How We Generated Buzz For Our Agency By Creating An NFT [Update]
This is a follow up story for Kontra agency. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published almost 4 years ago, check it out here.
Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.
Hello! Our names are Ilija and Petar, and we're two friends from Split, a sunny city in Croatia. Our agency recently entered its tenth year of business, and today is what one would call a full-service digital agency. But it was far from that in the very beginning. Some more about that soon.
We started as a small social media agency, having two clients each. All we had was two laptops and some money, which Ilija's family left him, and that was just enough to open a company here in Croatia; legally. Ten years later, we can offer all kinds of different services, primarily shared across two main divisions of Kontra – digital marketing and web development. Today, we're most famous for our focus on driving results.
In a time where others measure their success with likes, pretty photos, or social media followers, we're the agency that will get you into that double-your-profits-in-a-year category. Everything else is just a means of success or falls into that nice-to-have category. Just because everyone does something one way doesn't mean it's the best way.
Tell us about what you’ve been up to! Has the business been growing?
Since the last time we talked, we have grown in many ways. We went from 9 to 16 employers, which nicely shows our growth in the past year. We do not employ new people if we do not see a need for them in our business, and we’re determining that need based on numbers and data. That’s the thing when you’re an agency. You have to be careful of your decisions of employing new talent because there are highs and lows in this business. Fortunately, the past year has been full of highs for us, and that’s why we managed to get to 16 employees, and we are very proud of that.
In October, we celebrated our 10th anniversary! That whole month was our birthday month, and there was a lot of talk about Kontra and how we got to this point. We like to keep it real, so we love to share our journey with people, especially if a person reading our story is thinking about starting their own business or agency. We celebrated it with a nice dinner with our employees and reminisced about how it all began.
Also, we decided to test some new things out, and that’s why we created our own NFT! We wanted to see how ready the Croatian market was for this kind of technology. This made us the pioneers in our field to do this, so it naturally created a lot of talks. When you're the first to do something, it's exciting and fun, but it's also an unknown territory. When we first started this project, we learned a lot on the go. When you start doing something new and a bit difficult to understand, you have to be ready to improve your understanding of it and the quality of the project, even if you think it's finished. Our initial goal wasn’t to make money out of this but to test new technology, and create a platform for what we believe is the future of digital. We even managed to create a significant hype around it, which is always fun to see.
What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?
In the last year, we understood that everything we've done in the past made sense and paid off somehow. All the connections and networking that we've done, all the blogs we've written, and every step we made in our marketing strategy has paid off with great new clients and collaborations that made us grow in every way. Not only in the sense of new employees, but also in a sense that this made all of us look inwards to see what can everyone bring to the table and is room to improve and grow, as individuals, but as an agency as well.
We also learned the importance of being patient. Not all deals will be closed right away, and that's okay. Sometimes you introduce yourself to a potential client who does not need your services right now, but it may change in a year or two. That's why it's super important to work on your brand and stay relevant because you never know what can happen in a year and who might contact you out of the blue.
Also, in the past year, my partner Petar got back to recording his podcast. We prepared a new setup for recording the new episodes and raised the podcast to a higher level. That's an exciting project that has allowed Petar to talk to many interesting and successful people in their fields. This is great for educating people about what you know and for our marketing as well.
Also, in our business, things are constantly changing. Digital marketing and web development are growing fields, and you always have to keep an eye on the latest trends. That's why you have to be ready to adapt, learn and evolve. This is the reason why we are also working on expanding our services. For example, we formed new services in our performance marketing department in the past year. Those new services are SEO - Search Engine Optimization and CRO - Conversion Rate Optimization.
What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?
We want to grow, slowly but steadily. We are preparing the further development of specialized departments to offer an even higher level of service quality to all carefully selected clients and partners with whom we cooperate.
We have a new approach to sales, which we've never done before. We decided to start proactively introducing Kontra to potential clients. The whole point of these meetings is to present our work and our services so they know they can contact us in the future, depending on what they would need. We are also working on expanding on foreign markets. We already have successful projects behind us, but now we want to dig in more.
Not all deals will be closed right away, and that's okay. Sometimes you introduce yourself to a potential client who does not need your services right now, but it may change in a year or two.
We are also expanding our development team and exporting our development services to foreign markets. It's going well thus far, and we are motivated to keep going.
Have you read any good books in the last year?
We both listen to podcasts and lectures from Gary Vaynerchuk or Tony Robbins, but we also love reading books, especially biographies of successful people, you can learn a lot from their mistakes but also their success, for example Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, the creator of Nike. Some other great books are Win Your Inner Battles by Darius Foroux and The Psychology of Selling by Brain Tracy.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?
Just start, the perfect time to start something is never. Start with MVP, and keep improving as you go.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
We are constantly negotiating with new and exciting professionals who will help us start and provide even more services to our clients. In the future, we will certainly set up a public job advert on our social media and other channels, so be sure to follow us.
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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