Credo Digital Marketing Blog

Grow your business through digital marketing advice and up-to-date strategies.
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What To Read As A Link Builder

Posted by on December 20, 2016 in Marketing Strategies/SEO Tactics

Prescript: need to hire a link builder on a consulting basis to help you grow your company? You can find them here on Credo. If you’re a new link builder, you probably struggle with where to start learning. When I started in SEO full time in 2010, there were an amazing amount of fantastic new blog posts being written about link building, complete with new ideas and strategies to test. Link building was fun. The times have changed.

How Much To Charge For Consulting

Posted by on December 8, 2016 in Consulting Strategies/Pricing

When most people start consulting on their own (and subsequently hire people and start an agency), they charge too little. Don’t be embarrassed – everyone does it. When I did my first freelance consulting projects in 2011/2012, I charged $50 per hour and was billing hourly. I realized years later that I made them ~$2,000,000 dollars from my SEO work, and I made ~$2,500 from that engagement. Great ROI for them, but not for me. With my next few clients,…

Credo Pro is Open!

Posted by on December 6, 2016 in Announcements

Hello digital marketing enthusiasts! It’s me, John, founder of Credo. Today I am excited to announce that Credo Pro is once again open to new pros. Pro closed at the beginning of October so that we could rethink the sign-up flow to ensure that only the right agencies are able to get onto the platform, and that has indeed happened.

CredoCast Season 1 Finale – John Doherty

Posted by on December 6, 2016 in CredoCast

Today is the finale of Season 1 of the CredoCast. I decided to give you a bit of a background on my own entrepreneurial journey, some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way, and more as I walk through the questions that I ask all CredoCast guests:

Announcing Platform Responses

Posted by on December 6, 2016 in Announcements

In the middle of October I emailed you to tell you that I had made some changes to the email system and that a few more were coming as well. Today I want to let you know that the way responses come to you has changed, for the better!

Announcing the 2017 Digital Marketing Industry Pricing Survey

Posted by on December 1, 2016 in Announcements

Update: this study is now live here! One of the bigger challenges that marketing agencies and consultants face is “how much do I charge?” With the popularity of our SEO company rates page, it is painfully obvious that this is a need in the industry. The need is on both sides – agencies need to know if they are over or under charging relative to the market at large, and businesses looking to hire should also have more transparency into…

How To Write A Lead Response Email That Gets Responses

Posted by on November 30, 2016 in Premium/Sales

Hey Credo pro – You’re on Credo because you want to build your business and get more clients. One of the toughest parts of any sales program is getting responses from leads, and Credo is no exception. When you are responding to an Open Lead on Credo, you’re one of multiple (up to 4) responses, so you still need to set yourself apart from others.

TVFMS – What To Do When a Client Has Not Paid You

Posted by on November 17, 2016 in Premium

Ahh the freelance life. Work wherever and whenever you want to, make more money and work fewer hours, retire young. At least that’s the dream, right? Unfortunately, it’s not always reality. One of the toughest realities to run into (and if you have not yet, you will) is when a client does not pay you for the work you have done for them. So what can you do? That’s what this week’s video is all about! The tips: Stop working…

TVFMS – What Happens When A Client Wants More Work For The Same Price?

Posted by on November 10, 2016 in Premium

Sometimes when doing work for clients, they ask you to do work that is outside of the scope of your project. What do you do? In this week’s video, I go deeper into some of the strategies I have devised to keep scope creep like this from happening. These include: Making sure that you have a contract signed that outlines the scope of work (and the contract template has been approved by a lawyer). No contract, no work. Explain to…

Credo Crosses $1 Million in Work Sent to Pros

Posted by on November 7, 2016 in Announcements

Today I have an exciting announcement to share. As of the end of October, Credo has officially passed the $1 million mark in work sent to pros on the platform! Every month, Credo continues to grow faster and faster. It is amazing to me that in 13 months’ time, I have hit this milestone as a solo bootstrapped entrepreneur. Credo is an amazing business to run. I get to work with fantastic business owners (agencies and consultants) who are doing…

CredoCast Episode 7 – Blake Denman of Rickety Roo

Posted by on November 1, 2016 in CredoCast

Today’s guest is someone I have known for about a year and had the pleasure of sharing a meal with a few times on visits to Bend, Oregon. He’s a smart entrepreneur who has a fascinating personal as well as business story. Blake Denman is the founder of Rickety Roo, a digital marketing agency for local businesses. Blake and his team are based in Bend, but they of course work with brick and mortar clients around the nation to drive them…

CredoCast Episode 6: Akvile Harlow (@akviledefazio)

Posted by on October 26, 2016 in CredoCast

Today’s CredoCast guest is someone that I have known for a long time through the digital marketing industry, but learned a ton about during the podcast – Akvile Defazio. Akvile relaunched her consulting practice under the name AKvertise in 2017, which really shows off her keen eye for detail and doing things right. During this conversation, we went through the usual questions I ask guests, but Akvile really went above and beyond to give some amazing tips for starting out…

CredoCast Episode 5 – Mike Ramsey of Nifty talks door to door sales and entrepreneurship

Posted by on October 18, 2016 in CredoCast

Sometimes in business you get a chance to talk with one of the people you have come to respect most. That’s this week on the CredoCast, as I had the privilege to chat with Mike Ramsey who is the founder of Nifty Marketing, based in Burley Idaho. Mike is a tireless proponent of entrepreneurship and I’ve seen first hand all that he does to bring agency entrepreneurs together to share knowledge. He also gave a great talk at MozCon 2016…

CredoCast Episode 4 – Tom Critchlow on Solo Consulting

Posted by on October 12, 2016 in CredoCast

Today’s guest is one of my best friends and a mentor of mine. Tom Critchlow is a New York City based digital marketer with a wealth of experience under his belt – he helped build Distilled from the ground up and opened the New York City office (where I worked for him), did two years at Google as a Product Marketing Manager, and for the last two years has been a solo consultant based in Brooklyn working with some large brands…

CredoCast Ep 3 – Mike Arnesen of UpBuild

Posted by on October 4, 2016 in CredoCast

Mike Arnesen is the founder of UpBuild, based in Portland Oregon. Mike used to have a sweet ponytail, much like myself and a few other digital marketing industry veterans. I learned during this podcast that he actually cut it off about 10 months ago in order to streamline his life as an entrepreneur. We’ll get into that more in the show. UpBuild is a technical marketing agency, and if you’ve ever heard Mike drop marketing science on Google Tag Manager, JavaScript, or other…

On-page SEO Guide for marketers and non-marketers

Posted by on October 3, 2016 in SEO Tactics

Are you a consultant or work inside an agency where you frequently need to give onpage SEO recommendations, yet you have not yet built out a full list that you always make sure to send to your clients when they ask? Or maybe you believe (as I do) in bespoke work and that no template works perfectly for every client. Over the years I have been asked by clients time and time again to provide onpage SEO recommendations, though I…

CredoCast Ep 2 – Brandon Doyle of Wallaroo Media

Posted by on September 27, 2016 in CredoCast

Brandon Doyle is a cofounder of Wallaroo Media, based in Provo, Utah. Brandon was actually the first person I ever sold a lead to through what was at the time HireGun, and now Credo. Brandon and his cofounder Kade have become good friends and trusted peers of mine in the industry. They brought me out to speak at SLCSEM in February in Utah, we spent 5 days together in Mexico at CredoCamp in April, and we’ve hung out at numerous conferences…

How to Brainstorm Blog Post Ideas Your Target Audience Will Love

Posted by on September 26, 2016 in Marketing Strategies

If you’re struggling to come up with new blog post ideas, you might be thinking: Why does this blank Word document look so daunting? I mean, you know your audience better than anyone. And you know how to market to them. So, why does making a list of topics seem impossible? Chances are, you just need a good brainstorming session to get yourself back in the groove. Let’s talk about 4 methods you can use for better blog post topic brainstorming. By…

CredoCast Episode 1 – Jeremy Smith of SimpleTiger

Posted by on September 20, 2016 in CredoCast

Jeremy Smith is the founder of SimpleTiger, one of my favorite agencies here at Credo. Jeremy and his brother Sean were one of the first agencies on Credo, and they have closed an incredible amount of business off the platform. I’m super happy to kick off the new CredoCast with Jeremy, where we delve into SimpleTiger and talk through these specific questions: How they knew it was time to do their own thing How they got their first client(s) When they knew it was going to…

What Tools Should You Own vs Your Agency?

Posted by on August 23, 2016 in Business/Consulting Strategies

Last week I wrote about SEO tools and I’m doing it again today because it’s an important topic that isn’t talked about much these days in the digital marketing world. Today I want to cover the question I have often thought about and heard around what tools a business should have access to vs what tools they rely on their agency for. I’ve worked inhouse and at agencies with clients, using many of the tools on the market today. I’ve gone through many…

TVFMS – What if you had to start over?

Posted by on August 18, 2016 in Premium

Happy Thursday! This video is a bit later in the day than usual (I bet many of you are seeing it on Friday) for a number of reasons, not least because I was busy trying to be wise, not smart. Watch the video and that will make sense. During a conversation with a Credo pro yesterday, I heard a story about leaving their job to go full time freelance and subsequently losing 3 of their 4 clients in the same…

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