Unlocking Marketing Success with Ryan Berry

Welcome to Media Minds with your host David Wolf.

Joining us on this segment is Ryan Berry. He's a marketing innovator with more than 20 years in digital marketing and leadership experience. He ran his own agency, digital marketing agency, from 2009 to 2017, and he's also the director of WealthAbility, which is a Tom Wheelwright company, where he led multiple marketing and PR teams across the US and internationally. Currently, he's the director of marketing at the Ackerman Group, which is a top veterinary practice sales broker in the country with more than $4 billion in sales. Ryan, welcome to the program. Great to be with you.

Great to be here. Thanks, David Wolf.

So, um, I know we know each other from some prior lives, and I know you've been very involved in all things marketing and digital marketing, uh, for much of your career. Um, For our audience, what are some of the keys to success when it comes to marketing your business? What are the, what's the core? What's the, what are the keys?

I think it depends on what you define as success. I think that's always where you have to start. What's, what is the end goal when it comes to your marketing? Is it, obviously we all want sales, we want to grow our businesses, but I think it's important as a marketer, one of the keys is to really paint that picture for what you are as a business and what you want to be and where you want to go. You know, I think once you've painted that picture, another thing that is important is where have you been so far? So you have to really audit yourself. And sometimes that can be hard. Sometimes you need to bring in extra people to do that. But how do we get to where we are? And you can only, only by reflecting on that will you know how you can get to where you want to go.

Well, it's interesting because I've heard it said that, you know, branding and finding your own brand is a bit of a treasure hunt. It is, isn't it? Yeah. So this idea of going backwards. Yeah.

Well, I'm just saying it requires to really— what I've found is you have to be a little bit of a detective. You know, you have to track down because what you think was a success may not be a success. You know, what you think worked in marketing, uh, you have to really track down that data. And that— and sometimes you have to hunt and peck for it, and sometimes it's just— it hits you in the face.

Uh, it's hard, right? It's harder to, to, to measure marketing of ethic, um, uh, efficacy, isn't it? Because it's, it's branding, it's not transactional, it's not really about unit sales, right? Is it— it's a little more amorphous? Yes. Or are there ways we can get to that? It sounds like there are.

Well, honestly, it also depends on are you, are you selling a product? Are you— is it point of sale? Are you selling a service? You know, because if it's a service, then ultimately the sales in the end is, is your, your sales team and how, how good they're, you know, they're running their ship. But the marketing in a sales organization is to bring those leads, is to bring the opportunities, to brand the company, get, get the name out there, get the word. And that can be through a number of different vehicles and it can be in digital and it can also be in traditional. It depends.

And you, you've worked in your career, you've worked in traditional as well as digital? Yes. Across your career, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah.

All right. So this is a great pivot because I mean, of course I'm speaking to the choir here, but there are so many channels that we can do marketing on. How do you think about the matrix?

I think honestly it changes over time. As we've seen way back in the day, everybody would do, you know, direct mail campaigns or they'd just do, you know, advertising on TV and then it would morph into the internet and everybody had to have a website. And then, you know, and then things come around, you know, some. And what I found is I'm still doing some direct mail pieces. You have to have that, you know, integrated approach. But you do traditional. There's lots of conferences. Some businesses, especially service-based businesses, meet all of their, their customers at conferences.

Yeah.

So, I mean, there's so many different mediums or so many different types of businesses, but that's where the detectiveness comes in. That depends on, on what kind of brand you want to build too.

Right. Unpack the Ackerman Group a little bit for us. A top veterinarian practice sales broker. So they facilitate the sales or acquisition of veterinarian practices and consolidate them. Is that fair, or they just facilitate the sales from party to party?

What Ackerman does really well is they— well, let's look at an example. You might have a veterinary practice owner. They've been in it for years and years and years. They've had a team of vets that have worked— that work with them and that they're passionate about. You know, any business owner is going to be passionate about their business and they want to know that when, you know, we all have to retire someday or we would like to. So the team that they've built, they don't want them just, you know, dropped into some sort of corporate situation. They want to make sure that their teams are taken care of and that, you know, the company moves, you know, continues to grow and everything else. And yeah, what Ackerman does really well is it pairs the, the buyers with the sellers really well. Ackerman has been around since, I think, 2010, 2012. It was started by, by Dr. Gary Ackerman, and he expanded his team over the years. And, you know, and the company has grown. But through all that work, we basically have relationship with most of the major buyers that are across the nation. And now we're working a lot into Canada as well. That's cool. No, it's really cool. But I think how they've done that is relationship building. And they are to a point that they are the number one broker, you know, throughout the country.

That's brilliant. That's brilliant. And you point to one of the hardest parts about anything, purchasing a business or M&A, is just this idea of integrating teams, integrating the humans, integrating processes. There's brand integration that has to happen maybe, or, you know, I guess it depends on the position of the Is this a— is it a consolidation purchase or strategic or, you know, all of those things come into play.

Yeah. Yeah. There's so many elements. And I don't claim to be part of the team that works the magic on that.

Yeah. So you're working the marketing side of the Acram. In other words, putting them on, keeping them out in front in terms of if I've got a veterinarian and I'm ready to retire, I want to call you guys. That's the idea, right?

That's definitely the idea. And it all starts, you know, with building that relationship with the practice owner, finding out who they are, what are their goals? Do they just want to retire and walk and go out into the sunset and be good? Do they want to have some partial ownership, you know, that remains? There's all kinds of different options that the team at Acumen works out, but it's just, it's tail— and it's finding the best buyer that's going to fit their situation.

So this kind of marketing is interesting because you're, you're driving brand and awareness so that when it's time for someone to retire or an acquirer is looking, they think of you guys first. So I guess it's like you would say it's a multichannel approach. I'm going to guess, right? I'll venture the guess. Well, yeah.

Um, uh, an example is, you know, this, this company has been around for a while, so they've, they, they've had a chance to build their brand in the market for, for years and years. You know, we're 2023. 25. They started with, with Dr. Gary Ackerman way back when, but, but now we, we're almost starting fresh. I, I, I've, I came on board and, and now we're trying to get into Canada. Well, how do you do that? You have to, you know, you have to look at the market. You have to, you have to look at what, what's important to veterinarians over in a different, you know, obviously they're just north of us, but, but it's a, it's another country, you know.

Yeah.

So How do you do that? Well, you look at what's worked for you and veterinarians in the US and say, how can I bring that? How can I bring that to Canada? Where are they at? And you start with building with a lot of traditional marketing. You'll start, okay, where are the industry leaders? You know, what publications, you know, where, you know, what, who are they going to for information about how to enhance their practice or build their practice or grow it?

The content side.

Yeah. So we, I mean, we've looked at a lot of different conferences and that sort of area. And with every market, it's going to have its, you know, idiosyncrasies. To us, we found it's a little bit harder to break into those conferences there. So you have, you know, we had not been in that market. So one thing that we did this year that I led the efforts on was we decided to look at one of the biggest conferences that was going on in, you know, this year in 2025, and it was called OVMA. And we're like, okay, well, maybe we can create a side event, OVMA, and we can invite all the practice owners that are going to that event. And through different connections, we were able to find out who those were and invite them and just see what we get, see how many we can get to show up.

Interesting.

Start to build a relationship. Well, that turned out really, really well. I mean, we we decided to do this only about, you know, a month out from the event itself. It's just, you know, through conversation, determining when you want to do it. And that's what— in marketing, you have to— you have to make decisions, you got to take some risks. And we ended up actually promoting it 15 days out from the event.

So you had a— so, you know, it's basically a 2-week run ramp into it. And you were based— and but what's nice about this is you positioned yourselves as the facilitator host. You created your own event as a peel-out, if you like, or exactly.

And we had the best word to use, but we had, uh, over 80, I think, uh, practice owners, individual practice owners show up, um, which was— it was an amazing event. It was supposed to go, I think, 6 to 9, and there were people hanging around until 11. And that's, you know, we, we co-branded it with, with, uh, some people that are in the industry already, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

So we worked with a law team, with a CPA practice, and we co-branded it together.

Because they want to reach that audience as well. So you want to co-opt them. Brilliant. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good strategy. What an interesting strategy. And one thing we all know about the pet world is it's extremely loyal, right? Do you find that with those that have run their own veterinarian companies or practices, I would imagine it's extremely passionate. Oh yeah, certainly dog and cat owners are very passionate. I know that.

So, oh no, no, they are. And, and just as I've learned more and more about the industry, it's been just so, yeah, so interesting to, to see the ups and downs. And, and you—

that—

and that's one thing as a marketer, if you go back to, you know, the keys to success, is it's— you have to, you know, what is working for the market, you know, where are they located, what, what is it that they want, what is, what is the appeal of what, what, what solution are you bringing to the table?

Right.

And you focus on that when you're branding, when you're messaging, and you integrate that into the platforms that are going to make the most sense.

Yeah, it makes— that's great stuff. And also just to unpack that strategy, what I call the peel out is really a cool takeaway for anyone watching here. Just if you're attending a trade show and you can take that list and say, hey, we're having this other party over here and you may want to join because it's kind of, it's kind of an exclusive thing. You know, it's a little, a little bit scarcity. That's cool.

Yeah, well, we had so much success, we're doing it again. We're doing it. We got Vegas coming up here in about, you know—

oh, that's brilliant. So you're bringing it into the US. This, this happened in Canada, am I correct?

Yeah, yeah, that event happened in Canada, and now, you know, we do events in the US. We're doing it in Vegas, uh, in early March.

I think that's brilliant, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I was gonna ask a bit, pivot over to AI. I can't have a conversation about marketing without AI.

Yeah.

Of course, we do it in production, but in your world, how is AI impacting the way you think about the business?

Well, I think, as you mentioned, AI is affecting every business when it comes to research, when it comes to content creation. And it also depends on how you work with the AI and which ones you're using. You know, obviously the most well-known is probably ChatGPT. But there's so many different ones. And are you using it to Are you using it for doing tasks? And then are you, you know, how are you integrating it? I think what, I think the ways that I've had the most success with AI is, is kind of creepy, but talking to it like an assistant, talking, you know, telling it, giving it all the details and the more that you can feed into the machine with the details of what you're trying to accomplish and the data behind it, the more that you're going to get out of it. So I think—

Do you typically use it for content creation? Is that— you use it for—

I use it—

You're talking about the prompts, the quality of the prompts there.

The quality of the prompts, but yes and no for content creation.

Okay.

If you want really, really good content, you know, obviously a lot of research goes into that. A lot of personal experience goes into that, but it can get you started. You know, you don't have to do as much legwork when you got the AI and you can generate something and it can spark ideas. There's so many things that it puts out and it's never perfect.

Right.

It hasn't got to that point yet. Not that it won't, but it, you know, there's something different, you know, coming from a human than coming from a machine.

Do you guys use it for— I mean, do you do lead? This isn't really so much marketing. Maybe it's more sales engine, but do you use AI or those kinds of tools for lead generation? To get to the—

I know a lot of people do.

Discovery call, if you like.

They'll do it for bots. They're doing it. And we don't do that, you know, not at Ackerman Group. We haven't found the need to.

Yeah.

There's a lot of businesses that do it. It depends on if it makes sense for your industry and for what you're doing.

Right.

But it just doesn't for us, you know.

It makes sense to me just thinking about it, not knowing a lot about your industry, but we, touched on it earlier, it's a relationship-building endeavor. I mean, selling your business is a big deal from an emotional standpoint, from a life cycle standpoint, and you got to be talking to humans and you really have to have that human touch. And we've thought about these things, uh, but Ryan, in our business as well, where we have, you know, we, we, we are positioned as kind of a high-touch, white glove, kind of highly engaged team. And the notion of, you know, sending bots out to, uh to schedule calls seems to run very counter. So these are the kinds of decisions you have to make as a marketer. I think a more transactional business, it might work well, you know, but in yours I can see why it might be a fit.

So I get into a lot of automation. I get— I've done— I've led development teams. I've looked at, you know, automating and using AI for different things. And and I think that you can get to a point for say social media or whatever, you can use the AI to help find opportunities if you wanted to. I don't need to do this in Ackerman, but you can build AI to connect and automation to connect to whatever platform. For the most part, most platforms have an API that you can hook into. And I use, a lot of times I'll use Zapier or whatever to connect into these software programs. And you can use that to query or to look for the opportunities. But then you still have to have a human on the other side to determine what is a good opportunity, what does it look like? And you can help feed that. If you could write scripts to feed that into your sales team, you know, so there's smart ways you can use it. And that's what I mean by everything is growing and changing and innovating. And there's tools out there now that probably can do that for you. You can write your own tools. But as a marketer, you have to wear a lot of different hats and you have to be able to think outside. There's no box anymore.

You have to—

you just completely think outside of it.

You know what box?

What box? It's anything that you can think of that's going to help you reach your target audience. You know, you can get there. But that's what— again, you start to look at the historical and then, and then take some risks too.

That risk thing is interesting. So you have to make decisions about where you're going to spend, where you're not going to spend, and then you measure and then you iterate and you tweak and maybe you're A/B testing, that kind of stuff, right? That's where you're going.

Yeah, yeah, no. And that's also a big piece. So whenever I join a new team, you know, part of that is, you know, where we want to get to. Another part is, you know, where we come from. And then another part is building out an infrastructure. Too many times when you start on somewhere new is, you know, what's the infrastructure? A lot of businesses have a lot of pieces, but they don't bring it all together. You know, to your point, you know, what is, you know, how do you measure marketing? How do you measure what's actually successful? Well, if you bring all those pieces together into one place that has a dashboard and reporting on, on your social media, on your marketing spend, on your traditional advertising, on, on all your sales contacts, on your email marketing, if you bring that all together and you can look for the dips and valleys in each one and say, I did this here and I got X out of it.

You know, and which begs the question, it sounds like the dream platform. Is there one that you recommend of the way you're handling that where you have this, this dashboard concept?

Well, we're actually researching that right now. I've used many in the past. I've— yeah, with Ackerman Group, I actually just took the reins in November. One of the ones that we're looking at, there's, there's a company called Databox.

Yeah.

And, and but there's so many— that's what brought it up is there's so many pieces you have to bring together and streamline. But Databox is one that we're looking at heavily to bring all of those elements together into the stream and paint that picture for you.

There's— and I've also discovered in my research there are wholesalers like Bombara that are selling to like ZoomInfo and other places. If I've got it right, the ability to indicate buyer intent, is that something you've tapped into at all where, oh, this guy's getting ready to retire or these guys are acquirers. I just wonder if that plays into what you're doing.

You can— that, that's when you get into providing those details to the sales team to run. Yeah. Um, again, I need the outside. Depends on the industry as well. This— yeah, so we do a lot of blind outreach, you know, depending on certain variables like what you're talking about, but a lot of it is, you know, referral-based too. And that's— that, that sounds like a, like a cop-out, you know, for marketing, but You know, no, not at all. But with you on that, the relationship building is huge. You have to have the marketing piece behind it so people see you as the industry leader that you are for the experience that you've built over these years.

Yes. Yes.

You know, it all works together.

It does. Oh, God, it's good to be with you and talk to you. It's so stimulating to talk to you about all these things. And I'm also in a research mode as well for our companies. So we're visiting with none other than Ryan Berry. You can reach him at The website, R. Berry, R-B-E-R-R-Y-M-B-A.com.

Yeah, that's my personal website, obviously. That's your personal website. All the different companies I work for, but that's the root of where I'm located.

That's great stuff. Ryan, thanks for doing this today and thanks for kind of sharing your insights with our audience. Appreciate it.

Appreciate you, David.

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