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…
Thanks to the interest in this post, Credo has created the Credo Porter service to give you personalized consulting on what channels are best for your business and what type of marketer you should hire. Check it out! In my day to day of speaking with businesses and consultants, I’m confronted with the fact that a lot of businesses have no idea whether they actually need a marketing consultant or a marketing agency to fulfill their needs. Here’s the deal – I…
One of the most interesting things about running my business Credo has been watching the pros on the platform sell their services to businesses interested in hiring a digital marketing professional. I have experience working in sales so as I have watched agencies and consultants try to sell their services, I’ve been able to guide many of them to much better close rates and therefore a lot more revenue for their business. One agency told me recently: The quantity and quality…
Note from John: this is a guest post from Garrett Mehrguth of Directive Consulting. Garrett started Directive in Southern California and has a wealth of knowledge around how to make a consulting project successful. Take it away, Garrett! There’s a general distrust of marketing agencies amongst in-house marketers and business owners alike. As a marketer, you can sense this distrust from the moment you get on the phone with a prospective client. As an in-house marketer or business owner, you are…
There I was, sitting at a table outside under an umbrella in Mexico, looking over the infinity pool to the Pacific Ocean. I was drinking a cold Pacifico beer and eating some delicious tacos. At that moment though, my mind was far away from Mexico. I missed my wife and dog. Part of the lure of being a freelancer is the ability to work from wherever there is an available Internet connection. I’ll be honest that I love this about…
Looking for a new digital agency that can accelerate your marketing results? Schedule a free marketing evaluation with our team to meet the right agencies fast. It’s fast, free, and we get it right. HubSpot and Marketo are two of the more well-known marketing automation tools available. Both are publicly traded companies, both have their pros and cons. So which is better for your business, HubSpot or Marketo? We divided the information based on pricing, required commitment, features, the onboarding process, and common shortcoming according…
One of the hardest parts for both sides about a consulting arrangement between a business and an agency is communication. Communication is hard because it takes time, what’s said can be misunderstood, and many people who work digitally would rather not talk on the phone. When I worked at Distilled, we used to say this all the time: Communication solves all problems So as a business working with an agency (or looking to work with one), how do you communicate…
A note from John: this post comes to you from Everett Sizemore at Inflow, who also wrote the monster Prioritizing Your Marketing Channels post. I asked Everett to write this post because I have seen a number of Inflow’s sales cycles and am very impressed with how consultative they are in their process. I believe that this is paramount to the success of consulting businesses who charge a premium for their services. Because they charge a premium, they can afford…
Looking for a new digital agency to help grow your business? Schedule a free marketing evaluation with our team to meet the right agencies fast. It’s fast, free, and we get it right. Small businesses and freelancers rejoice! Invoicing sucks (let’s be honest) and is often a bigger time sink than we’d all like (much like proposals and pitching new work), but it’s also paramount to our businesses because without invoicing you don’t get paid. And that REALLY sucks. So I’ve…
There are a whole host of WordPress plugins. At a quick glance at the WordPress Plugin directory shows that there are close to 43,000 plugins available. That number does not appear to include those stand-alone plugins that work with WordPress. In the unofficial WordPress Plugin Directory, there are 22 different categories of plugins, with over 2,700 subcategories. That is a lot of plugins! Based on our experience, here are the 8 best WordPress lead generation plugins, both paid and free….
Note from John: this guest post comes to you from Mike Arnesen of UpBuild, a Credo partner agency in Portland, Oregon. Mike contacted me about writing this post because he uses a great workflow that helps him qualify leads and send the ones that are not a good fit for his agency to Credo, so that they can find the right agency or consultant for their needs. Mike found that by implementing this into his workflow, his response time to…
Looking for a new digital agency to help grow your business? Schedule a free marketing evaluation with our team to meet the right agencies fast. It’s fast, free, and we get it right. The digital marketing industry is still young, having started in very nascent forms around 1996 with the first search engines, where all that mattered was onpage text. The notion of links as a way to connect the Internet came into being in 1999-2001 with Google coming onto the…
Marketplaces are an interesting business to build because you are in actuality building two companies. One side is B2C, where you acquire customers as the demand side (either people or businesses). On the other side you have the B2B portion where you are building out the supply side to serve the demand side. It’s a double headed problem, so where do you start? I’m only a little bit into building out Credo, the marketplace that I founded, so I have…
Lots has been written over the years about hiring a consultant or agency for your business. When I sit back and think about what you as a business owner have on your plate for the day to day of your business, worrying about whether or not a service provider can do the job you need them to do should not be something you have to do. More businesses have come to me as of late who want to work with…
I’ve been in the digital marketing world for about 6 years now and have worked at 2 agencies, two brands inhouse, and now I’m running this company whose blog you are on and doing a bit of side consulting myself. As such, I see and have seen a lot of emails and leads from people seeking SEO services. The SEO and digital marketing industries are still in their nascent early stages. Until just a few years ago, it was relatively…
If you do email marketing through MailChimp and your site uses WordPress, congratulations. You’ve already gone through the challenges of finding a domain name, getting hosting (we use WPengine), starting to publish content, and beginning to generate an audience. You’ve also signed up with MailChimp and started to think about how you are going to use email marketing to help grow your business. A lot of the hard work is done, and now you need to connect up the two…
I’m recently out on my own as an entrepreneur. I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea, but I am trying to get two businesses of the ground at the same time — consulting with businesses on growth and inbound marketing on the one side, and then building Credo on the other side. While it’s a virtuous cycle, it is also a lot of work as a (semi)technical solo founder and former agency consultant. To manage the increasingly long…
Looking for a new digital agency to help grow your business? Schedule a free marketing evaluation with our team to meet the right agencies fast. It’s fast, free, and we get it right. Many marketers and businesses have asked the question “Which should I use, Moz or HubSpot?” While the answer is often “Why not both?” because they are vastly different tools (and the founders are very good friends), we thought it would be useful to dig into the differences to…
Choosing between WordPress and Squarespace can be a difficult decision. By understanding your needs and how each platform measures up to them, you’ll be able to make the informed choice that best serves you. We examined the two platforms across a few topics: Availability of Themes SEO Friendliness Pricing eCommerce Integrations Other Integrations (Mailchimp, etc) So who wins? Let’s look.
I (John) was a consultant for years, first with a software company then later with an online marketing agency while at the same time doing freelance consulting on the side. Now I have been inhouse for over a year and a half, and have seen what it takes to get things done for growth Across these years I have come across a lot of businesses looking for help from a consultant to grow. Many of these have been great companies with a…
Looking for a new digital agency who can accelerate your results? Schedule a free marketing evaluation with our team to meet the right agencies fast. In this economy, you can’t afford not to. It’s fast, free, and we get it right. Matching brands with agencies is literally what we do. I’ve been asked many times about how to structure marketing consulting engagements. While there’s no right answer necessarily, each consulting type has its own advantages and disadvantages. If you’re a…
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