel for small businesses. And, at the same time, the platform was becoming too complex for these companies to manage effectively in-house.
Conceptually I wanted to offer our clients the personalized service of a freelancer combined with the quality, tools, and support system of an agency. Maybe that’s not unique, but it is unusual, and something that most of our clients seem to really appreciate. In short, we call this our ‘single point of care.’
How does your company innovate?
Most of our innovation is based on finding the happy medium between automation and grey matter. There’s a huge push from ad platforms to automate everything and pushback from agencies and advertisers to retain more control. Finding the sweet spot is what separates the best PPC agencies from those that either just push buttons or are 100% hands-on.
The key, for us, is rigorous and continuous testing of new platform features. Effective features get integrated into our SOPs. Features that don’t make the cut get benched for the time being.
How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping?
Some of our previous clients have closed their doors, which is sad. And, we’ve seen quite a few ups and downs among many other clients.
Fortunately, we’ve niched down on service instead of industry, which has helped us weather the storm.
Importantly, our structure makes us recession-resistant as our costs are directly linked to income.
Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?
Thus far we’ve had to tighten our belts a little. We haven’t had to make any significant changes with our staff or other suppliers. To help our clients we’ve frozen our prices for 2020-2021.
My main takeaway from all of this is to always be prepared for the worst-case scenario.
What specific tools, software, and management skills are you using to navigate this crisis?
Our software stack hasn’t changed much as a result of the crisis since we’ve always worked remotely. Mostly we use best in class industry tools plus custom integrations for client and campaign management.
You can download our ‘Great 100 PPC Tools’ e-Book to see which software we’re using at our agency.
Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?
Most of our competitors are small to mid-sized US & Canada based PPC agencies. We differentiate ourselves based on:
- Our amazing service
- Transparency and honesty
- A pricing model that’s advantageous for clients that grow with us
In addition, there are the more obvious things like becoming industry leaders and maintaining our partnerships with Google, Facebook, MS-Ads, and others.
Your final thoughts
I want to thank you for the opportunity to interview with The Ad Review. I hope that my few words are helpful or inspire others trying to grow their agency.
- Spokesperson: Ed Goss
- Company: Ten Thousand Foot View Digital Marketing
- Website: https://www.tenthousandfootview.com/
