Today I wanted to talk a little about beginnings and to tell you the story of On Point Global. This isn’t uncommon with most companies. They establish a vision, and their story is basically how they got from Point A to Point B.
Cliché as it may be, On Point Global isn’t most companies.
This is a company whose story we all created along the way. I do mean “all” of us, from the executive
team to content, design, tech, HR and more. In fact, it’s a story we’re still creating even today.
As many of my colleagues would say: We proved the model before we even put our name on the door.
Here at the On Point Global office in Miami, we are and always have been focused on the work, on the data and on winning every day of the week. We prioritize innovation, collaboration and moving with urgency so that we can accomplish our motto:
“We assist, enable and empower people to accomplish tasks and achieve goals.”
This is how we got there.
On Point Global Miami as a Lead Generation Company
Like many others in 2014, we were focused on lead generation. The difference between us and our competitors? We were 100% focused on one thing – learning about customers.
The goal was to get better every day, and there were no shortcuts.
After a couple of years, we realized that we could do more for consumers.
That’s when we decided to shift our focus to publishing.
Brent Levison Increases Involvement & On Point Becomes a Publisher
Now it’s 2016 and online publishing is booming. We decide that this is where our focus should be and put in 110% effort to make our mark and positively impact the lives of users around the country.
I encourage our team to experiment with new types of articles. We add newsletters to our sites. We look at our competitors to see how they’re succeeding and determine areas where we can improve upon existing models.
Creating rich and valuable content becomes our #1 priority, and the whole company embraces it. Everything we do is to provide a better experience for our end user.
Here’s how we did it.
First, we reviewed the data:
- How were customers interacting with our sites?
- What pages were they reading and not reading?
- What were they interested in?
- What were they not interested in?
Second, we kept up with all the key trends in the publishing space, from those in search engine marketing to best practices for optimization and more.
After two more years, we had developed such a strong understanding of our audience that we realized we needed to change our focus again.
Once more, we discovered there was a way we could have a bigger, more helpful impact on our readers.
In fact, there were two ways.
On Point Global Adds Services
For years, we had been offering rich content across various verticals. We still do, in fact. On Point Global provides content on:
- Automotive.
- Financial services.
- Home & communities.
- Marketplaces.
- Recreation & travel.
And that’s just a few examples.
In any case, even though we were already assisting millions of people to accomplish tasks with the time-saving information and tips on our sites, we weren’t satisfied with stopping there.
We wanted to provide services for our audience. We wanted to provide the means by which they could accomplish their goals online.
So we did.
Rather than refocus our priorities, we continued to create rich content and added fulfillment services to our product offering. Soon enough, our sites were reaching far and wide to help users with both detailed information and DIFM (do it for me) concierge services in various areas.
On Point Global as a Data Company
Remember all those learnings I mentioned before? At this point, we didn’t just know which automotive topics our auto audience was interested in. With 21 million first party data records, we knew what financial services our audience wanted to know about. We knew which travel destinations they were considering and more.
With that information, we began to connect them with the products and services they needed at the exact time they needed them.
By 2018, our understanding of our audience surpassed any expectation we could’ve had when we started the company back in 2014. Simply put, On Point Global went from being a lead generation company to a business that helps its ever-growing audience at every stage of the funnel.
That ever-growing audience consists of 11 million unique visitors every month across our 2,000+ domains on various popular verticals.
But we’re not done yet.
Now the challenge is to see how we can continue to help people – through Data SaaS. It’s not enough that we’ve been able to help millions of consumers every day to accomplish their tasks and achieve their goals… because there are tasks and goals that our sites don’t cover yet.
That’s why we’re working to establish partnerships with third-party companies so that they can learn more about their audiences and be able to help them with valuable content just like we do.
Brent Levison Fosters a Culture of Development
In 4+ years, our company has come so far and changed so much. On Point is now a Data company that provides eCommerce services, and it operates in 4 offices across 3 countries.
A lot of the original team jokes that we connected the dots backwards, achieving success and then building a brand around those wins.
But I like to think that it was all part of a plan. We just didn’t know it yet.
In any case, one thing that has never been in question is the importance of developing our team members.
Like I mentioned before, On Point Global is a company that all of us worked to build. It wasn’t just Brent Levison and the executive team. It wasn’t just content or just design or just tech. It was the coming together of all these specialties to put everything we had toward one goal.
And just as everyone at On Point has given everything they have to build this company into what it is today, I’ve always prioritized giving back everything I can.
From providing leadership training to our managers and implementing company-wide feedback meetings in every department to establishing company volunteering days at Camillus House and working to develop students at local magnet high school iTech, one of my top priorities will always be the development of those around me.
This is a culture that I foster every day. And as we continue to grow and to help the millions of people who reach our sites each month, I’ll always strive to do my best in helping my team members and my community.