How to Integrate Print & Digital Marketing

Hello! My name is Ryan Cote, I'm the Director of Digital Services and Partner at Ballantine, a family owned print and digital marketing agency that my great uncle started in the mid-60's. I occasionally go on marketing or entrepreneurial related podcasts to talk about marketing, entrepreneurship and related topics, and I'm sharing the transcriptions on LinkedIn hoping you get a helpful nugget or two from my conversations. This interview below was with Paul Maskill from Business Owner's Freedom Formula. Enjoy!

Paul: Hey. What's up, business owner? Thanks so much for tuning into Episode 174 of the "Business Owners Freedom Formula" show. Our interview here today with Ryan Cote.

Ryan is the Director of Digital Services and Partner at Ballantine, a third-generation family-owned direct mail and digital marketing company based out of Fairfield, New Jersey. With Ballantine since 2003, a family-owned business that was started in 1966 by his great uncle, Ryan now manages the growing digital marketing division.

From lead generation to marketing strategy for small businesses, Ryan and his company rise above to get featured quick schemes so often attributed to digital marketing. He loves to geek out on technical marketing talk as well as work with real world business owners about growing their book of business in today's online world. So that is Ryan Cote. Ryan, welcome. Thanks so much for being here. How are you today?

Ryan: Thanks, Paul. I'm doing great. Yeah, I'm really good.

Paul: Awesome. If you are watching the interview, Ryan has the biggest book collection to date of anybody that we've interviewed. But it is a third-generation by now book collection so well done to him. If you are watching the interview, he's got a phenomenal book collection from his father's office.

Ryan: It's all his books.

Paul: It's all his books. He can't take any credit, but we're gonna jump right in. Obviously, we are all about freedom. So the first question I ask everybody is what is your ideal view of ultimate freedom?

Ryan: I mean, for me, honestly...so I mean, I work a good amount of hours, but I like what I do so it's not necessarily...you know, there's obviously some moments of stress and whatnot. But overall, I really like what I do. So for me, it's doing what you enjoy doing and also having some sense of hobbies and things you like to do on the side. So it's really having passion for what you do and growing as well. You know, that, for me, is freedom.

Paul: Awesome. And you're probably the first person who actually referenced the fact that you do work probably more than most people that work jobs but you enjoy it. And I think that is just fine. If you're working 60 hours a week and you love it, it's better than working 30 hours a week and hating it. So the key is how you spend the time making sure you're enjoying what you're doing.

So we're gonna jump right into the interview. I always like to kinda focus on two things: one, your journey to today. We all love stories and hear on how you came to where you are today. And then, two, the second part of the interview will kinda dig into your expertise and see how that can help our listeners out there today.

So number one, you're in a family business that's been around for like 50-some years. So how did you get involve with the family business in the first place?

Ryan: So the company started in the mid-60s by my great uncle. And so, out of intern college and breaks, I would work at the company during summer breaks. And I actually did not know that I want to get into the family business out of college. I had a couple of jobs afterwards, have a marketing degree. And my middle brother went into business, and I started getting the itch.

And so, I started out doing marketing for the company, so, you know, SEO and trade shows and various different strategies, and then, help to launch the digital division about five years ago. So I transitioned out of marketing, though I guess I sort of am sort of the marketing person. But now, we treat Ballantine as a client of our digital side of business. And my main job here now is to grow the digital division through getting new clients, you know, sales. So that's a very quick description of the last I guess 15 years of my life.

Paul: So what was the final straw to get you to quit your job because obviously, you went to school. You went to go get a regular job, started helping on the side. What was that kind of aha moment like, "Okay. I'm gonna quit my job and go work for the family business full time." Did you ever have an inkling of, "Hey, I wanna work in the business. I wanna own my own business," or how did that come to fruition?

Ryan: So I've always have like an entrepreneurial bug in me. So I'm always, you know, on the side, sold things. You know, even in college, selling things on eBay. So I've always had an entrepreneurial side to me. And so I think that started to come out more, and I started thinking like the family business. And maybe one day, I could be an owner and own my own business, which I now am with my two brothers and my uncle. My dad retired in December so now, we are all partners in business. So they come to fruition.

So I think that's what it is, I mean, the entrepreneurial bug that was always in me started just getting more and more active. And once the idea popped my head and I decided that I want to do it, it was something I couldn't stop thinking about. And so, I went to my father and uncle and kinda just threw the idea out there and here we are.

Paul: Very cool. And how has it been? Obviously, we probably have listeners out there that are in family businesses, which sometimes can be tough because at the end of the day, it's family. So how have you been able to kind of navigate those waters to make sure you kinda keep business and family separate? Because I know a lot of times business owners, whether it's their spouse or their parents or an uncle, it's sometimes tough to navigate that. How have you guys been able to do that successfully for 50-some years at this point?

Ryan: Yeah. I see the connection, and it's something that I think a lot of family business struggle with. So I wouldn't say we're perfect, but we have that successful business for the last 50-plus years. So the way we do it is like here at Ballantine, you'll have set roles. So what I do is different from what my two brothers do. It's different from my uncle's. We all have our set roles. It's very defined.

And then, in terms of...you know, we're all respectful with each other. We don't have egos. There's nothing, no battling like that with an ego involved. And here, we are all very conscious of keeping family life healthy so it doesn't affect work. And if things come up, then we try to settle it as quickly as possible and so it's worked. I mean, it's 50-plus years now. And we've had a couple of family members come and go, but for the most part, we've had the four of us, well, five being my dad's that have been steady at the company for 40 years going back to when my dad started.

Paul: Very impressive. And I think the key is the communication and self-awareness and knowing that everyone does have the same goals and let's get on the same page. And when you don't have the egos involved, it makes it a lot easier. So really curious even from your standpoint what you've heard from your father and even when it first started, when your grandfather started it, I mean, even back in the 1960s, direct mail probably was kinda like this whole new thing. And then, to see that transition from like direct mail to whatever else was in between, if you did some other marketing, you set some trade shows, to now digital marketing, you've watched the business evolved.

How has that transition...you know, how have you seen it positives, negatives and finally making that switch to digital marketing? Because I'm sure it was a tough transition for some people that had been there for a while. It's like why are we going this way? Is it the right move? How has that transition played out over the last 50 years at least in your eyes?

Ryan: Yes. So, if we go back to the mid-60s, we were just basically doing print-and-ship type of work. So the business has kind of evolved that I can give like a really 30-second review of it. So we started out with print-and-ship, which means you print something, you get it shipped to your office.

And then, we started doing print and mail. So you print something, and then you mail it like the stuff you get in your inbox. And then we started doing copy and designs. That's creating the packages, and then printing it, and then mailing it. And then the digital came along. So it's been like a slow and steady evolution. So the team we have for print, there's clearly defined roles there to in terms of the team. So there's team members here that handle print and then handle digital, so that's clearly separate roles.

You know, I think everyone was excited about the transition because everyone wants to be a part of a company that's evolving and growing. And three years ago, we moved into a newer, more hip, you know, cooler office. And everyone loved that because this is a nice little upgrade in terms of the environment that they come to every day.

But I guess the biggest change was just growing the digital side because it was just me that was doing marketing. And there's only so much one person can do. That was the hardest part is we have this established print business and we wanna have an established digital side of the business. And so, how do we get to that point? Because, you know, I didn't have any experience [inaudible 00:08:56]. My father and uncle did of course but that was printing and digital is different. It took us a little bit to get to where we are now, but that was a little bit scary at that point in those one or two years.

Paul: So you make that transition and you're going into digital marketing. So now, we're gonna kinda focus into that. That's where your expertise is now. You've been doing it for the last few years. We all want more customers. No matter how big or small our business is, we all want more customers. And as we had mentioned before, you even mentioned it in your intro that it is a noisy world out there to stand out, get that attention especially in the online world. Because it's so much easier and financially cheaper to get in front of people than it would be if, "Hey, I need to print all these things then I need to mail them." That's obviously a little bit more, you know, there's a lot more barriers to entry. Where, now we can just throw anything online and all of a sudden we're marketing experts.

So based on your experience and what you've seen, what is, you know, from a 30,000-foot view, how can we stand out online no matter what our business is because we have a lot of competition no matter what you do. I'm a partner in the landscaping business. There's a million landscapers out there. How can our listeners stand out amongst their competitors when it comes to that noisy, busy online world?

Ryan: So I'll answer that but I wanna go back to one thing with the print. So one advantage of the print is that there is less noise. So yes, it's more expensive, but you might not need to leverage print because it's just less competition in the mailbox. But going to digital, it's really not relying on one channel. So as you probably know, Google is always changing whether it's paid or SEO. You know, Facebook is changing the rules. They've had their issues in the past, in the recent past, so you can't rely on one channel. So what we try to do is we try to get our clients on multiple channels. This makes sense for the business of course but multiple channels. All the channels are working together as much as possible. There's synergy and congruency across all different channels, and there's a strategy. So, you know, SEO is not a silo. Paid search is not a silo. Facebook is not a silo. They all work together.

And just to kinda give you a basic example of what I mean with that is paid search, so you're bidding on keywords and you're driving traffic to the website or even Facebook Ads. So you're running Facebook Ads, you're driving traffic to the website. Well, on your site, you have a Pixel for Facebook retargeting and Google retargeting, and then you're retargeting those people. So lessons, those two channels are working together. One is pushing the traffic to the website, and the other one is bringing them back through retargeting. So you wanna make sure that they're all...as much as possible, there is a lot of synergy and they're working together to maximize results. Does that answer your question?

Paul: Yeah. So you've mentioned one thing that I wanna dig into a little bit. Obviously, print is less noisy especially a lot less noisy now than it was probably 10 years ago just because a lot of people have shifted their marketing dollars, which allows for an opportunity in the direct mail print marketing aspect because a lot less people are doing it. How can we get over...I mean, I know when I get mail if it's not something for me, I just throw it away whether it's postcards, a magazine, like whatever it is. How can we stand out so that stuff doesn't get thrown away? What are some things that you've seen have worked recently as far as some strategies to get those things actually opened and people taking action?

Ryan: So there's a few different things you can do. So personalization is obviously and that's what we're seeing like back in the '80s and '90s, you know, we were doing mail for Columbia House, AOL. It was like a huge volume campaign just kind of blasting out to everyone. Well, fast forward to today, it's a lot more personalized. The mail volumes may be smaller, but it's more personalized. The list that our clients are buying, it's very targeted.

So the first step just [inaudible 00:12:40] business, it's making sure that your targeting your audience very specifically and then the mail that you're sending out is very personalized. And it's also committing to a regular schedule of mail. You can't just say, "All right, I'm gonna mail out the other 10,000 stuff mails as postcards." You can make some [inaudible 00:12:57] but the momentum, the buildup of repeated mailings is really, really important. You don't wanna just... it's not one and done there has to be a...

It's like digital. You don't just do SEO for one month. It's a repeated strategy that builds momentum. Well, mail is no different. You need to commit to a schedule. You have your schedule of mail, and you have your schedule of digital and then basic marketing. You offer the copy that you write, the design that you're using to who you're speaking to, all those basic marketing principles, relate obviously to direct mail as you would to digital.

Paul: Very good, very good. And I think, really, like you said, the key takeaway is having that strategy and having that schedule and not just doing it once, "Oh, it didn't work well. I'm not gonna do it again." If you have a strategy and you probably know just as well as anybody else that depending on the marketer, they say, "We gotta touch someone seven to 10 times before they decided to take a buying action." So if they see your postcard once and never again, then, yeah, they're probably not gonna take action, but continually providing value and staying top of mind whether it's online or direct mail.

So going into the second part, you're talking about as far as your online strategy. It is noisier but you're having all these systems work together. I know I've ran into a ton of people, and you probably talk to them every day. They say, "Facebook ads don't work. I've spent money. Nobody bought my stuff. I'm never doing it again." What do you tell the people that tell you that?

Ryan: Well, so Facebook Ads, this is why we try to do multiple channels for clients because there's SEO and there's paid search, which is you're capturing buyers that are further down the cycle. They have a need, they're going to Google and looking. And you got social media, where you don't know if they have a need. But for Facebook, you can use Facebook Advertising to get in front of that specific person who should be a buyer but they might not be ready.

So with Facebook advertising, if you are trying to go for leads, what we try to do is we try to go for a more early stage lead like email address, capturing the email address. So Facebook's lead capture, Ad Objective, we've a lot of success with that. So basically, you're running ads. Someone clicks on Sign Up or Learn More, and their information is prepopulated. You click the button again, you get to capture a lead. So we've done that successfully for capturing email addresses, and that goes into a drip funnel.

So, you know, we've seen Facebook Advertising work. It's part of the bigger strategy of everything digital. But it's also, you know, you might not get the lead like, "Okay. I wanna speak to somebody right now." It's more about, "Here's my email address. I want the information that you're showing me in that Facebook ad." And then, you can nurture them into a full-blown lead.

Paul: And I think that's the key is understanding where they are at in the buying process. If it's Google, someone's actively searching for whatever you're selling. So they're already kinda committed to at least buying something in your industry. Whereas, Facebook, they didn't go onto Facebook to buy your stuff. So you really need to understand and take the time. Maybe you just get their email address, and then you provide more value and a little bit more value.

And then you use the retargeting function that you talked about to then pop up into their News Feed again or they show up on Google ad or whatever it is, and you continue to build that online presence. So eventually, they will buy from you. So a really good insight there. Go ahead. A little bit more about retargeting. If our listeners don't know what retargeting is, give them kind of the quick and easy what retargeting is, what a Facebook Pixel is, what a Google Pixel is and that kind of downlow on that stuff.

Ryan: Absolutely. So you're retargeting...like I said, Paul, you add the Pixel to your site. So you can do LinkedIn, you know, Facebook, Google, etc. So basically, you put Pixel on your site, which is just a piece of code. And when someone comes to your site, they get cookies, and they get that pixel identifiers and it cookies them. And that way, when they leave your website and they browse say, Facebook or LinkedIn or Google's spy network, they see your advertisements.

So it's really important because it kind of amplifies everything that you do. And every type of marketing you're doing, you're generally pushing people to your website. And so the retargeting kind of just...it gives you that second chance, it amplifies all your efforts because when they leave your site, they're seeing your information around the internet.

And we can go down the rabbit hole with Facebook. Even like their email match, you've got your email list, you know, you go to Facebook, you get the matches. You can write ads to those people. So it's not really retargeting, but I guess it kinda say it is because they're on your list, they're probably going to your website, and now you getting them with the ads because their email matched. So I'm not sure if you wanna talk more about that, but that can be pretty effective.

Paul: Yeah, I know. I think even just the overview of what a list, when people I hear...I know I talk to a lot of people. "Hey, do you have a Facebook Pixel?" I was like, "Well, I have a link to my Facebook page on my website." That's not a Facebook Pixel. It's simply a line of code. You paste it into the header, and then you forget about it. Even if you don't wanna run ads, that's my advice to everybody because it's at least capturing all the information of everyone that's visiting you because at some point, you might wanna run ads. And even if you don't, you can at least learn about who's visiting your site through all their demographics and all that kind of stuff.

So if you still don't know what that is, my advice is to go to Amazon, go click on something, show you're interested in it, and then go back to Facebook and probably within 30 minutes, whatever you're looking on Amazon, it's gonna pop up in your News Feed. That is retargeting through a Pixel. So give our listeners...you're gonna dig into the email list function a little bit. So give our listeners a little bit of insight into what you mean when you can send ads just to people on your email list as well.

Ryan: I think this is really cool because a lot of the business owners I speak with don't know about this feature. I used to have one more thing I should mention, too, starting off with the email match. You have your email list. If you don't have one, you should build one. So it's newsletter or what-have-you or a list of customers and prospects. You could upload that list to Facebook. You can find the matches, matches mean that email address matches up with a profile because every Facebook profile is associated with an email address.

For the people that matched, you can show ads to them. And so what that does is...I mean you can even tie this back to direct mail going back to the beginning of our conversation. If you've got your own in-house list of addresses and emails, you're sending mail to them, you're uploading that list to Facebook, you're finding the matches, you're showing ads to those people, and then you've got an email list and you're sending them newsletter. So now, what's happening is you've got this potential customer that's getting your mail. They're seeing you on Facebook, and they're seeing you on your inbox. And that repeated exposures can be very powerful to get them to convert.

Paul: That is a really good strategy. I mean even just simplistically speaking, once you get your customer's information, you have many ways to reach back out to them whether it's through email, whether it's through the newsletter, whether it's through targeting them with their email address on Facebook, whether they've been to your website and then sending them direct mail. There's a lot of ways to stay top of mind to your customer with the understanding that they're not gonna just buy from you every time you send them something. But long-term, you're building this relationship, where they're never gonna go anywhere else.

So some really good action advice there from Ryan. I really appreciate it. I wanna dig into now kinda transitioning into your normal day. What does your normal day look like? Obviously, we started off talking about freedom. So curious to see how you see maintain that freedom, what your normal day look like as the director of all the digital services at Ballantine.

Ryan: Yes. So I'll give you a typical day of Ryan Cote here. I'm not sure how interesting it will be, but it might be a little bit. I have a morning routine. So I wake up. I've got three girls, three daughters, married, three daughters, and living in Jersey. So I get up before everyone gets up. And my morning routine of, you know, some exercise, reading, a little bit of meditation, a couple of things like my gratitude journal that I have.

So I start my morning routine, then I go to work. And one way I can find to...obviously, I spend time with my girls in the morning. But one time... one way I find that I kinda give my mind a break is I'll go for sushi at lunch. So a few times a week, I'll go grab sushi by myself with a book. And so there's a place right by our office that has really good sushi. Everyone makes fun of me because I'm there like three times a week. I'm on a first name basis. They know my order. I will walk in. I don't have to order. There's no menu. They just bring it to me. So you know you're a very advanced customer there.

But I get my sushi and I read. And that really for that hour is I love it. And then I work. Go back to work. Go to boxing. And then I go home and spend time with my family. We used to cook dinner together, that's four times just to, you know, the work-life balance, just spend time with them. And then go to bed. Read my kids a book and spend time with my wife. That's my day.

Paul: No, I think it's just a really good insight to see how other people carve out time for themselves, their professional life, and the family life. And when you have it kind of on a schedule, and you have every hour blocked off, whether it's the people at sushi knowing you're gonna be there Monday, Wednesday, or Friday or your kids knowing that you're gonna be home for dinner every day or having the accountability going to boxing after work, whatever it is, having time set aside beforehand to make sure it happens, otherwise, work will just kinda take over. And it will cause a lot of havoc short term and long term to a lot of those people in your life. So I really appreciate you giving our listeners a look into your everyday life.

And then, as far as the future plans, what is next for Ballantine? Obviously, you guys have been growing pretty well. You've been at this thing for a while. What's on the horizon for Ryan and Ballantine?

Ryan: So right now, we're focused on growth. We're about to hire another person. So my job is to get new clients and my team, they service a client really well and keep the clients. So right now, we're focused on growth which we just added two new people to the team. We're only 20 people here. So we add two new people, it feels like a lot, the training and just everything comes along with hiring someone. And we're about to hire our third. You know, we're looking for someone right now. So right now, we're focused on growth. We have a system right now for getting clients and keeping them happy, and getting them results. So right now, we're just focused on growth, and that's top of mind right now for all of us here.

Paul: Awesome. We're excited to watch that continued growth. We'll definitely keep following along, keep adding those people to the team, and keeping the systems in place. I wanna say thanks again for coming on the show, sharing your journey, providing all the action advice for our listeners when it comes to growing their business, staying top of mind with customers.

But before we sign off, we wanna dig in a little bit further. It is time for our rapid recommendations for all the things we've been talking about, business, marketing, systems, freedom, all that good stuff. So the first recommendation we wanna get from you is the number one book that you would recommend our listeners read today.

Ryan: Yup, so I'm a big reader. Audible, paperback, I read every day. So the book that comes to mind is "The Compound Effect." "The Compound Effect," I don't know if you read but it basically, give you like a nutshell, the book in a nutshell, basically, it's how small efforts compound to create results. And so sometimes when you're in a daily grind of trying to grow your business or lose weight or whatever it is, you're making small progress that might not feel like it. But if you look at it over the last month or two months or three months, you can see tangible results. It's like don't just look at yourself on a daily basis, the progress you've made. Look at the last month or two and you'll see it's pretty incredible with the results that you've achieved.

Paul: Awesome. Great recommendation there. We'll link everything up in our show notes at the website paulmaskill.com. "The Compound Effect" book is Ryan's number one recommendation at the moment. What about one quote that inspires you?

Ryan: So I'm not sure who said this, but it's, "Rule your mind or it will rule you." So it's really important because mindset is everything. You know, negativity is poison. So not that it's easy to be 100% positive all the time. But for me, I just keep that top of mind and trying to keep my mind stay really strong and rock solid because it's really helpful.

Paul: There you go. Great quote. And I think having that self-awareness and doing things to stay on top of that, whether it's the gratitude journal, working out after work, going to luncheons, spending time with nobody but yourself, whatever it is, be aware of that because, as Ryan said, negativity can be poisonous. What about one tool that you could not live without?

Ryan: So right now, it's ProsperWorks. We just converted everyone here to G Suite, Gmail, you know, Gmail's platform for email and other stuff, to a Drive whatnot and Chat. And ProsperWorks is a CRM built for G Suite. Yeah, we've used other CRMs in the past and we like this one because you can basically stay within Gmail. And so for me, it's [inaudible 00:25:44] and sale. So I can basically manage all my clients and potential clients in my Gmail, and it's really simplistic. And for me, that's really key to maintaining a CRM because it gets really complicated otherwise.

Paul: It sure can. And I think just playing off that, if you don't have a business email address or if you don't like the one you're using, or if you have to use Outlook or something, definitely check out G Suite. It's literally like five bucks a month to start at least for your email address. You can have your professional email address, but it's housed in Google. So it's just the Gmail platform interface, really easy to get your business email going. Great recommendation there, Ryan. What about one podcast if you are a podcast listener that you're listening to right now?

Ryan: Yeah. I'm a huge fan of podcasts. I listen to that as I commute because I got a 40-minute commute. So my favorite one right now, I kinda go back and forth but my favorite one right now is Andy Frisella, and his podcast is MFCEO. It's a pretty hard-hitting entrepreneurial podcast. He swears a lot, so it might not be for everyone. But I just think his content is really good. And I'm impressed at what he's achieved and his pieces of advice and his overall style. So that one definitely keeps my attention. And right now, that's my favorite.

Paul: Great recommendation. He is intense, definitely motivating. So if you aren't put off by people using bad words, definitely check out that podcast, MFCEO. And then, last but the least, one parting piece of advice for a business owner out there who is stuck, burned out, or they're just trying to get over that hump.

Ryan: I would say just focus on daily small wins. Maybe that's an advice that's been provided here before but for me, it's been key. Like focus on daily small wins, daily progress. Don't look at everything to do. Focus on what we need to do today to move the needle. Focus on daily progress, daily wins. It kinda goes back to "The Compound Effect."

And then, I guess it kinda tie into what I said before. Like I said, it's a second piece of advice is the morning routine. That's been kinda a game-changer for me, you know, having your set routine in the morning where you're strengthening your mind, your body, whatever, and you stick to that for 30, 45, 60 days. I've seen major improvements just in my...it's amazing. Like when you have like these routines and you're focused on growth, it all of a sudden you start getting lucky. It's a sort of I find that to be the case. So those are my two pieces of advice.

Paul: Great parting piece of advice. Ryan Cote, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to impart your knowledge, wisdom, and enthusiasm to our community. Hopefully, this helps everyone out there get one step closer to achieving that ultimate freedom in their business and in life. Before we sign off, where can listeners go to keep in touch with you and learn more about Ballantine and all the good stuff you got going on?

Ryan: Sure. So we created a special landing page for your audience. And they can visit it at Ballantine.com/BOFF.