Rowe Digital stays agile in new marketing world

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half. — John Wanamaker 

NEW YORK MILLS — John Wanamaker was a merchandising genius. In 1875, his eponymous company was the first department store in Philadelphia, and he went on to open stores in New York City, London, and Paris. He established the policies of “one price” and “returnable goods” and created the “money-back guarantee.” 

The retail innovator also created the price tag, placed the country’s first half-page and full-page newspaper ads, and hired the world’s first, full-time copywriter. His marketing strategy revolutionized the retail industry.

Fourteen decades later, Kevin Rowe has the answer to Wanamaker’s dilemma. Rowe can tell you not only which half of your advertising dollars is wasted, but he can also tell you whether any of your marketing dollars are wasted and which dollars are productive. He is the founder and chief strategist at Rowe Digital, LLC, a search-engine, marketing firm that offers enterprise solutions along with advanced analytics to mid-size and large corporations.

In the 60 years after Wanamaker’s death in 1922, marketing changed only to the extent that mass-media channels — radio and television — were added to the advertising options. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that digital marketing made its debut, when an agency developed a campaign for several auto companies to prompt magazine readers to return inserted reply cards. The readers who responded received a floppy disk, which contained multi-media content promoting the auto companies and offering test drives. Today, technology has revolutionized marketing by targeting and measuring multiple campaign channels in real time at a fraction of the cost previously required.

Digital marketing
“Digital marketing, in its simplest terms, is the promotion of products, services, and/or brands via one or multiple forms of electronic media,” explains Rowe. “It differs from traditional marketing primarily by using channels and methods of organization to analyze marketing campaigns and to understand what efforts are working, all in real time. Digital marketers monitor what customers are viewing, how often, how long, and what content works. While the Internet may be the most popular channel, digital marketers also need to monitor wireless-text messaging, content, mobile instant messaging, mobile apps, podcasts, electronic billboards, digital television, and radio channels, to name just some digital media.”

Consumers are driving the digital-marketing revolution, because they now have access to information anytime and anywhere they choose. Companies no longer control the message they want to share with the public. Digital media provides a growing source of news, entertainment, shopping, and social interaction, which means that consumers are listening more to the media, friends, relatives, and peers rather than to a controlled company message.

“Digital marketing is changing rapidly,” notes Rowe. “Just in the area of SEO (search-engine optimization), we’re quickly moving away from only using keywords to good quality, relevant content. Google, which controls roughly 67 percent of the North American [search] market and most of the European market, keeps changing its methodology for determining page optimization. While keywords are still an organic part of ranking, Google’s ranking algorithm is now stressing readability, relevance of the content to the query, and high-quality link authority. The digital-marketing industry is also shifting rapidly to catch up with mobile users, requiring us to recognize different devices and to understand the mobile-ranking factors. Add to this social-media signals such as tweets and likes in helping to boost rankings. Even though Google says it doesn’t directly use these signals in ranking sites, data suggests a positive correlation between the number of social signals and rankings. These social signals are clearly important for brand awareness and help to drive organic traffic to top-ranking sites.”

Rowe launched Rowe Digital in 2014, concentrating on New York City advertising agencies and public-relations firms which cater to international accounts such as Coca-Cola, Siemens, BMW, Motorola, Yahoo, General Motors, Walmart, Allstate, and Citrix. “The company has grown rapidly not only developing programs for Fortune 100 companies through agencies in Boston, Miami, and New York City, but also for start-ups in Silicon Valley,” notes the eponymous founder. “Rowe Digital operates from a 1,000-square-foot office in New York Mills and relies on a staff of five, including consultants. Our digital marketing [menu] includes SEO content, pay-per-click advertising, marketing and content management, social marketing, website management, online reputation management, lead generation, e-commerce sales, and audience interaction with brands.” Rowe is the sole shareholder.

Keeping up
Why are the world’s leading advertising and public-relations agencies coming to New York Mills to develop and monitor their digital marketing? “It’s not easy keeping up with technology that is changing quickly,” observes Rowe. “Look what happened just last year. Mobile SEO exploded, Apple released the Apple Watch, live streaming via mobile apps … [has hooked] consumers, Pinterest and Instagram launched ad platforms, many social channels added buy-buttons, Google launched ‘Adwords’ for small business, mobile in-feed promotions are finally being recognized by advertisers, Facebook released targeting for custom and look-alike audiences, machine-learning is becoming more sophisticated, and Google made a deal with Twitter to gain access to crawl Twitter’s database of real-time content.”

Keeping up with the technology is just one challenge. “Having the ability to gather all of this data is useless unless you can make sense of it,” avers Rowe. “Having advanced analytics is critical to plotting a campaign. Rowe Digital utilizes … [‘agile methodology’] to respond to unpredictability. Our software provides opportunities to assess the direction of a project throughout the development lifecycle. In our paradigm, every aspect of development is revisited throughout the lifecycle. Since we are regularly re-evaluating the direction of a project, there is always time to change direction to adapt to what’s working and to a marketplace that is always changing. The process we use reduces both development costs and time to market. The constant re-evaluation of a project optimizes its value and allows us to be competitive in the marketplace.”

Agility
“Agile Methodology,” as explained by Jennifer Rooney in an April 14, 2014, Forbes article, is a technique “… typically used in software development … In today’s fast-paced, multichannel world, marketers no longer have the luxury to spend months crafting large projects; they must innovate, produce on the fly, and respond immediately to market disruptions. [The technique] … drives long-term marketing strategies with short-term, customer-focused iterative projects that improve responsiveness and relevance. It allows for faster creative, more testing, smarter improvements, and better results.”

Traditional portfolio- and project-management tools only focus on the project. “You need a single work environment to connect individuals and teams across the entire work life-cycle,” emphasizes Rowe. “To monitor a project or campaign requires 360-degree visibility and real-time reporting capability from all of the … [stakeholders] working on the project. In addition to the project management, you need customizable reports and dashboards, time and source management, issue-tracking, mobile apps, auditing, and integration with popular products such as Dropbox and Google Drive. Staying on the cutting edge is getting more difficult because of the proliferation of digital channels, intensifying competition, and exploding data volumes. To manage digital marketing today requires managing complex customer relations, responding to and initiating dynamic customer interactions, and extracting meaningful value from mountains of data in order to make better decisions faster.”

Rowe Digital’s success is only partly based on keeping up with cutting-edge technology, innovating, and utilizing advanced analytics. “We meld software with the human element,” says Rowe. “Despite the sophistication of the tools now available for digital marketing, you still need trained people to review the process and make the right decisions. And most importantly, you need to listen to the client. [For example] … enterprise corporations are very concerned today about their brands. That’s why Rowe [Digital] just released ‘searchtelligence’: SEO reputation-monitoring software to track how well corporate online content is performing. This allows our clients the ability to protect their brands by monitoring the tone, relevance, and authority of Google’s top results.”

Rowe’s background
Rowe came to digital marketing via a circuitous route. Born in Newfoundland, he moved to Norwich, New York to attend the seventh grade. After studying for two years at Mohawk Valley Community College, he was admitted to Ithaca College to attend the Park School of Communications. Following graduation, Rowe visited South America to assist in biology research. A mugger changed his plans. Broke, he returned to Utica. Rowe chose SEO as a high-growth industry and taught himself the basics. He worked for three years at Site-Seeker, an area SEO company, before moving to Mohawk Hospital Equipment, where he worked in e-commerce marketing. The next step was serendipitous, when a freelance contact in New York City asked whether Rowe could handle an SEO project for an agency there. The project was the rationale for setting up Rowe’s LLC.

Rowe is in a hurry to grow his business. The Business Journalestimates Rowe Digital’s current revenue at between $400,000 and $500,000 annually. 

Growth plans
“I have a sales goal of $5 million in five years,” asserts the company founder. “There is an opportunity for rapid growth in the industry, and I am positioning the company to take advantage of it while pivoting Rowe Digital’s focus from agency work to working directly for corporate clients. The goal is to sell the company within five years, and I need to have a client list where I am not competing with agencies. Currently, I am looking for sales reps in the New York [City]area who already have a book of business. I am also planning to add employees to handle the additional volume.” 

Rowe has already begun talking with a holding company that has expressed interest in buying Rowe Digital. He plans to use the proceeds of the sale to build another service-based company that melds technology and software with service.

Rowe isn’t waiting to sell the company before spinning off micro-businesses. “Rowe Digital has launched Amplify, a PR analytics firm,” he notes. “The company has also just released Rapydly, a rapid-concept testing service. The idea is to create micro sites to generate leads that test what’s working. [In short] … what creates revenue quickly. It’s really prototyping, just not in … [plastic or metal]. A client should be able to test a new product or service quickly, while spending only $5,000 to $10,000 rather than the $150,000 it can potentially cost. Launching a business today is cheap; it also doesn’t need to take a lot of time. Anyone can try a number of ideas simultaneously, and select those with the best and most immediate revenue streams.”

At 33, Rowe understands the need for an organization to be data-driven, customer-focused, always prioritizing options, and making quick decisions. As chief marketing officers are increasingly pressured with the responsibility to grow their companies, there is a demand for support to ensure speed, flexibility, and results. In today’s always-on, always-connected marketplace, Rowe understands that companies can’t wait for the perfect campaign: They need to be agile and rapidly adjust to the market.

Rowe feels at home in today’s digital marketplace. He plans to remain in the Mohawk Valley where costs are low, while building targeted digital-solutions anywhere in the world. Where Wanamaker pioneered marketing changes in the 19th century, Rowe is pioneering them in the 21st century, helping make the Mohawk Valley a hub of innovation.