Hey there! If you’ve booked a call with Credo in the past two years, we’ve likely spoken about your marketing budget. If not, let me introduce myself… I’m Emily Faxon, head of Client Success at Credo. I am in charge of listening to your marketing needs and then introducing you to the Pros I believe will help you accomplish your goals. I weave my knowledge of the Credo Network and my background in recruiting to make the right introductions. And…
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 sales. Any business owner or entrepreneur knows all too well the importance of generating leads. Without sufficient leads, you run the risk of making insufficient sales, which is bad news…
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, when you’re first starting out just having form software and a live site is a big win. But once you’re achieving any sort of scale, manually entering new leads into…
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 hard. We all wish there were a magic button labeled ‘New Leads,’ but if you’ve been trying to increase leads to your site, you know it’s just a lot of…
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 conversations with some super cool companies, I knew in my heart of hearts that I wanted to work for myself. Spoiler alert: I’m writing this in April 2021 and I’m…
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 is “what’s the best CRM for marketing agencies?” I don’t believe there is a “best” CRM for marketing agencies, but there are CRMs that are more commonly used by marketing…
Are you trying to convert sales prospects but your conversion rates continue to plunge? Numbers vary between sources, but the latest studies suggest that only around 10% to 15% of leads turn into conversions. That means you’re doing better than average if you convert 2 of 10 leads. To nurture leads, you need to have alligator-thick skin. You need to accept some level of rejection. Ghosting will happen. You just need to learn how to live, and learn from, this character-building experience….
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 the time I was offering 1:1 consulting with agencies and consultants, and they signed on for a few sessions. Part of this coaching was me asking them to send me…
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 few concerning things which I messaged them about (and which turned out to be on purpose but a really bad user/conversion experience), we got into a discussion. As happens with…
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 send them a proposal, you are not going to sign nearly as many clients. And if you do sign clients they’re going to be clients that are paying you less…
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 to problems that we have, and sometimes they exist and sometimes they don’t. Check out the “request for product” search on Twitter: With this in mind, I’ve learned that there…
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 your question there? If your question needs to go via email, then there are a few great ways to find find someone’s email address for free and quickly. These are…
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 why.
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 the first week, then send a final email that you are going to close their record. Set their expectations for next steps and keep to what you commit to. If…
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 your prices, and what does that mean for your current clients who are paying you less than your new rates? This video covers that second part – communicating pricing changes…
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.
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…
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…
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 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…
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), what happens after the lead comes in is just as important. Let’s do some math. Say you want to generate $20,000 per month in revenue. You’re on your own and…
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