Today we’d like to introduce you to Duff Ferguson.
Duff, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I caught a bad case of the entrepreneurial bug while working on Wall Street early in my career. It was fascinating watching how capital flowed to new ideas and how these ideas could disrupt entire industries almost overnight.
This led me to the California startup community, both in San Francisco and in Los Angeles, where I got a crash course in scaling startups and playing the disrupter myself. My part was helping connect products with key audiences in a unique way to spark sales and scale. Gradually, I realized that an agency could be a much more efficient (and fun) way of filling this need and that’s when Amplitude was born here in LA.
A few years ago, we acquired Konnect Digital. That step brought us a well-oiled team of PPC/SEM and SEO experts plus the luxury of “Big Data” audience targeting. Now we can scale products directly with consumers via Google, Facebook, Instagram and Amazon so big ideas get bigger fast. The team wound together a complete growth marketing stack specifically for ecommerce. That’s been our focus ever since.
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?
One challenge for us has been fostering a real human culture as a digital agency: it has to be about more than just making money together and looking at numbers. A lot of our employees flex-work from all over Los Angeles, so we aren’t face to face every day.
The solution has been for us to work hard together on our core values, which might sound hokey! But honestly, it really worked. Our team naturally attracts people interested in optimization, so Amplitude Digital’s values are about that too. We work at collectively improving our personal performance with each other just like we optimize for our clients.
One small way this is represented is in our business cards. Flip them over and they have quotes from each employee’s personal hero. You’ll see these quotes framed around our office too and I’m inspired by them every day.
We also picked a big company mission we all believed in: helping foster animals! We donate time and money to local shelters and send money to animal assistance agencies in disaster zones. Here’s one we love in Beverly Hills: https://amandafoundation.org/!
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Amplitude Digital – what should we know?
Amplitude Digital is a digital growth marketing agency for ecommerce companies. Our clients are in consumer packaged goods, including food, beauty, nutrition and fashion, and range in size from advanced startup to middle-market.
We see a lot of fun products and get to try a lot of interesting samples! Our team slots right into our clients’ digital marketing teams wherever they need us most.
The Amplitude team then improves return on online ad spend (ROAS) at every stage of the customer journey:
• Pay-per-click (PPC) & SEM advertising: Google Ads, Microsoft Ads (Bing)
• Paid social advertising: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter
• Amazon advertising and product/brand optimization
• Search engine optimization (SEO): Google, Microsoft (Bing), Yahoo
• YouTube channel/video optimization
• Email nurturing and promotional campaigns
• Remarketing campaigns
• Creative services
Part of our reputation comes from how we identify and reach the correct audience with an ad. We have a targeting platform called Amplitude Audience Intelligence that uses deep website analytics, Big Data and competitive intelligence to give us an edge.
We also recently invested in additional machine learning and automation tools for advertising. Our ad bidding can respond quickly to product promotion calendars, holiday events, news events, sales seasonality, weather patterns and more. Cool stuff!
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
I love learning and try to keep my outlook humble. The moment your mind thinks you know it all, learning stops cold. Our business practically reinvents itself now several times a year, so there’s no laurels to rest on here.
As an employer, I love it when I see an employee grow and they get me involved in their challenge to be better. That inspires me to try to do the same and learn and grow in a way that benefits the agency, my family and the Los Angeles community.
Contact Info:
- Address: 5792 W Jefferson Blvd, #2149, Los Angeles CA 90016
- Website: https://amplitudeagency.com
- Phone: 213.973.2002
- Email: [email protected]
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amplitudedigitalinc
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/amplitudeagency?lang=en
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/amplitude-digital-los-angeles-2
Image Credit:
Katie Stone
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