Biznik Blog

Big changes are sweeping through the marketing world, and Dominic Canterbury of DC-Strategic is one of the alert observers of his craft who is riding the wave, rather than getting buried by it. The dirty secret of the marketing world is that advertising doesn’t work like it used to, and Dominic, unlike a lot of marketing professionals, doesn’t try to hide the fact when clients come looking for advice. Because Dominic knows that in the media-saturated world we live in today, the most effective marketing is often the least expensive: word of mouth.

Let’s find out more about how that might apply to our businesses directly from his mouth…

Q: Where are you from, and what brought you to Seattle?

I was born in Tennessee on a Hippy commune, The Farm. My parents were founding members. We moved off when I was only a few years old so have no memories of it. We then came back to our ancestral home: Seattle. I’m a fourth-generation Seattleite. So that means, including my 2.5-year-old son, we’re going on five generations here.

Q: Tell us about your work background, and how you got into marketing.

I’ve loved marketing ever since I was a kid. Other kids liked comics; I liked ads. I could never bring myself to go into advertising, though, because the ad world is just so damn creepy and manipulative. So, when it came time to choose a college major, I chose neuroscience.

Neuroscience didn’t work out too well for me. I loved everything about it except for the part where I had to do cruel and unusual things to rats. So, I gave it all up and transferred from the UW to Oberlin College to get a degree in politics.

Towards the end of college, while searching for jobs, I discovered public affairs. For those who don’t know, public affairs is marketing and strategy for public issues. It was like an explosion in my head. Suddenly my path was clear.

After college I paid my dues as a cubicle dweller before landing a job as the campaign manager for the speaker of the Washington State House of Representatives — Frank Chopp. Following that campaign I landed a job in public affairs. We handled a wide array of major statewide issues. Most of our work was behind the scenes and the company that I worked for keeps a very low profile so I think they’d prefer that I not talk too much about our work.

Q: What inspired you to quit the corporate world and go indy?

As it turns out, I was never really cut out for the 9-to-5. And the public affairs job made that painfully clear. In all modesty, I am extraordinarily good at what I do. But, working for a company, I knew that I would never be given the latitude to actually do it the way I knew it should be done. I had to take control for myself.

Q: So, what’s wrong with mainstream marketing as we know it today?

If you listen closely to mainstream marketing, you’ll hear its death rattle. There was a time when the old model worked: Create a product, then force people to think about it whether they want to or not. Today, our environment is saturated with marketing. It’s so saturated that we’ve all become adept at ignoring it. So, Madison Avenue has responded by escalating the war for our attention. Did you hear about the recent Sony campaign that involved hiring graphitti artists to deface the urban areas with their Playstation characters? Now that’s desperation.

Q: You’re a big proponent of word-of-mouth marketing. Can you describe what that is?

Businesses live and die by word of mouth. The public no longer trust ads, but we all trust regular people. A company’s over-hyped claims mean nothing without the experience and word of mouth to support it. When Honda says that the new Civic will “reverse your thinking,” our first reaction is to discount the claim to match what we’ve seen and heard.

It works the same for small businesses. To get clients you have to get people talking about you. And to get people talking about you, you have to give them something to talk about. You have to be remarkable.

Any company can be remarkable. You just have to figure out what your target market wants and how to give it to them. But, you don’t stop there. You have to give them the tools and the incentives to promote you.

Q: Give me an example of a word-of-mouth campaign – how can small businesses use it effectively?

I’m working with a tech consultant. He installs and maintains computer networks for mid-sized businesses. For him, we’re doing two parallel strategies – one for his existing network, and one to expand into a highly desirable target market.

We began by refining his services so that what he offered and how he offered it — in terms of bundled services, pricing structure, guarantees, etc — was magnitudes better than his competition. Then we designed an email campaign for his existing clients. Basically, if you and/or your colleague signs up for the complementary — highly informative and useful — network analysis, we’ll send you a gift card.

This works because his clients are happy to refer him. We’re just providing a way for the subject to come up and a reason — the gift and the free service — for someone to act on the referral. And that’s all he needs. Once he gets in the door he can begin cultivating deeper and deeper client relationships, and additional word of mouth.

To strategically expand his network we’re targeting a specific (top-secret) profession. For them we’ve created a specialized program designed to meet a wide array of their needs. To design the program we researched the profession, brainstormed with selected professionals in the field, and field-tested the plan.

We’ve also identified the communications channels we need to target — newsletters, organizations, individuals, etc.

We’re now to the most exciting part — unleashing the plan. Once it’s out there we’ll be closely analyzing the results to identify ways to enhance and strengthen the campaign. There are always small modifications to make, but it’s usually those small changes that make all the difference.

Q: What’s the importance of a business network like Biznik to you?

I’ve tried a number of business networking groups. Couldn’t stand them. I felt like I was in elementary school. Everything was just so contrived and forced. And their fixation on referrals made no sense to me.

Biznik, on the other hand, fosters a legitimate community of business people. These are people I can confidently refer business to because I actually know them and know their work. The most important part for me, though, is the ability to work with other talented and driven indys on improving our business models and building stronger, more effective partnerships.

Dominic’s website is dc-strategic.com

This entry was posted on Friday, February 17th, 2006 at 9:47 am and is filed under Interviews. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.