With the rise of large companies like Amazon dominating the industry, small business owners and marketers are feeling the pressure. It can be difficult to compete with these eCommerce giants when you run a local brick-and-mortar business like HVAC companies or law firms that rely on foot traffic to make…
When I started Credo back in 2013, I had a WordPress site with Gravity Forms installed. One of my coaches likes to joke about this, mostly in the context of that we’ve built a real business off of that start. As a business generating leads, whether for yourself or others,…
As an agency, your business grows when one of a few things happens: You get more leads and close more of them You retain clients for a longer period of time You trim back expenses Let’s be honest first, getting more leads and closing more of them is really…
When I first got laid off from Trulia in 2015, I had a three month runway of finances before I needed to either be making enough to stay self-employed (and paying my half of our San Francisco expenses) or starting a new job. I was interviewing and had some great…
Because I spend a lot of my days talking with marketing agencies who are trying to sell their services to prospective clients, I spend a lot of my days thinking about sales and how agencies can be more successful. A question I hear time and time and time again…
Are you trying to sell something to prospective clients, but keep getting ghosted in the process? If so, keep reading. Over the last 5.5 years on Credo, we’ve seen thousands of proposals go to prospects for marketing services. For a period of time these went through our systems, though now…
I was once working with a marketing consultant who was offering high-end SEO audits. This person is extremely accomplished, but they were struggling to close high-ticket audits. They’d close them from time to time, but they felt like they had hit a ceiling for how much they could charge. At…
I was recently emailing with a solo consultant who contacted Credo about becoming a customer on the supply side of our business. Basically, they want to get more digital marketing leads in their door. I hear this a lot, so I went to their website to poke around. Seeing a…
Transcript Hey there, what’s going on everybody? John Doherty, Founder and CEO right here at Credo. So today I tweeted out something where basically I said, if you are sending proposals to clients without including a statement of work or you’re not sending a statement of work before you even…
If there is one thing I’ve learned over the years in business, it’s that people are always more optimistic than they think they are. Most (many?) businesses start because the founder saw something they needed and decided to build it after they couldn’t find it. We’re always looking for solutions…
Sometimes you need to email someone but you don’t have their email address. Sure, you could go about tweeting at them, or DMing them, or messaging them on LinkedIn for it, but doesn’t that seem a bit counter-intuitive? If you have them there, then why not go ahead and ask…
Live chat is all the rage these days on websites. I used it on Credo for a number of months and decided to remove it completely from the site. But I think live chat is a valid solution to a valid problem for the right companies. Let me tell you…
Do you want to close more of the leads coming to you into new clients and therefore more revenue? If so, you have to follow these three rules of sales: Follow up with everyone within an hour of receiving their message. Follow up with them every couple of days for…
Sometimes, you change. I’ve spoken with a few agency owners and consultants who have realized that they either have or need to go upstream in their business to a) be more profitable and b) be happier. I’ve seen this happen many times. So how do you move upstream and change…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 freelancer or agency, you need to consider the pros and cons of the different models so that you can effectively…
Marketers are trained to drive awareness and traffic, and hopefully leads, to their websites. This is accomplished in multiple ways: Content production/blogging Email marketing Social media Content placement Paid search Referrals from services (like Credo) While driving traffic and generating leads is all well and good (and of course necessary),…