NEW: Our 2025 content marketing trends report is live!
• Reported traffic is (still) up
• Link building interest is down
• Interactive content use is down
• Content spend is up, but per asset is down
More: www.siegemedia.com/strategy/con...
There's something only great marketers do. But there's no agreed-upon standard for doing it.
It's audience research.
And very likely, they're doing this without really knowing what it is. Studying and getting to know their audience is just part of their DNA.
In this long overdue guide…
Thanks for sharing Kelsey!
Hopefully you haven't cried yet...! The day after I posted this, I had a call with someone who started the call by telling me one of their team had handed in their notice 😭
Thanks Johann! I'll take a closer look into that.
We asked the question in a way to hopefully keep the answers proportional to the size of the agency, so in theory, that would help normalise the responses a bit.
The latest batch of research from the State of Digital Agencies survey is live over on the SparkToro blog.
This time, we're sharing lots of data on sales and marketing, including how effective (or ineffective) outbound sales is for agencies.
Go check it out 👇
sparktoro.com/blog/the-sta...
Sure, you may not be happy that they are leaving, but do your best to leave them with a positive impression of your agency and you as a leader. Don't make them feel like they've definitely made the right decision based on your attitude in their final weeks or months.
If they do leave, don't make their lives difficult for their remaining time with you. I've heard horror stories of founders who turn the team against leavers and flat out bully them. Don't be one of them.
4) Take a bit of time to think about what they've said and decide what you'd like to do next, but give them clarity on next steps as soon as possible.
1) Stay calm and listen to them.
2)Ask questions and seek to understand why they're leaving.
3) If your gut instinct is to try to keep them, try to find out if this is a final decision or if they may be open to talking about staying.
You could fight to keep them, but is that the right thing to?
(Spoiler: usually, it's not). It's also nearly always a bad idea to throw more salary at them unless they are underpaid right now.
No matter what, you should:
There is a chance that over the next couple of weeks, you'll get one of them come to you to hand in their notice because they've found a new role.
What do you do?
If you're an agency owner or a team manager, you should be aware that the Christmas & New Year period always means one thing: your team will be thinking hard about their career & their future.
The chances are that at least some of your team have applied for a new role over the last couple of weeks.
Got one too. Shedding bug fixed.
If you work in SEO and / or content marketing, this is 5 mins of your time well spent...
A Template for getting feedback as a manager, using the start, stop, continue method.
Do you want to get actionable feedback from your team?
Use the template below to send them a message before the holidays and use the responses to inform how you'll be a better manager in 2025:
Totally using this as your profile pic for the intro slides for the next Indie Founders in Bologna!
Happy Birthday!
What do 600+ digital agency owners and consultants think about the state of the industry right now, the impact of AI, the move to remote working and it's impact on clients?
@randfish.bsky.social and I decided to find out and you can see the first results here:
sparktoro.com/blog/the-sta...
NEW research: sparktoro.com/blog/new-res...
We looked at:
- 332 million searches
- Over 21 months
- From ~130K mobile & desktop, Google searchers
And published:
- 13 charts & graphs
- including data on many never-before-answered Qs about how people use Google
Here's a little sample 👇
Thanks Ann! Yeah I wrote and re-wrote a few bits to try and communicate my point clearly. Hopefully that worked!
Ah yay! So glad that you found the posts useful :) If there are any challenges that you’d like to see written about, just let me know!
Chill work = the way we should aim to operate in our working lives.
Chill managers = eh, not so much. Read why:
Thank you! Yeah, although well-intentioned, I don't think that chill managers are effective, ultimately hurting themselves too.
Chill work/companies though = here for it and it's on my mind a LOT right now as I'm building my career again.