Today we’d like to introduce you to Todd Bairstow.
Todd, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I went to Hobart College in upstate New York, a traditional refuge for kids like myself, who didn’t get into an Ivy League school. I was a liberal arts guy who majored in English and had some vague notion of being a writer or working in publishing after I graduated. For the first couple of years, I temped and had a side job as the mascot for the Lowell Spinners. If you saw the Canaligator dancing on top of a dugout in 1996-97, I was the sweaty guy under the green felt.
That went so well, that I had an interview to be the original Wally for the Red Sox – but I didn’t get the gig. Undeterred, I considered becoming a professional mascot with my own character and doing guest appearances at sporting events around the country. But when I told my parents of the plan, they gently explained how much my very expensive private education cost them, and asked me to consider getting a real-world job. My dream of goofing off professionally died that day.
But it was just at that time that the Internet happened. Or more specifically, America Online happened. And through some friends, I got contract jobs writing some of the original AOL email newsletters that people got when they signed up via those ubiquitous disks and CDs. If you told AOL you liked “sports” you got the newsletter that I wrote every week. Sorry everyone, I unwittingly helped to invent spam.
That was my first foray into Internet marketing, and evidently, it qualified me to become a copywriter at a small marketing firm in Woburn. As the Internet continued to blossom in the late 90s, so did my career as I was one of the few writers who focused primarily on the Internet and online marketing. After stops at a couple of other firms, I landed at Arnold Worldwide in 2003. It was a terrific place. Office looking out over the Charles River. A short walk to Fenway Park. The best holiday parties in Boston.
But at the time, the agency really struggled with the Internet. It was focused on what it was good at, high-profile television and branding campaigns. I was just starting to work as a creative director, writer and strategist with Google advertising, and could generate some strong results. But I was getting restless, and my entrepreneurial streak was getting the best of me, so I started to plan my business on nights and weekends. In September of 2005, I left Arnold and started Keyword Connects.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Keyword Connects was a bootstrapped business from the beginning, which means I put my own money into the business, but didn’t take in any investors. So, in the early days, it was all sweat equity and challenging work. I didn’t take a paycheck for a year. I worked out of the back of the Diesel Café in Davis Square almost every day, then went to the gym, and often worked again at night.
That was the real path for the first 18 months until we had grown enough to get office space and settle into the old Watch Factory in Waltham.
But from a timing standpoint, it was odd. 2005 and 2006, we were off to a very promising start and were bringing in clients left and right. But as I always say, there’s no business plan for the Great Depression. In this case, the Great Recession started in 2007, then really hit us hard in 2008. As a young business, those were frightening times. Our clients weren’t leaving us. They were going out of business themselves. Literally disappearing overnight. Those were scary times…but if there was any comfort, it was that if the economy ever rebounded and we could hang on, we would be in a great position to benefit. And as the economy started to revive in 2012, we grew faster and faster.
There have always been some traditional business challenges – and some very non-traditional changes at Keyword. On the traditional side, selling keeping and managing clients is always a challenge. On the non-traditional side, we’re very focused on Google and how their advertising systems affect our clients and their advertising programs. The problem is that Google doesn’t disclose much about the way those systems work, so we must go into fire-drill mode every time they make a change. As an example, for almost ten years, Google ran 8-10 ads on their typical search results pages. Then in March of 2016, on a Thursday night, it was leaked that by Monday there would be only 4 ad positions shown. We essentially had a long weekend to fix thousands of campaigns so that our clients’ ads would show and their lead flows wouldn’t be interrupted. Whenever we think we’ve got online marketing figured out, Google comes along and changes the game.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Keyword Connects – what should we know?
The original idea behind Keyword Connects was to enable our clients to effectively market online, without all the bells and whistles which we found only marginally valuable to our clients. In the agency world, we spent an inordinate amount of time explaining to clients what we were going to do and why – rather than spending that valuable time and resources building their business. We developed a reputation for driving direct results with a minimum of effort from our clients, and that was well-received in our market.
We developed a specialty in the home improvement market because we could geo-target campaigns for smaller companies in a new and unique way. Our “Hyper-local” focus helped us to find results that we think others miss in the market. And because we are compensated on a pure performance basis, we are true partners with our clients. If we don’t perform, we don’t get paid. When we were starting the business and mentioned the idea of working on a performance basis, everyone said, “You’re crazy!” That’s really set us apart in the marketplace and really remains at the core of the company, even after eleven years.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.KeywordConnects.com
- Phone: 781-899-3675, ext. 77
- Email: todd@KeywordConnects.com
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-bairstow-974a25
Image Credit:
Paul Baudisch
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