Transferability

There is an area in Los Angeles where the major aerospace companies have their headquarters. Three buildings sit right next to each other, all of them within a stones throw of Los Angeles International Airport. If you work in aerospace, you probably work in that small strip of mid-rise real estate. Having the major players who happen to be major competitors located in such proximity creates some interesting business dynamics, a set of competitive dynamics that create an interplay between the companies and its employees. It’s not unlike Google, Facebook, and Microsoft going after the same talent and in many cases having talent go from one to the other. In this part of Los Angeles it happens with greater frequency, because of their proximity. Not happy with one place. Go next door. Have an offer, use it for leverage. It’s transferability in a nutshell.

In our industry, the notion of transferability has a rather limited definition. It’s related, though, to a topic that we spoke about previously, upward mobility. Internet companies, especially performance based companies are very flat organizations. You can go from Account Manager to Senior Account Manager. Occasionally, you can then move up to Department head if the company is big enough, but generally speaking that is about it. On the surface, it might not sound ideal, but as we’ve seen time and again, our version of upward mobility takes place outside the confines of the organization. It comes in the skills that we learn even in some of the most entry level jobs that can take us to heights not expected. Transferability is very similar. It’s not about the likelihood for getting a position of greater stature but the chance for using our skills in companies that we wouldn’t have expected.

Many times, we sound like a broken record. That record goes something like this – we love the daily deal industry because it’s creating multi-billion dollar direct response businesses. We’ve watched for so long platform plays dominate the attention of investors, the media, and users. With daily deal, that same intensity of interest has come to the direct response space. And, there is a reason why so many in the cpa network and lead generation industries have started their own daily deal sites – the deal businesses are direct response businesses. They are about aggregation, customer acquisition, and lead generation. In that vein, the skill sets that enable one to succeed play a large part in the other. By that definition, we are talking about transferability.

Business model transferability is only piece, and while it may not sound like it, the less interesting form of transferability. That one works at a company level. What gets people excited are things that can make a difference on their level, the individual level. That a company who was doing leads in mortgage might be able to go into debt is one thing, but skills that allow a person at one company in one field to go to another company in a related field is something completely different. It’s the more exciting of the two because it allows the performance marketing dna to become infused with other types of businesses. If the performance marketing dna is able to impact positively other organizations, it gives credence to performance marketers. We’ve seen this in the daily deal space where those in operational roles have made the switch and in one case played a significant role scaling up the deal company’s user base. To date, these have been more one off cases, the talented young guy making it big. It looks as though those opportunities are becoming more institutionalized.

Our goal has always been about the increased awareness and equity value of performance marketing. When we engage in race to the bottom behavior, that goes counter to those goals. When the skills that those in performance marketing have can go towards businesses that can scale, that have product, tech, and monetization but lack some of the funnel and traffic expertise, that is super exciting. It’s imperative that we keep the reputation of the industry up, because we contain the perfect candidates, but if there is a taint, these companies won’t hire from our industry. That would hurt them and it could mean literally missing out on multi-million dollar opportunities. We have already spoken to two different companies that need customer acquisition dna. They desperately want someone to help them optimize their spends, come up with new offers, and get additional distribution. In one instance, it involves leveraging the assets of a major offline coupon brand to turn it into an online group buying opportunity. They have the merchants but need the people. What experienced performance marketer wouldn’t want to associate themselves with these. It’s full of all sorts of “-ility” upward mobility, transferability, and others we’ll think of later I’m sure. They all depend, though, on our industry being seen as the talent pool. That wouldn’t be a bad position for us to be in.