An established name in direct marketing in the California region, Ryan McAweeney has for some time now returned to his initial and most gripping passion---which is to develop initial marketing campaigns from scratch. Founder of the popular Vertical Direct Marketing Group (VDMG), Ryan has worked with scores of clients since the establishment of the firm back in 1992. Among his more famous clients, one can find names like NFL, Wells Fargo, Toyota, and Direct TV.
However, with the rise of VDMG as one of the chief marketing firms in California, there came the added responsibilities and Ryan found himself having to look after the business side of things more and more. That is when he chose to get out of the spotlight and started his own consulting firm dedicated to helping small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and individual entrepreneurs.
While he still functions as the chief marketer of VDMG, Ryan is happy to devote more and more of his time to his new consulting firm. In an interview given a couple of years ago, he stated that developing direct marketing strategies is his real passion, something that really drove him, back in the early 90s, to start the Vertical Direct. And it is the same passion that has now made him distance himself from the business aspect of VDMG and busy himself more with his new consulting firm. Since it is here that he gets the opportunity of working hands-on with various SMEs.
Affiliate Marketing & San Diego As the Next Digital Hub
Ryan believes that San Diego is the perfect place for a startup to set shop and flourish. In the last decade, the city has consistently ranked as one of the fast-rising digital hubs in the country. It is a beautiful place that attracts many millions of tourists every year; the standard of living is cheaper compared to other metropolitan regions in the state; which also means that businesses can buy or rent office space at a much lesser price compared to Silicon Valley and other established digital hubs. Moreover, the city is also regarded as business-friendly thanks to its regulatory environment and industry specialization.
Now, apart from establishing San Diego as a premier digital hub, Ryan's other big plan is to bring back affiliate marketing and its potentials into the spotlight again. It is Ryan's belief that in the digital era of today, direct marketing can benefit immensely from affiliate marketing processes.
Affiliate marketing has, of course, been always a favorite of the marketers and it predates the so-called internet revolution. However, in the early days of digital or internet marketing, affiliate marketing fell out of favor since the tools back then were inadequate to accurately track buyers’ activities and results.
However, affiliate marketing has been equipped with better tools since the introduction of web 2.0 and these tools have only got better with each passing year. So much so that no one can easily track buyer's activities at each stage of the buying cycle and can thus gauge the impact advertising has made on each of those respective stages. These are extremely valuable insights from a marketer's point of view and especially for a direct marketer like Ryan McAweeney who has always encouraged his clients to focus most on the customer needs.
In fact, it is Ryan's personalized approach to marketing that has proven to be his most valuable asset and has been the key to most of his successful marketing campaigns. And if Ryan is so enthusiastic about the future of affiliate marketing, it is because this approach fits in perfectly with the principles of affiliate marketing. And with the advances in technology, one can now make use of the sophisticated tracking tools and evidence-based strategies and this is what, according to Ryan, makes the time ripe to exploit the utmost potentials of affiliate marketing.
