Meet the Broker: Bill Ochs
Today we meet Bill Ochs, director of list sales at Macromark, where he’s worked for the past four and a half years. Despite overall economic gloom, he’s been able to find strength in categories such as health and business opportunities.
Originally working on the management side of the business at List Services Corp., Ochs saw brokerage as the next logical step.
“[List brokering] was just something I wanted to do. I was already working with list owners so it kind of made sense to do both roles,” he says. “Since I have really intimate knowledge of list owners’ data, it’s easy to know exactly what they need and what they might be missing.”
In addition to his three years specializing in international files at List Services, Ochs has also worked at Affinion Marketing, a Norwalk, CT firm that markets membership services and credit card loyalty programs.
Over the last decade or so, Ochs has seen a lot of growth in Internet-generated files as well as in the amount of data that lists contain in general. And despite the recession, he does see some positive news.
“I’ve seen certain categories growing stronger in this down economy,” Ochs says. “As long as you’re diversified in the kinds of mailers that you’re working with you’ll be okay.”
Another element in sound list brokering, as he sees it, comes from trying the seemingly unconventional.
“Every day, a mailer comes back with news that a certain list did very well unexpectedly across categories they didn’t expect to work,” he says. “You could get a direct mail diet list that could be good for an offer that’s totally unrelated and you would never know unless you gave it a try.”
Similarly, Ochs says a recession may actually be the wrong time to stand still.
“You have to know what’s going on around you–but that doesn’t automatically mean stop doing things that worked in the past,” he says, adding he hopes mailers who cut back now don’t hurt themselves in the long run.
“Sometime it pays to be aggressive in the downtime and go after clients you normally don’t have a chance to get,” he says. “I look on this as an opportunity to grow. If you have money to spend, now is the time to go after people who are sitting around waiting for something new.”
When off the job, Ochs spends time with his wife and three-year-old daughter Sophia and 10-month-old son Billy at his home in Bethel, CT where, among other things, he’s involved in local government.
“Town politics are fun and challenging,” he says. “It’s a way to give back to your community.”
