AL EP 53: Anns Ali Syed – Confidence in Organic Traffic

Show Notes

Digital Growth Factor, an Expert Vetted and Top Rated Plus agency on Upwork, is a husband and wife run full-service digital marketing firm based in New York. Known for driving business growth through strategic innovation and industry expertise, it provides end-to-end digital solutions to prestigious clients like Arizona State University, Appcast, and Quantic.

Connect with Anns Ali Syed & Digital Growth Factor here –
Web: https://www.digitalgrowthfactor.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/digitalgrowthfactor/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/digitalgrowthfactor/

Episode Transcript

00;00;00;00 – 00;00;32;23

Everybody is adjusting to go more agency. Transformation coach and founder of Niche in Control Creator of leverage for growth. And I’m Lucas James founder of Twist which scaled from 0 to $200000 a month with my own agency. We are the host of Leverage for Growth Podcast Agency Leverage Episodes. We know that in order to scale your agency successfully, there are multiple shifts that need to happen within the founders mindsets, skill sets and leadership styles.

00;00;32;25 – 00;01;02;28

We are on a mission to interview marketing and PR agency owners on their journey to six, seven and eight figures and leverage the lessons from their journey to save you time, energy and money in order for you to get your agency to the next level. If you find value in these episodes, watch the case, study video to learn more about leverage for growth and how we successfully scale agencies quickly at Niche in control outcomes Case study at niche in control com slash kingdom.

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You are now listening to Leverage for Growth. Hey everybody, This is Jesse Gilmore, founder of Niche and Control and creator of Leverage for Growth. Welcome to the Agency Leverage edition. Today I am here with an ally, the co-founder of Digital Growth Factor, an expert vetted, top rated plus agency on Upwork is a husband and wife running full service digital marketing firm based in New York and known for driving business growth through strategic innovation and industry expertise provides an end to end digital solution for prestigious clients such as ASU, APS, Cast and Quantic.

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Thanks for coming to our show today. Thank you very much. Jesse. Thank you for having me. Thank you very much. Absolutely. And tell us a little bit about the history and background of digital growth factor. So we started off back in 2015, actually, and we started with the notion of just being a social media marketing agency. Right? And generally when we were doing social media marketing for a lot of different clients and brands, we always would run into certain issues that were beyond our control, right?

00;02;13;14 – 00;02;45;03

So essentially what we thought would be, you know, hampering our growth right, was the fact that whenever we talked about results because we were more related to performance based advertising, even on social media marketing. So you’re able to ride on the performance based marketing early on. And essentially what was key and very pivotal for performance based marketing was the fact that generally we do not want to leave any loose ends when we are advertising.

00;02;45;06 – 00;03;08;12

So initially when we were advertising for different brands, the brands that are all over the place because they had a different agency, conservative media marketing, they had a different agency for search engine optimization, they had a different agency. They were looking over the web, they had a different agency that was looking over the mobile app, right? So essentially, whenever we talked about advertising, now advertising, as you know, now is very cohesive.

00;03;08;15 – 00;03;29;21

It’s more of like being able to create like a unified solution, which is running the same strategy across different channels, right? So it’s more like an Omni approach. This is so sensitive. When we started off, we would face these issues with a lot of lines when we would say that your website isn’t performing quite well, it’s not fast, it’s not responsive.

00;03;29;21 – 00;03;49;01

And you know, that’s affecting the advertising for us because we are not able to, you know, have a very high conversion rate optimize website. So then they would go to the website department and the website department would blame a lot of the things on the department. And there was like a huge blame game going on between different digital marketing channels.

00;03;49;04 – 00;04;15;18

So we came up with an idea of why not have a one window solution where the blame game is actually not between different agencies, where the blame game is between different departments of the same agency, and the blame game is not to basically put one agency down and the other agency up. Right. The blame game is actually to make sure that there is constructive and positive criticism that can help improve the brand’s performance at each and every stage.

00;04;15;21 – 00;04;44;27

So what we did was from 2015, we were just like a social media marketing agency. And then we thought that we should slowly and surely integrate more digital marketing channels into our offering and the aim to becoming like a full service digital agency. So for becoming a full service, digital agency required us to operate different marketing channels like searching and optimization, Google ads being ads, then website development, mobile app development.

00;04;44;29 – 00;05;09;14

So we started employing different people to lead these departments and then build team under them so that when we go on to a client and when we tell them that we are a one stop solution for all your needs, then we actually mean it and we can actually deliver on, right? So it took us three years initially from 2015 to 2018 to be able to have our full service agencies suite ready as well as delivering.

00;05;09;14 – 00;05;28;20

And now we are a team of 40 people in-house that are based on social media managers. Search engine optimization expert You’ve got graphic designers, we’ve got mobile app developers, we’ve got web app developers. You know, we’ve got the full suite of service that’s been our thing. And with that are able to go to each and every brand that is there.

00;05;28;20 – 00;05;53;04

And we can tell them that instead of having your own digital marketing department, you could completely outsource the digital marketing department to us and we could work alongside your brand manager and alongside your convention marketing department and make sure that we can fulfill all the digital marketing needs that you have without you having to employ digital marketing department or digital marketing resources that you ordered.

00;05;53;06 – 00;06;21;26

So we’ve been able to package this solution and provide it to whoever wanted to dive into the digital marketing world without having to invest a lot into creating the team first and then a lot of the people that we met had quite a lot of difficulties creating a team because not only the creation and finding the right people was a challenge, but you also like maintain and also retain the sort of employees with the challenge, right?

00;06;21;28 – 00;06;45;27

Because the growth that an agency can offer an employee within digital marketing working on six different channels are working on many different clients from different industry. The same growth is very difficult to offer on the brand side. So, you know, for us it was easy to retain clients because we could retain employees because we’ve been able to offer them very, very, very solid growth in their careers.

00;06;45;27 – 00;07;07;10

Right. And that same thing that they would not be able to feel and they would not be able to achieve on the brand side. So a lot of the agency, a lot a lot of plant that were creating their own teams were having difficulties and not only creating them but retaining them. Whereas in our case the retention was quite strong because we’ve been able to offer unparalleled growth and better learning alongside.

00;07;07;12 – 00;07;33;14

So for us, this was easily one of the unique selling points for our agency and we were able to package and deliver a complete one window solution for the client and make sure that at the end of the day we’re only delivering results for the client and we’re not delivering another point for them to ponder on or another excuse for them to basically try to solve.

00;07;33;14 – 00;08;01;06

And, you know, just say that you know, this department is not working or the website is not nice. So, you know, the search engine optimization is not up to the mark. We’re not getting organic traffic to top up. So instead of playing the blame game and, you know, going across different, you know, factions of being now well-equipped with solving all the client need under one window and giving them a robust solution for their performance marketing solutions.

00;08;01;08 – 00;08;25;17

So this has been like one of the major aspects for the agency since 2015 and back how we started and why we started and who they’ve been working with. MM That’s awesome. Starting off with one service, then continually evolving over periods of time and making it to where ultimately you’re creating partnerships with your clients because you’re going, Okay, what’s the next problem to solve?

00;08;25;17 – 00;08;54;23

Okay, how can we help you with that and then continue to grow? And then you also talked about how, you know, you and your wife had started it and then being able to grow to multiple teams, then building out. So I love I love both the internal and the external factors of being able to grow. Looking back on kind of like your whole journey, you know, looking at it from both the internal, from being an employer and then also looking from an agency kind of growth and solving the client’s.

00;08;54;26 – 00;09;29;11

What are some maybe like one or two kind of things that you learned along the way that you would pass on to another agency that might be like the earlier just social media agency that wants to become a full service, you know, any anything that kind of comes to mind, Right? So like one of the major things that when we started off and one of the major beliefs that that we had based on the growth that we had seen with other agencies was the fact that you would have to advertise in order to get clients.

00;09;29;13 – 00;09;50;05

That was the only model that we saw Good different agencies that we started across. But at that time we would wanted to have organic growth because we started off as just happened, by working together, you would do a lot of the content, I would do a lot of the other advertising stuff, and then we slowly and gradually expanded our team.

00;09;50;07 – 00;10;17;18

But what we focused on from day one was organic growth. So we wanted to do something different, whereas the traditional agency and the traditional agency scaling was based on the fact that you would have to always, always, always advertise and then get leads and it leads and then have a very sales focused approach and trying to qualify those needs, nurture those needs, and then get them to sign up and then start working with them.

00;10;17;21 – 00;10;45;11

So we took a different approach when we chose organic platforms and organic mediums where clients had real problems that needed help with and they needed to solve those problems. So we chose Upwork as one of the initial platforms that we wanted to start with, and it’s something I want to focus on for people that are looking to start their agencies, right, Because a lot of people that want to start the agency are just not starting that agency because of the fact that they think that there’s a lot of investment required.

00;10;45;18 – 00;11;02;15

Right. In terms of advertising and then that not just the investment, but there is a shared factor as well. So the fear factor is basically the fact that what if I advertise and what if I spend, you know, a couple of thousand dollars into advertising and then even if I get leads, what is the guarantee that those needs are actually going to convert?

00;11;02;17 – 00;11;25;14

So just those three factors are enough for people to stop and not take action in terms of creating their own agency. But my suggestion to people that are like starting out at the moment would be to employ certain platforms, freelancing platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, there’s multiple freelancing platforms that offer basically a free of cost client acquisition method, right?

00;11;25;17 – 00;11;50;16

You could go there, the client is already there. The intent, is that right? You know, they’re already looking at searching for you online and then based on that, if it able to offer great value and if enabled to offer them an upgrade solution, then they’re able to and want to sign up with you as well. So initially what we did was we offered a free one hour consultation to our clients, like whoever we would pitch to on Upwork.

00;11;50;18 – 00;12;07;25

We would tell them that regardless of whether you hirers or not, whether you hire agency or not, why not just step onto a call with one of our digital experts and a digital strategist? That is something that we do to this day, by the way, is like a free one hour consultation so that we can actually do goals, plans, challenges and tasks.

00;12;07;25 – 00;12;28;06

Take a call to understand what the client is and to really understand that we can actually make a difference onto their life straight. So based on that, we would then jump on to consultations with different clients and we would then figure out if we had the best fit for them and if they’re the best fit for us. And then based on that, we would do like a custom tailored strategy for them.

00;12;28;12 – 00;12;49;24

And then if they would like that strategy, that is when they would sign up. So it was basically offering much more value upfront. Right? And then based on that value, establishing a very strong relationship with them. And then when we get the trust, then we get the job right. So it was for us basically providing tons of value to any person that was coming on board with us.

00;12;50;01 – 00;13;17;01

And then if they were satisfied with the solution that we were offering, then we would be going towards, you know, pitching our services and, you know, the return and then talk about the financial aspect of the whole model as well. But the first step was to basically reach out to people with high intent, because if you consider advertising and if you’re maybe advertising on social media and Google ads, so on Google ads, there is still a lot of content because people are looking for your services.

00;13;17;08 – 00;13;56;27

But if you’re attracting in social media, then a lot of the times the intent factor is missing and that in fact it is very well couple that Upwork because the client actually posts the whole job as to what he wants to get done. So for us, you know, Upwork has been one of the largest and the singularly most successful platforms for us to scale the agency and since 2015 we’ve been working on our audience all and making sure that all the organic growth is fueled by freelancing platforms like Upwork and then the second most important factor was so this is like I said, you start of the agency, you have to go towards freelancing platforms

00;13;56;27 – 00;14;17;03

like Upwork. If you want to start off organically. But then what happens is that as soon as you’re delivering solid results and as soon as your client is satisfied, then there’s a huge uptick in terms of clients that recommend through word of mouth, other people that are also within their industry. So we had blinds that were actually, you know, lengthening.

00;14;17;03 – 00;14;36;11

I left right ends and total different kind just because of the fact that they like their offer, they like the work that we do. And they really enjoyed working with us. Right? So they were then, you know, referred different partners and different people that are new to the agency. So it’s just that first step of getting the first few clients out of the door.

00;14;36;14 – 00;14;58;01

Right. And getting the first few clients. And then it basically becomes a ripple effect where those clients are able to deploy more people and then, you know, they’re able to get more word of mouth flowing for, you know, what this initial organic growth does is that it provides sort of a launchpad for you to launch in terms of projects.

00;14;58;01 – 00;15;16;28

But because now when you have your retained earnings, you would be much more confident in spending those because that is not something that you’re spending out of pocket and that’s not something that if you spend out of pocket and seen would be a make or break moment for you because you might you have a much more cushion. The business is already flowing and then you can start scaling your agency.

00;15;17;00 – 00;15;35;29

So I feel like the most difficult part for people is to actually start of the agency, like how to start off and, you know, is there a way to start off organically as well? So you know, that is one of the major reasons that I feel like people are hesitant toward taking that first step to take the first leap of faith.

00;15;36;01 – 00;16;00;07

So this is what I wanted to make, you know, stress upon and focus as to it is not that difficult because if you’re working on platforms like Upwork, that is no upfront fee, that is nothing that you have to pay for doing the start, everything is going to be based on the fact that when you’re working, you give a small fee back to the to the platform and then you’re able to work your way through.

00;16;00;10 – 00;16;24;05

So, you know, that has been, you know, one of the key factors for our success is the fact that it built a lot of confidence for us because we were able to, you know, always, always, always make sure that we’re covered in terms of our expenses and. Right. So we’re not like advertising and making sure that our expenses are a lot to then start driving revenue.

00;16;24;05 – 00;16;49;24

That is obviously subjective to a lot of other reasons, whether you want to close a client or not. So based on all of that, it really makes a difference If you start off with slow and steady and organically build your way up because I just feel like it creates a very solid foundation rather than advertising and having tons of clients coming in and then you’re not being able to manage them and then the whole building collapsing because the foundation isn’t Trump.

00;16;49;26 – 00;17;12;29

I just feel like organic growth provides a very, very, very solid foundation for you to then, based on that solid foundation, go on and further accelerate and further scale the agency upwards from six figures to then seven figures, right? Mm hmm. Yeah, I love it. It’s it’s kind of like the playbook for starting an agency and minimizing risk, using organic.

00;17;12;29 – 00;17;49;00

That’s what. So what are you working on right now? What are you excited about in the next, you know, maybe 1 to 3 years or so? So right now we’re working on leveraging most of the API in what we do on a day to day basis. So we’re working on optimizing our workflows and making sure that we can leverage artificial intelligence and all of our tools from the moment where we start a client to the moment that we’re delivering, you know, assets to the claim, the whole process through the task management system is now being enriched by artificial intelligence.

00;17;49;00 – 00;18;10;00

So let’s suppose that there’s a task to create X, Y, Z advertisements for X, Y, Z client, right? Then artificial intelligence would already know about the client and would also be able to create like a small framework that these are the top performing ads. These are the top performing guidelines based on the idea that the top performing, you know, call to action that they would receive.

00;18;10;02 – 00;18;34;02

So our major focus is basically to leverage artificial intelligence into the agency to be able to maximize and give back time to most of our employees, to be able to then innovate further into what they want to do. Because you know how the agency structured it, right? You know how the agencies are. Everyone is overburdened. Everyone is in quite a lot of pressure.

00;18;34;04 – 00;18;59;16

So we just be like artificial intelligence and model that good forward 3.5, We’ve seen that they’re able to give back a lot of time to our resources. And then when those resources get that extra time, that fuels a lot of creativity, that fuels a lot of, you know, the sense, the fact that they can do much more than they were initially doing between the days that rudimentary.

00;18;59;16 – 00;19;33;01

And they were doing this for different clients. Right. So we’re very excited about creating our own artificial intelligence smartphones as well. So what we’re trying to work on these days is create a task management system that is also through artificial intelligence, then going on towards social media marketing as well. So for example, starting from the client, creating different tasks that need to be done, and then from those things that are done and are ready for final publishing are then published on different social media networks as well.

00;19;33;03 – 00;19;50;28

So we’re trying to create like our own proprietary solution to be able to get that done. And then like this is an example that I’ve done for social media, right? But in terms of SEO, we’re doing what the call to action should be, what the title should be, what the matter description should be, you know, whether they’re of high quality or not.

00;19;51;01 – 00;20;13;12

We’ve created our own like we’ve trained our own algorithms to be able to detect and optimize certain copies. So then they’re optimizing copies based on the set formula that we’re giving them and see that if the new copy that we’re coming up with, if it’s not up to the modern day, they will do that just through generating value as to what the copy should be.

00;20;13;14 – 00;20;40;13

So we’re very excited about, you know, leveraging more of the artificial intelligence into our workflows and definitely into like and plan deliverables as well, because we just feel like at this point in time, I know there’s a lot of, you know, the two sides of the coin and there’s a lot of debate whether the idea is going to Canadians either, you know, yeah, is going to put the agencies onto about code and, you know, like kill business with agencies.

00;20;40;15 – 00;21;12;01

But honestly, I feel like artificial intelligence today is like industrial revolution back in the 1800s. So, I mean, there were a lot of, you know, people that rode, you know, like horse carts and stuff that did lose their jobs. But obviously then they were a driver to a shopper that also got those jobs. Like, I just be like, you know, to put out of the intelligence in such a bad light, seeing that it would cause other jobs and it would, you know, cause the agencies to shut down.

00;21;12;04 – 00;21;38;23

I just feel like agencies that are not able to innovate and that are not able to adopt and that are not able to actually catch on to the Yeah bandwagon are the ones that are going to face difficulties. But the agencies that are actually innovating and using those solutions to optimize their offerings, using those solutions to make sure that they’re delivering better work to clients are going to be agencies that are going to leverage the most from this, right.

00;21;38;23 – 00;22;07;17

So based on that, I’d be very excited for, you know, how for the past 3 to 6 months, we’ve been working on artificial intelligence to actually grow our agency and to also make sure not just on the growth of our own agency, but also to make sure that the deliverables that we’re sending out to the client, they’re also at a much better, you know, quality as to where we were working in silos in the law and based on, you know, just a human element.

00;22;07;19 – 00;22;44;05

So that’s like a key. And the way forward for us go either. So what’s the best way for people to get in touch with you, or do you have any offers for them that they could take advantage of? So for so we’ve got two offers for people that are listening to us. So if we have people that want to scale from six figures to seven figures, we would want them to head onto our website and just offer and just sign up for a free one hour consultation so we would be able to come up and provide them with a fee when our consultation, based on the understanding that they’re going to be are where they

00;22;44;05 – 00;23;10;18

want to be and how we can get them to reach that point. So that is for everyone that is coming on to and wanting to stay in their agencies. If they’re someone that doesn’t want to spend, they’re considering starting an agency and is like very scared of taking the leap of faith. So we’re able to help those people as well in terms of establishing what platforms need to be established to be able to get to where they want to and make that leap of it a little less scarier.

00;23;10;23 – 00;23;44;25

Right. And make sure that the risks are minimized if there’s someone that wants a risk free way to start the agency variable to help them out as well. And they can also come onto our website and sign up for the free consultation. That can be if there’s a brand or the client that wants to, you know, get in touch in terms of having different digital marketing services being provided by our agency to them so they can also reach out to us, to our website and we will offer free audit or their existing setup as to make that existing digital presence.

00;23;44;27 – 00;24;00;28

So we call that a free digital audit so they can sign up for the free to deploy it on our website as well. And then based on that, after the audit, we can get in touch with them and offer a free one hour consultation as to where we can take them with our offer is towards growth and success in the digital world.

00;24;01;00 – 00;24;36;18

So awesome. And for anybody that’s listening, I’ll include the website and the URLs in the show notes. And and I just want to thank you very much for being on the show today. Laura Rundle Thank you very much for having me. Jessie and I have been following the podcast for quite some time and I just wanted to say that you’re doing an amazing job and keep the great work up and it’s just really, really fulfilling to be able to find a medium where we can as agency owners and, you know, people that are on different agencies can actually get together and actually find more like minded people because people that are going to start the

00;24;36;18 – 00;24;58;26

agency journey, they’re going to notice that sometimes it becomes very lonely. And, you know, you have to find the right set of people that can give you the sort of motivation to keep going. And we are going through the ups and downs. So for me, just listening to other agents as you sort of inspiration and motivation for us to, you know, keep going and doing different stuff.

00;24;58;26 – 00;25;21;23

So thank you very much for the day’s work that you do. Agency owners, if you want to transform your agency to sustain and grow without your direct involvement, where you can stop working in the business and switch to working on the business where you can regain control of your time, delegate effectively, get paid what you’re worth, and have your team run the day to day.

00;25;21;25 – 00;25;39;25

Go to niche in control dot com slash case study right now to learn more about leverage for growth, you can book a free strategy session with us to look at your systems, understand what needs to be done in order for you to scale and get a free strategic plan for the next year to live the life of entrepreneurship that you’ve always dreamed about.

00;25;39;27 – 00;26;16;08

Go to niche in control dot com slash case study that is niche in control dot com slash case study now.

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