Jordan Digital Marketing (JDM) is an independent digital marketing agency specializing in positive account performance for high-growth B2B and B2C lead-gen clients. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Jordan Digital Marketing CEO Tyler Jordan to learn more about the company.
Tyler Jordan’s Background
What is Tyler Jordan’s background? Jordan said:
“I’ve been in digital marketing for about 15 years, with experience on both the agency side and the in-house side. I went to school for video production, but I took a copywriting class for advertising in my junior year and realized that was my passion: creative storytelling to persuade people. Advertising is a unique combination of creativity, analytics, and problem-solving, not to mention the curiosity to learn about your ideal customers and what would make them want to purchase your product or service.”
Formation Of JDM
How did the idea for the company come together? Jordan shared:
“I started out on my own about seven years ago. After taking on a bunch of clients as a consultant, I decided it was time to use all the lessons I’d learned about what I did and didn’t like about the companies I’d worked for and start my own agency. It was very important to me to build a remote organization because I always cherished the flexibility being remote provides employees. The fact that we’ve been remote since our founding in 2017 gave us a real advantage in COVID – other companies had to scramble to figure out how to support their employees remotely, and we’d already worked through a lot of the challenges and questions by that point.”
“I’ve also always prided myself on being an open and transparent leader and client partner, so I wanted to build the agency on those principles. Lots of agencies make that claim, but living it is much less common.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Jordan reflected:
“I remember closing our first deal and feeling so uncomfortable in the sales process that I thought I was going to be sick, being so scared to make the actual ask for them to be a client. Now, looking back at that experience and thinking about how far the company and I have come… it’s remarkable.”
“I also remember closing Azlo in the middle of the pandemic. I had been concerned about the near-term prospects of the agency and we’d been working the lead for a while, and when it finally closed, it saved some jobs at JDM. They went on to be a great partner up until their acquisition, which we were proud to have helped them achieve. It was a great win-win story.”
“One of my first “big” clients was Scoot, which was bought by Bird. They came to us with a substantial budget, and I was excited for a big payday. But in the first month, I realized they were spending way too much for what they were getting, and by the end of month 2, I had dropped their budget to 20% of what it was when they came to us – and delivered more new users than the month before we took over. It was one of those proud moments where I did the right thing for the client, not the selfish thing for myself, and it actually taught me a lot about myself and how I would run the business.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Jordan explained:
“We started out offering paid media. Just before COVID, a friend who was the Head of Marketing at Webflow reached out to me because Webflow was calling everyone back to the San Francisco office, and he had just bought a house in San Diego. I brought him onboard to add SEO services. Over the past couple of years, we’ve expanded our core services of paid media and SEO to offer website development and marketing operations services. Those have been very in-demand with the measurement changes in the marketing landscape, and they’re also fundamentally necessary for us to fulfill our client promise of driving real business results as efficiently as possible.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Jordan and the team face in building the company? Jordan acknowledged:
“We have clients in a range of verticals, but most are in the B2B/SaaS space. The last couple of years have been a really tough funding environment for SaaS, which has made bringing on new clients with healthy marketing budgets more challenging than when money was cheaper and funding was more accessible. Over the past year or so, we’ve shifted our focus to user-first marketing, which is a return to marketing fundamentals (using today’s levers) that have proven to help grow all kinds of companies.”
Evolution Of JDM’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Jordan noted:
“A lot of the value that agencies provide for their clients is keeping on top of the evolution of the major marketing channels. The rate of change is always high, but AI has accelerated that big-time, whether it’s a radical change to the Google SERPs or a massive shift to automated bidding and targeting in Google, Meta, LinkedIn, etc. This has made our strategic shift to user-first marketing even more important. When I started the agency in 2017, we focused on channel-specific marketing, but today we need to find ways to optimize for wherever the users choose to engage.”
“I’m proud of the work we’ve done to incorporate AI into our own services to free up more time to lean in on a more strategic level for our clients. I’m also super-bullish on the marketing ops solutions we’ve built to help clients cope with measurement changes, including the eventual phase-out of third-party cookies.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Jordan cited:
“Every time we bring on a new client or hire someone in a new state is meaningful to me because I love helping companies grow and love having our remote-first, remote-only approach validated by finding great talent in all corners of the country. It’s also really fun to help our clients hit big milestones, like successful exits or new rounds of funding.”
“I also find that matching clients with account managers closer to them geographically helps make sure that we all understand each other as best as possible. America is a huge country, and matching people with regional commonalities is a type of account localization that we’ve found works really well.”
Customer Success Stories
When asking Jordan about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“One of my favorite recent stories is working to adjust our campaign and measurement setup for a longtime client (an absolute powerhouse in the performance monitoring space) that made the decision in 2023 to completely get rid of third-party cookies. It was a ton of work and encompassed some huge shifts in our approach.”
“Not only did the client double their revenue with more efficient acquisition costs in the year after the transition, we helped them gain some great PR for their aggressive move to protect user privacy.”
Funding
When asking Jordan about the company’s funding, he revealed:
“We’re completely self-funded and have been since our founding.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Jordan affirmed:
“From the very beginning, we’ve operated on a philosophy of treating every client’s business like it’s our own and valuing transparency. I always talk about the difference between eating in an open-kitchen restaurant vs. one where everything happens behind a door. We like to operate out in the open with great partners.The team really takes that to heart – if it’s healthier for the client to spend less, that’s what we’ll recommend. In the off chance things don’t work out, we own up to it and work with the client to find a solution, rather than try to sweep it under the rug.”
“The talent we’re able to draw because of our remote orientation is also a big advantage. From the beginning, we’ve invested in robust training tools and structures to accommodate a remote workforce, and we only get better over time.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Jordan affirmed:
“We’ve had some really strong results with eCommerce and B2C clients, and I’d like to build more of a presence within those verticals. Our bread and butter has been B2B/SaaS from the beginning, but over time, the numbers for our clients in eCommerce and B2C prove we’ve got the chops and the service offerings to help brands in those other verticals take off.”
“We also want to be less focused on individual channels and more focused on doing whatever our partners need to grow. In the early days of the agency, companies could win by being the best at SEO, or Google Ads, but now you need to be operating as the conductor of an orchestra rather than being an amazing soloist.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Jordan concluded:
“The one thing I’ll end with is that while AI is pretty much dominating the discussion in lots of verticals, including marketing, what’s become more evident lately is that focusing on the user – not platforms, not keywords, not match types – is what’s actually driving differentiated growth for marketers today. AI might represent some of the tools that help you carry out your campaigns, but it comes down to the user when all is said and done.”
