An Exclusive Interview of Michael McDougald, Founder of Fast Partitions

Recently, we had the unique opportunity to interview Michael McDougald, founder of Fast Partitions, a bathroom partition distributor and Aviation Shirts, an aviation apparel company. During our discussion, I had the chance to hear how Michael built an online distributor that has already jumped to the cutting edge of his industry in just a few short years. In particular, I asked Michael what sort of marketing goals he has used to build his brand online, how he has used digital marketing to grow his company, and any other advice he had for those of us – in any industry – to use today’s marketing tools to best effect.

Speaking on his goals, we asked Michael what he looks at for his goals. Of course any business wants to increase revenue and profit, but what controllable metrics was he trying to leverage to increase this? He told me that there are a lot of contractors out there in the world, and letting them know the value add Fast Partitions offers is key to growing his business. Brand awareness is key. Specifically, letting the market know that Fast Partitions is able to fulfill their orders significantly faster and with much less hassle than a traditional distributor could. As a child of the internet, Fast Partitions approaches order fulfillment differently than their competitors do. The bathroom partition industry in particular tends to be archaic, relying on written invoicing and manual ordering processes. During our interview, Michael told me about a recent trip he made to a major hardware store. Arriving at the countertop section of the store, he noticed they were running their inventory system on DOS, something most of the business world hasn’t seen in years. After browsing and making his selection, the employee manually transcribed what Michael requested and then faxed it over.

As far as specific marketing advice, Michael mentioned a few tactics he has used. Those in the marketing automation world should be familiar with a few of his tricks, including optimization through AI. Specifically, Michael has optimized for calls using Google’s technology. Essentially, Google allows clients to select from a number of different metrics to optimize their digital marketing efforts towards. When Michael chooses to optimize for inbound calls, the machine works to make sure that he is getting the most of these per dollar spent that it can provide him. This of course provides more leads which in turn filter down the sales funnel, growing revenue. Any number of goals can be selected to optimize for, not just calls. By playing with this and seeing what works best for your specific business, you can maximize the ROI on your marketing spend.

In talking with Michael, I learned quite a bit about all the services that Google offers marketers. Google Search Console tools, for instance, allow you to see how your site is optimized, if it is, for SEO purposes. Google looks at the links that are coming into your site and on page SEO metrics, such as load speed, and tells you how this might be affecting your SERP rankings. Companies like Fast Partitions that have SEO talent can use tools such as this to see if their efforts have been paying off and what areas they need to target in order to improve their rankings. It is important not to underestimate how valuable this is for businesses. Organic traffic can be worth thousands of dollars each month. Even moving from the bottom of the first page of Google results to the top could mean hundreds or thousands more leads each month. Consider how much one lead is worth to you based off your marketing metrics. Then consider that 90% of clicks will go to the first page of Google results. This is a massive value that you could be missing out on. When a company invests in learning and utilizing SEO to the extent that Fast Partitions has they can take advantage of this source of leads.

While it is impossible to cover Fast Partitions’ entire marketing strategy in such a short blog post (and unwise to do so!) readers ought to get some sense of the work Michael is putting into revolutionizing the toilet partitions industry. There are simply so many opportunities for innovation within this industry because it has lagged behind for so many years. It is inevitable that consumers will notice the companies like Fast Partitions that offer the sorts of ordering and service conveniences that have become standard in other industries. As Michael said, if some of his legacy competitors within the industry would update their thinking they could solve the bulk of their problems right then and there. However, as long as they continue to fax their orders in, it looks like Michael will not have to look hard to find room to grow!