A letter of apology of sorts.
Well, here it goes, we made a mistake. When we started as an agency we looked for an under-serviced market, one that we knew we could make a splash in, and we picked social media. It was our intention to run a savvy social media agency that would change the face of that facet of marketing in Niagara... one problem: social media wasn't enough, it isn't enough and that is why we changed. So let us break this down for you.
What We Did
Social media was an easy entry into the marketing marketplace. We know social media through and through, it is an element of the field that isn't used terribly well by specialists and generalists alike, and we weren't afraid to get creative with our clients in Niagara by using strategies we had used elsewhere with much larger (enterprise level) corporations. So, we kicked ourselves into a full public relations work-up, got ourselves tons of attention, we started teaching classes and we took on clients like wildfire. In twelve short months we had shaken things up and we had some people nervous about our rapid growth and what that meant for their businesses. They can rest easy, we moved on and up, and we did that even faster.
Why We Made Change
Social media is one part of the digital marketing puzzle, but never ever hire us because you want your Facebook managed, or you want a solid Twitter account. We would be lying to you if we said that there was a way to make social media the most important part of your marketing strategy in a marketplace as small as Niagara. We work primarily in localized sales, as in, our clients are typically marketing to people in their backyard. There is not a substantial enough uptake of social media in Niagara to make that a good enough solo entry into the digital marketplace. So what did we do to make up for what we learned was a dramatic lack of return on investment for clients that choose to focus on social alone?
Enter Inbound Marketing
We switched to Inbound Marketing and joined forces with HubSpot, one of the most incredible companies that we have come to know. So how is inbound marketing different from social media marketing? Fundamentally, it is all about the return on investment. We didn't get the complaint from our clients that they weren't seeing a substantial return on their dollars, but we could feel it coming. It was stressful to work so hard to get our clients traction and we couldn't predict the success, we were stressed out and when we get stressed we aren't performing to the standard that our clients deserve. So, we picked a platform and committed and now we can predict that success, and some of our clients have signed 12 month, some 24 month and some 36 month retainer agreements because they want to keep us around. In short, it has changed everything for us, what we can do for the people that we work with and what is means for our happiness and work/life balance.
So What Failed?
We failed when we did the talks, chatted about the power of social and did it all when we knew that we weren't gaining the results we wanted. We have social media success, and we have a lot of it. But it is never just the social, it is the content and the design behind the social. It is the slick web presence, the well written blogs, the ease of communication that we facilitate for our clients. We use social to attract and delight. Once we have attracted the consumer, there is a hell of a lot of work that helps us turn them into a customer. Then once we have them, we delight the hell out of them with personal anecdotes, recognition of their work and company and conversation about whatever it is they are posting about or engaging in. Now the middle stuff, the really important conversion stuff, that is is our wheel house. So, we failed when we convinced you that social was what you need, you need a lot more than that and you are wasting your dollars if you've invested in a strategy that is founded in social exclusively. So, we apologize and if you've been reading our blogs, you'll know that we are working hard to do better, be more and make this inbound marketing thing a more popular option for many agencies because it is what works and makes you money.
Keep up with our blog to make sure that you don't miss what we're talking about because we are, we would guess, making more return on investment for dollar spent than any other agency in Niagara. Our strategies turn digital marketing into a lead generating service and you want to know how we do that. Learn how we can do that for you with a consultation.