Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?
My company, Odyssey New Media, is a leading Digital Agency based in Birmingham, UK. We specialize in Search Marketing (SEO and PPC) as well as offering a full array of services from Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, Content Marketing, Web Development, Mobile Apps, and more.
My role within the company is primarily managing day-to-day operations, working on new sales, and helping to oversee key accounts.
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the Digital Marketing Strategy for a client.
The main objectives for any of our customers ultimately are for them to get ROI and growth of key metrics like site traffic, site conversion, conversion rate, and so on. From the conception of a new website or strategy, we make sure to understand our client’s business and establish realistic targets with them.
How does your company differentiate itself from the competition?
We take time to learn about our client’s business, and we offer a free initial consultation so that we can help advise them on the right strategy and marketing channels to achieve their goals from digital marketing and web. We also strive to be as transparent as possible with our reporting and regular contact throughout a campaign so that clients can see that activity is happening.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive?If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
We cater to a wide array of industries with no limitations as we feel that digital is the way forward for most businesses. However, over the years, we have found that certain sectors have been looking to invest more in digital; these include Legal, Healthcare, and Software.
Most of our marketing work has to be on-going work ranging from a few months to a whole year initially. The ratio of repetitive clients is approximately 70%.
Please share some of the services that you offer for which clients approach you the most for?
We are most well known for our Search Marketing services – SEO and PPC; and therefore, receive a lot of inquiries around these services. These days I think most people are aware that if you’re not found on Google and the other Search Engines you are missing out on a large amount of high conversion potential traffic, leads, and sales.
What do you find to be some of the most key factors for running a successful agency in the field of Digital Marketing?
I think the key factors are managing client expectations from day one and solid, transparent reporting. Clients will spend, but many have unrealistic expectations which need to be managed and agreed. Reports need to showcase key information and be transparent, while at the same time being uncluttered and uncomplicated so clients can digest and understand the key performance metrics.
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of a project?
The key factors we try to establish is what does the client hope to get out of a project and what does a website or digital marketing campaign need to produce over a period for the client to make a return on their investment. It’s important to establish what an average sale value is, or estimated cost per lead (CPA). Then you can try and estimate how many leads/sales a client needs to gain enough ROI for them to be satisfied.
What kind of payment structure do you follow to bill your clients?
We normally have set a monthly amount of time, which is billed monthly. We bill primarily on time rather because a strategy needs to be fluid, and you can’t always just do the same repetitive tasks every month and expect to get results.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2018?
Projects can range from a few hundred pounds a month for small campaigns right up to several thousand. As a rough guide, I would say they varied from £500 to £3000 per month in 2018.
Name a couple of activities that you think provide the best ROI in terms of benefit/impact when it comes to different areas of Digital Marketing.
A key activity which we invest time on is setting up proper conversion tracking alongside conversion enhancement analysis of a website (if it’s one we haven’t built). This is invaluable because very often getting traffic isn’t the challenge; the challenge is converting it. Sometimes simple changes to a website can make a massive difference to conversion rate, but these require analysis and proposals in order to get them made. Often clients will listen, but it can be challenging, especially when changes to their website means additional development costs.
Kindly share your feedback on how Goodfirms has been doing so far in increasing your visibility among potential clients.
Goodfirms has helped us expand our social proofing as it is another platform. From analyzing our Web Analytics, we can also see that we get referral traffic to our website and some inquiries. Potential clients can also read our reviews on Goodfirms so we are actively trying to increase the number of reviews and case studies on our profile so people can see evidence of our good work.