Creative Agency Secrets provides digital marketing services for brands and businesses. We are a leading agency innovating with new marketing techniques like SEO, community building, direct response and advanced blogging.
When working with us, you will learn how to run and manage digital platforms such as a website, e-commerce shop, blog as well as learn the ins and outs of email marketing, database management, and social media marketing.
If you want to get a career in marketing but haven’t found yourself a job – this will get you your first position on your CV and some solid experience.
Being a digital native on the internet is essential, so a Marketing, Communications or Business Studies degree would be considered favourably. No prior knowledge of websites, blogs or online marketing is needed – full training is provided.
Send your CV and Cover Letter to Conrado along with one page describing an event you ran (party, event, gig, etc), outlining what you did to market and promote it, the tools and techniques you used, what worked and what didn’t work and the outcomes.
This job is a 4-week unpaid internship. The start dates and hours are negotiable, and can be suited around your studies. If there is work available for the best candidate after 4 weeks, you may be offered part-time work at $20 per hour.
Applicants for this position should have NZ residency or a valid NZ work visa.
Working with a client who makes animated explainer videos – Case Study of how to grow referrals. We discuss three ways they can get more referral business.
Image by NWeSource
1.Innovations in your specialism
Every market changes over time – fads pass, new ideas surface. So write about what’s happening in your market. Consider writing about styles, techniques, innovations to be added onto an explainer video (if that’s your business). So which new styles are coming about? Where did each one come from – background and timeline of the evolution.
In the writing analyse the change, what are the component parts, which elements stand out. You could add in new uses for explainer videos – for example in a PitchPack video brochure.
The goal:
Give the reader the education and tools to make an analysis themselves of whether their archive of explainer videos is getting dated
Show your opinion as a market leader on what’s good, what’s new and what’s to be avoided
Create content which you can share with past clients and encourage them to update their videos and re-buy from you. [This is referring back to prior clients, not new ones.]
2. Create a Call list
You need to speak to people if you sell in Business to Business (B2B). The best way to start a dialogue is with Open Questions. These encourage a longer response from the other person and give you insight into their views on a topic. Any insight enables you to position your services as a solution to issues they raise.
Here’s an example of a call prompt (not really a script).
“Hello, Rebecca. I sent you our article about new styles in explainer videos. I just wanted to get your opinion on it. What did you think?”
Can you imagine how the call will develop into a discussion?
Yes, so can I.
Whether you get a new job immediately or not, you stand a good chance of doing some good things
Checking your contact database is still current – add new names in if you can
Finding out the current situation in the client business with regard to your service offering
Reminding them that you exist and have been trusted with work in the past
Updating your CRM with lead status (cold, warm, hot)
Possibly opening new opportunities for new business.
Create this call list from a list of all your clients from the past 3 years (more if you’ve been in business longer). Also add to the list from your Linked In connections and those from your co-workers. Goal to have 100 people on the list to call.
Plan on making 3 calls per week, per person in your team. Yes, new business development requires discipline and is hard. We can teach you how…
3. Getting Referrals
Start to build a referral marketing engine into your daily project work as well. We find what works best is to connect with them early in the project.
Start with a “Happy call” when you ring asking for feedback on how the job is going.
Then build on this with a similar call just after the project has been delivered. Remind them of what they said on the earlier call. This is the moment to ask for a testimonial for the project team.
After getting this, I usually wrap up by asking
Do you know anyone else who might like to meet us?
My goal is to get two names of people as an introduction. My big tip to make this successful is to ask the question and then to stay silent until the other person has come up with a name…. stay silent as they “ummm” and say “maybe”, “well”, “I’m not sure” and still stay silent and they will 80% of the time come up with a name. If they firmly say no, you can prompt with – maybe a co-worker in a different team or maybe someone from your previous job and see if that can deliver a name.
How to use the introduction….. write an email to BOTH people. This is my template email that works.
Subject: NAME OF THE INTRODUCER
Hi Alex,
Our AGENCY NAME has just completed a job for INTRODUCER and s/he suggested you as someone who might like to get to know us.
We completed an explainer video (link) for INTRODUCER.
I took a look at your website and [something helpful here which they can use immediately].
Looking forward to connecting.
Lots of love from Rebecca (only joking… use an appropriate sign off).
I always cc the introducer in this message so they know what I said.
In the email you could tell them about the customer satisfaction scores or Net Promoter Score which your team has acquired over time. Or link to TrustPilot Reviews or your Google My Business Review score.
The follow up call is just a friendly get to know you call. No selling. But if you feel it’s gone well you can follow up with an email linking to a helpful resource from your website. Here’s one I use frequently.
This is an example of the type of helpful marketing tips which Creative Agency Secrets writes in our newsletter and blog.We want to enable you to buy web services as an informed consumer (and we don’t build websites, we help our clients to use them actively to win new client business).
Cute eh?
Then you have to put them onto a stay-in-touch programme or ask if they will allow you to stay in touch with a newsletter subscription. Either way, one call won’t win you business but a dedicated process to provide utility (usefulness) to them, will ensure you are remembered and they take your calls in future.
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/referral-NWeSource.png420596Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2017-06-08 17:13:202022-12-19 11:57:24Case Study: Three ways to increase referrals
My name is Emelie and I have been interning with Creative Agency Secrets for the past 2,5 months. I am a Swedish marketing student at Halmstad University and this internship has been a part of my education. It has been great to finally get to work with marketing for real rather than just be reading about it in a textbook. I am happy I got the chance to do my internship here in New Zealand, it has been a fun challenge and I have learned a lot.
What I have learned
During my time here I was lucky to learn many different things within digital marketing. I have learned to work independently and to do research in order to be able to create great content for both Creative Agency Secrets and for our clients. My colleagues have introduced me to a bunch of awesome marketing tools such as; Feedblitz, MailChimp, WooRank, SumoMe, EventBrite, Teamwork, Google Analytics and WordPress just to mention a few. It’s been fun to learn how to use all these tools and see how effective they are when you use them right.
Writing, writing and writing. I have been writing many blog posts and learned the importance of SEO. You have to create great content and you have to make sure your website gets noticed. Because if no one will read your post, then what is the purpose of having all this great content on your website? By improving your SEO, you are more likely to get noticed on the web.
Not to forget, social media has been a big part of my work here. I have been doing social media for some of our clients. It is not always that easy, I have learned it can actually be quite hard. Anyone can get likes, but it gets a lot harder when you want your likes to click through to your website and actually become a customer of yours.
Tack!
I am very grateful for this opportunity and I would like to thank the team for this time together. Rebecca, Jeremy, Laura and Conrado, thank you! Thank you for all your help and all the time you have spent on explaining and teaching me new things. I have learned a lot and it is all thanks to you. I wish you all the best!
Improving the SEO for your business is very important. When potential customers search for your products and services you obviously want to appear as high in the search engine rankings as possible. In order to do so, your SEO has to be better than your competitors. Google and other search engines will rank what they think is relevant to what is searched for. Therefore, you have to make sure Google thinks your business is relevant to rank. The higher ranking you get on Google, the more likely you will be to drive more traffic to your website. So, what do you do and where do you start?
BrightLocal’s 7 SEO tools
BrightLocal is a company that specializes in SEO tools that help businesses grow through the effective use of search marketing. Today, BrightLocal have more than 20,000 customers worldwide using their 7 SEO tools.
1. Local Search Rank Checker
The first tool is the Local Search Rank Checker. It tracks your ranking on search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo and it covers both organic and local search rankings. You have the opportunity to set up this tool to run a report automatically every month or week and you can compare your result to previous reports. Decide what settings will work best for your business. Finally, the report is also available for you to download. Keep track on your ranking and make sure it goes up!
2. Local SEO Check-up
The Local SEO Check-up tool provides a fast and comprehensive audit of a business’ local SEO set-up. It’s a complete local SEO audit tool that runs more than 300 automatic SEO checks. It enables you to speed up your SEO audits and it only takes 5 minutes to set up! You get a clear and accurate report within 15 minutes which you can share directly with clients and prospects. The things this tool checks includes: inbound links, domain authority, your presence on the most important local directories, social media, and Google Places.
3. Google+ Local Wizard
You use Google+ Local Wizard to quickly analyze you Google+ optimization and benchmark your business against your top 10 local competitors. You can also see your ranking on Google+ for your key terms.
4. CitationTracker
CitationTracker is a tool that helps you find, track and manage your local citations. A citation is a listing for your business on a third party site, for example; on a review site like Yelp. By using this tool you will get help with your citations in four different ways. It will help you find existing citations, locate old and incorrect citations, spy on your competitors citations and track the change you make to your current citations. You can also find new citations by locating your top 5 competitors and list your business on the same site!
5. CitationBurst
The CitationBurst tool helps you if you don’t want to go through the labours of manual citation building yourself. CitationBurst will do it for you! It gives you the chance to submit to multiple directories at one time and help to generate listings on local, general and niche directory sites. Pick what sites you want to submit to and CitationBurst will complete the submissions for you within 14 days.
6. ReviewFlow
What ReviewFlow does is that it locates and monitors online reviews on important directories and reviews sites. Using this tool makes it possible to find existing reviews and track all new reviews you receive. ReviewFlow keeps track on all major review sites such as Google+, Yelp and Tripadvisor. By collecting reviews from all sites the report makes it easier for you to read and comment your reviews. You can schedule the report to update monthly, weekly or even daily.
7. ReviewBiz
The final tool is ReviewBiz. It gives you the opportunity of adding a ReviewBiz badge to your website. Create and customize your button and copy paste the code onto your website. By doing that, your clients can easily click-through to a review site of your choice to read and add reviews about your business. Positive reviews will boost your local ranking!
Image credit: pixabay.com
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/SEO1-2.png371956Emelie Tillackhttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgEmelie Tillack2016-04-12 08:44:332019-08-13 15:18:177 Tools to Improve Your SEO
Periodically I answer questions on www.Clarity.fm – a broking website for experts and entrepreneurs. This questioner is a startup and wants to know if having his blog articles syndicated will be helpful for his business. The answer applies to established businesses who write articles as well as startups.
The advantages of Content Syndication
I would say that it is 100% a good idea with a couple of caveats.
First, your syndication destination should already have an audience who aligns closely with your startup’s desire clients / customers.
Second, the syndicator must allow link-backs to your website.
So definitely go do it – if it builds audience with prospects and also if it can be made to drive traffic back to your website.
The key to appraising whether these things are appropriate, are all about building audience, testing the market and getting early adopters.
So consider your articles and whether a call-to-action can be added to the bottom of each one that drives the interested reader to your website. When they get there, can you capture their details by offering something to the reader?
Improving your local SEO is an important part of your business marketing. It’s all part of Getting your website working hard for your business [there’s a free ebook telling you how].
Read more blog posts about Profile Raising by clicking the icon below. It’s one of the steps in our 8 Step Methodology
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When you’re new, or growing, and need social proof to prove your worth to the world
So, you’re starting out your business and you know you’ve got a good thing going. But something you don’t have yet from your clients: their endorsement of you and your brand or your product. Sure, they’ve told you they liked working with you and, of course, that made you feel good on the inside. But, with the interwebs, you need to have hard proof that says someone used your services and liked it enough to write it down in a social internet space. Like Google Reviews. Or Facebook. Or even just in an email and with your clients’ blessing. Okay, so, how do you do it?
As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, or deduced from the title of this blog post, we’re talking about testimonials. Or reviews. Either or, they can be one in the same, if they contain ratings and words as friendly companions in whatever social app you’re using. There are multiple ways to get those testimonials so that, when a new possible client happens to Google you, lo and behold, they see other people like you and have used you and have provided their friendly feedback. Well, we rolled out with a fun and ‘give-back sort’ of way to request from our clients and those that have worked with us in the past. I think you’ll like it.
Before the holidays, our Chief in Command, Rebecca, came across a non-profit organization called StarJam. Briefly, I just want to let you know that what they do is amazing. Through music and performing arts, StarJam lifts kids with disabilities up, helps them to learn new skills, and gives them confidence. Just take a look at the photos they have on their website, every time I do I just want to be a part of that! Anyway, back to the story. Rebecca wanted Creative Agency Secrets to be able to give to StarJam. We also, you guessed it, wanted to get testimonials. Testimonials in one hand, giving to a good cause in the other… hmm. There’s got to be a good way to put these two together.
And SMASH!
It’s the holidays, right? We can send out a good will email to our clients! WE will donate money in your name to StarJam if you can write a few words on Google about your time with Creative Agency Secrets. So, we reached out to StarJam to get their permission, find out if they felt comfortable with our plan, requested a few images to use and then started crafting an email.
Key items we made sure to have in our email
Make your headline engaging
Make your text interesting to read
Tell the reader what you’re doing or what you’re asking them to do
4. Hyperlink to wherever they need to go or whatever you’re referring to
5. Use images
The main thing we wanted to make sure to do was inform our followers HOW to submit a review. Some people don’t have Gmail. I know, crazy world, but we had to come up with a foolproof way to say ‘This is easy! Here, we’ll show you’.
Voila! We created this easy to read image with everything needed to tell our audience how to do what we were asking them to do.
Then what? Well, we could wait around with baited breath. But, by this time, it was Christmas and we decided we’d come back to it in the New Year with fresh eyes and suntans.
And when we did… no reviews! We could have been sad and wallowed a bit but that’s now how you get good reviews. So we sent a follow-up email. Sort of a, “Hey, we know you were busy over the holidays, but…” reminder. Good idea, right? Of course.
But when you’ve asked the same way twice and you still get no response
You try another tactic. This time, we called, or in some cases walked over to, those who had worked with us in the past to ask them, oh so kindly, to provide us with a review while we donated to a good cause in their name. Sometimes it just takes the glimmer in your eye, the inflection in your voice, or just good ole human contact to make the connection you need.
And now we’re on the MAP!
Tips to those using Google reviews!
For one, you need 5 reviews to be able to see your star rating.
For two… even if you have 5 star ratings for all 5 of your Google reviews… somehow you still only rate 4.8 stars
Number two will remain a bit of a mystery.
I hope this helps any startup businesses out there looking to get on the map as well with testimonials and reviews. As they say, right now, the BEST way to get business is by word of mouth. And online rating systems like Google, Facebook, and others are the next best things with the worldwide web!
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Be-Innovative-with-How-You-Get-Testimonials.jpg393800Creative Agency Secrets Teamhttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgCreative Agency Secrets Team2016-02-25 11:00:002020-01-24 01:44:59Be Innovative with How You Get Testimonials
We’re happy to announce that our team have recently left the Ironbank on 150 Karangahape Road and moved our office to a new location. It’s only a short walk from our old office. From now on our new address is:
Our phone numbers and email addresses are still the same. We look forward to meeting you in our new office. If you have any questions we’re happy to answer, just send us an email.
Best wishes, The Creative Agency Secrets Team
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Hi, I’m James Halpin and I’ve been lucky to have an internship at CAS over the past month and boy, has it been a crash course. Being at CAS was my first exposure to the professional working world and it is certainly different to my previous work experience. I’ve had to adapt my skill set to this environment and learn brand new skills. Here are a few of the things I’ve had to improve on.
Independence
There is far less micro-managing in the professional environment which was different to previous jobs I had had. I’ve had to import my independence skills that I had learnt at university and apply them to the real world. Figuring out stuff on my own is difficult but rewarding. It is tempting to take the easy route and do a cheap job of something, but doing something properly with quality is far more rewarding.
Research
Surprisingly to me research was a large part of my internship. Not only from within the company (looking at previous work to decide what to do) but also for software and companies that were new to me. Fortunately for me, there was a wealth of material already on the internet that I was able to call upon when I didn’t understand something. Rebecca also sent me a textbook, Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Sharma. This book tied all the method to the madness. I also could rely on the team here at CAS to explain something if I couldn’t solve it.
Writing Skills
My writing style over the past month has had to change. University is very formal and stringent about their writing criteria, no personal pronouns and certainly no language that could be considered colloquial. The internship has taught me to be more flexible and put a little flare into my writing. This is a list that I’ve added to every time I have received consistent criticism of my writing:
Make it more personal.
Give sufficient context.
Think about your SEO from the start. Pick a keyword and build the article or blog post around that. It’s all about that SEO life.
Be more assertive, fewer ‘if’s’ and more ‘you can’. Make my call to actions stronger.
Software
Before I started at CAS I had never used any marketing software. On my first day here I was given the task of learning how to use Google Analytics which is the foundation of CAS and their client Rowperfect. I’ve discovered not using GA or another equivalent would be suicide for an online business. WordPress has also been a revelation to me. Seeing the backend of a website has given me insight into the online world. I’m now able to criticise websites where I know people have been lazy. Equally however, that means for the websites I work on – everything must be on purpose. Formatting is essential, spelling and grammar, even more so.
I would like to thank the all the team at CAS; Rebecca, Jeremy and Laura. Working here has been a complete learning curve and I couldn’t have developed without your guidance. I wish you all luck for 2016! A special thanks to Rebecca for giving me this opportunity and I know it will propel me forward on my career path.
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I get really mad when low quality website developers over-specify for marketing websites. Is this
Quality Website Developers
something you have seen?
Part of the expertise of a high quality web developer is to recommend the right tool for the job and I find it ridiculously easy to spot website developers who are not skilful. But it still makes me angry.
Marketing suppliers like Creative Agency Secrets lead the industry because we “decode” marketing for our clients, we find high quality suppliers and engage them for our clients as sub-contractors with us managing the job. Trust is essential to maintain reputation and high quality marketing services delivery.
I cannot hire you if you set out to exploit the ill-informed client.
Which CMS is right for you?
We are handling a small website for a client which needs to become responsive. It’s a brochure-ware site and needs to rank well in local search. That’s it.
So why, oh why does their existing developer recommend a CMS that scores highly for:
Sell E-commerce: The core installation comes with a very nice E-commerce module
Offer Exclusive Content: There is a membership module installed right out of the box
Want Flexibility and Growth: Each website is built from the ground up. Another great feature is the multiple site manager
Care About Security and Stability: there hasn’t been a major security breach in over 10 years.
I did some research comparing two CMS products and found this and Quora answers. Which confirmed my own views of mis-alignment between client need and tools proposed.
Quality website developers don’t do this
It’s lazy and over-engineered for the requirements and will be costly for the client.
Game over for that potential relationship.
I do not see it as my job to specify the website build and design – that is what an expert web developer should be doing. As marketing experts, we specify the functionality and features needed and let the experts propose appropriate solutions.
If you know a good web developer who would like to quote on this job – send them this link to the job description.
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/specify-website.png6841200Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2016-01-26 13:19:472020-01-24 01:44:59Quality website developers - time to up your game
