3Q Digital

Introduce your business and what you do there.

CuriosityStream is a subscription video-on-demand service with high quality, factual programming. My role is executive VP of business development.

What challenge were you trying to address with 3Q Digital?

We were launching our product at the time, and our main goal was to acquire subscribers. 3Q Digital was the first advertising agency that we worked with.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were building a marketing function from the ground up. We already had our branding. We have in-house creative staff, and because we’re a content company, we have quite a bit of assets. 3Q Digital helped us from beginning to end in figuring out what our target was, developing a plan, executing on the plan, and optimizing from there. They continue to do so. They also help us with testing, but that’s more on the analysis side.

We do 100% of our digital advertising with 3Q Digital. We think of it more as a subscriber acquisition tool than a branding or brand awareness tool. They have been laser focused on that.

How did you come to work with 3Q Digital?

We had a marketing consultant at the time who took charge of a request for proposal process, went through a number of agencies, and ultimately selected 3Q Digital for their experience and fit with our culture.

How much have you invested with 3Q Digital?

We are currently ramping up, spending in the neighborhood of $500,000–$700,000 per month now.

What is the status of this engagement?

We engaged with them in February 2015 and started working in March. We continue to work with them.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Digital advertising has been, up until very recently, our only subscriber acquisition tool, and we have exceeded all of our goals and are leading in our market. They have really taught us how to do it. They have been a real partner to us in our endeavor.

How did 3Q Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management has been great. That’s something I really can’t say enough about. Sean McEntee, in particular, who is our project manager, is extremely responsive. They lead a weekly call with the team and deep dive into all the numbers. I attend those meetings as needed, but I will occasionally have a semi-urgent question, and Sean is always right there. He’s completely steeped in our business. He knows it as well as, or better than, anybody.

What did you find most impressive about 3Q Digital?

It’s the total partnership. They have a really strong team. Each person on that team knows their area. Sean manages that team, and as a result, we have a super close finger on the pulse of each channel and really optimize on an hour-to-hour basis.

Are there any areas 3Q Digital could improve?

I really don’t have anything to add. Somebody in the agency business would have a better idea of what is possible and say how they could optimize or improve. I feel that they have taught us, and I am 100% happy with what we’ve gotten in return.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

 We are a regional specialty department store selling home goods, shoes, and apparel. I’m the senior manager for digital marketing and strategy for our e-commerce division. I’m focused on how to make our online marketing better and more effective, as well as the strategic direction of our overall e-commerce business and where it needs to go in the future to reach our goals.

What challenge were you trying to address with 3Q Digital?

I had an agency that was doing my paid search. Their approach was fundamentally always going to underperform, and they were not seasoned professionals. They were sloppy at times and ended up costing us money. I looked for someone who could improve the productivity of the money that we spent. 3Q’s system is a lot more clean and efficient. Their team is more productive, and they don’t make the mistakes that cost us money. Finding a partner like that is what I needed.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They do paid search, display, and paid social for us.

We believed that we could improve our ROI [return on investment] for non-branded paid search text ads by 20–60%. We believed that our branded ROI could improve marginally, and our click-through and conversion rates would be much higher. We believed that they would be able to execute, in display, a strategy of segmentation, slicing the population up into small subgroups for whom we could build the perfect landing page. Instead of reaching someone with one broad, generic page, we can have hundreds of different unique groups that we reach with more effective ads. We can then translate that into multiple channels beyond just display and social.

How did you come to work with 3Q Digital?

I received a marketing email from 3Q Digital after I signed up to download a whitepaper about their alpha-beta bidding strategy. It was perfect timing, as I was looking at other agencies at the time, so I reached out to them to set up a meeting.

How much have you invested with 3Q Digital?

We planned to spend over $300,000 every month with 3Q Digital. It fluctuates based on seasonality and could peak at $700,000 a month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in October of 2016, and the work is ongoing. We’re expanding the funding for 3Q Digital's work over time.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The ROI on our non-brand improved more than 40%. The conversion rate improved more than 25%. On our branded side, the click-through rate improved more than 10%. We already had a 40% click-through rate on brand, and it got even higher, and the conversion rate improved 8–10%. Our impression share for brand improved 8–10%, while the non-brand probably improved by about 15–20% for the keywords we were bidding on.

In display, we more than doubled our investment with them, and the ROI was the same as before, which is extraordinarily hard to do. I know on a flat budget that the ROI was typically 30–40% higher.

How did 3Q Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

I’ve never had an issue with 3Q Digital hitting deadlines. Whenever we give them things, even if it’s last minute, we never have an issue. They’re very organized, and they have a good process. They’re able to take whatever you give them and turn it around fast. Whether it’s a report, new campaigns, or a new strategy for the campaigns, they always turn it around very quickly.

What did you find most impressive about 3Q Digital?

I’m most impressed with 3Q Digital's knowledge of all the advanced and best tactics, features, and betas. They’re always much farther ahead, and they’ve actually got experience doing them. A lot of agencies don’t have the experience. Everything I bring to them that is the latest, just-published new thing, they know it and can speak to it intelligently. I’m not paying them as they learn to do it. They know the details about everything. They seem to be ahead of most people in their knowledge and experience. When Google announces a brand-new beta, they’ve got their clients doing it a few days later.

Are there any areas 3Q Digital could improve?

I would say the biggest thing is figuring out a better process to get them the information about a new business or brand. If you’ve been established for over a year, and they know the account better, this wouldn’t be an issue. However, when we were a new client, I didn’t fully understand the best way to articulate to them the key areas that we wanted to build up.

When 3Q Digital sets you up, they look at the historical performance and other things about the business, and they build out a structure for you. They do a good job, but it was hard for me to know the best way to translate all that knowledge. I’ve had to work with them to develop a process that works to get them that information in a way that’s scalable and fits in their workflow.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

MidwayUSA is an internet retailer of shooting, reloading, gunsmithing, and outdoor products. We have no storefronts and carry in our warehouse over 100,000 different SKUs [stock keeping units]. I’m the marketing manager.

What challenge were you trying to address with 3Q Digital?

The main challenge for us at the time when we first engaged 3Q Digital was the fact that Google had shut down our advertising account because of policy. We had some inexperience in the digital realm and had broken policy, and they basically shut us down for good.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We engaged 3Q Digital for being a mediator between Google and us, and we created this partnership with Google’s acceptance. Google turned our account back on, and we were able to advertise again. In the beginning, it was only two people working for us, but there are now five and an account lead.

We did marketing in-house prior to onboarding with 3Q. At one point during our relationship, we did go to another provider for product feeds, but it wasn’t giving us the performance we had expected. We brought that back to 3Q and saw double-digit growth over that previous provider.

The only thing that 3Q does for us today is search engine marketing work on a day-to-day basis. They do display ad design for us, manage our bids in paid search and product feeds, and help us out with natural search or search engine optimization.

How did you come to work with 3Q Digital?

I uncovered 3Q’s agency in an article discussing Google policy. It was an article written by David Rodnitzky, their CEO. I ended up reaching out to him through his contact on the bio section of the author and gave him a little rundown of our situation. The relationship grew from there.

How much have you invested with 3Q Digital?

Initially, they got us unbanned from Google free of charge since they were going to get the account. In terms of competitiveness and what we pay them, we have looked at other agencies. For what we get from their fee, they provide a huge value for the money. It’s hard to say though because it wasn’t a single project, but we had them on a retainer contract. They perform like an internal team. I’d say they’re putting in 200 hours.

What is the status of this engagement?

It was in 2012 when we started working with them.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

3Q Digital performs a quarterly business review that they put together where they go over each prior year, same period, and year-over-year data. We have always been growing the account since we’ve been with them. They go above and beyond to showcase the work they do and educate the organization in not only what we’re doing or what they’re doing from a process standpoint, but also to demonstrate how that is leading to sales, return on advertising spend, and click-through rate in driving the true performance of the account.

How did 3Q Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

We’ve not had any issues regarding timelines. We get weekly calls when it’s not something that we’re requesting from them. When we have to work with Google, Bing, or another partner, they’re very much on top of those partners to get back answers quickly and promptly for us so that we can work towards a resolution or understanding of what happened. They’re very much on top of the work and continually deliver on time.

What did you find most impressive about 3Q Digital?

With 3Q, we have certainly had our members grow through their organization and move on to other roles and accounts. What speaks to 3Q specifically is their ability to manage those transitions and bring new members into the mix without taking two steps back. They’re constantly innovating and moving their teams forward. At appropriate times, they’re bringing new junior members onto our team in the background. As people move into more lead roles, it’s a seamless transition in taking over the account. I really do commend them on that because I know that can be a pain point when working with agencies.

Are there any areas 3Q Digital could improve?

I can’t really think about anything. They could adopt a more proactive approach to becoming a more internal or inside team to the organization. Something that we’ve started doing this year is really integrating our work and their work into our internal processes, so making external requests, incorporating them into our written process documentation, and then having 3Q follow the same steps as us would be great.