Intellitonic

Our Digital Marketing Business's Monthly Revenue Shot Up By 237% Since COVID [Australia]

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Courtney

Founder, Intellitonic

$135K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Intellitonic

intellitonic.com

from Bellingham

started February 2016

$135,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Discover what tools recommends to grow your business!

Discover what books Courtney recommends to grow your business!

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Trans... David Kushner

Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Fou... John Doerr

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Other... Jim Collins

Want more updates on Intellitonic? Check out these stories:

1. How We Started A Digital Marketing Agency And Grew It To $90K/Month And A Team Of 11 People (2021) ➜

This is a follow up story for Intellitonic. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 3 years ago, check it out here.

Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.

Hey, Everyone! I am one of three co-founders of Intellitonic, a digital marketing firm specializing in paid (Google Ads, Amazon Ads), organic search via search engine optimization, and well as paid social media management (including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest).

We work with for-and non-profit organizations that make the world a nicer place to be from health products for individuals to curated collections of sustainable home goods.

We’ve increased our monthly revenue by 237% since COVID by increasing our revenue per client while simultaneously growing our team from 9 to 14.

Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?

I think the biggest update is our team - we had two people transition off the team and added three new people within one month. Onboarding three new people across three different teams was difficult but the team has never felt stronger or more dedicated.

Everyone on the team is excited about everyone else’s success which in turn has led to the company being even more successful, taking on bigger contracts and at bigger prices. The bigger contracts allowed us to add a fourth new person since we talked as well as increase salaries even further. It’s been a good year all around.

Be patient and work hard - as cheesy as it sounds, success doesn’t happen overnight.

We’ve also been leaning further into ads along Amazon, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Pinterest - all of which have been beneficial in helping us land more work and upsell services to existing clients. For years, we’ve gone back and forth on website builds - they can be very lucrative with the right client and not with the wrong fit.

What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?

We continue to iterate on our products and services, especially our reporting that has continually received great feedback from clients; however, we’ve also continued to struggle to communicate the amount of work we do and oftentimes the value.

For example, a lot of research and internal collaboration goes into client strategy every month which can be difficult to show. Of course, we also have to balance this with the amount of time that goes into reporting and every client's wants and needs are a bit different.

Find the right people, whether they are your partners or team members who can replace or add to your skillset. Additionally, if someone isn’t good at something, focus on what they are good at.

We do a lot of work directly for clients and a lot of work where we partner with bigger agencies to deliver the work, taking the account management out of the picture. This means we get access to larger clients but can’t necessarily present that work on our website.

In other words, we’ve had a difficult time communicating the work we’ve done for some household name brands which in turn makes it difficult for us to attract those same or similar brands on our own.

What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?

Invest in yourselves! We’ve taken a few leaps to attend conferences and be included in a major marketing networking group known as MAGNET. These kinds of things are not cheap, but they introduce you to new people and organizations who are interested in collaborating and troubleshooting.

Partnering with other agencies has allowed us to respond to larger RFPs and work with brand names we wouldn't have been able to access on our own.

That said, attracting agencies to partner with is no easy feat! Our partnerships have come through our referral networks, being involved in other groups such as MAGNET, and having clients who work with other vendors and are willing to have a vendor brainstorm. We recently had a fantastic brainstorm session around one client with their website developer, email marketing team, organic social team, and us - it was full of energy and great insights for each of us to improve upon our work.

What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?

We are incredibly excited about opening a new branch in Brisbane, Australia this year. We worked with our local university’s International Business program a few years ago to identify emerging markets and Australia and New Zealand bubbled to the top for us. We also have a new team member in Los Angeles so we are considering an office there as well.

We initially launched the business to focus solely on nonprofits but quickly pivoted to for-profits as well. Our current focus is to partner with companies that are B-Corp certified, nonprofits, or working to make the world a better place. We want to use our skills to amplify those that are doing good.

It’s ok to fire a client or turn work down. As an agency, your work relies heavily on relationships, both internal and external. The health and happiness of your internal team are just as important, if not more than your clients.

We’ve also been doing a lot of development consulting and work that we’ll be adding to our website in the near future, finally making it into a marketable product.

The founders are also weighing the pros and cons of buying a building (and where that would be).

We’re hoping to keep our team on the smaller side, not to exceed 20 people.

What’s the best thing you read in the last year?

I’ve been enjoying the podcast Smartless which has offered a fresh perspective of people trying to make it in show business as an individual.

The Dropout on Hulu has also inspired me to think about the mixture between imposter syndrome, the idea that confidence is magic, and being completely transparent and honest.

We’ve also been working with a PR Firm to identify the things that make our agency unique and how to leverage that. This has included work with a local Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Outreach contractor to assess and brainstorm how we can not only better work with our communities, but share that work in a meaningful way.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?

Be patient and work hard - as cheesy as it sounds, success doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to make the right connections, find the right clients, find your right order of operations, and figure out where your boundaries are.

Find the right people, whether they are your partners or team members who can replace or add to your skillset. Additionally, if someone isn’t good at something, focus on what they are good at. It’s ok for a person’s position to change based on their skills and interests, as well as the changing industry.

If people show an interest in another part of the business they’re not currently in, let them in and allow that project to receive new energy from someone aware of another aspect of the business.

It’s ok to fire a client or turn work down. As an agency, your work relies heavily on relationships, both internal and external. We’ve partnered with several other agencies who lost a lot of good people because the client was bad (late to meetings or never showed up, didn’t pay on time, etc). The health and happiness of your internal team are just as important, if not more than your clients.

Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

When hiring, we start with the right culture fit. We’ve had a lot of success hiring people who don’t necessarily have a background in search, social, or marketing - their various skill sets have translated well and offer a fantastic new perspective to the work we do.

We also love giving back to the community via our internship program that is tailored to the student's interests and needs.

Visit our careers page for more information on how to get the conversation going.