It’s been so long since I’ve written a blog post about Rocco Douglas, in fact I haven’t done one since we redesigned our website 6 months ago. But we’ve had so much happen, I’d really like to share some of the highs and lows (learning experiences) as we approach our second birthday as a business. Here goes…
First some really good news:
We are on track to have the biggest month Rocco Douglas has ever had. Yep, April 2018 (the month I turned the mature age of 40), will be the best month for revenue ever.
This past month we started 5 new clients – they’re all very different and add new industries to our portfolio. I can’t wait to share the exciting campaigns we’ve been working on for them. I’ll give you a clue – a couple of them involve NZ celebrities.
And a few changes:
Over the past 2 years I’ve been really good at saying “yes we can help with that”, so our product and service offering kept expanding, and while we had happy clients it wasn’t where I wanted to go as a business. I didn’t want our tagline to become “we do everything digital”, and by doing everything we dilute the value we can really add to businesses.
So this year has been all about consolidation – we’ve reduced our service offering, maximised resources, and in doing that we’ve actually grown the business. We’ve made it easier for prospect clients to see what we do and where we can really add value. This being…
Digital Marketing, Facebook, Google & Video
That’s it, it’s on the car. Sure there’s a number of products and services under those headings but it’s pretty clear, what we do.
So while we still might help you with your website, help you build and send the occasional marketing email, design a logo, brochure or a print ad – this isn’t work I’ll be looking for, in fact I’d much rather point you towards a preferred partner who specialises in these services.
And a huge learning experience:
I’ve been very lucky in that this business has grown month on month, almost organically since we started. So I got comfortable, and we stopped following our own advice and stopped marketing ourselves. And we took an unforeseen hit right before Christmas. Revenue halved on the previous month and it was too late to turn it around before the summer holidays.
Fun times? So we hustled over summer and worked through, running campaigns while all our competitors were relaxing at the beach. And looking at the numbers now I can see it has paid off.
A few challenges:
The second year in business can be really hard, cashflow is a killer and challenges growth.
The best sales person is you. Build your team to support you and create opportunities for you to sell. So far I’ve employed 2 sales people – they no longer work here.
Stay focused on the dream and vision for your business. Bigger businesses may offer you quick win opportunities, but ultimately these can just be distractions.
And a few more wins:
As a certified Google Partner we can now support clients who spend up to $90K per month on ad spend – how crazy is that?
We’ve really grown the video production side of the business – we shoot videos for our clients most days of the week now.
AND we have literally made our clients businesses hundreds of thousands in revenue from our digital marketing campaigns – this is something I’m really proud of and exactly why we do what we do.
I’m excited to see what the next 6 months bring for Rocco Douglas. Thanks again to all our clients both past and present and our passionate supporters, you’re all awesome.
Shane
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