Digital Transformation / Digital Partnership

If you’ve spent any amount of time on our website you’ll have noticed the phrase ‘Digital Transformation’ littered about the place. It may seem like meaningless marketing drivel – words that take up plenty of space but don’t say anything. If you think that please do let me know, it means we’re not communicating properly!

It refers to our premium service, the Digital Partnership. In a nutshell we direct the digital growth of ambitious SMEs who have a destination in mind but no map to follow. In this way we facilitate and manage our client’s Digital Transformation.

Insert your own guff about butterflies if you wish.

Who does the Digital Partnership help?

We tend not to niche by industry – our clients range from specialist wig makers & florists, through to aquatics specialists & charities. The defining characteristic of a perfect candidate for the Digital Partnership is an SME who has a vision for their online business. They know they want to grow, know they could grow, but don’t know how to do it and cannot afford to hire the team of 2 or 3 new members of staff to realise it for them.

Money & time. The two biggest enemies to the SME. From the smallest side hustle to an established business with a demanding, yet disconnected, board – the biggest hurdle is ROI. The problems remain the same. How can we guarantee results from investment in such a big step for the business?

Luckily for us this question often answers itself. We cannot ever guarantee results but we can show you the results we’ve got for every other client we work with. In the same way the weather report doesn’t guarantee sunshine. Experts look at the data they have, combine it with the experience they have and tell us the most likely outcome.

The second factor is the client themselves. We will only offer our partnership to businesses who have made the decision to get behind it. I use the word ‘decision’ deliberately. We’re not interested in businesses who want someone to ‘go away & fix it’. The problem with that is they learn nothing. We could go away and create a new website & an entire digital marketing strategy for the year but once we’d delivered it the client would be in the same spot as before. Only this time they have a website they don’t yet know how to use and a digital marketing plan they don’t fully understand.

We get really excited about our client’s businesses. We learn stuff we don’t really need to so we can better understand their industry. I can tell you about the history of the fountains at the palace of Versailles (a fascinating subject) just because a client mentioned them in passing when discussing a blog post about water features. I spent the time and effort to immerse myself in that industry because we believe it makes a tangible difference to our service. It certainly made a difference to the client!

What do you do in a Digital Partnership?

This depends on what you want. What matters the most to you? Once we’ve established the goal we’ll put together the digital route to take. The Digital Partnership can pull together all of our core services; Website design & build, SEO, CRO, & maintenance.

The elements that make the difference to the clients, however, is our digital marketing plans & sales strategy. These are not the typical A3 poster with an inspirational quote and some jargon slapped across it. These documents are researched, built, and updated throughout the partnership and take around a month to create initially. They cover absolutely everything from the behavioural patterns of your ideal customers & competitor analysis, to quarterly hashtag research & social media strategy to ensure everything you say is being heard by the right audience, regardless of those pesky algorithm changes.

It may sound a bit of a cop-out to say that an exhaustive list would not only make for a boring read, but they wouldn’t all be applicable to every business to there’s no point going through all of our possible actions.

What do your clients do in a Digital Partnership?

We don’t just expect our clients to throw themselves into this process. It needs to happen in order to get the results we forecast. You need to be engaged and excited for the process as much as we are. Going back to Richard’s testimonial earlier – he was unsure about a few elements of our project with him at first;

We put this element of the plan forward. It got kicked into the long grass. I went and found it, wiped it off, and presented it again. We knew it was uncomfortable for our client to ‘bother’ his customers like this. We even wanted to ask them how much they earned! The cheek! Eventually the green light was given. In ten days we had all the data we needed.

Not a single client complained. No-one minded. In fact, lots of the answers highlighted extra services that would be of value! Customers took the opportunity to provide wonderful feedback on service & staff, took the time to compliment the business as a whole, and communicated their excitement for this next stage in its evolution. It was genuinely lovely to read the responses we got and it gave us yet another insight into this business we wouldn’t have had otherwise.

If I were to start a pond project or become an aquarist I would go to Richard for his advice. He knows this. So when it came to our area of expertise he knows everything we do and recommend is to benefit him and his business.

Every client invited into our Digital Partnership programme is like Richard. Excited, decisive, ambitious, & integrous.

How do I know if I’m ready for Digital Transformation?

It’s perfectly natural to be unsure what your ideal situation ‘looks like’ but knowing you want to change. If you sell products online the target of ‘I want to sell more products’ is a bit vague but it’s a good start. If you know you want to ‘level up’ (yuck, sorry) but you’re not sure how to start then get in touch.

Any business that has a destination in mind but is unsure how to get there, any business determined to grow, any business that wants more from their current online business. Don’t worry about the details for now – we can work on it together.

How much does the Digital Partnership cost?

£1,500 a month.

£18,000 a year.

Let that amount sink in for a moment and slosh around. It’s not a massive amount when you consider how much it would cost to hire full time staff with the same experience, let alone the equipment, software, and licenses you’d need to buy to actually action any of the works.

In fact, when you think about it that’s a bit of a bargain.

Maybe we should put our prices up.

We don’t need to justify our prices beyond showing the results they get. Every client that’s worked with us in our Digital Partnership has shown consistent digital growth, has consistently received an ROI that far outweighed the cost, and has achieved what they set out to. What more justification is there?

However some clients still need more of a safety net. So here’s one for you. We offer our first month as a standalone ‘product’. We’ll create your digital marketing plan and sales strategy. We’ll conduct all the research, put in all the long hours analysing all that we can and at the end of it will present you with the resulting document. This document is yours to take away with you and will inform every digital decision you make in the next 12 months, will target every social media post, will align your online and physical business seamlessly, and will show you how to target each segment of your audience accordingly.

No bad for £1,500, eh? Imagine what we could do with a whole year.

What are the next steps if I’m interested?

Top right of this page – you’ll see ‘Let’s chat’. Click that and it’ll take you through to a diary booking system for you to book a call/chat with me. That’s it. Pick your date and time and let’s talk it over.

I generally approach clients I believe would benefit most from this service but I am just one man – there will be thousands of businesses out there that we could help dramatically who are keen to get going. If that’s you then get in touch. We look forward to working with you!