622: The Art of Traditional and Digital Marketing Strategies | Darren Anderson

Darren Anderson, the Business Development Manager of Anderson Marketing Group, is joining us live in the studio on today’s episode of the Conquer Local Podcast.

With over 20 years of experience, Darren and his team have provided strategic solutions to businesses in Saskatoon and Western Canada, helping them grow and establish brand trust within their respective industries.

Darren’s unique service offering focuses on enhancing clients’ brand presence, enabling them to stand out in the competitive market. As a dedicated professional, Darren actively supports his clients in achieving their business goals and desired outcomes. His approach combines creative thinking, hands-on marketing expertise, and a deep understanding of his client’s needs, resulting in tailored strategic plans that deliver remarkable results.

Darren goes above and beyond to cultivate lifelong relationships with his clients. And his genuine and personable nature has earned him a reputation as a trusted confidant to all who work with him.

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

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The Art of Traditional and Digital Marketing Strategies

Introduction

Jeff Tomlin: Welcome to the Conquer Local Podcast! Our show features successful sales leaders, marketers, thought leaders and entrepreneurs who will inspire you with their success stories. Each episode is packed with practical strategies, as our guests share their secrets to achieving their dreams. Listen in to learn the highlights of their remarkable accomplishments and get tips to revamp, rework, and reimagine your business. Whether you’re a small business owner, marketer, or aspiring entrepreneur, the Conquer Local Podcast is your ultimate guide to dominating your local market. Tune in now to take your business to the next level! 

I’m Jeff Tomlin and on this episode, we’re pleased to welcome Darren Anderson

Darren Anderson is the Business Development Manager of Anderson Marketing Group that has provided businesses in Saskatoon and Western Canada with strategic solutions to grow and gain brand trust in their industry for over 20 years with a unique service that helps clients enhance their brand presence

Darren works actively to support clients with their business goals and ideal results by using a creative experience and hands-on marketing to create a strategic plan that is best suited for clients. 

You know, personally, I’m really excited to have this conversation. Darren is going to be in the studio with me and I’ve known him for a long time, and I’m excited for you to get to meet him because I’ve never met a business leader that can create a network like he can. And it’s not just a network, he creates lifelong relationships with his clients. Everyone becomes his friend. Everyone knows Darren, he’s an amazing person and so I’m going to say get ready Conquerors for my good friend, Darren Anderson coming up next on this week’s episode of the Conquer Local Podcast. 

Local Hero, Massive Network and Simplified Golf Secrets

Jeff: Darren Anderson.

Darren: Jeff.

Jeff: Local hero, so I haven’t had the chance yet on the podcast to chat with a local person, sit across a desk and have an interview, and so I feel like you’re one of my heroes. But growing up, it felt like you kind of ran the town. Anyone that wanted to do anything cool in town, well, do you know Darren Anderson? No, I don’t know him. How do I get to know this guy?

Darren: Yeah, yeah, back then it was very interesting ’cause I was involved with a lot of the larger hospitality venues, integrated with sports and university and so forth. So it was neat because some people did say on Saturday night, if they had a mayor election, you would probably win.

Jeff: Well, it’s true, that’s the way I remember it too and it was like who is this guy? He’s an international man of mystery or at least a local man of mystery, but you created a massive network really early on in your career, and now we’ve been working together for about seven years.

Darren: Seven years, yep.

Jeff: Finally got to know Darren Anderson. Still doesn’t take me out golfing

Darren: This summer I will.

Jeff: Yeah, well, actually there’s a reason for that. I try not to embarrass myself and put myself in those situations. You’re a scratch golfer, aren’t you?

Darren: I can’t say that I am now. I used to be actually a pretty good golfer. I was a golf pro for a few years, but it’s just a matter of now getting out with my friends once a week and no real expectations.

Jeff: I’ve been struggling with my golf game for many years and I had shared this story at one of our live conferences ’cause I looked up some tips online and I came across this engineer who’s a perfect example of problems that I’ve had. And he said well, I’ve broken this swing down into just a couple of easy steps and if you can remember it, you’ll be off to the races. He says you need to flat-load your feet so you can snap-load your power package. That way you can amplify both lag and drag pressure through impact fix. As long as your number two power accumulator doesn’t break down, you should be able to reach maximum centrifugal force at minimum pivotal resistance. See, the pivot is the utilization of multiple centers to create a circular motion for generating centrifugal force on an adjusted plane, plus the balance as necessary to promote the two-line delivery path. The swing has 24 base components, each 12 to 14 variations, and if you get that down, you should be good. And that kind of summed up my recollection of everything that I learned, it’s gobbledygook.

Darren: Oh, do you know what? And there’s so many instructors that teach that way on the technical side, but there is actually, believe it or not, a way you can simplify the game of golf and really it just comes down to setup, and grip pressure, and tempo. So you think of it as a pendulum. It’s back and through and just get everything working together.

Building Networks, Balancing Traditional and Digital Strategies

Jeff: Analogy of simplifying business practices too. So you’ve got, well, probably well over 20 years of experience now in all things marketing and strategic planning. So why don’t you tell the audience a little bit about your background and how you got to where you’re at now?

Darren: Yeah, so it does go back over 20 years. Actually, in the late 90s when I was actually in school and I was running the Patricia Hotel which was one of the, it was the centre of the universe.

Jeff: It was.

Darren: And for, again, athletes and hockey teams and students and so forth, so it was very, it was all about building the network. Even though it was a very social atmosphere, I was 23, 24 when I first started there but I had a plan. So it was finish school, build up my network, and then I knew that I wanted to go into the consultancy side of business, the growth side, the strategic planning side. And so I started building relationships and it’s very interesting, to the present day, a lot of these guys that I babysat back at the Pat are now CEOs and owners of their business and so forth so.

Jeff: That’s an accurate analogy, babysat.

Darren: It was, we won’t get into those stories because I might get a few subpoenas.

Jeff: I might have been one of them at one point.

Darren: Oh, you were good. And the first relationship built was actually with Chief Darcy Barrow out of Whitecap and this was great for me ’cause he was such a, and he still is such a visionary. And he had his community and he was looking for growth, and it started with the sports center right up to the resort. And so I’ve been very fortunate to be a part of that story, that journey for, again, 20-some years starting with the sports center, and the growth aspect from the development side to the planning side to the promotional side. And it just really started with delivering beer out to their sports days and taking care of them that way. We just built a relationship and went from there, and like I said, it’s continued forward.

Jeff: And what a great example of a group that really had a vision and then executed on that vision consistently over quite a period of time and have built something amazing out there now really. So I mean, so the way that you approach things, you really are a strategic planner and you have this mix when you approach things on traditional approaches and digital approaches. And maybe talk a little bit about how you balance that when you’re planning.

Darren: Yeah, like I said, when I started, it was more of a traditional sense of marketing like we had print, television, and radio. But you still needed a strategy behind it and you still needed to execute and someone to manage these campaigns and projects. Basically, someone needs to be turning the wrench so to speak. And then when the digital side started taking over so to speak and that was when we started our partnership, I knew that I had to make changes or I then, as a consultant at that time, would become a dinosaur and it would be very hard to move forward in the new age of marketing. So had conversations with you and brought in some key people from website designers, to social media people, to graphic designers, to content writers just kind of covering all bases that I would need at some point based on the projects that we’d bring in. And I started with warm calls. Because of that network that I built which was so important, those are the people that I immediately went to and had conversations about their business, where it stands now, and where they wanna be in the next three to five years, and then even the longer term.

Balancing Investment and Problem-Solving with Holistic Approach

Jeff: Yeah, so you deal with quite the breadth of businesses. You don’t focus on one particular vertical so you’ve sort of got a holistic approach when you begin working with them. I am just curious about the digital versus traditional. How do you figure out what is gonna be most effective and how do you balance the investment in the two sides when you’re approaching a sort of a strategic plan for a business?

Darren: And that’s a great question. One is, and again, going back just to meeting with my prospects, my clients and having that conversation of where they presently sit with their marketing portfolio and then just having conversations about it. So I always considered it I looked at it as a two-by-four and to fill that two-by-four is what does that look like and what’s the percentages involved? So for example, one of my longest-standing clients, Precision Auto Body which has done wonderful things in the city and now they branched out into the rural centers, they were strictly or mostly radio. 80% of their marketing portfolio was radio when I came in seven, or eight years ago. So we assessed that and we looked at the ROI on that and how they quantify that investment wasn’t really working. And we determined it was working ’cause they were very unique with the strategy behind it. They had a cool voiceover. They created a character called Rocco.

Jeff: Yeah, I remember that.

Darren: Yeah, so ’cause they were Italian-owned. And it was funny, people would phone and ask for Rocco.

Jeff: Of course, they would.

Darren: Yeah, so it’s very similar to other clients that we worked with from that point forward. But then we had to look at it a little deeper into it. Is that now we needed to look at more lead generation and growth and conversion and how we were gonna get there. So we looked at the social marketing side of it. We looked at the search side of it and again, everything included very specific strategies and management and execution of that. And then we would just again, kind of wipe the board clean or in this case my two-by-four, and then say okay, we’re gonna take radio from 80 to 25. But now we’re gonna add search and social and we’re going to do direct mail which would be about 5%, and we just basically filled up the two-by-four once again.

Jeff: But you have a unique approach to problem-solving and especially when you walk into a brand new business and there’s a lot of different aspects to the business, there’s the branding, there’s their go-to-market and lead gen, and then there’s their product positioning and the way they’re positioned in the local market. And breaking all that down when a business is having problems specifically can be challenging. Maybe talk a little bit about how you approach problem-solving when you step into sort of either a new client or you have a client that brand new problems sort of pop up.

Darren: Yeah, the problem-solving is always a big factor as well because again, a lot of business owners and so forth are usually, especially in our centre, are very involved in their day-to-day business, so they’re always working in their business. And it’s sometimes very tough for them to step back and look at it from the outside in.

Jeff: Work on the business.

Darren: Work on the business, so that’s where we come in and we will run an assessment of what we see going on as it pertains to staff and to the corporate structuring, the communication lines. Are you achieving your short-term and long-term goals? And look at the competition factor and then basically come back to them with the report and our recommendations. Sometimes they didn’t like it and when you think about it, you don’t really blame them ’cause a lot of these business owners have worked so hard to get where they are and sometimes don’t want to give up control of their business or admit that they need help.

Building Trust through Effective Communication

Jeff: Is that part of the process of creating the trust though? You have to give them the bad news and be able to deliver it in a way that they can ingest it, right? 

Darren: Some have kicked me over their office. But on the other side, Jeff, is that they’ve also a few weeks later have re-invited me back to their office and they said, you know what? I was wrong. Not saying I was wrong, but I just didn’t look at what you were really saying. I was in denial would probably be a better word. And then that just opened up a door for now the communication which would be the strategic conversation, right? Of what do we need to do? Let’s talk about budget, let’s talk about timelines, let’s talk about the need. So what are we needing over here? And then we can start bringing platforms, these solution tools, to fill that need. So once you create that trust and then that communication falls, communication’s key and that’s key in anything. And I guess looking back, that has and always will be one of my skill sets. Especially growing up local and having success in what I did leading up to what I do now, I think people just say he’s a good guy. He knows what he’s talking about. Let’s partner with him.

Jeff: Talk a little bit about your approach because when I think of the way that you describe your go-to-market, you remind me of belly-to-belly, an old school, belly-to-belly salesperson, maybe without the belly.

Darren: I try.

Jeff: But is that a forgotten art? It seems like you create a relationship with your customers that other companies just don’t do, and also is that sort of a forgotten art?

Darren: Yeah, and again, another great question and my philosophy has always been again, building that relationship and I give you a perfect example. When I’ve had young guys coming out of university kind of wanting to get into the digital side, the marketing side, strategic side. And we were in Prince Albert and we had a meeting with the Prince Albert Raiders going into their next season, and they were gonna have a strong hockey club. So we were meeting with their board of directors. I’d never met them. The only person I knew was their internal marketing guy. Great guy, Mike Sissims, and so I knew what I wanted to talk about and I had I guess my apprentice there with me. So we walked into the boardroom and guys were talking and the meeting was just getting kind of settled, and I was looking on their wall which is kind of like a wall of fame, it’s hockey. And there was a picture of the PA Mintos when they won, back then it was kind of similar to the Telus Cup. They won the national championship so to speak in the early 50s, and my dad was in that picture.

Jeff: Wow, no way.

Darren: And I pointed to dad, he was a hockey player and he ended up playing with the Detroit Red Wings. And so I said, “Oh, that’s cool, there’s my old man.” And a couple of guys stopped and like “Who’s your dad?” I said, “Well, Dale Anderson.” Right away he was like, “Oh, I remember Dale Anderson,” da da da, “and then he became a liquor rep after we retired. And he was such a great guy. He had such good stories.” And at that point, I’ve already broken the ice. I’ve already created a doorway.

Jeff: Part of the family.

Darren: Exactly, I created an interest, a conversation piece outside of business. And so then we kind of settled in and continued to talk. I asked them what they do and what companies they own ’cause they’re a board of directors. OK Tire, we had an audio-visual owner and the conversation just ensued. And my guy sitting there is like this guy’s just gonna talk about interest and he’s probably not gonna talk about business. And then Mike came in, convened the meeting, and then we got to it and I said, “You know what, guys? Here’s your objectives for the upcoming season with a strong hockey club and you wanna reach the students. Well, we can help you do that. We can help you do that on the digital sense ’cause you already have the traditional sense already in play ’cause you’ve been doing it well for so many years. We’re just gonna balance that on the digital side and this is how we’re gonna do it.” So we talked about local ads and the geofencing and getting into the colleges and the schools and so forth, and they’re kind of like this is cool. But the trust was already intact so to speak.

Jeff: No one else was winning that business after that conversation.

Darren: No, and the cool thing, Jeff, is that the other business owners in that conversation then came to me after the meeting and without a word of a lie, we actually got three new clients from the board along with moving forward with the Prince Albert.

Adapting and Thriving: Navigating Business Transformations with Resilience

Jeff: What a great story in the need to be relatable, right? And there’s a flip side to it because you have amazing customer attention. You don’t just land every deal that you basically approach almost, but you keep customers for a very long time.

Darren: Yeah, and honestly I thought a couple of years ago and again, we were going through a pandemic which actually we remained quite strong through the pandemic and we can talk about that, but I always thought it was about bringing on the growth aspect of my business and bringing on new clients, almost two a month I would say. But then my game plan kind of changed and I’m like wait a minute, what about my existing clients? Because everything changes daily. Their needs will change. The digital side will change. There’s new tools that I can maybe bring in and integrate and offer a different strategy for a different need. So I really started focusing on again, the partnerships that I’ve already had in place and how do we continue to grow their business. And I focused less on going out and getting new clients ’cause still, it was about quality versus quantity. So if I did this right, you know what you have in place already. So it’s from a financial side, our business knew we were stable and we knew what our monthly intake would be for revenue generating and honestly revenue growth. We didn’t stop the new business side. We just integrated them.

Jeff: Focused in, and all those businesses needed someone putting them top of mind and thinking about them at that point because everything changed, right?

Darren: Yeah, I remember that first month back in, I guess three years ago now in March and when that announcement came, and the panic button was hit. And we all felt it because the uncertainty was there and it’s almost like the world stood still for a month in my mind.

Jeff: It did for us too. We took a pause and said how is this gonna shake out? And quickly learned that digital solutions were just gonna be in more demand and more demand than ever, and then we continued on. But yeah, I remember everyone took a deep breath and it was like the world was on pause for a month.

Darren: Yeah, and it was so surreal because this was stuff we would see only in the movies. Growing up, that movie with Dustin Hoffman, “Outbreak,” with the little monkey in that. But it was reality and I needed to kind of bar my side with what am I gonna say to these clients? ‘Cause they’re gonna reach out and I need to reach out to them and basically calm the water so to speak, but I didn’t have any answers. So I had initially had people come to me and said I need to shut down my website. I need to shut down, they just wanted to stop ’cause they’re worried, the dollar, the budgeting was the first thought. It’s like I can’t afford it. I won’t be able to afford it. I don’t know what’s happening. So I had to talk them through it. I said let’s look at this as an opportunity to again, step back and let’s look into our business from the outside in and see what we can do differently, see what we can add, see what we can integrate and change our model. Add a revenue skew, and look at different things. And the one big thing and you guys were very helpful with this, was the e-commerce side of it ’cause everything was gonna more so shift of the online aspect. And the cool thing as we started out with it was the online stores we did for golf courses and that they didn’t offer an online component to their membership before. And now it was almost like, why didn’t we think of this when we were in normal times? Now they have you can still come and have this curbside pickup, we can deliver to your door, and eventually, you can come into the pro shop. So you have so many opportunities for members in the general public to buy product.

Jeff: It was clearly the most rapid acceleration of a digital transformation that ever happened, you could imagine probably ever happening. But then you’re surprised when something like OpenAI comes out with ChatGPT and you think oh, man, we’re at the cusp of another revolution. But it was amazing how resilient businesses were and how rapidly they transformed out of necessity, and it was special actually.

Darren: It was, and that’s a great way to put it is that none of our clients lost their business. They actually came out on the other side better than ever and now they had a growth strategy that they weren’t even thinking of. They were looking strictly at the survival strategy. And I’ve said this many times before, I’m proud of all of them because actually they did step back and they rolled up their sleeves, and they grinded it. It’s such a Saskatchewan mentality because we’re that type of people.

Jeff: That’s a great way to think about it too. I feel the same way, I feel proud.

Fostering Collaboration for Client Success: The Power of Networking

Darren: Exactly, and I told them how proud and they were proud of themselves, and in hindsight, don’t take it the wrong way, but the pandemic for some businesses was a blessing ’cause it allowed these business owners to put a pause on things, step back, and work on their business.

Jeff: It was a forcing function for that, yeah, 100% percent. So, and as things change, the technology landscape is changing so fast, how do you stay on top of things?

Darren: Yeah, and again, me more so being a traditional guy a marketing person and a consultant, honestly I really rely on my relationship with you guys because my conversations happen daily. We have specific times, we have one-off times, but we’re always communicating on the new stuff and on the existing stuff, and that’s been a really big key. So for me, it’s my digital sounding board. It’s here’s my client, here’s the need. Here’s the change, what do you guys think? And then it’s the conversations ensue over here and then we get back to the table and say, Darren, we think that this would be great for your client. I’m like cool, let’s talk about what it looks like.

Jeff: We talk about a lot of businesses that are stuck working in the business instead of on the business, and so that sort of highlights, I guess, the need to have a network that pulls you up out of working in the business, and to reflect, and say hey, what are the new things that we need to be thinking about and where are things going?

Darren: One of our unique clients and well, their international brand is the Holiday Inns. So we have the one on Idylwyld which has been around forever, it’s an Express. We have the downtown Holiday Inn which is more of a premier hotel by TCU Place. Now we have the university Holiday Inn which is actually a Holiday Inn Staybridge, so it’s two properties under one location. And they’re great to work with because they have the support of their governing brand, the IHG brand, but they also love to be local because when we can come in and take photos and take video for reels and social media campaigns and so forth and have those one-on-one conversations. Recently I thought because now they’re doing a lot of work with Sask Tour or I guess Discover Saskatoon about promoting incentive packages. So giving their guests a little extra when they stay or the enticement of book with us because we have these great packages through the calendar year. So I went to The Willows and I said we should do an incentive package in June, July, and August with the Holiday Inn. So you book in and you’re getting golf vouchers, a free round of golf. So we had a meeting, three-way meeting. We put it together and we’re starting on the 1st of June.

Jeff: Amazing, amazing.

Darren: Yeah, so old-school cross promotion integrated into a social media campaign and organic social media marketing, and this is what we do.

Jeff: Very cool, and you’re bringing your clients together and creating your own network, that’s amazing.

Darren: And who knows what’s gonna happen between the Holiday Inn and The Willows in their own regard. They might do more business together. They might start golfing or book their staff golf tournament there, who knows?

Jeff: So you really are a connector in the community. So that’s a very, very cool strategy

Darren: I never just, you got to be able to kind of step out of that box ’cause it’s very easy for us as digital marketers, consultants, traditional marketing people to get stuck in that bubble.

Jeff: 100%

Darren: So the more we can step back and kind of look at the big picture as it involves traditional and digital, it’s only gonna benefit our clients in the end.

Driving Purpose and Building Strong Community Networks

Jeff: So what’s on the agenda for you for the year? You’re looking through the end of the year, 2023. What’s on tap for Darren Anderson for the rest of the year?

Darren: Yeah, it’s been, like I mentioned to you before we came on is that we have had an interesting start to 2023, a good start. Ourselves, we even looked at, we even grew through the last couple of years through bringing in a corporate apparel promotional division. I brought in a partnership on the video production side. And so on the video production side, we actually have a recruitment platform for young athletes to do these packages and position them in front of recruiters for college applications for scholarships. So we’ve actually done probably close to 20 already in our community from soccer to fastball to hockey. Yeah, it’s pretty neat, yeah. So we found though that they all integrate of course. So we just did a TED Talk series with Canadian Mental Health Association last summer. Now we’re just launching it into some digital platforms so there’s an awareness, and it was 20 topics with 20 people that had amazing, very deep, very intimate stories about what they went through in their life when it comes to mental health from trauma to anxiety, to self-advocacy. And now we’re launching these videos through this partnership with the CMHA using our digital platform. So we do have a mental health initiative and that was when we lost my brother four years ago to suicide who was our, his business was promotional and apparel. So a lot of interesting things have happened for us through the pandemic and into what the new normal looks like, so our growth is-

Jeff: You really are driven through a sense of purpose. Again, through your work on the mental health side and then your community building through your roots, and sports, and the network that you created, and bringing people together. It does seem like you have a real sense of purpose in the community.

Darren: Yeah, I’ve always loved the fact that I can create these partnerships and I can bring other people into those partnerships. I like to see my work, the success of my work, whether it’s driving down the road and you see a billboard that you designed and used the slogan and built the new brand and design. And I love to see businesses succeed because I’m a local guy even though we have clients all through Western Canada. So watching, being a part of that success factor has always been pretty cool for me. And again, going back to the network I’ve always told young people that I’ve dealt with and that I’ve spoken to, you can never put enough great people basically into your pockets ’cause you’re gonna need them.

Jeff: It’s so true, it’s so true.

Darren: And building your network is half the battle. I was very fortunate of where I worked. So when I got into it, I already had a network established. A lot of kids coming out of university, that’s their biggest detriment is that they’re starting from ground level. They don’t have a network, so they’re cold calling which I am not a cold caller.

Jeff: I remember being in business school in university and they would have these networking events, and I didn’t even know what it meant to network at the time. And what am I supposed to be doing here? I’m rubbing shoulders with people that I don’t know. But you’re so right, that being able to build a network with a focus on really building meaningful connections with people that have similar interests, right? That is at its core, isn’t it?

Darren: Yeah, and I really learned to be, through that process, Jeff, to be authentic, to be real. Have the tough conversations with businesses because at the day, their best interest is my priority. And that spins off into their brand message, into our campaigns that that we build for them is tell your story. Not just what you do, but why you do what you do. Bring in some personality, keep it simple. Let other people help you with that process. So your network that you’ve built, your followers and your loyal customers, they will help you because the platforms are now in place. It’s easy for them to help you, but just, yeah, make it authentic, make it trusting. And I will always remember my conversations with my mentors is that a lot of times the consumer isn’t buying the product that you’re offering. They’re buying you, they’re buying into you.

Authenticity, Trust, and Successful Campaign Strategies

Jeff: Well, I was just gonna ask you for one takeaway. What is one thing that people could take away, but I feel like it should probably be that.

Darren: Yeah, it’s again, the authenticity and the network. The being able to just, using that network, using those connections and build a strategy. The digital age I found at some point for me, I said oh, this is easy. I just load up my stuff and press submit, and let her rip. I quickly learned it’s much more than that. There’s the management side, there’s the monitoring side. There’s the communication back and forth with my client. Here’s the good that’s happening. Here’s where we’re a little weakened. So you’re constantly managing the campaign, whatever it looks like and whatever the budget is attached to it, it works. It’s not built to fail. And so from our side, the leave that I would say, from our side and the client side, the business owner side, trust the process which I know is sometimes very tough to buy into. But it’s built to work. So if that communication, and that authenticity and that trust is in place, you’re gonna have a successful campaign which means you’re gonna have a successful business, whatever the campaign strategy is all about.

Jeff: I feel like we could talk about this for a long time and I feel like we could talk about all of your different local stories and amazing stories that you have with the community leaders and business leaders locally and throughout Western Canada that you know. It’s always a pleasure sitting down and having a chat with you, and I hope we can do this again in the near future. If people have questions and they wanna connect with you, how do they reach you?

Darren: Yeah, they can head to our website which is AMGBranding.ca. They can contact me via email at Darren, D-A-R-R-E-N, @amgbranding.ca or just give me a call at 639-471-7922. Let’s talk about your business.

Jeff: And hopefully throughout the course of the year, I maybe get an invite to one of these exclusive golf groups that you have.

Darren: They’re not exclusive.

Jeff: And maybe I’ll take a risk at embarrassing myself and we can pick up the conversation.

Darren: Yeah, absolutely, I’d love to take you out and show you the simple side of the golf swing.

Jeff: It’s been elusive for almost 30 years, so I’d love to see the simple side of it.

Darren: Yes, absolutely.

Jeff: Hey, always a pleasure, man. Thanks for sitting down. Hope we can do this again in the not-to-distant future.

Darren: Yeah, I loved it, it was great. So thanks, Jeff, appreciate it.

Jeff: Ladies and gentlemen, Darren Anderson. Thanks so much for joining us.

Darren: Absolutely, thank you.

Conclusion

It was a pleasure having my good friend Darren Anderson joining us here live in our studio. Darren emphasizes the importance of building trust and relationships with his clients and vendors. He’s able to have long-term clients because he focuses on quality over quantity, and he works closely with his clients to understand their needs and build customized solutions. And by being local, he can provide a unique flavour to his campaigns and create a sense of community with his clients.

Darren’s success in building partnerships and networks highlights the importance of community building and having a sense of purpose. He uses his platform to address important issues like mental health and sports recruitment and he integrates them into his digital marketing initiatives. He encourages young people to build their networks and to keep their approach authentic and trusting.

Lastly, I love the way that Darren creates synergies between his clients and in expanding his network.

If you’ve enjoyed Darren’s episode discussing The Art of Balancing Traditional and Digital Marketing Strategies  Keep the conversation going and revisit some of our older episodes: Episode 507: How To Think More Profitably As An Agency with Marcel Petitpas, or Episode 300: Building Trust with Customers, with Jim Tracy or Episode 321: Sales Procurement & Relationship Building, with Jens Hentschel

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