MarTech 360 Interview With Brian R Johnson, Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Canopy Management

Could tell us about you your journey in technology?

First interested in computers as a teenager. Later worked for Microsoft and Intel in desktop computing, software project management and script software development for other Fortune 500 companies for several years. Shifted to marketing and e-commerce for a few years, then jumped back into software development with my first SaaS that reached 4500 paid users in one year. In 2015, I launched another SaaS in the Amazon advertising space that also reached 4500 users in its first year – I later sold this company to a business partner. Currently, I have  cloud software developed for various internal-use e-commerce, marketing and business needs.

What challenges did the Covid-19 pandemic pose for your team?

Since my last few companies were created with remote staff, quarantine was easy for us. In fact, employees often became the sole family income earner because of this online flexibility.

What sets Canopy Management apart from the competition?

Canopy’s above-average track record in advertising and marketing for brands selling on Amazon has been primarily due to repeatable processes developed to replicate our subject matter expertise. Clients often state the noticeable difference in knowledge, professional communication and consistency in delivering results.

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How do you envisage PPC advertising evolving, in the years to come?

PPC advertising is self-feeding for the platforms (eg. Amazon). By self-feeding, a continuous influx of new brands and products forces investment in PPC advertising that continues to drive up the average cost per click and ad spend for all advertisers.  PPC advertising is also subject to emotional response to market conditions – where anytime sales drop (eg. right after Christmas) novice advertisers react by being more aggressive in their ad spend, further driving up everyone’s ad costs.  As of now, brands need to be looking to drive external traffic to both their Amazon listings and their own brand site.

How can business owners leverage DSPs to optimize their digital outreach?

Amazon’s DSP display ad platform, “Demand-Side Platform” relies on a network of Amazon-owned or -partnered sites to show ads off-Amazon to be shown to current shoppers or previous buyers. If a brand is selling over $100k per month total on Amazon, they’re a good candidate to test DSP retargeting and remarketing ads. Amazon operates its own in-house DSP ad management team, yet requires a large monthly ad spend and only promises traffic/visibility not necessarily sales or profit. Individual agencies that are authorized to operate the DSP self-service platform (such as Canopy) can offer lower ad spend and greater focus on ROI to the brand.

As a business leader, what metrics do you use to define success?

We monitor key metrics for the good of each department, for the whole company, and of course each client. Our client-facing departments focus on net profitability to the client brand. Net profit after ad spend, cost of goods sold and agency fees is essential to a long term working relationship.

As a company, decisions on investments, manpower and technology should be made on expected ROI, however, attributing a cause-effect of every dollar or hour spent can be difficult. Therefore a system of continuous improvement in process and tracking metrics is made each quarter as the company grows quickly.

How do you see Marketing Automation impacting the traditional sales and Marketing funnels?

Automation in marketing allows us to be creative first instead of bulk content output — focusing on identifying the needs of our target audience, split testing content and advertising, and keeping manpower overhead low. An example of automation would be distributing scheduled content posts and videos to multiple social media channels in one set of clicks.

Automation software is not keeping pace with the new variety of social media platforms and content format variations introduced each year.

Could you name one person from the MarTech sector, that you would like to see featured here?

The founders of Seller.Tools (Troy Johnston, Brendan Morris).

Could you name the Top 5 apps/platforms that you use for marketing? 

Canopy uses Hubspot, Canva, Streamyard, Hootsuite, and Zoom Webinar.

What advice would you give to someone who aspires to be a Sales Leader?

Get the processes documented and followed to repeat performance.

Seek automation to leverage team resources into daily (weekly at a minimum) content visibility by the target audience.

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