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Chris J. Snook
Managing Partner — Launch Haus
Twitter: @chrisjsnook
FAST FACTS
Session Name: Building Brand Loyalty in the Age of a Promiscuous Customer
Location: Scottsdale, AZ
Domain name you wish you owned: decentralize.it
Favourite extension: .it
Now watching: YouTube influencers across multiple categories
Now reading: Principles by Ray Dalio
Best city for a conference: It depends. Vegas is practical for large scale, but I like places like Austin, or Nashville too.
Your mentor: My dad
Q&A
Describe your company and how long you have been there.
Our digital asset portfolio at Launch Haus includes our digital marketing agency Elevated.com and our Amazon marketplace brand management firm Quiverr.com. I have been working with those leadership teams since 2010 and 2013 respectively.
What can attendees look forward to during your session?
A highly interactive, highly pragmatic working session with a candid and hopefully humorous delivery that is educational, actionable, and entertaining.
What can attendees do in order to prepare for your session? Are there any questions or scenarios they should consider in advance?
For those who read, you can and should pick up a copy of my book Digital Sense, or listen to it on Audible. Pay particular attention to the Experience Marketing Framework, as we will be referencing it within this session. I’ll discuss how to customize your game plan on top of this framework as we walk through the loyalty/promiscuity problem in your customer base, as well as the business model shifts that must be strategically solved.
What would you like attendees to learn or take away from your session?
How to identify the pain points of your customer rapidly.
How to prioritize and calibrate your strategy, vision, and budgets to scope.
How to align all silos around customer experience as the most important metric.
How to use empathy mapping to customize a battle plan using the Experience Marketing Framework, thereby gaining market share and leaping ahead of your competition.
Can you tell us about how your service or product helps deliver value to your customers?
Every potential client interaction starts off with what we have called a “buyopsy”. It’s essentially a digital touch point data extraction and high level diagnostic to assess where Elevated (for B2B and B2C brands) and potentially Quiverr (for consumer product brands) can create true value, using partnership and performance-based compensation models to move the needle.
Once we have identified areas of potential fit and engagement, then we focus our early efforts on a deep dive audit. Here we’ll explore the most critical touch points that can be impacted within the time horizon and calibrated to budget/scope. We take a customer-centric approach to our analysis and recommendations. We leverage our core strengths in UX/UI, CRO, Content Strategy and SEO along with our distribution capabilities (in the consumer product case) and paid media algorithms (at Quiverr). These allow us to drive short-term ROI to scale each relationship with our client partners.
What are your thoughts on the new TLDs?
I love how certain TLDs are gaining traction in key verticals (for instance .io and .in the cryptocurrency space). I think that some of the vanity stuff will fail to get real traction but find that the space is getting more exciting as new brands look to use domaining as a differentiator and certain verticals begin to expect TLDs other than .com. I think efforts like blockstack.org are creating whole new decentralized internet plays with registry functionality – these can be green fields of opportunity for domainers.
What kinds of changes do you foresee within the industry in the next year 5 years?
I see new registrar players likely to emerge over the coming decade, as whole new independent internet protocols like nexusearth.com, digibyte.org, or blockstack.org continue to get built. I see some massive arbitrage opportunities for certain TLDs in the current protocol along with potentially even higher premiums for certain .com names in the legacy internet – which will still be the majority of the market in 5 years.
What are you most looking forward to at the upcoming NamesCon?
The conversation during and around my presentation with attendees and other speakers.
What industry trends or topics do you think will be at the forefront of panel and keynote discussions this year?
I am excited about the auction!
Whats something most people don’t know about you?
I paid for my MSBA at San Diego State University by running around half-naked in the Monty Montezuma (Aztec) mascot costume during football and basketball games.
How did you get your start in the industry?
I evolved into a digital marketing and asset portfolio, with my first investments in a mobile analytics technology platform and a publishing house nine years ago.
What advice can you offer those who are just getting their start in the domain or related industry?
Focus your efforts on a core problem that leverages your existing experience and network/understanding from another industry. Enter in that small niche while thinking bigger about how you can scale off that initial success into parallel verticals as you gain more industry specific experience and credibility.
For example – if you come from the fitness industry, maybe focus on the biggest gap those business owners are missing as it relates to their digital footprint. Build a service or technology solution that solves it. Nail that offering, focus on gaining traction there, then expand into other verticals that share that same problem/opportunity gap as you grow.
What was one of your biggest “a-ha!” moments in life?
When I realized that as an entrepreneur if you want a seat at the table you may have to actually bring the table. The internet gives you that level playing field.
How does your career compare to what you envisioned in your youth?
I never envisioned being an entrepreneur. I was a college athlete looking to replace the energy and love I had put into the sport of football with something equally or more fulfilling and challenging. Entrepreneurship became the extreme sport that I stumbled into in 1999, and I’ve never looked back. Despite several setbacks and highs & lows, I am grateful to have found the thing I want to do for the rest of my life at such a young age.
How would you describe what you do in a single sentence to a stranger?
When it comes to improving your business, I can’t invent a new dot, and I don’t enjoy managing dots all that much…but I am one of the best in the world at connecting those suckers and making it rain as a result.
If you had fifteen extra minutes each day, what would you do with them?
Try meditation.
Who has been the biggest influence on your life? What lessons did that person teach you?
I have several. My father and mother influenced me at my fundamental core by showing me that unconditional love means letting someone you care the most for venture out into scary and unknown territory. It means watching as they endeavor to find the self-awareness that allows for the creation of real meaning in life (it’s most worthy and fulfilling pursuit).
My son Beckett has giv
en me the profound and visceral understanding of just how big a gift my parents gave me. I am finding my own way, together with my wife as we nurture the environment around him to provide as much possibility as we can, while at the same time letting go – preparing to have faith that he will find his way when he ventures down paths that I don’t understand.
My wife has been an absolute soldier and partner in both life and business through the great times, along with some really rough times where we have been bankrupt or under immense fire. I have learned what love and loyalty and faith really looked like through each of them, and understand why those are extremely valuable ingredients to success.
What’s the latest and greatest accomplishment in your career so far?
Digital Sense was selected as one of 12 books to be featured at CES 2018 this year. It was quite an honor to have organically received the opportunity (with my co-author Travis Wright) to be part of the main agenda, 12 months after the book originally dropped.
Describe a recent challenge at work or in your personal life that you overcame.
I was running out of bandwidth at the end of 2016 due to work and personal commitments. In 2017 I found a way to organize my schedule in a series of sprints and buckets. This allows me to alter my sleep cycles Monday-Friday to optimize work and family time, while still enabling me to catch up on hours and down-time over the weekend. My day starts at 4am now 5 days per week, but I still average 48 hours of sleep per week when its all netted out.
Where is your favourite place to escape?
Anywhere new with my wife and our son. We love to travel. Grand Cayman is a new favorite. Two-day road trips or staycations using Southwest points are also a fun way to get multiple trips in to see new things as well.
What was the best advice you were ever given?
We are all broke at different levels. What it means is that you will always want slightly more than you can currently reach or achieve, but the real fulfillment comes in pursuing the things that you feel give your life meaning. Our search for meaning is the true mystery of the human condition, and that journey is where all the juice in life actually is. Achievement is just a temporary reward, and acts as a motivation to keep us going through the obstacles.
What object would you put in a time capsule that best represents who you are today?
I would put an empty plate. The plate represents my unquenching hunger to capitalize on this once-in-a-lifetime decade of commerce and humanity that we all have in front of us right now. I am in my prime as an entrepreneurial athlete and investor, with 19 years of experience and a 25 year old’s energy level. I am just getting started and I truly understand what lies in front of us all right now, so “insatiable hunger” represents my current condition.
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