This week we feature Kent Lewis, Founder of Anvil Media. Anvil Media is Portland's Award-winning Integrated Marketing Agency that provides digital marketing services including Search Engine Marketing, PPC Management, and Social Media Marketing.

In this interview, you can read more about his work at Anvil Media, favorite marketing tools, productivity tips as well as his advice for budding marketers.

‍

‍

Your location: Portland, Oregon.

Your favorite gadget: Samsung Gear S3 Frontier.

You start your day with: A glass of OJ after a workout.

Your favorite time-saving trick: Making sure my office and house are less than 1.5 miles apart.

Your top 3 blogs you read daily: SmartBrief, MOZ, iMedia.

A picture of your workstation or the view outside your window if that inspires you: You can see two pictures, one of my office with WWII-era desk and a second with my trusty bunny slippers.

‍

‍

‍

Describe an average day at Anvil?

An average day at Anvil may start with a standup meeting to align the teams on various client initiatives. We are proponents of time-blocking to reduce switch-tasking, so most of the day for the team is spent in 1 hour blocks managing paid media, organic search and social media. We may also spend part of the day on professional development, training or other internal initiatives. Most of my day is spent in meetings, as my primary role is sales and marketing.

As a founder/ marketer what are some of your favorite productivity hacks?

I have a few hacks (we call it The Swing at Anvil) including: scheduling that day’s social media posts first thing in the morning, time-blocking for projects and spacing out meetings with 30 minute cushions in between to check email and travel time. I also turn my presentations into articles/blog posts and vice versa, to maximize the time investment.

As a person who is well-versed with online marketing/ inbound,  I’m sure you rely on a few marketing tools to automate your efforts.  What are the top 3-5 tools you use?

I rely on HootSuite for social media, Mention.net for social media monitoring, Owler for business & competitive intelligence and Outlook for scheduling, planning and time-blocking.

Your company has a growing community of users. How do you use this treasure trove of customer insight to power your marketing efforts?

We utilize Base CRM and Act-on to capture, nurture and convert leads as well as manage weekly and monthly email communications with prospects, partners and clients. We treat ourselves as a client and have a team that manages inbound marketing efforts, which we review weekly and monthly.

What is your strategy for getting people to your site and then converting them to a customer?

Our primary marketing strategy is public relations (speaking, writing and awards) backed by targeted advertising and SEO. We have a highly-evolved inbound marketing program and two sales team members that proactively identify and target leads as well as close deals.

Is there any advice you'd like to give to budding marketers to help them work smart and stay productive?

Define your ideal customer, get to know them intimately and build marketing programs and content that not only separate you but also make you memorable. I’ve found attraction marketing is far more fun and rewarding than outbound sales efforts. We leave the boiler room approach for the movies.

How do teams at Anvil have fun at work/ make work fun? OR Describe one fun activity you did recently that energized your team? Please share any images.

We have a very strong work ethic, as well as fun ethic. We were named a Best 100 Places to Work in Oregon 2018 as a result. We regularly have Nerf gun battles and recently completed a scavenger hunt at our company retreat on Friday. Check out the #AnvilLive hashtag on Instagram or visit our website for more details (scroll below the text for a view of our latest social posts (http://www.anvilmediainc.com/about/culture/).

A big thanks to Kent for taking the time out to answer these questions! If you haven’t already, we highly recommend that you check out Anvil Media.

‍

Managing marketing projects shouldn’t be chaotic —Try Brightpod for free and start focusing on what matters.