You Get An Expert

Most of our clients have worked with a Digital Marketing Agency (or two, or more) before. They know that usually you get a smooth sales pitch from a senior salesperson and then you're left to fend for yourself with a junior account manager who ends up struggling to do the work.

You'll be pleasantly surprised to learn that the expert you speak to is:-

1. Not a dedicated Sales Person. We're Digital Marketers first, and secondly we like talking to prospective clients too.
2. Talk to the Expert from Day 1. The expert you talk with will (very likely) be the person you work with. They'll be the one working on your website or at least coordinating that work.
3. Communication. If we change something we'll talk you about it. As your needs change over time the expert on our team who takes the lead will very likely change too. Victoria takes the lead on Web Projects and SEO Heavy Campaigns; Sam takes the lead when the main component is Ads... and when all three are involved (often happens) we work with you to decide who is the best fit.

You'll Benefit From Our Experience

Our team have experience delivering comprehensive Digital Marketing campaigns.

• Google Ads with Effective Landing Pages
• WordPress Websites with Security and SEO in mind
• SEO with consideration for your non-technical webmaster to add content

We've been around the block and we've got the skills, and the checklists to make this work effective, fun, and fast.

The likelihood that you'll have to wait around for a junior team member to learn how to do something before it is implemented is extremely low.

Speaking Up

If you ask for work that is outside the plan, or just want some help with something completely out of our skillset we'll give you options, in order of our preference...

• First and foremost, we'll keep your campaign on track!
• Recommend someone we know and trust to match our output, e.g. if you want branding or a fresh logo design.
• Find someone we can recommend.
• Turn down the "add-on" and stick to our campaign.

If you want to change something that .

We, well I (Ben), have made the mistake of describing our services, and showing the excellent results we've attained for clients, begun the engagement and learned the hard way that things just won't work.

Experience like ours is rare, especially so in Digital Marketing. We admit that a good chunk of that experience is hard-earned from mistakes.

We don't make mistakes like this and haven't for many years, since at least 2015. This is why we want every prospective client to read and understand this page.

Clients are often their own worst enemies in many ways. Here are some of the biggest and best mistakes that we used to see clients make.
(best, or should I say worst?)

Hamstrung Expert

Hire an expert and then tell the expert what to do and what they can't do. Very often the thing(s) that the expert needs to do to deliver results push the client into new territory, towards the very actions that they've always avoided.

This doesn't just eliminate the potential for your website to succeed it is a complete motivation killer for everyone involved in the project. You, me, our team.

This is one of the biggest things we mean when we say we're not everyone's cup of tea and people don't like our direct approach. If you do this, we will tell you straight.

We ask clients to trust us, and we go get you the results. Hamstring us and we'll propose some resolutions.

Resolutions:

We'll tell you straight, and give you choices. The choices...

• Let us implement the plan, and do it right.
• Waterdown what we're doing - and you pay us upfront for the rest of the campaign because it probably won't work as clients in this modus operandi are often just rehashing what has not worked before.
• Part ways ASAP.

Your Availability

Hire an agency, agree to an action plan that involves your input and maybe even some effort and then disappear.

Reappear and complain about the lack of progress.

Mitigation:

We're excellent at project management. 
(read my post What I Learned About Project Management from a Gangster)

• We'll keep track of what you agreed to, and keep you accountable.
• We don't let the client "Project Manage" the campaign. We do it, always.
• If you miss a deliverable, we make sure you know and do our best to minimise the negative impact on our business (fees continue as agreed) and yours - we're ready to receive and implement when you deliver.

Resolution:

We work with busy teams, CEOs and Marketing Directors who over-commit and under-allocate investment of their time in their own marketing. There are ways to resolve these things, so we look at the right options for you.

• BEFORE - We work with every client before planning a campaign to ensure team availability (yours and ours) aligns with what is needed.
• DURING - As mentioned above, we always project manage campaigns and will actively follow up with you about deliveries, deadlines and the impact of missing them. 
• OPTIONS - Getting back on track usually isn't hard, sometimes it just needs some additional resources, commitment or both. Simple and client options always exist, for example
  • Stick to the plan, and deliver your input+effort and work together to catch up or at least not fall further behind, or
  • Add a resource, e.g. a professional writer - instead of hoping a director will find the time.
  • Hand-holding-Meetings. Send one of our team members to sit with and extract the input we need. If this meeting is out of scope it'll have a budget impact, but this minor cost increase can be the unblock everyone needs.

Magpie Mode - New & Shiny

There are always new and shiny ideas, systems, plugins, themes and gurus.

We're not stick-in-the-muds, but there's a time for strategy and planning and a time for execution. Rewinding a running campaign back to the planning phase doesn't come without costs to time, effort and results. Again, we'll tell you straight.

Is this you? Get outta here!!! Just kidding.

If you recognize some of your past behaviour in the above scenarios don't worry.

Our view is that a manager or leader who recognizes this in their own (past) behaviour is a huge plus.

Our straight-talking approach and ability to focus leadership and marketing teams on the right KPIs and results mean that we usually win the day, and get the campaign moving forward.

The best way to think about us is that we're a small team - about as small as we could be. There are currently just four specialists in the business. We are a Micro Digital Marketing Agency.

Matter Solutions has been 15+ people and growing to this size was exciting it did result in a diluted focus on outcome for clients. This caused Ben, our founder, some concern and stress. We hired business coaches, we used consultants, we changed systems and we hired a full-time Agile Coach - everything worked a little bit but the outcome wasn't ever quite as effective as it had been when we were just 3-5 really dedicated experts... so when COVID came knocking wiping out our biggest clients and we were already moving to a work-from-home model it made sense to restructure.

We're super-efficient. People with 5, 10 and 20 years of experience know how to get things done effectively and quickly and we identify and fix problems before they even arise. As they say, if you think hiring an expert is expensive try hiring an amateur.

A good way to consider this is about the type of clients we take care of.

Small owner/manager businesses

70% of our clients are owner/manager "small" businesses, they range from a couple of people up to hundred-plus companies.

We're proud that they trust us to give them Digital Marketing guidance we know that they value Digital Marketing, they value a direct line to specialists instead of an army of account managers and customer service buffers.

We also know that many of them have been led on a merry dance by digital marketing partners of all kinds around Brainerd and beyond.

The campaigns we run for these clients usually have multiple threads and range from $10-50k per quarter including ad-spend.

Corporate Clients

The number of "corporate clients" we look after is lower than the number of small businesses but they spend considerably more on their campaigns, naturally. They enjoy the dedicated expertise of the same people who helped bring them onboard and spoke to them before engagement. We don't have a team of client winners and junior-do-ers. 

We've worked with (and still work with) some well known Aussie companies. Some are United States Subsidiaries of Global Corporations who want a better (and local) option for high-quality digital marketing rather than working with the agencies that Head Office in Europe or the USA uses.