Curious about thriving in the ever-evolving world of Digital Marketing?

Explore the expertise of Peter Tandy, a seasoned professional with over 30 years of experience in the advertising industry. With successful careers in both Real Estate and Hospitality, Peter’s journey began at US WEST in Minneapolis, where he contributed to substantial revenue growth in the Yellow Pages industry.

Transitioning to AT&T during the digital revolution, he played a pivotal role in managing online platforms like yellowpages.com and yp.com. Renowned for his skills in new client acquisition and retention, Peter’s clients have remained loyal advertisers, generating ongoing revenue.

In 2020, he founded the boutique agency One Four Three Digital, continuing to offer online advertising campaigns for national and international clients, including Western Union and Rasmussen College of Business.

Conquer Local is presented by Vendasta. We have proudly served 5.5+ million local businesses through 60,000+ channel partners, agencies, and enterprise-level organizations. Learn more about Vendasta, and we can help your organization or learn more about Vendasta’s Affiliate Program and how our listeners (like yourself) make up to $10,000 off referrals.

Are you an entrepreneur, salesperson, or marketer? Then, keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy.

Boost Your Digital Customer Acquisition and Retention with Expert Tips

Introduction

Welcome to the Conquer Local Podcast! Join us as successful leaders share their secrets to success. Packed with practical strategies, each episode highlights remarkable accomplishments and offers tips to revamp your business. Whether you’re a business owner, marketer, or aspiring entrepreneur, tune in to dominate your local market. Are you ready to take your business to the next level? Let’s get started!

I’m Jeff Tomlin and on this episode, we’re pleased to welcome Peter Tandy. Peter has over 30 years of experience in the advertising industry and had successful careers in both the Real Estate and Hospitality Industries.

His advertising career started with US WEST in Minneapolis in the Yellow Pages industry, where he contributed to the company’s substantial revenue growth to over 2.2 billion dollars.  Transitioning to AT&T during the rise of online platforms, he played a crucial role in acquiring and managing properties like yellowpages.com and yp.com.  

Recognized for his exceptional skills in new client acquisition and retention, Peter’s clients throughout his career remain active advertisers, generating ongoing revenue. After managing online advertising for notable clients such as Western Union and Rasmussen College, Peter founded the boutique agency, One Four Three Digital, in 2020. 

Get ready Conquerors for Peter Tandy coming up next on this week’s episode of the Conquer Local Podcast.

Jeff Tomlin: Peter Tandy, I want to welcome you to the Conquer Local podcast, and thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to join us here.

Peter Tandy: Thank you and I totally appreciate it. Looking forward to the conversation. I’m obviously a big fan of Vendasta’s and looking forward to helping others if I can.

Jeff Tomlin: Hey, look, before we jump right into the business, I’ve got to ask you about the pictures that are behind you. I’m a huge golf fan and I recognize both of the pictures. Are they photographs or are they paintings?

Peter Tandy: They’re actually paintings. The one over this shoulder is of course the Swilcan Bridge at the home of golf at St. Andrew’s, and the one over my other shoulder is the 7th hole at Pebble Beach here in California. And I’ve had the opportunity to play both of them. And for me, golf is a good way to structure my business. It’s 18 holes or a front nine and a back nine, and it occurs to me that my life’s work is very significant in terms of how I compare it to a golf course.

Jeff Tomlin: Golf is a passion of mine, so I wanted to ask you about it because I absolutely love golf, although I do find it’s a great way to have a little white ball ruin a beautiful walk. It looks like you’re a winner and you take the little things in life, you don’t take them for granted. So you’ve got a long history. You’re in the top 1% of advertising executives through your career, what, some 24, or 25 years. Tell me a little bit about that and how it influenced you and the way you approach running an agency now.

Peter Tandy: Yeah, it’s a really good question. My best suggestion comes from some of the mentors who I’ve surrounded myself with, and the most important one, I think Jeff, is to have a very strong board of directors. So I actually have a board of directors of millionaires and multimillionaires, thought leaders, people that you and I know from reading the Wall Street Journal or from other publications, Forbes and from Psychology Today. And my number one recommendation is to surround yourself with a board of directors who are much, much smarter than you who can give you great advice. The secret to this particular board of directors is that none of them know they’re on my board of directors. They’re on it because I tap into things they have written, I tap into things that they have said. I tap into things I have learned from them on a daily basis. So people like Tony Robbins and Andy Andrews, and people like Mel Robbins herself, are all on my board of directors, but they don’t know they are. I just tap into everything they say that has made them successful and that helps me to become more successful than I am and more successful than I was.

Jeff Tomlin: I love that, and I love the twist that you put on that. You sound like a guy that walks the walk and talks the talk, and you carry that through also to your selling style. One of the things I think about a lot is for anyone in sales to be successful, one of the things that we have to battle through the sales process is at some point, our prospect is going to. They may have anticipated regret. They anticipate regretting making a purchase, and we have to help them through that. One great way to do that is to take the element of risk off the table. And so you guarantee a lot of the results and in a fairly short period of time, 45 to 60 days, you guarantee results for your clients. So talk a little bit about the impact that has on the success that you have with your company and making your clients happy?

Peter Tandy: Having grown up in this industry, and I’ve been in the digital space, Jeff, since the digital space started in the early 1990s. I worked for a Yellow Page publishing company here in the United States, one of the largest in the United States. And when we got into the digital space, it was brand new. But here’s what I came to find out. I know, and we all know in the digital space, that somewhere between 85% to 91% of the people start and stop their search for a new company on page one. If I want to be down and dirty about it, the easiest way to explain that is simple, nobody, but I mean nobody that you or I know except for a couple that lives in Tracy, California, population 8,000, nobody that I know says, “Honey, I’m a little bit bored tonight. Should we watch Wheel of Fortune or should we see who’s advertising on page five of Google?” Does that make sense? Nobody does that.

Jeff Tomlin: No.

Peter Tandy: Nobody. Very easy for our clients to understand that if they’re not on page one of Google, then they’re supporting everybody that is on page one of Google. So to answer your question, I look for people who aren’t on page one of Google, people that have been in business for 14 years and have 14 Google reviews, people that are struggling for business, people that send me postcards in the mail. And quite simply, the value proposition is very simple. One, no contract. You begin and end this relationship with me whenever you choose. Two, whatever I charge you on a monthly basis for our agreement, I’m going to put in a trust account. And if I don’t get you onto page one within 45 to 60 days with keywords and key towns that people look for such as divorce attorneys Sacramento, or plumbing contractors El Dorado Hills, whatever their niche is and whatever towns they’re looking to work in, if I don’t get you on page one in 45 to 60 days, I will return your money every single dime. So for me, working with the contractors and the vendors and my partners at Vendasta, I know they’ll provide those kinds of results. So it’s easy for me to make that recommendation. To your point, the risk is not there because there’s no contract and their money’s guaranteed. Now, as you can tell, my mother had ugly children, but none of us were stupid. So I don’t take on any client that I don’t believe I can get onto page one of Google. So although I said it, it was my misspeaking. I don’t try to put people on page one in Sacramento or San Francisco or Los Angeles or San Diego. Number one, it’s not necessary. Number two, their competitors have too much money to throw at being in number one position. But I’m also a man that believes, and I try to help my clients understand that we’re living in a world, not of lack, but we’re living in a world of affluence and there are so many possibilities for income creation no matter what the niche is, whether you’re a divorce attorney or a plumbing contractor or you do epoxy floors or fences, there’s so much business there every single day. You as my client, need to be on page one in order to garner that.

Jeff Tomlin: Yeah. I love that point that you make because one of the things that you’re talking about is how carefully you choose your clients and you don’t take just anyone. You choose the ones that you can win at. And I listen to a lot of SaaS podcasts and I remember listening to a conversation. I think I’ve talked about this in the show before, but it’s such an important thing. I was listening to the former CMO and the CRO of a large data analytics platform that grew to a billion-dollar company lightning fast. And they’re talking about how they did it. And one of the things that they talked about said that was most important was they had laser focused on their ideal customer profile and they didn’t veer outside of that ideal customer. They just focused on them. They knew who they were and that’s where they won at, and they continued to win all day long talking to the right people where they knew they’d had success. So I like that a lot.

There’s two sides to this. Now you’re talking about your approach on the digital marketing side. Also, you’ve got a ton of success on the advertising side on the business, and you’ve got a solutions-based approach for advertisers. And I think finding killer advertising campaigns and messaging that really works and resonates is elusive for a lot of business owners. And so talk a little bit about that approach, and I don’t know if you have any examples of people that specifically that have implemented, but talk a little bit about the solutions based approach to advertising?

Peter Tandy: Yeah, it’s really important and your concept of solutions based is a key factor in every time one of my associates talks to any one of our clients, we’re always talking about why. What’s the why? If we can understand the client’s why, then we can do the how. But the important thing is helping that client understand why they want to build their business, why they want that phone to ring, what’s important to them personally, for having a successful business? So it again, does not matter what the niche is or who the client is, the why is the most important, and we provide the how. So we have as an example, we’ve done a lot of work and continue to do a lot of work with attorneys from all spectrums, but we like family attorneys because from all the different facets from child custody to child support to divorce to prenuptial agreements, all of those are very, very important to the fabric of the general family itself. But according to the Law Review, the value to an attorney of a family law case is somewhere north of $15,000. So we know that if we go to a divorce attorney that’s sitting on page two in any major city or any town over a quarter of a million people, and they’re not on page two… Excuse me, they’re not on page one, we can get them to page one. And so the value of our average contract with them is something around $1,800 to $3,500 monthly. But they totally understand that if I get them on page one where a majority of people are looking for them, they’re going to have success.

So we have a client in the eastern suburbs of San Francisco, in the Oakland suburbs of San Francisco that has 4X’d their sales volume since they’ve been with us for a little over two years. And I have not raised my rates with them, although I’m sure that I could, but I love the fact that she refers other clients to me. And so it’s so well worth what we do for her, and it’s so well worth my relationship with her to just keep it on and on. And one of the things that’s really, really important from my perspective from all of those clients is to make sure that their why is answered and then we are very, very clear on what we’re doing to help them achieve their why.

Jeff Tomlin: One of the areas I wanted to talk to you about was diversifying your income because it was something that you had mentioned in the pre-show, that you diversify your income and you have a couple of different things that you work on. And I just want to share a quick story. I remember when we were starting Vendasta, I was having a chat with one of my co-founders and I was saying… He had a couple of different things in the go. And I was saying to him, “Hey, my point of view is that we have to be all in on this one thing and we have to approach it like there’s no plan B and failure is not an option. That’s the only way we’re going to ensure we’re going to grow this to be World-class thing.” And he said, “There’s risk involved in any business, and you’re an idiot if you don’t think about diversifying.” Now, he didn’t call me an idiot. That’s what I heard him say. But I like to think that the truth of the matter lies somewhere in the middle of our two opinions on the matter. But talk to me a little bit about how you approach diversifying your income streams and how you choose where to focus?

Peter Tandy: Well, I’m a big believer, as I said earlier, in an abundance state of mind. I fully know having read some really great books that if the world, the universe, God and the universe as you will, will give you anything you focus on. I like to focus on abundance. I like to focus on the fact that there is so much business out there for people in our industry, in our digital marketing industry because there are so many business owners who go to bed at night, Jeff, and they either pray to God, pray to the universe, meditate, or whatever it is they’re doing. They’re saying, “Dear God, dear universe, please, please make my phone ring in the morning so I can sell something to somebody. Amen.” It happens every day.

Jeff Tomlin: Yeah.

Peter Tandy: So I’m a big believer in letting as many people as I know, know about the tools that work for me. So I’m a big proponent of the affiliate program at Vendasta and sharing Vendasta with as many of the people that are in my tribe, my search engine optimization agency tribe. And I meet with these people probably two or three times a month and let them know what people like Vendasta and the vendors that support you do. And I have other affiliate programs that I work with as well that run the scope of tools that I use for my business software-as-a-service tools that I use for my business. And I’m a big believer in sharing that, and if it helps reduce my overhead or helps bring dollars to the bottom line, all the better. But I think it’s silly and more importantly, shortsighted to believe that we all have to gather all the business around us and we have to worry that our gain is somebody else’s loss. No, our gain is somebody else’s gain because the stronger we are as organizations and being able to talk with one another and share best practices with somebody else, the better we’re all going to be. I love that, and I love the relationship I have with Vendasta, and how that helps me leverage that philosophy in my mind.

Jeff Tomlin: I like that a lot. What I hear you saying is that you’re not diluting your focus at all. What you’re doing rather is you’re maintaining a focus and you’re taking time to share the knowledge and experience that you have working in the specific area that you’re in. And from that, I imagine it creates a lot of opportunity from you spinning that off.

Peter Tandy: Without a doubt. And as you well know, I spend some portion of my life involved in business Networking International, BNI, whose philosophy is givers gain. And I’m a big believer that the more I give, the more I gain. And I can never out give the people that I refer business to, they’re just going to continue to give me more business. Even though I try very, very hard to out give them, it just never happens.

Jeff Tomlin: Clearly leadership is a big thing for you and you carry that on to the work that you do with your clients as well. One of the things that you talk about quite a bit is being a leader to your clients and providing them leadership throughout the relationship and your engagement with them. Now talk a little bit, how that’s important to you as well.

Peter Tandy: Yeah. Each one of the members of my team and I have a very small team, but everyone understands the value they bring to each of our clients and their role in the client’s success. So every new contract we take on, every new client we have, every time we get page one presence for our client or more reviews for our client or their listings are cleared up, we celebrate as much as we can every single day. I’m a really, really big believer in making sure that our team members are happy and more importantly, they understand what drives our clients. So the relationship I have with our clients, Jeff, can best be described as collaborative. From the very, very beginning, they understand that I can’t make them successful, that their success is based not only on our efforts, but also on their efforts as well. So they see me and our staff as sort of like a virtual sales and marketing director. And I’ll give you a perfect example. If I call a client and they have an answering machine that says, “Your phone call is very important to us.” And it’s between eight and five on a weekday, that’s a no. My phone call is not important or you’d have somebody answering it. And I’m very, very frank with these people, my clients, because I know, because I’m a consumer, that if I’m looking for somebody, again, a roofer, a flooring contractor, an attorney, a doctor, a dentist, I have a very select timeframe in which I’m going to make a decision to find that person, to take money out of my wallet and give it to them so they can solve my problem. It’s a very limited timeframe. I know, and I help them understand that if they don’t answer the phone when it rings or they don’t have an answering service that answers in their own name or an employee who answers in their own name, that person who is on Google for a very short period of time is going to go somewhere else. So very important that they understand that they need to be responsible for the success in their business. They can’t rely on page one presence on Google, although they’re getting it. Page one presence means they’re going to get more phone calls, they better be ready to handle them.

Jeff Tomlin: Yeah, a 100%. Love it. We’ve covered a lot of ground here from talking about mindset to leadership to the importance of networking and sharing. If you had some takeaways for the crowd, where do you start and what are your top three takeaways? 

Peter Tandy: Okay. Well, I would say a couple of things. Number one, find good partners, and I had success before I was introduced to Vendasta, but I’ve had four times the success I’ve had since my relationship with Vendasta. That would be number one, find good partners who know more than you do and who are willing to be collaborative and are willing to have a relationship in your success. Number two, find a way to get new business. I choose business Networking International, BNI, because there are 11,000 chapters worldwide. The business has been in effect since the 1980s. There are about 313,000 members, 13.1 million referrals this last year. And just in the United States it was $20.6 billion in referred business. So I’m a big believer if you have a BNI chapter in the area that you live in, look at it because from my perspective, if you’re looking for new customers, it’s always easier to get a foot in the door or to talk to a C-suite member if you’ve been vetted and every single member of BNI believes you are vetted because you are. So I spent a lot of my time, Jeff, in the employment of Fortune 100 companies where we “dial for dollars” every day. I don’t discourage it, but it’s hard, hard work. Whereas if I call another member of BNI and ask them for a half an hour conversation about their business goals and I want to share my business goals with them in a very structured environment, they’re going to answer the phone and they’re going to set an appointment with me. And so I would tell you that somewhere close to 75% of my bottom line revenue is from BNI. And if anybody would like to get information on that, I’m sure you’ll provide them with my credentials.

Jeff Tomlin: That’s amazing. Customer acquisition is one of the most challenging things for any company, and it sounds like you’ve got that cased. Hey, it was an absolute pleasure spending a few minutes chatting with you. You’re a wealth of knowledge and a ton of wisdom, and I’m going to go away and I’m going to ask for my wife to get me a golf trip booked somewhere fancy and I’m left a little bit inspired. If people want to continue the conversation and get in touch with you, how do they reach out to you?

Peter Tandy: Well, they can go to my website, which is onefourthreedigital.com, all spelled out, one-four-three Digital. I’m sure you’ll put those in the show notes or they can email me at onefourthreedigital@gmail.com or find me, Peter Tandy on LinkedIn as well.

Jeff Tomlin: Peter Tandy, it was an absolute pleasure chatting with you. I wish you the best and hope that you can come back on the show a little bit down the road and share some more with us.

Peter Tandy: I look forward to it. Please call me when you get to Northern California. We’ll go up to Lake Tahoe and we’ll play the golf course up there and the scenery itself will inspire great shots for me, my friend.

Jeff Tomlin: I don’t know what can inspire great shots from me, but I am all in and I will take you up on that.

Peter Tandy: That’s a deal. Thank you.

Jeff Tomlin: Best to you, Peter.

Peter Tandy: Appreciate you so much.

Conclusion

Jeff Tomlin: What a great guy! Here are the key takeaways that I took from our chat. First up is Strategic Mentoring. Tap into the knowledge and experience of industry leaders who’ve been in the industry for a while. Learning their strategies can give you a significant advantage in the long run, proving invaluable on your path to success.

The second takeaway is a Client-Centric Approach and Solution-Based Advertising. Peter emphasized the need to understand a client’s motivations and implement a strategy focused on solutions. Clear communication is key in ensuring clients grasp the value of securing top search engine placement. This approach fosters a collaborative relationship, contributing to overall success.

If you’ve enjoyed Peter Tandy’s episode discussing Digital Marketing , keep the conversation going and revisit some of our older episodes from the archives: Check out Episode 648: Building a Successful Agency and Establishing Long-Term Client Partnerships with David Reske or Episode 640: Boosting Consultancy Success: Strategies for Navigating Today’s Business Dynamics with Chris Knudsen

Until next time, I’m Jeff Tomlin. Get out there and be awesome!