BAMF. No, I’m not talking about the tape company. That’s BASF. Even though this little bitty blog of mine is open to all comments and all forms of expression, when I started to type out the words for one of my favorite acronyms, Mrs. Rumblepup gave me the stink-eye, and let me tell you, Mrs. Rumblepup’s stink-eye would send city devouring demons running and crying like little girls who just had their favorite Hello Kitty pocketbook ripped apart by a 7 foot crack fiend on steroids.
But I digress.
BAMF. That pretty much sums up the marketing Bad Ass (I did get the first two words in, neener, neener, neener) that is Mr. Brian Mark.
Brian Mark is a marketing animal. Well, you pretty much have to be a marketing animal when you run a show like http://www.toolbarn.com. Go ahead, check it out. I’ll wait.
Just a tool website you say?
Did you look at the PR?
Did you check out the backlinks?
That’s right. We’re talking about an Internet 500 company. What’s that, you say? Well, there’s the Fortune 500, and there’s the web equivalent of the Internet 500. Why is that impressive? Well, just imagine this; How many successful e-commerce sites do you know of? A whole bunch is an adequate statement. Heck, you might even run one. Ok, and the web consists of millions of web sites, of which, a great many are e-commerce or merchant sites. Somebody like Internet Retailer makes an exhausting search on the TOP 500 of these in terms of revenue, and the site Brian Mark runs is IN THERE with Abercrombie and Fitch, and Fossil.
Are you catching my drift here? Toolbarn.com is mentioned in the same company as Apple Computer and Target for darn sake. Just take a look at who is on the list of Top 500’s to see what I’m talking about. That takes some marketing know how, and Brian Mark is full of marketing know how.
I heard it leaks out of his ear on some occasions.
A regular speaker at SES, he’s known for great SEM and fantastic PPC marketing campaigns. PPC alone gives me hives to try to figure out, but he has figured them out.
He’s damn proud of his machines too. Whenever he gets a new box in the Computer Room, with childlike abandon, he plays with it, then runs and tells everybody the cool new toy he’s got. Sometimes he doesn’t even play with it first, just runs and tell the computer geeks amongst us about the cool new box they’re installing right now, just to make the pocket protector crowd heave a collective “whooooaaaa.”
I have a lot of respect for Brian, ‘cause we have similar backgrounds. Coming from an artistic background, he started out doing graphic design and computer graphics, and he up and decides to learn something simple, like UNIX, runs a few IT departments here and there, and then gets into web design and promotion.
See, just like me, except he’s good at it.
Word on the street is that if anybody knows the algo it’s him. I’ve even heard some rumors that he’s on a first name basis with the algo, and invites it over for cookies and beer all the time.
Running several successful blogs, several successful sites, speaking at SES, and joining the maverick team of Top SEO Consultants has made Brian Mark somewhat of a celebrity marketer amongst the “little train that could” crowd, and a respected professional amongst ALL CROWDS. I’ve had the pleasure of being called a numb-nut by him and then being taught a finer wisdom that he can drop on you like a ton of bricks.
So you know I had to ask him some rumblepup questions.
When I asked him if I could, he said yes. Then he gave me a cookie.
…
How did he know I wanted a cookie right there and then?
He’s a BAMF marketer, that’s why.