Thrive Internet Marketing Agency president Matt Bowman doesn’t need coffee after waking up.
Instead, he’s energized every morning by his strong desire to help businesses grow.
“I see it as a puzzle to solve,” Bowman said. “I just like progression. I’m competitive and I like to see things win and succeed.”
With that in mind, Bowman has made it a priority to help business owners more than ever before by creating the Thrive Council, an 11-person thought leadership committee that will provide companies a continual source of domain knowledge in the always-fluid world of digital marketing.
“The idea of the Thrive Council is going to be how we can educate, inform and teach business owners how to use digital marketing in effective ways,” Bowman said. “The Thrive Council concept is a way to do that on a bigger scale than we’ve ever done before. We’ve always done that, but we want to do it bigger and larger than we ever have.
“So, from strategy and tips to things to look out for, industry news, things that are going on with Google and the industry, just keeping people up to date on how to have best practices. Overall, too, for us we just want to continue to grow our own reputation in our industry and be seen as thought leaders, and I think the Thrive Council is a way to do that as well.”
Who will be on the Thrive Council?
The 11-person committee includes all six members of Thrive’s leadership team: Bowman, Brent Nau (director of operations), Aaron Whittaker (web team director), Adam Hankey (SEM/SEO team director), Josiah Wiles (sales team director) and Amber Ooley (digital marketing manager).
The Thrive Council also includes five members from the sales team of manager Mike Wice and marketing consultants Craig Chevrier, Tim Clarke, Ashton Dobbs and Joseph Jenkinson.
The committee has a combined 130 years of experience in digital marketing. So, they’ve outlasted Betty White. That’s saying something.
“Everybody on the leadership team has deep knowledge of this industry, been doing it for a lot of years, a ton of experience,” Bowman said, “so that’s a pretty natural choice.”
But Bowman also wanted to emphasize Thrive’s knowledgeable sales team as part of the new thought leadership committee.
“I picked some of the sales guys because they are really on the frontlines of what questions clients are asking how things work and why they want to rank,” Bowman said.
“They talk to a lot more companies than even our delivery team gets to talk to because we get hundreds of leads every month and not all of those sign up with us. So, I like them because they’re hearing a lot of the frequently asked questions and that is great content opportunities.
“Also, the sales team does a good job of giving an answer in kind of a layman’s terms. So, the delivery team are technical experts, like an engineer, and sometimes they can get caught up in all the nerdy technology that the business owner might not understand, so the sales team does a good job of understanding it but presenting it in a way that it’s easy for the business owner to understand.”
Bowman also sees Clarke as a valuable member of the Thrive Council because he heads up Thrive’s Rize Reviews business that’s a done-for-you service to generate positive reviews and attract more customers.
“I just believe that reviews are a mega-trend that consumers are using reviews to make more and more buying decisions and they’re checking reviews of not only products but of service businesses,” Bowman said. “If I want to find a doctor or a lawyer or a business or whatever it may be, I’m looking at reviews. Reviews are not going to go away either.”
Where did the Thrive Council idea come from?
What sparked Bowman’s interest in forming a thought leadership committee was a book by Mark Roberge: The Sales Acceleration Formula; “Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 million.” The strategy is from Chapter 10: “Flip the Demand Generation Formula – Get Buyers to Find You.”
The blogs will provide Thrive the opportunity to share its industry expertise. This won’t be your typical SEO-magnet blog content, however, that simply locks in on keywords.
Instead, it’ll be a useful space for all business owners to find ways to grow their businesses without any charge.
How can Thrive Council members help your business?
Thrive Council members will have the opportunity to regularly weigh in on trends and obstacles in digital marketing with their knowledge and direct quotes, providing business owners a new opportunity to take advantage of their vast experience in such areas as SEO, PPC, web design, sales, operations and social media.
The goal is to provide business owners with suggestions and solutions for their biggest challenges.
“The industry as a whole is very rapidly changing,” Bowman said. “It’s fast-paced. We’ve got amazing people on our team with lots of experience and we just want to pull their knowledge out of their brains and get it on paper and get it out where it can help business owners grow their businesses. We believe you’ll find a great deal of value in the Thrive Council blogs.”
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