In this episode, I interview Mike Belasco, the President and CEO of Inflow, a Denver-based eCommerce marketing agency. Inflow provides cutting-edge eCommerce inbound marketing and search engine optimization services including conversion optimization and paid search marketing. Mike has been an entrepreneur and digital marketer since 2003, when he launched a brand in the online gambling industry. He honed his skills in the early 1990s during the dot-com boom and has led Inflow to five Denver’s Fastest-Growing Private Company awards and three Inc. 5000 awards. In 2009, he also founded ConversionIQ, which was acquired by Inflow in 2014.
From also working as a web developer, he developed deep expertise in search engine optimization (SEO) and over his marketing and SEO career, he’s worked with brands such as Amazon, Overstock.com, Dish Network, and many other mid-sized companies and small businesses. Mike has previously spoken at national and international industry events and conferences such as Search Marketing Expo (SMX), Online Marketing Summit (OMS), Search Engine Strategies Expo (SES), and Business Marketing Association Events (BMA). He’s also a guest lecturer on digital marketing at CU Boulder and the University of Denver.
He joined us on the show to share his digital marketing expertise and talk about his aspirations as a 12 year old kid, venturing into business at a young age, starting an affiliate site for online poker and online sports betting in his early 20s and how it all led him into the lucrative eCommerce industry that he’s in now.
This Cast Covers:
- From doing web development for different corporate entities to running Inflow for the last 14 years (01:14)
- How growing up around computers and tons of tech inspired him to become who he is now (04:00)
- Learning about SEO and digital marketing from running an affiliate site for online poker and online sports betting that he started his early 20s (05:37)
- Where the name “Mike the Internet guy” came from (07:37)
- The huge challenges that came with a white label business model (09:23)
- Starting ConversionIQ to help clients with conversion optimization (11:25)
- Niching down on the eCommerce space and how lucrative it’s been for them (15:02)
- Building their values around the Inflow Harmonic Triangle to consistently grow their business (21:16)
- Continuous improvement: How they are consistently trying to figure out how to make things better for their team members (26:36)
- Growing the business from their own marketing, content marketing and referrals, and the challenges they have with outbound marketing (29:59)
- Looking more into target marketing and the success they’ve had with their profit share model (36:13)
- How employing the agile framework helped them get more effective on the operational side of things (40:56)