Digital Marketing Trends You Can't Ignore with Everette Taylor
Written by Brandon Alexander
Everette Taylor is a serial entrepreneur, marketing executive, and public speaker. His entrepreneurial journey began at the age of 19 when he started an event marketing technology company EZ Events which was successfully acquired 2 years later.
Since then, Everette has been a leader in the world of entrepreneurship and marketing, building several multi-million dollar brands.
As CEO of ET Enterprises, Everette oversees a diverse portfolio of companies that include PopSocial, MilliSense, ArtX, Southside Fund, Hayver, GrowthHackers, and WAVE.
As a marketing executive, he helped lead both Qualaroo (acquired by Xenon Ventures) and Skurt (acquired by Fair) to successful acquisitions, oversaw growth for new mobile apps for Microsoft China, and led e-commerce company Sticker Mule to unprecedented growth as their CMO.
As a public speaker, Everette has spoken in 15+ countries and numerous cities across the US, sharing his personal story of overcoming adversity as well as thought leadership on the topics of entrepreneurship, marketing, startups, art, mental health, and diversity.
Beyond the world of business, Everette also serves as the National Brand Ambassador for NASA's Startup Initiative. He also has worked as a digital influencer for brands such as Intel, Amazon, Adobe, Toyota, American Express, Google, Wells Fargo, Marriott, Disney, Lexus, Intuit, Merrill Lynch, Complex, Bumble, Starwood Hotels, Nationwide Insurance, AT&T, Mass Appeal, Miller Lite, Accor Hotels and more.
He has been called a "marketing genius" by Forbes, a "marketing star" by Fortune Magazine, and "an innovator who's changing the consumer marketing game" by Black Enterprise. Most recently he was named one of the "100 Most Influential African-Americans" by The Root and Forbes 30 Under 30.
WHERE ARE YOU FROM?
Everette: I’m from the Southside of Richmond, the 804.
WHERE DID YOU GO TO SCHOOL?
Everette: I went to Virginia Tech
HOW DID YOU GET INTRODUCED TO MARKETING AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP?
Everette: The first time I was introduced to marketing was people hustling in my neighborhood. Whether it’s the dude that came into the barber shop selling scents and fake Jordan’s or the guys who were hustling on the block. Those were the first people that I really saw who kind of understood marketing. So that’s really my first experience, but my true experience was when I was 14 I started working for a company called EASA National.
EASA National is a non-profit that runs a lot of gift shops and bookstores in the national parks. I became a marketing associate for them. I think a lot of us don’t really know what our talent is. I was blessed to discover marketing as mine.
This was something that came naturally to me. I got introduced to entrepreneurship during my sophomore of college.
I had to drop out of school in the middle of my first semester sophomore year. I went back home and tried to apply for jobs. No one gave me an opportunity.
I created a fake LinkedIn with a white dude name Billy. I set it up with 10 companies that then gave me an opportunity and 7 out of those 10 companies gave me a response. I wondered what I could do. At Virginia Tech, I was the party dude my freshman year. I figured I’d start doing parties myself.
There were two guys who I lived in Pritchard hall with during my Freshman year of college who were engineers and developers. We created software similar to Eventbrite. It was also a platform where people could upload pictures for events. We built that out and sold the company a couple years later. That allowed me to go back to school and pledge my fraternity. That’s how I got into the whole entrepreneurial thing.
“We built that out and sold the company a couple years later. That allowed me to go back to school and pledge my fraternity. That’s how I got into the whole entrepreneurial thing”
WHICH COMPANIES GAVE YOU THE FOUNDATION FOR WHERE YOU ARE TODAY?
Everette: EASA National because it was the first opportunity. I would say, so I sold my first company and then I went back to school. Everybody who knew me at tech knew I came back to school with a Porsche. I ended up blowing through a lot of that money that I sold my first company for.
So, for me I figured government jobs were always going to be there. The DMV is always going to be there. I want to try my hand at entrepreneurship again. I got an opportunity with a guy by the name of Sean Ellis. He invented growth hacking marketing. He gave me the chance to be head of marketing for his start up in California. He said he could only pay me $40,000 dollars. Once again, this was in California. I lived in an apartment.
It was between Orange County and Silicon Valley. The first place I got this room in a beach house. I had 3 roommates. Everybody was like, “You out there yea you killing it. Little did they know I was broke. I didn’t really get to enjoy the beach because I would wake up and it was still dark outside. I would get to the office early and then by the time I got home at night it was already dark again.
Sean gave me the opportunity to run marketing for a venture-backed start up. I learned what it meant to really have KPIs, key performance indicators.
I didn’t know anything about data. I didn’t know anything about being held accountable to different benchmarks. I learned about the different facets of marketing from paid advertising to social media marketing to content marketing. That experience truly taught me the ropes.
TELL US MORE ABOUT ARTX.
Everette: We are a culture. We’ve been culture and now we’re finally starting to get recognized and financially benefiting from being the ones that are moving and shifting culture. When you talk about Jay-Z, his music catalogue is worth $75 million and his art collection is worth $70 million. It’s crazy that it’s only $5 million more. It’s an amazing time. One thing I recognize, especially within the black community, is that in these art spaces white people are ones who support us.
The people that have a Kehinde Wiley and major black artist they were white people. These were the people who had major black artists in their collection; it wasn’t us. Some of these art collections are worth 100s of millions of dollars, maybe even billions. And it’s all off the back of black artists.
I want people that look like me or anybody who is interested in this space where a lot of people don’t get access, to be able to easily discover art. ArtX is in its infantile stages and is not launching until later this year. It’s a platform spotlighting different artist and providing them with free tools and paid tools to help them throughout their careers. We just gave out our first batch of scholarships to artists which came out of our pockets because we’re not generating a lot of revenue from that company yet.
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS AROUND WHEN THEY SEE US?
Everette: Episodes 1 and 4 had most people.
I’ve been in situation in places with people I didn’t have any business being with. I remember my freshman year in college when I came home. I got in the car with some of the homies. I asked if they had anything in the car. They said, “no, stop being a”. We get in the car and of course the police get behind us. I was just like “Oh my god”. The police ended up pulling us over and searching the car.
The cop started searching me and pulled out my Virginia Tech ID. He asked if I go to Virginia Tech. That changed their whole demeanor. It could have been a rap for me even though I wasn’t doing anything and didn’t have anything in the car.
When I was watching When They See Us, that’s all I could think about. I could have been in a situation where I didn’t really do anything wrong and could have been put away and my life could have been changed forever.
We have to create content that invokes emotion like that. That can literally impact so many people. It was amazing to see so many people get moved at the same time. If you’re creating great content, and great ad campaigns, you can do that as well.
WHY DO YOU THINK VIDEO CONTENT IS SO POWERFUL?
Everette: I’m worried about us as people. People don’t want to read. That’s why video is so popular, people don’t want to read. I see things go viral all the time; some aren’t even true. There was a report that Beyoncé made about $300 million off of Uber. Everyone just spread it but didn’t read and actually find out whether or not it was the truth.
People have very short attention spans. Companies like Google, YouTube, Facebook literally have data scientist and people who are dedicated to understanding human emotion, the way humans act and how to get humans addicted.
The reason you’re on YouTube and you get stuck is because they optimize that experience for you to stay on YouTube longer. Video is so powerful. One, because of attention span, and two, because people don’t like to read. It’s the number one source of how people are consuming things now.
WHAT ARE SOME WAYS THAT WE CAN CREATE BETTER CONTENT IN BRIEF?
Everette: Yea invest in yourself. Make sure you have the right materials that you need. Invest in a camera.
Creating video content can get really, really expensive. If you haven’t built the audience, the email list, or social media, what’s the point in spending a couple thousand dollars to create a video when it’s not going to reach people. That genuinely doesn’t make sense. It makes more sense to create. One of the things that I learned at Skirt was video ads perform very well. Instead of spending all that money on video production, putting that money into ad spend is going to get you much better results. Create videos for as cheap as possible and use that money that you didn’t spend in amplifying that content.
“Create videos for as cheap as possible and use that money that you didn’t spend in amplifying that content.”
WHAT IS YOUR PASSION AND WHEN DID YOU KNOW?
Everette: I think my passion now is piece of mind. A lot of the things that we aspire for. People say money doesn’t buy happiness, wealth does. Wealth or financial freedom creates piece of mind. Being able to find work life balance provides piece of mind.
Being happy in your situation and happy with what you’re doing on a daily basis creates piece of mind. I’m just very passionate about things that bring peace of mind to me and my own happiness. I sacrificed piece of mind, happiness, self-care, health, mental health for so long. Outside of that it’s really giving back to others and that’s why I do some much philanthropy. Sometimes black entrepreneurs get a bad rep about not paying people well. I make sure I overpay. I want to make sure the people who work for me are very successful and very comfortable. Legacy is all about laying the foundation for others and helping other succeed. That’s something that I’m truly passionate about.
I used to be very caught up in the perception of success. I think that’s why people aspire to be Forbes 30 on 30. They aspire to have a lot of Instagram followers and things like that. The most successful people don’t have social media. I’m getting back to the basics of: “Am I happy? Do I have peace of mind, and how can I help others get to that place too?”
Interested in learning more or connecting with Everette?
Instagram/Twitter: @everette
Website: http://www.everettetaylor.com