 How would you speak to someone if you bumped into them every day? If someone tried to sell you something every time you spoke to them, would you ignore them? This is at the core of every successful social media strategy. Social media is an ongoing conversation that should be genuine, engaging and informative while also having elements of social interest rather than simply selfish motives. How will you help your customers have a better day, week, month or year? Do you genuinely care about them?
When we begin designing the ultimate social media strategy we start by thinking of your social media as a person. How do we make them charming? What are the personality traits we want your brand to have? How do we win friends and influence people? While every post might appear disjointed to the untrained eye, social media experts use this to their advantage, sewing intricate narratives that your customers can buy into and become part of. For something to go viral and be truly favoured and supported, brands need more than simply a clever hook. Would you share a story that you heard with zero assurance of its credibility from a source you didn’t know or trust? Social media can be likened to the old strategy of advertising weekly in the local newspaper; while not always effective in immediate conversion of customers, the regular and reliable placement of the advertising can communicate reliability and strength for the brand. Social media offers a similar opportunity for you to build long-term relationships with potential clients and with every Quality communication, quality image and resonating viewpoint, your brand can build highly valuable in-roads into your target market’s inner circle. Having a great social media team is as much about listening to your target market as it is about speaking to it. Don’t build 100 posts and hope to be heard; read 1000, post once, and with every post make a Noize.  We hear it every day; “we are rebuilding our website”. But unfortunately the website usually isn’t the problem. Clients go from one web design company to another yielding the same or similar results because ‘how great something looks’ or ‘how usable it is’, is only a tiny part of a very important ‘conversion puzzle’, as we call it. Where Noize differs from most is that we’re not simply web and graphic designers; we’re business and marketing experts first and designers second. This means that our visual design is led by proven marketing techniques that convert visitors into customers. When your esthetic is a consequence of your motives, your customers feel a certain confidence when dealing with your brand. The customer can follow simple visual cues to achieve what they want (which in most cases is the same outcome that you want). We call this the “W.A.N.T THEORY” because clients are WILLING and ABLE to NATURALLY TRANSACT. Think about it; you visit a restaurant website because you WANT to find the right restaurant. You WANT to book a table and you WANT to stop looking because finding something fast is convenient. With this in mind, all you have to give the client is exactly what they WANT and allow them to transact in the fastest and least invasive way. When traditional web developers see 8 out of 10 visitors leaving a site without interacting, they say “that’s normal”; when we see it, we say “how can we appeal to more of your visitors”. Your web presence should be forever evolving to improve your catchment and speak to more visitors in ways that resonate with them. At Noize, we wear your customers’ hat; thinking like them to ensure we deliver on the visual cues they are looking for. We break down your offering into bite size chunks and we make sure that when scrolling your page, the information jumps out at the user and is communicated without the need to read long-sentences. Online you have one, maybe two, clicks to turn a visitor into a buyer (or at least a lead) so it is critically important that your message is made clearly while giving all kinds of users an instant incentive and method of interacting with you. But how do you cram so much vital information into one home page while appealing to a spread of potential customers? Short answer is “funnels and automation pathways”. Only a small percentage of visitors should be entering your site from the home page domain name. Only those that search for your company name or type your URL into the browser should find that. Most of your traffic will come from organic searches and marketing. This means that your marketing and search advertising can lead people directly to highly targeted content specific to what they are searching for. Someone searching for “event venue” doesn’t want to see the breakfast menu of a restaurant website. This is why it’s critical that your puzzle is both incredibly complex (from a structural point of view) while being incredibly simple from your customers’ perspective. While it is also important to offer your potential customers information that they are after, it can also be more appealing to give the customer a way of avoiding or delaying such research by downloading the info. This can capture the customers’ contact details allowing you to reach out and continue the customer journey offline. We can also use this kind of online action to trigger a series of technology automations which could include sms or email. With the use of cookies you could even deliver advertising content to the user well after they leave your site, further embedding your brand in their psyche one banner ad at a time. When we begin working with clients we often start with one specific area of their business to show how effective “deep content” can be. By doing this, our clients see immediate success in targeted areas of their business which gives them tremendous confidence to continue investing into different parts of their business. Perhaps one of the most valuable parts of deep content is that it is almost impossible for your competitors to replicate simply because they cannot possibly know all of the different content you have out there. Advertising and marketing that is specific to each of your products and services should only be seen by those most likely to interact which makes copycatting your strategy impossible. So how do you keep track of endless pages of content and keep each of these up to date at all times? The answer is what we call “rapid development”. By this we mean ensuring that you have a way to edit content quickly and on the fly. There are plenty of web companies Spruiking CRM’s that are ‘easy to use’ but in actual fact they are difficult for clients and rarely used. We make it our number one priority to build infrastructure that makes editing instant and rapid so that clients and our own marketing and creative teams can make immediate changes without a coder. If the secretary can’t change critical content in an instant then the website is worthless in our opinion. A quick way to tell if your current web developers are using a rapid development approach is by the time it took to build your website in the first place. At Noize we can deliver a fully featured and custom website in 7 - 14 days, which means clients have confidence in our ability ongoing, to work under pressure. Unlike most agencies, we dont hound you for content and blame you for delays; if you don’t supply us with content then we’ll simply create it. We know that your job is running your business; ours is to communicate that in the most effective way possible, with or without your input. Our team are experts in extracting key data to allow us to build compelling content that converts visitors into buyers. Because Noize works long-term with clients to keep achieving business targets, we like to focus on the clients we have rather than attracting new ones. For this reason, the best way to experience what we do is as a real client. If you’ve heard of what we do then it’s likely from referral, because for us, the best marketing is the marketing we do for our clients. It’s not simply how pretty something looks but how much noize you make in the process. Let’s make Noize in your industry  We always love the first few weeks of bringing a new client on board; seeing their face, as leads role in faster than they have before. The days of getting 1, 2 or even 10 leads a day via email, seem like a distant past. Because of the lead quantity we are usually able to achieve, we send leads directly to the salespeoples’ mobile phones, meaning it very quickly becomes obvious to our clients that they need more sales staff. Experiencing leads hit your phone (sometimes multiple in a single minute) is enough to make you realise you’re about to experience significant growth in your business. The most common question we get is; what do you do to generate your leads? The answer is simple: Everything! Quite literally we use our full spectrum of services to initially go after the low hanging fruit and as your budget and lead appetite increase, so too do our efforts to dive deeper and deeper into harder to reach lead generation strategies. Most agencies tap out where we get started. “More leads please” is our favourite thing to hear from a client; it means we have to continuously innovate to deliver success. We call this “The Lead Tap”. Every successful business needs the ability to control the amount of leads that they receive to ultimately control the growth of the business. Without this your business is at the mercy of luck. There are plenty of agencies that will simply give you a Google Ad Words or Facebook Campaign and then very quickly reach a ceiling on the amount of leads they can generate you. At Noize we take lead generation far beyond popular platforms and passive ad management. We actually work hard for our money. A thoroughly thought out lead generation campaign should include everything from designing the ultimate attention grabbing offer, press and news releases that generate free hype around your brand and drip marketing campaigns that will communicate with your target market while you sleep. Competitions, free downloads, polling, giveaways, discounting, memberships and even time-based calls to action are just a handful of the strategies we use. If your brand is visual then we consider platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram as well as image tagging and sharing to create both back links to improve your natural search engine optimisation and create buzz for your brand online. But it’s not just WHERE we market; it’s WHAT we market. Unlike most other firms, we often design out an entire strategy just for one of the products or services you offer. This level of detail and laser focus is what gives us our edge and keeps our clients happy for years.
After wanting to understand how we do what we do, the next thing clients want to know is ‘how much leads cost’. Unlike most lead generation firms, at Noize we keep our remuneration clear and simple as a percentage of your spend. At the same time we are always aiming to reduce your cost-per-lead to ensure we are earning our keep. We have worked with clients to develop deep content and linking campaigns that have proven our ability in reducing lead costs from $200 to just $2 dollars in highly competitive markets. In short, we make it our focus to do the things that your competitors simply won’t. Where your competitors are lazy; we focus all of our energy. We borrow strategies that we’ve proven in similar industries and work out how to do those in your industry. We’ve been generating leads online aggressively and with remarkable results for longer than most people have been using social media. And you’ll be comfortable in knowing that the way we attract our own lead-generation clients is from giving YOU the ultimate outcome; more leads for you to tell your friends about. Warm VS Cold Leads We can provide any temperature lead that you desire. We generally recommend keeping the top of the lead generation funnel wide and cold to catch as many leads as possible then develop lead-warming marketing drips to warm the leads over time, which are then delivered to your sales team at the ultimate time. There are multiple benefits of doing things this way;
The reality is that; The more time your marketing spends warming your leads, the more likely your sales people are to eventually close them. In some respects the cold leads end up being the warmest buyers. This is because they go through an organic educational process over time, free from pressure, making the buying decision on their own accord in their own time. Think “APPLE”, has anyone ever called you to sell you something or do you walk yourself into the shop and sell yourself on the products? Okay, now walk yourself into Noize (oh wait, you just did). Let’s start with getting you more leads then.  1. Set up a proper office space
One of the great fantasies about working for yourself is this image of laying in bed casually checking emails, or filling in a spreadsheet from some tropical beach, and yes these things are possible and they do happen. However, those days (or more realistically, those moments) are far less appealing as you may think, and if you set yourself for that style of work, you are bound to have problems. The ability to work anywhere doesn’t mean anywhere gives you the ability to work. There are countless studies around ergonomics in larger office spaces, and the rule applies at home as well. Having a quality office chair with a desk will inevitably be a better work space for you in the long run than lounging in bed. That doesn’t mean you can’t do those things if and when you want to, but make them the exception, rather than the rule. 2. Get in the cloud Following on from our first point, whilst you should set up an office space, the ability to take your office with you is going to dramatically increase your ability to get things done, if you use it wisely. These days, just about anything can be completed online, whether it’s your bookkeeping and accounts or writing a report, you can access your work from any device anywhere. What’s more, most cloud based systems and programs also allow you to collaborate with other people, saving you the time wastage on sending, editing and sending. COVID-19 lockdowns forced so many businesses to convert to remote offices, and the software developments to support this have been hugely successful. If you’re not familiar yet, it is probably wise to start with a setup that integrates with your email first, for example google docs, sheets and slides if you use gmail, or office 365 if you’re on Microsoft. 3. Use your calendar If you’re working from the cloud and have your office set up, you should be able to handle a much higher workload and do so even when you’re not sitting in your ergonomic office chair at your desk, which means your tasks will be plenty and calendar full. However we often find that many people with enormous task lists have completely empty calendars. Thinking that you can operate simply by checking off your to-dos 1-by-1 is a trap we can fall into when those to-do lists are reasonably short. When your workload increases, the need to look ahead and consider future outcomes is essential, and the ability to prioritize tasks becomes an asset. It is best to start by considering what things are must-dos rather than to-dos, then schedule them into your calendar with a colour (or style) that allows minimal flexibility. Next will be your to-deligate items; anything that you have to do to get a bigger job or the same job working on someone else’s desk. These come next because from the moment you complete them, they continue being productive for you while other teams work on them. The next most important are the ‘to-completes’, which refers to anything you need to do to finalise a job or contract. Everything else is a to-do and should fit in around these top 3 types of tasks. 4. 3 things everyday You may have heard the age old adage “do one thing every day that scares you”, and we believe in it wholeheartedly. We also live by another similar rule: “do 3 things every day that progress you”. It seems somewhat trivial at first, but the rule genuinely works. Simplify your tasks to grouped outcomes. Any outcome is a thing that will progress you. If you achieve 3 of these every day, you’ll have achieved 15 of them by the end of the working week. 15 progressing outcomes every week is more than 60 every month, and we can promise you this, if you’re hitting 60 key outcomes consistently every month, one of them will be reconciling all that money you’re making. This rule doesn’t just apply to your work, though. As a contractor you are likely to blur the line between work life and personal life, and that’s okay. Try to apply this to your personal life as well and notice the huge improvements in your mood, health and relationships. 5. Set boundaries and flex them. Boundaries are tricky. You want to do well by your clients and partners, and deliver a service they are happy with and you can be proud of, and that is a good trait. Sometimes, that intention falls into the hands of people who see no end. This is particularly true for people with regular, ongoing contract arrangements where learned behaviours can infiltrate otherwise systematic arrangements. Familiarity with clients and understanding of yours and their strengths and weaknesses can result in manipulation into crossing the terms you’ve agreed on. This often takes the form of something called ‘mission creep’, a dangerous slippery slope where a contractor agrees to do something that is not part of the agreed terms, as a gesture of goodwill, or a demonstration of service and commitment. Before long, that ‘one thing’ has turned into late nights working to complete jobs with little or sometimes no return. As a contractor, you are especially susceptible to this kind of manipulation, and it is important to get clear on what you are prepared to accept from a working relationship and what you are not. Once you are clear, flex it; politely and respectfully, of course, but be firm and assertive with those who seek to push the limits. For example, if you’ve set a working time with a client, and they set meetings outside those hours, politely ask them to change the time. If you opt for a goodwill gesture and allow that breach, make it known, and reinforce it more firmly on the next request. Having boundaries might seem like setting up walls and limiting your potential in some way. It isn’t, and the reality is that having these boundaries will help you avoid being taken advantage of, falling into mission creep, and spending your precious time on not-so-precious tasks for someone else’s gain.  In this day and age many agencies have team members who work remotely, even more so since the COVID-19 pandemic. This has always had its own set of challenges when managing a team and these challenges are increased with different time zones.
The other factor that many agencies struggle to deal with is handling freelancers that only come on board for a job here and there, finding the right freelancers that you can rely on is the holy grail in production management. Managing your team and your time, so you can delvier the work on time to clients is the daily strugle of any agency. Below are my 5 tips for overcoming these challenges:  At Noize, we believe branding is your corporate DNA. It's who you are, what you stand for and why you're in business. The world demands more from brands than ever before; a great logo is no longer enough to capture the hearts and minds of your target market.
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