DOM360 CEO Robert Donovan finds rapid growth in a changing market

Robert Donovan had a great job in advertising in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., but he saw the industry changing and presented a new strategy for his agency. When they weren’t willing to move in a different direction, he knew it was time to go out on his own.

He launched Dealer Online Marketing in Greenville in 2007 and has seen rapid growth focusing on digital and traditional marketing services for automotive manufacturers and dealerships. Now known as DOM360, the company was recently named the 167th fastest-growing technology company in North America on the Fast 500 list compiled by Deloitte US. Donovan, CEO of the business with 65 employees serving more than 300 clients, said that growth is just beginning. “We’re on the uptick,” he said. “We want to diversify the portfolio in a way that makes sense for us. We just need some good people that can jump on board.”

What separates your company from other marketing and advertising companies?

We spend more money on development each month than most local agencies spend on payroll. We have a technology platform as a backbone that is second to none. So while most companies scale through addition of people, we scale through multiplication because we have a strong backbone that supports our clients.

How does your Web-based marketing platform benefit clients?

Google, Bing, Facebook, Angie’s List – most digital properties have a back end to these systems, the API [application programming interface]. DOM360’s marketing tool is integrated with over 100 APIs at this moment in time, which is unprecedented. We try to keep tabs on our competition, and I haven’t seen another marketing tool in North America that has as many APIs as we do.

So we can post directly through our tool. We have a layer of artificial intelligence on top of that so we can find the sweet spot for our customer. We hard-code that for our customers.

Does it benefit traditional marketing clients as well as digital? Are most clients moving away from traditional advertising?

We can also integrate with Arbitron and Neilsen. You can see the impact through running analytics for a traditional media campaign. This whole thing is continuing to shake out, but I think it will eventually be a 50-50 split. Right now we have some clients who are all digital, some who are 70 percent traditional, but no clients who are no digital.

How rapidly has your company been growing?

We’ve had basically 300-600 percent growth over the last several years – every year. We’re the fastest-growing technology company in South Carolina, based on percentage of growth, while most advertising and marketing agencies are dying on the vine.

Did you have rapid growth immediately? How have you managed such steady growth?

We made money our first year in business, and it has just gone up from there. It has been about scaling and being able to find the correct talent. When you look at digital marketing companies or traditional, they don’t have that technology background. Tech companies just develop and develop and then figure out how to support it. We created this amazing customer service organization that is more powerful because of the tech backbone we have.

Do you worry about growing too rapidly?

Our mantra has always been having one less client than we can handle. We have had a waiting list, because we pride ourselves on being customer service first and foremost. We’re not under any pressure.

What is the biggest challenge currently facing your company?

I would like to see the talent pool get a little deeper. I’ve sat down with leaders to devise ways to get more talent to Greenville. There are great people, but many are time-off driven. Money-driven people are what drive an advertising agency.

What can we do to improve that talent?

I’ve spoken with USC and Clemson. They weren’t producing the people we needed. If you’re going to be a marketer, you need to know front-end coding. I found universities that produce those people, but not in our area. The local programs were a little dated. Over the next couple of years, they should begin producing the people we need because we need to produce our own talent locally – that’s the goal.

How have you had to change your business since opening in 2007?

We’ve gone through a couple of iterations. When we started, my vision was more grandiose – print, radio, direct mail, TV and digital. Then came the worst recession since the Great Depression. It focused us on just digital, which allowed us to show some return on investment. Then several years later, we added back traditional.

What are your plans moving forward?

I’d like to cast some lines in the water and see what bites, and what aligns with our company. We’ve solidified the automotive vertical, and we never want to take our eye off of that. We want to diversify the portfolio in a way that make sense for us. We just attended the Computer Electronics Show in Vegas, the biggest in the world, and we’re ready.