Grant McKinstrie, CEO of Digital Position, is passionate about helping eCommerce brands grow by combining customer insights, data-driven marketing, and emerging technology. With more than two decades of experience in digital marketing, Grant has built a team that helps brands increase revenue through SEO, paid media, conversion optimization, and customer-focused growth strategies.

We explore Grant’s DP Growth System: Ask AI where consumers congregate, Immerse yourself in their communities, Create content they crave, Engage them on Reddit and Quora, Have influencers create videos, and Turn craved content into ads. Grant explains why understanding customer conversations is more valuable than relying on assumptions, how online communities reveal unmet needs and buying signals, and how businesses can transform those insights into content, influencer partnerships, and advertising campaigns that drive measurable growth. He also shares how AI is changing marketing, the challenges of scaling an agency, and why innovation remains one of the most important drivers of long-term business success.

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Build Yourself a Growth System with Grant McKinstrie 

Good day. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and today my guest is Grant McKinstrie, the CEO of Digital Position, a full-stack agency that builds a growth system for e-commerce brands. Grant, welcome to the show. 

Thank you so much for having me. Good to be here. 

Well, it’s great to have you here. And I’d like to start by asking you: What is your personal ‘Why’, and what are you doing to manifest it at Digital Position? 

Well, specifically when we think about the eCommerce space, there’s so much crap being sold out there. And also, in terms of what AI has done to the industry, it has allowed a lot of people to start a lot of different businesses, sell a lot of stuff, do a lot of dropshipping, and all these different things. It’s about trying to find the gems. It’s about finding the good people to work with and the businesses that are worth growing at the end of the day. There’s so much good stuff out there that gets pushed down because either they haven’t worked with a good agency or they just don’t know how to market themselves well enough. 

And I think the drive behind trying to find those people who are genuinely nice to work with and brands that are absolutely worth promoting and bringing out into the world is awesome and very rewarding. Being able to do that is incredibly fulfilling. That’s not to say that we’re perfect in every way, shape, or form. And it’s not like every single business we work with is perfect either. We do what we can. But all in all, I want to be able to help market products, people, and businesses that are absolutely worth getting out into the world and getting more people to know about. 

Yeah. That’s so interesting that you say that because I had a client in this space where you are, and they were a little conflicted because some of the brands they represented, they were not really proud of. And I think it really impacted their culture in turn. They felt that they were not operating with integrity with all of their clients, and that created internal friction. And it kind of held them back to some degree. So that’s fascinating that you talk about this. And I also noted on your website that your average client tenure is over four years, which I think bears testament to this.

Yeah. In a large majority of cases, I mean, we’ve had certain clients for six years and, in some cases, even eight years. So when you have tenures like that, they certainly last a long time. And sometimes it just doesn’t work, and we’re also very willing to openly admit that. I don’t want anyone to think, “Oh, if we sign up with you, it’s four years, and then we’re just constantly paying you for, I don’t know, whatever reason it might be.” But genuinely, we’re here to see how we can legitimately grow the business and actually bring you profit dollars that you weren’t seeing otherwise. 

Because so many businesses that we come across are just not able to allocate their marketing spend efficiently. And they’re just… I don’t know. Not to get too much into the nitty-gritty of things, but in a general sense, 95% of the businesses we talk to are essentially burning money. And in most cases, they’re being worked through an agency churn-and-burn system. And it hurts to see. Literally, I had a pitch two hours ago before this call where every single platform they were on was just burning money. They were trying to remarket to people who already knew about the brand and spending money on people who already knew about them and were already going to purchase from them. 

And the agency was trying to tell them, “Hey, all of our metrics are great.” But the business is suffering because of it. It happens all the time. It generally results in tough conversations for us because agencies have such a bad reputation. And we’re always trying to pick up the pieces and revitalize that relationship. Which has its highs and lows in many ways. But we’re out here doing the best we can.

Okay, so that’s a great segue because this podcast is all about frameworks—how to do something that maybe other entrepreneurs are trying to do, don’t know how to do, but you figured out. So do you have some kind of framework? Maybe it’s about getting an eCommerce company up and running on advertising and advertising profitably. Maybe it’s some other area in your business that is easy to explain in three to five steps. Does anything come to mind? 

The biggest thing that we have realized lately is what we have deemed community engagement. One, because of AI, you can scrape information so easily across the internet, and you can get fed so much crap that AI is just going to automatically generate for you. But what really matters at the end of the day is: who is your audience, where the heck do they hang out, and what are they talking about? 

So we are constantly looking to inject ourselves into Reddit threads, Facebook threads, YouTube comments, Quora—wherever those people possibly are. Get into the subreddits. Get into those Facebook communities. Get into the comments of influencers or whoever is relevant within that space, and talk to them. See what they’re talking about within those threads. Engage with them. Have a conversation so that you can understand what actually makes this person tick. What do they truly care about? What do they call things? What are they talking about on a daily basis? 

So that when you start creating content that resonates with those people, you know exactly how to connect with them. Because, as I mentioned earlier, so many people are creating commoditized products and content because of AI, because it’s making it that much easier to do. Nobody is truly trying to connect with the consumer at the end of the day. And therefore, you’re going to have so many people who become numb to anything being thrown in their face unless they actually feel like they’re being spoken to. 

So the biggest thing is to get to know the person on the other side of the screen. Go to where they hang out. Go to where they’re engaging. And listen to them. I think a lot of people forget that and want to go straight into data, metrics, spreadsheets, and all this stuff. When there is a human-to-human interaction happening within marketing every single day. And that is what you need to continue to focus on.

Okay, so maybe that’s the beginning of the framework. So get to know the person—or the customer—or both. 

Yeah. And it sounds really simple. It’s funny, when you put it that way, it’s just: listen to the person you’re trying to sell to. But it’s incredible how infrequently that actually happens. Because a lot of people will talk about, “My product is the best. My product is so good because it does this cool little thing that nobody else does.” But who really cares unless it’s actually solving a problem that somebody has? And unless they’re able to understand exactly how it’s going to make them feel in that moment when that problem is solved or how it connects to their core persona or whatever it might be. It’s a very simple framework. But it is the most important thing that a lot of people tend to neglect. 

No, I love it. I love it. So what does the actual framework look like? I understand you go to Reddit, you go to Quora, and you listen. But what is the process? How do you even know which part of Reddit you should go to, what you should listen to, and who the customers are? Give me the rundown. What do you do when a new customer walks through the door and you want to figure out how to make them successful? 

Yeah, of course. So I think Reddit is just the easiest example. I think it’s what a lot of people are familiar with, but it also provides value because it’s related to all the LLMs and what they like to cite as sources as well. Funny enough, one of the best ways to start is if you have a brand, a service, or something that you’re looking to build. Feed that into AI—Claude, ChatGPT, whatever works for you—and have it help you understand: “Hey, what subreddits should I be participating in?” If I want to sell vegetable seeds, for example—and that’s an example from a client we’ve worked with—or if I want to get more into gardening, where should I go? 

It will point you to gardening, DIY gardening, seasonal gardening, and all these different places that have communities of people who are very specific when it comes to anything you want to know about gardening. Then you jump in there and see people talking about: “When should I start planting my tomatoes?” Or: “When should I do any transplanting?” Or: “How do I need to handle my watering schedule?” And then you have layers and layers of threads, topics, and information that you can gather from. People are giving it to you for free and telling you exactly how they handle those things. 

And that turns into content. That turns into ways for you to engage with those people. It turns into ads because if you’re able to understand what their pain point is, then you can make an ad out of that. At the same time, you can pull a lot of that information using AI. But the biggest impact still comes from truly engaging with those people.

So you said that when you figure out what those communities are talking about in their Quora or Reddit communities, then you can engage with them. You can create content, you can create ads, and you can engage. And I’m just wondering, are there other forms of engaging with customers other than through content and ads?

Good question. So yeah, that’s the main part. You can directly comment within those Reddit threads, or you can start creating your own content within those Reddit communities. If you start to see a trend of multiple people asking, “How do I start planting my tomato seeds?” Or, “Where do I even start with this?” Then you can create an entire guide on your website. Build a blog post around it. Or you can get together with an influencer who’s able to make a video around it and show the entire process through a visual element as well. So you’re not just doing written content, but video too. And then you can even run ads around that. 

Because one of the biggest things, for example, with this brand that I’m kind of alluding to, is that every single ad and every single piece of content they were putting out beforehand was very disconnected from the true gardener at the end of the day, or the true DIY gardener. Because everything they showed was a picture of this beautiful, perfect pepper or tomato that nobody ever experiences unless you’re operating a commercialized system with all of the technology they have access to. But somebody in their backyard is not going to have a perfectly round tomato or a perfectly formed pepper. And therefore, no one knows how to get there. So you have to show them the step-by-step process. 

What soil do you need to buy? What seeds should you buy? And then you become part of that system because: “Oh, I need to buy seeds. Okay, I’m going to go to this company and buy seeds from them.” And they also helped me throughout this entire process by becoming the subject matter expert on what to do with tomato seeds. It becomes this kind of system that you naturally inject yourself into as you create content that connects with that person. Because the biggest thing was recognizing that all of the content they were putting out beforehand made people think: “Well, my food is never going to look like that if I plant it in my backyard.” Yeah. “But how can I get there so that I feel a lot less stressed about even starting?” And you’re providing this entire guide for me to follow so that I can become a better DIY gardener. 

Yeah. I love it. It’s a great approach to basically figure out where to go, talk to the people, and then communicate with them and create helpful guides for them. And the influencer video—that’s also very clever. So that’s how you help drive growth for your clients. But how do you drive growth in your own business? 

Yeah, good question. Funny enough, man, it is so much harder to do it for yourself when you are so focused on other people. Reflecting inward is always tough. But what we have recognized lately is that you have to have a good freaking offer. Because so many agencies in this space say the same stuff. I sat on Instagram for two hours one day and rifled through every single ad from marketing agencies in the space. 

And everybody says the same thing: “You’re doing your ads wrong.” Or: “You have no idea what’s happening with your attribution.” Or: “Google Ads is making you lose money.” Or: “Meta Ads sucks.” And all these different things. And everyone is saying: “You should let us do a free audit for you.” Or: “Come talk to us and we’ll help show you what’s wrong.” It’s like, okay, there’s a pretty big gap there. I have to spend all this time talking to you just to figure out whether you’re a legitimate business and whether you’re actually going to solve my problem. And you’re not really offering anything other than: “Hey, let’s sit down and talk about it.” When everybody else is doing the exact same thing. So the offer across the industry is generally weak. 

There are a few agencies that have well-built offers. What we personally figured out through A/B testing is that we don’t even try to lead with the marketing conversation. Because in some cases, businesses find it difficult to admit: “Hey, our marketing sucks.” Or: “Marketing is our problem.” But a lot of people can identify whether their website sucks. They can look at it and say it’s old or that it’s not converting well. It’s generally easier for people to make that connection than the marketing connection. 

So we’ve built an offer around A/B testing. For just about any eCommerce business doing over $1 million in annual revenue, we’d love to do a free A/B test for them. We will build a landing page of their choosing. It could be their homepage. It could be a product page. It could be whatever. We will create a mock-up ourselves and come to the call with it. We’ll show them our version alongside theirs. They can decide whether it seems better or not. And if they want to move forward, we’ll implement it on their site for free. Then we’ll run an A/B test until we reach statistical significance and can determine whether our page or their page performs better. 

Either way, there’s no cost to them. We just want to show that we’re capable of providing value. We want to demonstrate that we can create something better than what they currently have. If it works out, awesome. Let’s continue the conversation. If not, no harm, no foul. We weren’t able to improve it for them, and it doesn’t make sense to continue the conversation. 

Yeah. That is impressive. So you’re actually building a competing site, and you show them that you could do a better job than they are, essentially.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it’s… I don’t know. There’s somebody that I interact with who always says, “There are no sacred cows. There’s no ego in all of this.” It’s just, “We genuinely want to show that we can provide value in any way, shape, or form here.” It has garnered a lot of interest because it’s low friction. It’s, “Hey, at the very least, when we come to the call, we are going to show you something, and hopefully you like it.” And 100% of the time we’ve done this, everybody has loved it. 

So it’s been a great source of driving more leads, more conversations, and more at-bats for the business. Simply by having an offer that people want to see value from, as opposed to: “Hey, we’re going to do an audit. There’s going to be a long turnaround time. Then we have to figure out the next steps. Then there’s going to be this big price tag,” or whatever it is. Whereas we’re just going to do something for you for free. If it works, great. If not, you didn’t lose any sleep over it. 

Yeah. Love it. That’s pretty cool. And I think what’s really cool about it is that you do it without disrupting their existing business. Exactly. So they don’t feel like, “Okay, maybe it’s at no cost to me. Maybe it’s a marketing thing.” But at the same time, if you’re interfering with my customers, that’s actually a negative. Because it can create damage. That’s my reservation about people who offer to drive business for me. Yeah. But then they want to use my LinkedIn profile, and they can spoil my reputation online. And I’m never going to allow it. Because it interferes with my business. So I love that you found a way around that. That’s pretty cool. 

Absolutely. Yeah, and we’re hoping that it just continues to grow. Fortunately, AI has allowed us to move a lot faster with this because I think that historically would have been a major holdup. Mocking up a page is not a very easy task. But because we’re able to understand the business and generate something relatively quickly through our experience and understanding of how a page should be structured, it works out really well.

Yeah. Love it. So switching gears here, let me ask you this: What is something that you’re actively trying to figure out in your business? 

Ooh, boy. Scale. I think the ability to scale something like this is where I’m trying to figure out what is going to break next. Historically, we’ve struggled to figure out things like: “Oh, we need a really good offer to drive cold outbound leads.” We have historically been a referral-only business. And while that’s worked, it certainly isn’t as sustainable long term as building a proper, predictable cold outbound system. 

Now that we have something that is starting to work, and we’re seeing more leads come in, the question becomes: How do we scale this without the business breaking if we suddenly see a significant increase in leads? Because realistically, in the past, it’s been rare that we’ve had so many leads in the pipeline that we didn’t know how to handle them. But we’ve also recognized that the type of service we provide is elevated. We consider ourselves a boutique service. We know we’re not the cheapest in the market. But what we do know is that we can absolutely drive additional profit dollars to your business. Because we’re looking at the full marketing picture. 

We’re not just focusing on PPC. We’re not just focusing on SEO. We’re not just focusing on organic social. We’re looking at how all of those things work together. And then we’re looking at the business as a whole and trying to drive an actual P&L impact. Not just say: “Oh, ROAS in Google Ads is good, so everything must be great.” No. That’s not always the case. As I mentioned earlier, that can happen while you’re still burning money because you’re simply retargeting people who already know about your business. 

So the goal is understanding that we provide an elevated service and finding the right talent to help deliver it. So that as we continue to scale, we’re able to maintain the level of service that we know we’re capable of providing. And making sure that the people leading those client conversations are able to deliver on that promise every single time as well. Hopefully that answers the question, for the most part. 

So if you have the deals coming through, the cold outreach is working, and your offer is working, is it just a question of finding the talent, or are there other things that could break? 

Yeah. I think it’s hiring and talent for sure. And then the other piece is continuing to maintain the operational speed behind it as well. Because expectations in the industry are changing dramatically. We went from bi-monthly reporting to weekly reporting, and now people want to know how things are moving every single day. AI has sped things up to the point where people’s expectations are changing at a rate that we need to keep up with. And that is certainly one of the more difficult things to navigate. 

Especially when there are 30 to 1,000 new AI tools coming out every single day. Then you need to figure out: “What’s the best one that I’m going to be able to utilize long term, instead of just dumping it and moving to a new one next week?” So yeah, the operational piece has been very interesting over the past couple of years. It went from everybody using ChatGPT, to all of these different AI transcription tools. We moved into Notion. Now we’re using Vector, which is popping off right now. Claude has obviously made a lot of strides as well. And it’s about figuring out how we continue to pivot across all of these different tools. And I’m barely scratching the surface with those examples. 

We also have to make sure that the entire team is able to adapt to these changes over time. Because for so long, you could stick with a single tech stack and a handful of tools for years, and not much would change. But now, because of AI, things are adapting, changing, and improving incredibly quickly. And the expectations of the client are moving just as fast. So you need to be able to keep up with that.

I’ve always wondered about this thing that Steve Jobs said: The two primary functions of a business are marketing and innovation. And you are doing one of the two primary parts of the business. You could even argue that marketing is innovation as well. So the two things converge. How is it possible for an agency to innovate for multiple clients on a continual basis? 

Yeah. That just comes down to trusting the team and having the right people in the right place. And that’s why I think hiring is one of the biggest things that we need to focus on. Because AI has raised the floor for so many people. But it has also really shined a light on the people who are able to work alongside it efficiently, speed up their processes, and use their experience to make decisions really fast. It is more powerful than ever to have a creative mindset and the experience of seeing how things impact multiple different clients. And to understand how you can shift strategy at any point in time. It also requires having that childlike curiosity mindset. 

Being willing not to accept everything as fact. Being willing to pivot at any point in time. It’s truly about making sure that the people around you are willing to adapt and accept that they are not going to be right all the time. But they’re willing to keep trying, keep learning, and keep figuring out what the next step is. And not fall into complacency. Because if you do, AI has probably already rocked your world at this point. So the biggest thing is having people around you, a support system, procedures, and training that allow that to happen naturally. And trusting that they will be able to follow that and see the vision—or at least try. 

That’s fascinating. If there’s a company trying to figure out what to do, how to make sense of all these different platforms, SEO moving to GEO, AI, Reddit, Quora, rising advertising costs, TikTok, and all these other platforms coming online—and their head is spinning—what do you recommend they do? How do they select an agency? Of course, they should go to you. But how should they select an agency? What criteria should they use to select someone, whether that’s you or somebody else? 

Yeah. I mean, really, it just comes down to being growth-minded. And maybe I’m not fully understanding the question, but if you have any passion or drive to grow what you’re doing, you need to surround yourself with people who are constantly looking to push the envelope. Whether that be an agency or an in-house team. And in some cases, it might not make sense for you to have an agency. That really depends on your brand guidelines and how closely you hold them to your chest. Because sometimes bringing in an outside agency can be very difficult. 

It takes time to get them up to speed. If you’re looking to develop your own internal style of content because you have a lot of protection around the brand, then building that internally is going to make a heck of a lot more sense. Because they’re constantly going to be able to talk in your language. As opposed to an agency that wants to be an arm of your business, but at the end of the day, it’s difficult for that to always be the case. We try to live and breathe that as much as we can, but we also understand there are limitations. So I would say if you are a brand with extremely tight brand guidelines, then you need to train internally and make sure that is built into the culture and into the marketing team. 

Otherwise, everything you put out from that point forward is going to be disjointed from what the brand actually means or is trying to stand for. Therefore, you need to have that in-house and you need more control over it. Otherwise, if you understand that other people have great ideas, and you want to leverage that, and you appreciate that they’re looking at hundreds, if not thousands, of brands and seeing how they succeed in the market, then an agency can be a beautiful way to go. And it’s generally more cost-effective in most cases. You’re going to have an agency with maybe three to five people—sometimes even more—overseeing your account. 

And in many cases, that’s for the same cost as a single internal employee. So being able to leverage the minds of five different people with five different viewpoints of the world, and five different pairs of eyes looking at your website, versus just one… In my opinion, you’re going to win every time. Assuming you have the right team behind you.

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So essentially, you’re outsourcing your marketing function to an expert team. This is all they do. And they’re held to a high standard because they work with a lot of companies in a fast-moving environment. It’s similar to having an internal attorney versus using a law firm with high-flying attorneys who operate at the cutting edge.

You can never really replicate that cutting-edge environment, which helps nurture those people on the other side. Yeah. Love it. So if you’re listening to this and you want to take your marketing to the next level, and you want an expert team at your service to figure out how to grow your brand across multiple channels—content, advertising, customer engagement, and all that stuff—then reach out to Grant. But where can they find you, Grant? 

You can reach out to us through digitalposition.com. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m happy to chat with anybody. I’m more than happy to share anything I’ve learned along the way, whether you’re another agency, a brand, or whatever it might be. I firmly hold the belief that there is a massive sea of people out there to reach. And I’m happy to share any learnings that I’ve had. Because, boy, there’s so much to digest in this world, and I’m happy to share whatever I know. But yeah, digitalposition.com for anyone who would possibly want to work with us or chat. Otherwise, I’m on LinkedIn and happy to connect there as well. 

Well, Grant McKinstrie, CEO of Digital Position, a full-stack agency that builds growth systems for eCommerce brands. Thanks for coming and sharing your experience and your view of the world. And if you enjoyed listening, make sure you follow us on YouTube and Apple Podcasts because every week I come with an exciting entrepreneur who is sharing the best of what they know. So thanks for coming, Grant, and thanks for listening. 

Thank you so much for having me.

Important Links:

• Grant’s LinkedIn
• Grant’s website