How did you come up with the idea to create TrackingSuite?

 

So here is the story about TrackingSuite. But first I must tell you a bit about myself. My name is Garrett Jackson I am an American from California who has lived in Germany for almost 11 years.

 

How It all started

 

I worked full time in online marketing for companies but I always wanted to do my own thing because I always felt that I could do it better than the companies I was working at. I wanted to give great service and also be able to work on my own terms. So I founded Jackson MEDIA. 

Jackson MEDIA was a company I started in Germany (during corona)to allow me to start offering marketing services to Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. But although I had marketing skills, I still had to work on my sales skills in order to turn prospects into clients. 

So being that German was not my mother tongue, I did feel a bit intimidated. However, i was determined to not let that stop me. I ended up looking for a target market that fit MY criteria. This was important to establish as you want to make sure that the leads you are looking for can not only benefit from your service but also would be a theoretical business fit. 

Finding The Right Client / Client Avatar

 

Here is how I narrowed down my target market. 

• I wanted to work with young companies that had small teams but people with fresh ideas.
• I did not want to work with small businesses that have crappy websites and all of a sudden wanted to become digital because of corona as that says a lot about said business’s mentality that they only like to change when they have to and probably wont take my suggestions seriously. Although it would have been easy money especially because corona was forcing older businesses to pivot, I could imagine I wouldn’t be working with them long term.
• I needed to find companies that I could work within the German-speaking countries that could still switch to speaking with me in English if the conversation got too intense.

 

After brainstorming for a couple of days I came to the conclusion that I wanted to work with Startups. Specifically Tech Startups in Zurich Switzerland.  Why? 

 

• Zurich Switzerland is very close to where I live on the border with Germany.
• Zurich is very international
• Zurich has a huge tech and fintech startup scene that is ever-growing
• Most Startups are founded by young people who already have somewhat of an understanding of digital/social media marketing (we grew up with this stuff) and they learn very fast and understand the metrics
• Because Zurich is so international many people especially Startup founders can understand and speak fluent English
• Startups are filled with people passionate about their products/services and it challenged me as a digital marketer to find strategies that gave their startup as much exposure as possible while on a strict budget.
• Startup founders are generally open to new ideas about how you can help grow their company and you notice the impact right away.
• Startups usually have small teams and decisions can be made very fast.

 

Onto the prospecting

 

As soon as I established my target market I took to Linkedin Sales Navigator.

I knew Linkedin Sales Navigator would allow me to filter out companies that fit my profile such as:

 

• Companies sized 1-10 employees
• CEO – Founders 
• Industry 

That was all I needed to take off.

I knew that I had to be unique in my approach. I was used to getting annoying spam messages on Linkedin and I did not want to come off like that. 

How I approached clients on Linkedin

The magic sauce in my approach was auditing the website of each of my leads and seeing if we could be a fit. Could I see myself marketing their product? I had to be fast though. Most people would rather just download the emails from their leads and blast them with mass mail. 

 

Anyway, the first thing I did was work on my email copy. I made it short, sweet, and personal. After that, I would audit each prospect’s website and send them a loom video showing them what we can improve.

Here is an example of my Linkedin Outreach copy:

 

Subject: I like how your company offers solutions for X Industry 

 

Hey [CEO Name]

 

I really like that you are offering a solution in X industry. By the way, I had a quick look at your website and saw some quick wins that you can use to improve your marketing efforts. I know you dont have a lot of time so I made a quick 2-minute video for you to see how we can improve your website and marketing efforts.

 

Here is the link to the video: 

 

I look forward to hearing from you! If I don’t I won’t send you an annoying follow-up email but I wish you much success on your journey with (Company)

 

The Responses To My Outreach

 

The responses I got were always positive with either the result of me getting an appointment with the Founder/CEO or a very positive rejection “Mr. Jackson thanks for this awesome outreach video however we won’t be needing this at the moment but I will reach out to you at a later time.”

Now the power of the way I did the outreach was creating a simple audit video in which I used certain apps to show the business owner simple things such as the tracking/ google tag manager being missing on a site although they were advertising and or other marketing pixels. 

 

This was my foot in the door because the person watching the short video could see what I could fix for them and it also showed somewhat of my expertise. 

 

Now although this process was working, it was super time confusing. There are several apps on the market that show a websites technology, but they dont tell you what to do with that information. That is key. Regardless of how much information you receive, it helps of you know what to do with it. 

 

Several months later I took most of the revenue that I made from Jackson MEDIA and invested it into building TrackingSuite. TrackingSuite was originally made to be a tool to help ME and only ME. It ended up being a solution for other partner agencies that I worked with as well. 

 

Just be unique in your outreach. Trust me it helps 100%

 

TrackingSuite reads a website’s information and shows you or your sales team what to do with it. Yea you could mass email websites that have similar issues….but websites and companies are like people and are made by people, and people are unique and this is reflected in ones website. Just because 2 Websites do not have Facebook Pixels does not mean that they both NEED FB marketing. They both need a unique solution, a unique offer

and you need to see what needs to be done as fast as possible. Trust me the reward of approaching each prospect uniquely always outperforms mass emails. Quality over quantity.