Today we’d like to introduce you to Andrew Maffettone.
Hi Andrew, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
I started in e-commerce digital marketing a little over 15 years ago. My father actually acquired a business that he wanted to take online and I helped in the warehouse in exchange for learning and helping with marketing. It was something I was always interested in.
After that, I was in a “successful” band as a drummer. We all had our own roles outside of our instruments, and I was the marketing/promotion guy. I had such a knack for it that other bands and venues started hiring me. That’s when I started my first agency. But, as I’m sure many are aware… the music industry is horrible.
So, I pivoted the agency to keeping a good chunk of the venues and focusing more on hospitality and retail which naturally led me back to e-commerce. I eventually merged that agency with another one and got bought out as I wanted to go back in-house for a while. Well, I got the bug again. While in-house at a good size 8-figure e-commerce company, that owner owned multiple other businesses. Within about 3 months, I was running marketing for all of them, and one of his partners and I started another agency.
After about 3 years, we exited that agency after we were acquired by a public company. I left after 3 months because I knew it was time for me to do this myself. So, in early 2020 I started BlueTuskr. I spent most of that year creating e-commerce content and keeping my name out there until my non-compete was up. Right around that time, the company that acquired us basically burned the old agency to the ground so a lot of my old clients came right back.
Now, BlueTuskr is one of the leading full-service marketing companies for e-commerce sellers. What we’ve built is almost an “agency of agencies” where each department is specialized in a certain strategy (SEO, CRO, retention, paid media, etc.), and our Account Strategists act as Fractional CMOs, so you can kind of think of it as an entirely full e-commerce marketing department, without having to hire 10 different specialists.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Absolutely not. I’ve learned more about the industry, entrepreneurship, and myself personally in the past 3-4 years than I ever have. We’ve had some nuanced situations here and there that are typical struggles of business ownership, but the biggest struggle we’ve had, which we’re finally figuring out is the model itself.
The concept sounds great on paper, but executing it is another beast. I didn’t fully wrap my head around the fact that I was actually starting 6 different agencies at once (SEO, Website Optimization, Paid Media, Social Media, Retention Marketing, and Content Marketing) all at once. So we’ve had a lot of bumps in the road figuring out the correct way to structure it and keep everyone on the same page so that our client’s strategies remain aligned across all departments.
Now the new problem, since we’ve figured it out, is bandwidth. We’ve finally got an in-house recruiter who keeps in touch with our sales and project management so we know what staff we’ll need before we need it.
As you know, we’re big fans of BlueTuskr. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We are a full-service marketing company for e-commerce brands. We essentially act as an outsourced marketing department for the businesses we work with. Our biggest differentiation is the way we execute full-service marketing. Most full-service agencies tend to have a team of generalists that I find to know a little about a lot and you get X amount of hours from them, and that’s about it.
We’re a team of specialists that only focus on their areas of expertise so they can stay fully engulfed in their industry and execute it just as well, if not better, than most specialized agencies. But, because we’re all on the same team, it allows us to ensure all elements of a brand’s marketing strategy remain aligned.
We’re becoming more and more known for omnichannel marketing and diversification. We’re one of very few agencies that has years of experience both on and off marketplaces, like Amazon. So we know how to direct customers to certain sales channels to reach certain goals that other agencies don’t have the experience with.
Now, we don’t require brands to use all of our services or get lost haha. In fact, most of the brands we work with have one or two other marketers in-house, so we act as more of a puzzle piece to complement what they already have. We work with several brands where we’re only doing one or two things because they have other capabilities in-house, or they’re smaller and we’re rolling out strategies in more of a phased manner.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
I hate school. It wasn’t for me. But, I love learning, especially by doing. I was always interested in marketing, but I’m mostly self-taught. I did get a minor in entrepreneurship, but that’s about as close to what I do now as it gets. I’m also pretty naturally extroverted, so speaking at conferences, making content, being on podcasts, etc. is very easy for me.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.bluetuskr.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bluetuskr/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlueTuskr
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bluetuskr
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/bluetuskr
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdc4NwHfYYBQ_QtiZFC-5ww/d
