FAQs

On the advisory/consulting side, our work is not a panacea. What clients appreciate the most, though, is an outside perspective on how they are really doing (without pulling any punches), or how to accomplish something without reinventing the wheel. They realize that change is still dependent on them, but they want to be pointed in the right direction based on what has been successful for other firms. The solutions are not formulaic. On one hand, we are not very likely to see something new in each engagement, but we’ve seen hundreds of different elements and what’s unique is not the elements themselves but how clients have combined them into their own unique e-commerce or digital marketing mix. So your situation will require a unique answer, which is sort of like pulling just a few—but the correct—tools from a very large toolbox.

We work to maximize your return and minimize your risk, and we will always have a more “fiduciary” approach where what’s best for you is what’s best for us, regardless of the compensation.

Christopher Brya is the principal advisor at Digitize Media and will be your point of contact and project lead throughout the engagement. Chris may have some others assist (where applicable) behind the scenes, but the person who sells to you (Chris) will be the person working with you.

Five things:

1. We’ve developed unique processes that help surface the e-commerce or digital strategy and/or tactical issues and then solve them quickly and more reliably.
2. We’ve been doing digital and e-commerce work for over 20 years working with some of the largest online brands in the world pushing billions of dollars of online revenue through their online channels. We’d like to think that we’ve had a positive impact on hundreds of thousands of people.
3. We are a unique mix of kind and direct.
4. We like to practice what we preach, in every area.
5. We like to base recommendations on real e-commerce and digital business work with numerous clients.

Having listed these, though, there are excellent competitors in this field and nearly all of them are making a solid contribution that’s worth absorbing. If we are not a fit, we’ll be the first to tell you, and likely suggest someone else that would be a great fit.

In some cases, it would, particularly if there are no questions about what needs to be done. On the strategic advisory side, you don’t usually want to make big changes to your positioning, tech, process or major marketing shifts until you get a valuable outside perspective. On the growth side, everything about running a very solid digital business now will help you create a longer-term growth trajectory or a better exit later if that is a goal of yours.

Only if it happens naturally, and usually we just rely on a Zoom call to explore the possible relationship. One motivation behind that is to make the decision easier for you because you’ll get a pretty good idea of our perspective and what it’s like to work with us.

The New Digital Business Audit and Total Digital Business Reset are followed by an “implementation period.” That includes a set number of significant phone calls or emails (which we don’t count). These are usually initiated by you when there’s something you want help with, but sometimes from us if we feel like you’re avoiding us or may have lost some momentum. During the advisory phase, these calls are issues-based where we try to agree on the challenge and the solution, and the implementation phase lets us dig deeper or address something that’s changed. You would initiate that call, providing some context (i.e., an agenda), and then we try to help. To make this efficient, these implementation calls are limited in number and across so many months, whichever occurs first. They are scheduled one at a time, and must always include the principals of the firm.

The main deliverable is always insightful analysis and transformative advice. The focus is not on long reports or even reports at all, and in fact, the recommendations once all of the data has been obtained and a full understanding of your online business  determined, are short, concise, and only in outline form delivered in PDF. Before each advisory module, you’ll have a few things to review, and then we try to record the calls for your private use. It’s a good idea to take notes.

Of all the FAQs, this is the toughest one to answer because there are so many ways that you might misunderstand this. When prospective clients asked, we used to give them half a dozen or so. But after a few years of doing this, we don’t normally do it anymore and here’s why:

1. Our clients have not signed up to give you advice, and that’s usually what happens. So they’ll be on the phone giving you an outline of the great solution that worked for them, in effect consulting you, and there’s no mechanism for payment. Or even any assurance that what worked for them is applicable to you.
2. This isn’t always true, but in most cases asking for references is a sign of skepticism. This is why we prefer having introductions made via partners or colleagues we know as an initial point of contact, although we’re not opposed to contacting us directly.
3. There have been a few cases of abuse. First, some prospects would send out the exact same email to all the references, asking them each more than a dozen questions. Why should a non-paid reference bother? Second, they’ve had an assistant do the calling. If you don’t have the time to check us out yourself here or via a contact call, this won’t be a good fit.
4. In most cases, the work that we have done for a client is confidential, as our work with you will be. You can review testimonials via this site or unsolicited endorsements on LinkedIn.
5. E-commerce, in particular, is not only very proprietary, but connecting former clients would reveal some of our very best contacts within the e-commerce and digital community, and that’s not something we can expose for competitive reasons.

All services are fully prepaid and non-refundable, for any reason, without exception.

The reason is not cash flow. Rather, it gives me the freedom to be completely transparent with you, not harboring any fear that you’ll be upset and withhold payment, and it helps us work with clients who are ready to do this.

We do take credit cards as a form of payment if the issue is cashflow.