Episode three of Briefly is a great one. We met with with Tom Martin, founder of Converse Digital, a digital marketing agency based in New Orleans. This episode, we got into an in-depth discussion about the art and science of sales in marketing, how to grow as a marketer, harnessing conversations, where the marketing industry is headed and much more.
About Tom Martin
Tom is an internationally recognized speaker, an active blogger and a contributor to Ad Age’s Small Agency Diary. Tom founded Converse Digital in 2010 after a 20-year career in the advertising agency business to help companies learn how to turn conversations into customers.
In 2013, Pearson published Tom’s first book, The Invisible Sale, available everywhere books are sold.
His previous experience includes Temerlin McClain Advertising in Dallas, Texas where he developed direct marketing, retail and corporate branding programs for various American Airlines service offerings. After leaving Temerlin in 1994, Tom would spend the balance of his career largely responsible for business development at agencies throughout New Orleans.
As Vice President, Business Development at Peter A. Mayer Advertising, he created the firm’s business development program, which generated over 35% growth in new billings in just over four years. Leveraging the systems and approaches developed there he founded his own brand strategy firm, Brandmarken which he successfully ran until Hurricane Katrina forced the young firm to disband.
It was during his short return to advertising as President of another mid-sized New Orleans based firm that Tom developed the framework that is now Painless Prospecting. Based on the belief that getting known for knowledge is more efficient and effective than cold calling, Tom set out to prove his theory in the real world with the founding of Converse Digital.
Since the founding of the firm in 2010, Converse Digital has enjoyed a 25% growth rate year-over-year for each year without making a single cold call or running any paid advertising. All of the firm’s clients are the result of inbound leads as a result of content marketing and social media marketing efforts by Tom.
Tom is an active member of the New Orleans marketing community and served as the President of the American Marketing Association chapter. In 2008, the Advertising Federation named him Agency Executive of the Year and in 2010 the IABC named him Communicator of the Year.
He is a proud graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a BS in Advertising and is a happily married, but tired father of four.
When not helping his clients better leverage digital platforms to grow their business, he enjoys reading and the very, very occasional round of golf.
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