We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Josh Webber a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Josh, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

Initially:

Big Red Jelly was formed out of a perceived need in the marketplace. The primary founder, Joshua, had a business that require the services of a big regularly but yet in
search for a satisfactory partner, supplier, service provider was dismayed at the offerings in the marketplace. Thus, he began providing those services to his existing business in-house. Very quickly in 2016 and 2017 it became obvious, based on inquiries from customers for the existing business that they like what was being done in the digital space and could they be referred to the agency Joshua was using? Thus, the decision was made in late 2017 to sell off the existing business and focus solely on the Digital agency side.

First Two years of BRJ:

In the early years of Big Red Jelly’s existence its primary focus was a service and low-cost approach. This was purposeful. During this time-frame BRJ also was a full –
service platform offering all of the offence, marketing, Digital tools offering. This broad brush/ service approach was the correct one for client acquisition and offering as broader range of services as possible to build the client roster. This was a purposeful strategy to attract, retain, and grow a client base. From this the online scorecards, referrals from existing clients, and up-sales/cross-sales from the same clients was the initial growth strategy.

Clearly, the strategy worked as evidenced by the historical numbers to demonstrate such. However, as 2019 began to draw to a close it was clear that that strategy was in a hyper-competitive space, that eventually would lead to a race to the bottom of a commoditized hours-for-dollars service. Thus, “BRJ 2.0” was born.

BRJ 2.0

This pivot, as it would become to be known, was all about focusing in on the areas of uniqueness, value add, and ability to tend the price-point upwards for the unique skills provided. The focus then became Brand, Build, Grow. Commodity services such as social media management, online advertising, and SEO were jettisoned to specialist, contracted, partners to focus on (with appropriate agreements with each for one essentially turned out to be the net margin historically made on these projects paid by the vendor partner provider to BRJ—thus BRJ still receives the same net margin without engaging in the work Thus BRJ was seen to not try to please everyone, simultaneously to be coming a pivot point/broker for the services in the marketplace.

Brand, Build, Grow saw Big Red Jelly focusing in on building the Brand. The brand story, logo, style guides, and all of the brand architecture, brand voice, and other digital
assets to present well in today’s digital marketplace. This is a higher margin, higher specialty, more unique space that historically Big Red Jelly had become known for. Build is where Big Red Jelly engages in the actual build of, primarily, websites, etc but also sets up the added other digital tools that enable the branding component to be fully personified in the marketplace. That’s brand and build become synergistic, unique, skilled, value-add propositions. Grow in tales big regularly setting up its client base into all of the respective sass tools that are available. Big regularly spends a lot of time
assessing the platter of tools available in the marketplace to find the best in class for each function. Then, without purchasing power is able to negotiate lower bulk rates for its self and still pass along a perceived a discounted rate to the client, but still make a margin as a pseudo–saas player in the space.

Going Forward (Pivot 3.0)

The plan for the next 3 to 5 years is to consolidate big regulars reputation, management routines, staff skill set, and ability to scale in a well supported sustainable profitable way. Part of that towards the end of that time frame is to begin to look at where there are gaps in the marketplace, and/war opportunities to build tools of its own account and then enable it to be the actual digital tool provider in the growth space. This will further facilitate the locking factor for clients, as well as increase the margin as they will not be the wholesale payment back to the current provider, for the respective tools chosen to build. An intra measure of that is to continue to negotiate with best in class current providers based on the volume big red jelly provides to them, was still creating a value to Big regularly’s clients, and yet grow its own margin.

Josh, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have always loved marketing because I felt like it was at a crossroads between data, analytics, science, ambiguity, and creativity. Whenever I get bored with being creative, I can change it up and focus on being creative in my operations, SEO, and marketing analysis. If I am burned out with that, I can return back to being creative in design and branding. I absolutely love it.

Before starting Big Red Jelly, I worked in the agency space and always felt that current agencies had WAY too much fluff and were often overpriced. My entrepreneurial instincts kicked in, and I started designing an agency that was efficient, proactive, result-oriented, and creatively awesome — which is exactly what we’re doing at Big Red Jelly today.

When we started Big Red Jelly in 2017, before we had a name we built out our core values, vision, and mission statement first. The name was actually the last thing we decided on. A National Geographic newsletter came out with a section on the most efficient animal ever, which was found off the coast of Japan and named the red jellyfish. We knew right away that would be our name because that’s exactly what we wanted our company to be. The most efficient digital marketing agency in the game.

What sets us apart from the rest is our proven process, applied creativity, customization, collaboration, and foundation for growth. When businesses don’t see results, they immediately attack the marketing campaigns assuming that that is the problem. However, they aren’t realizing that it might actually be due to foundational issues with their brand and site and that is why customers are not resonating with their business.

That is why we have created Big Red Jelly to be a foundational one-stop shop for businesses. We believe we can help businesses build and develop brands and online experiences that set them up for business success. We are industry agnostic and are the go-to shop for any company that realizes it has foundational issues. With our applied creativity and best-in-class online tools, we can help businesses develop foundations that accelerate their growth and are built to withstand the market. With a strong foundation, businesses are more likely to start seeing results in their sales and growth.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

When COVID-19 hit, we were a full-service agency at the time. In the span of two weeks, ⅓ of our clients had to pause their projects because their businesses paused. That was ⅓ of our revenue. Instead of only panicking, we decided to take that time to self-reflect on the business and what could be different. As a team and agency, we always knew we were the best at branding and building websites. We knew this from not only reviews, but from personal assessments too. Therefore, we decided to niche down and only focus on branding and building moving forward. We developed partnerships with other companies that we could refer clients to that needed services we didn’t offer anymore.

Not only did our marketing and sales skyrocket, but our reputation exploded too. The partnerships we have made in the industry have been extremely beneficial for us, the partner, and our clients. That is why I strongly believe the best thing a company can do is niche down. Most companies think they might be niche, but I can tell you right now most are not niche enough. To this day, our decision to niche down our services has continued to be the best decision we have ever made as a company.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Other than the previous story about pivoting our entire business model, another pivot for our business was raising our prices. Companies become so afraid to raise prices because they fear customer backlash. When we raised our prices, we learned very quickly that there was no reason to be afraid. Clients come to us because we are the experts and the best in the game at what we do. Honestly, when you’re priced too low, people will automatically get the impression that you aren’t the best. Don’t be afraid to raise your prices and don’t be afraid to niche down, customers will respect you for it and that will show in both your sales and reputation.

Contact Info:

• Website: bigredjelly.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigredjelly/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bigredjelly
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-webber/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1zx9PH25X82MLdTMK6bkhQ
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@bigredjelly