How Colton Bollinger Saved A Software Company By Turning It Into A Marketing Agency.
Colton Bollinger started Jumper Media in 2016 to help businesses create brand awareness using Instagram. He has been mentioned in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Yahoo for is Instagram Focused Marketing Strategies. After working with over 15,000 brands, influencers, and small businesses, he has adapted in 2020 and built a team of 1,000 employees in the Philippines to increase engagement, sales and audience reach via Instagram for over 1600 businesses, all in less than six months.
Previously, Bollinger had a software company with over 80 employees. In July of 2019, the industry made a shift and their SAAS product could no longer function in the same manner, and which forced him to lay off 60 employees. This was the hardest thing he’s ever had to endure through his career, but Colton empathetically admitted it was also his most cherished lesson in failure. “Most entrepreneurs learn the value of resilience and getting back up after failure at an early age… that’s what allows them to endure and keep pushing until something works. But most of my failures in the past mostly affected me personally… not 60 people I care for and personally let down. Going through that, especially at the age of 28, truly shaped me in ways I could not have imagined. We ultimately saved the company and were able to pivot from software focused to Service based within a few months.”
After changing the business to a service-based agency, Colton’s team ran into many barriers, the biggest being how to track the actions of employees on phones in the Philippines working remotely to make sure they are carrying out enough actions per day for clients Instagram accounts. Jumper Media solved this by building an app that piggy backed on UI Automater, monitoring the screen and it’s HTML/CSS changes with every action made by the human tapping. With this app installed on the operating system of all the phones Jumper Media distributed to its employees in the Philippines, they were able to monitor the phone screens and real-time activity of their team. This was the game-changer that allowed Jumper to thrive once again.
By monitoring employees’ activities on their phone’s user interface, the team could easily identify teammates who were doing enough actions on Instagram, and those who were not. The software not only made it easier to monitor more than 1000 employees remotely, but it also enabled the management to accurately forecast workforce cost and payment based on activity, not hourly rates.
Jumper Media employs mostly stay-at-home moms in the Philippines, as they are typically on their phones utilizing social media anyways, so it’s a great fit to earn some extra money to support their family while helping small businesses. The company continues to employ more moms/family focused team members as the number of clients grows. Employees work Monday — Saturday, with Sundays off to spend time with their family and rest (As this is a human based service now, not software). In order to simplify the employment process, Colton and his team built their own recruiting agency with onboarding specialists to keep up with the market demand and increased hiring. Their #1 source of new employees in the Philippines actually comes from friends and family referrals interestingly enough, showing us that they take great care of their people and they love the working environment Jumper Media and Colton have provided.
At the moment, they are also testing Instagram Direct Message sales scripts which will track open rates and communications with new followers or existing ones to convert sales. The idea of this approach is to create real conversations with your social audience and compliment paid advertising efforts with another lead source for SMB’s. Sending about 100 targeted DM’s per day and having full blown scripted conversations with every thinkable variation accounted for through testing, it seems like a very valuable service to tie into Instagram Growth!
Colton is known for being someone who succeeded due to unforgiving resilience. More importantly, he is someone readers can trust to take care of them, and their Instagram needs in an honest and real manner. Colton is blunt and crass in terms of how he communicates with clients because he doesn’t like to get “bs” himself. They grow 25% a month right now not because they are the best at marketing themselves, but because their clients trust and refer to them, simple as that.
“I’m certainly no Instagram or social media Guru, I only speak off of data and things I see first-hand while managing over 15,000 Instagram accounts over the past 4.5 years. I usually talk to a lot of clients personally, and I believe that will always hold a high importance to me as an entrepreneur. I don’t like to be above anyone or too good for something. I’ll shovel the shit right there with my team and wouldn’t ask them to do anything I wouldn’t do myself.”
Jumper Media stands out when it comes to the Instagram marketing industry due to various reasons. First, the company is known for its reliability and efficiency. The team tries its best to meet client expectations while maintaining good relationships with clients. For that reason, they are able to get many repeat clients, and they also get a significant number of new ones through referrals. Secondly, they are trustworthy with complete transparency in their methods and by hand approach in the Philippines — using actual phones; they don’t try to cheat the system by using bots. Third, the company is different from other agencies since it has a reliable monitoring system that can track its entire workforce remotely. Lastly, the company obviously cares about its employees, both in the US and in the Philippines… which is important when considering reliability of their service and performance based on human action now.
Helping Others
“We help others by providing 1,000+ remote jobs to working mothers in the Philippines, allowing them to still stay home and care for their loved ones while providing for their family. The job is unique because our employees not only connect with a lot of people, but they also improve their online marketing skills. We are also educating and building our team in the Philippines with a digital marketing based foundation so they can take on more and work their way into other opportunities within Jumper. As a result, we have very happy employees helping our our clients grow their Instagram followers, close more sales, and expand their businesses.
Company Operations
Social networks have transformed the way individuals socialize. Most people, especially young adults, spend a lot of time on the platforms, connecting with individuals from different parts of the world. The networks are known to influence the way individuals make purchasing decisions. They tend to change the way people form opinions about items to buy, where to shop, and product endorsements to trust. People tend to try new products with positive customer reviews, and those suggested by online friends or influencers. Most businesses have realized that Social media offers an opportunity to gain new customers while creating brand awareness. consequently, companies are willing to spend more on social media marketing than traditional marketing strategies. However, most of them are unable to run successful campaigns on the platforms since they lack the necessary skill set.
Our company focuses on Instagram Marketing because the platform is where people are spending their time. Individuals with a large number of Instagram followers can potentially influence many people to become new clients of a particular brand. We help businesses, and people grow their social footprint on Instagram organically through engaging with their target audience and people who are relevant to their product/services. We do this all by hand on phones with our team, no software, just organic outbound engagement to create targeted awareness and drive more sales for our clients.
Advice to the Startups
I would tell them to keep meeting as many people as they can and take advantage of invitations. You never know what opportunities or relationships they will lead to. If you have a business, you need to meet new people since strangers are potential clients. You might be selling a commodity that someone you are about to meet needs or knows a friend who might buy it. Networking is the best way to learn new ideas because people have varying opinions. People with opposing views share a different perspective, which you should consider when making major business decisions.
Besides, interaction exposes people to new knowledge. Most workplaces are culturally diverse, and individuals who are knowledgeable about different beliefs and cultures tend to be good leaders. Identifying your employees’ strengths and weaknesses is vital in improving their efficiency and maximizing the overall productivity of your business. Once you realize persistence and resilience are common in this entrepreneur world, who you know is what trumps all. You need to build many relationships with diverse people so that you can increase your knowledge in various aspects of marketing.
Conclusion
When you are running any business, sometimes you have to make decisions that can either expand or destroy your company. Leaders have to make tough choices regardless of who it affects. Colton had to lay off 45 employees when Instagram banned software that increases followers. He also made a bold move by changing the business from a software company to a Marketing agency. Although the two firms involved Instagram, they required different technical know-how in order to run them successfully.
The entrepreneur decided to try engaging Instagram followers by hand, using actual devices. It was a risky decision since no one had tried it before, but it was the only way to save his company from going bankrupt. His strong leadership skills enabled him to endure numerous challenges before scaling the business up again. As an entrepreneur, never give up on your team since they are the same people who can help you build your business empire in difficult situations. A resilient team is the biggest asset an entrepreneur can have.
