You have big goals this year: maybe you want to bring in more profitable clients, or grow your team with people who live your values, or spend less time in the office and more with the people who are important to you in life. Whatever your goals, they’re all connected to your marketing, and you’re looking for support to make it happen. You don’t have the budget for a full in-house team or the time to tackle it all on your own, which leaves you with two options:
- On-demand or freelance work
- A long-term partnership with a marketing agency
A quick scroll through Fiverr will reveal page after page of passionate freelancers vying for your one-off marketing gig. It may seem like a quick solution to your problem, but on-demand marketing doesn’t compare to the value a long-term marketing partnership will bring to your firm.
On-demand marketing is like on-demand accounting
We recently collaborated with one of our accountants to write a blog explaining why they don’t provide on-demand bookkeeping. The first time a client comes to them with a messy set of books, they’ll clean them up until they’re sparkling. The client then has the option to continue with ongoing bookkeeping. If they decide it’s not for them, that’s completely fine, but our accountant won’t clean up their books again.
This policy is primarily for the client’s benefit because on-demand bookkeeping or accounting of any kind takes more time and more money for less reward.
Think of the value you can bring a business with consistent, year-round accounting. Now compare that to the value you could bring with a one-off clean-up or tax season check-in. The difference is astronomical, and it’s the exact same when it comes to marketing.
On-demand marketing provides short-term solutions for short-term needs.
Need a blog about new tax legislation? A content writer from Fiverr would jump on the job. Need a new header designed for your firm’s Twitter? A graphic designer from Upwork is willing to do it.
Sure, you’re checking these things off your list, but are you getting the high-value results you’re looking for? Are you bringing in more of the clients you love to work with, seeing a measurable difference in your data and executing new ideas with confidence?
No. Because like on-demand accounting, on-demand marketing is a temporary fix that will ultimately take more time, money and effort for less reward. On-demand marketing means:
- Struggling to put content out that accurately and fully reflects your brand
- Trying to build your own marketing strategy when that’s not your area of expertise
- Working piecemeal with individuals instead of creating cohesive marketing which is striving towards a common goal
- Missing out on the confidence and support a long-term partnership brings
- Creating marketing that brings you the wrong kinds of leads (people who aren’t a fit, or who aren’t ready to work with you)
- Starting over, starting again, and pursuing “shiny thing!” continually
Forming a long-term partnership with an agency gives you the confidence, support and strategy you need to get the results you want
Get a team of experts working to support you
The biggest companies in the world have an in-house marketing team complete with graphic designers, web developers, content writers, marketing managers, social media managers and more.
Like an in-house finance function, this only becomes accessible (and reasonable) when a business has grown to a certain scale. How can you get the collaboration and consistency of a marketing team working as one without the pain and price of hiring in-house?
Answer: a marketing agency. Like us!
When we start working with you, you get:
- A Client Marketing Manager (CMM) to pull out all your marketing gold dust, create a marketing strategy, connect your goals to your marketing actions, meet with you to brainstorm new ideas and update you on your progress, like your Instagram pics of your cute kids, and be your overall knight in shining marketing armour.
- A Content Writer (like me) to spin beautiful blogs from bullet points, tell your story on social media, speak to your ideal clients on your website and generally translate all your ideas and knowledge into flowing words on a (web)page
- A Graphic Designer to make everything look beautiful (and more appealing to your ideal audience) by transforming plain old text into an eye-catching digital design
- A Website Developer to keep everything visible to your prospects in the right places, and to keep your marketing content running smoothly behind the scenes
It’s like that scene in End Game where all the superheroes appear at once looking super cool to save the world. PF Team: Assemble!
Create customised marketing material based on a deep understanding of you, your brand, and your goals
Good marketing speaks to the people you love to work with. It reflects everything about them, from their frustrations and desires to the things they value most, the images that catch their eye and the problems they’re most looking to solve. A successful piece of marketing content will make your ideal client think, “Wow! These people just get me. It’s like they were made for me!”
But in order to achieve this, whoever’s working on your marketing needs to get you. They need to know you and your business inside out, and an on-demand marketing solution won’t give you this level of connection.
Our head content writer, Camilla, used to be a freelancer. In her words, being asked to write one-off marketing material for a brand you’ve just heard of is like “being asked to give a best man’s speech to a packed ballroom of people ready to be moved to tears… just minutes after meeting the groom.”
Sure, you could deliver a speech, but it’ll be nothing compared to what could be done by someone who’s known the groom for years. In your foundation sessions, we put in the time and consideration to understand all of who you are and, equally as important, who you want to be:
- What gets you out of bed in the morning?
- What kind of prospective client puts a smile on your face just thinking about working with them?
- What do you love to do every day and what do you wish was simpler, or different, or off your plate completely?
- What are your goals: short-term and long-term, for your business and your life?
- What’s missing (in your team, sales, or clients) which would make a big difference to you once delivered?
All of this (and so much more) impacts how we approach and execute your marketing. When we form a long-term partnership, I hear your voice in my head as I’m writing a blog post or social media caption for you. Our designers can take one look at a stock image and think, “that is so you!” or “you’d hate that!”
By knowing and understanding you, we produce better and more on-brand content. And our job doesn’t end there.
Build a marketing strategy we adjust based on data and results
When we form a long-term partnership, delivering an amazing piece of content is just the very first step in our process. Next, we collect and analyse data in a co-pilot report so we can know what’s working and adjust what isn’t.
For example, our CMM Kendall recently had a co-pilot report for one of our accountants where she noticed two of the blogs he wrote himself were consistently the most viewed pages on his website. Unfortunately, these blogs also had a high bounce rate, meaning visitors were leaving the site after reading them instead of sticking around to learn more.
Backed by this data, Kendall adjusted our accountant’s marketing strategy and sent the blogs to our content writing team for an edit. We expanded on some of the information included in the blogs and adjusted them to better speak to our accountant’s ideal client, specifically business owners in the construction industry who value good communication and flexibility.
In just one month:
- The blogs’ page views doubled
- Bounce rates dropped by nearly 30%
- And overall website traffic increased by 52%
This is a massive win, especially in such a short time period. Our accountant laid the groundwork with his initial blog posts, and with the support of our long-term partnership, he was able to take action and bring in results. It’s not enough to just have the data: we help you translate it into next steps and big wins that get you closer to your goals.
Feel confident you’re executing your very best ideas at the highest level
You’ve already got marketing ideas of your own bouncing around your head. Maybe it’s new products or services, plans for a webinar, a new logo, email campaigns to target a new niche, the list goes on and on!
With on-demand marketing, you’re hiring a yes man (or yes person). Whatever you ask them to do, they’ll do it, whether it’s right for your business or not. They won’t brainstorm with you or offer more on-brand alternatives or suggestions to take that idea to the next level. They certainly won’t say “I’m not sure that’s the best idea to deliver what you’re looking for”. They’re happy to get the work and will do ask they’ve been asked to do – whether it’s designing a leaflet or a billboard, writing a blog post, or building a new website.
But your long-term marketing partner considers you and your potential clients before saying yes. Our favourite type of message to receive at PF usually starts with, “What if we . . .” or “Could we try something like . . .” or “I’ve been thinking about. . .”.
We received a message like that from an accountant who wanted to change his firm’s name. This accountant, Jamie, pitched a few different ideas he’d come up with on his own, but nothing was doing his firm justice. It wasn’t speaking to who he was and who his ideal clients were, so we suggested he do a naming workshop.
We started by brainstorming words that reflected his firm, its culture, its purpose, his ideal client, and more. Some of the things that came up were, “being the rock,” “power,” and “want to win.” The business owners Jamie loves to work with have massive dreams. They’re looking for a partner to help them chase these dreams and provide the support they need to reach them.
As we continued brainstorming, we ended up discussing Jamie’s love for road biking. Road bikes are often made up of titanium because it’s lighter than steel but stronger than aluminium, making it the ideal metal for travelling long distances with ease.
Bam. Inspiration. TitaniumHQ provides strong, high-quality support to help carry their clients along their journey, wherever it may lead. Just like the metal they take their name from, they’re powerful, reliable, and the perfect companion to get you where you’re going.
Jamie found his perfect name, and it all started with his “what if. . . “.
Have more time to focus on the parts of your business you do best
Your time is not a renewable resource. Between all your roles and responsibilities in running your own firm, plus taking care of your mind and body PLUS spending time with the people you love PLUS getting to your kid’s school play PLUS shopping for your best friend’s birthday gift PLUS cooking three meals a day PLUS absolutely everything else going on in your life. . .
[break to gasp for air]. . . you’re a busy person. Where you spend your 24 valuable hours a day is super important to you.
Marketing takes time. Or, rather, good marketing takes time. There’s no getting around that fact, and any quick-win magic spell shortcut that promises to get you amazing results with no effort is going to end in disappointment.
Forming a long-term partnership with a marketing agency doesn’t mean you’ll never spend another second on marketing again. What it does mean is the time you do spend will be optimised to get you the very best results possible. Every time you jump on a call to go through a co-pilot report with your CMM or record a video for your content writer to turn into a blog, you’ll know your valuable time is being spent valuably, doing something to benefit you and your business.
Ready to use marketing to achieve all your big, exciting goals?
The first step to creating marketing that brings in real results is identifying who you are and who you’re speaking to. The Foundations sessions guide you through a brand deep dive (as well as other critical areas of your business) so you can start building a marketing partnership, putting out amazing content and achieving your goals in your business and your personal life. Book yours today.