How We Increased Our Client’s Leads by 751% And Doubled Revenue YoY [$45K/Month]
This is a follow up story for Tao Digital Marketing. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published about 5 years ago, check it out here.
Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.
Hello! I’m Matt Tomkin, Founder, and Director of Tao Digital Marketing. We search marketing specialists based in Bolton and offer SEO, Paid Ads Management, and Web Design and Development.
We work mainly with B2B clients across Greater Manchester and beyond. We have clients in all sectors, ranging from law and recruitment to insurance and a handful of B2C clients.
We have a client in Australia and have recently been speaking to prospective clients from across the pond in America, which is exciting - Tao’s going global!
We’re now turning over north of £40k per month and plan to keep doubling year on year revenue.
Tell us about what you’ve been up to! Has the business been growing?
Absolutely, so much has changed since our last chat in December 2019 - not least because of the pandemic that turned the whole world upside down! The last time we spoke, we were only two and a half years old, so half our current age as an agency. There were only three members of the team, and now we’re a team of eleven, so we’ve almost tripled in size since then.
This is largely due to the pandemic, when everyone was forced to rely on their online presence to generate leads, pushing digital transformation forward by five years. We’re very fortunate that our sector has thrived and that we’ve been able to work throughout, taking on many new clients and expanding our monthly retainers with existing ones.
Back then, our small team was very heavily involved in delivery, dipping in and out of all areas of SEO. Since then, we’ve focused on turning the team into individual specialists. As mentioned previously, our main areas of focus are SEO, Paid Search Marketing, and Web Design and Development. Within SEO, we have teams of people focusing on content, PR, and technical work. We’re almost at the point now where those teams will start splitting into proper departments.
As a result of this, our team has continued to generate some outstanding results for clients, such as;
Increasing Our Client’s Leads by 751% on Less Than £1K Per Month
In this case, study, in which we were lucky enough to get featured on Moz, we broke down how we increased leads by 751%, keywords by 259%, and impressions by 535% for Fleet Cover on a budget of less than £1,000 per month - largely through focusing on content optimization.
Increased a Law Firm’s Leads by 174% With Content Optimisation
Content marketing and optimization are crucial parts of any respectable online marketing strategy. Our work with AFG Law goes to show that results can be achieved by focusing on creating the right content for the right audience. The full case study is linked above.
Demonstrated the importance of strong client relationships
We wouldn’t be able to achieve the results we have done without having strong relationships with our clients, really getting to know them and their businesses inside out, and thinking from their perspectives.
In 2021, we filmed four client testimonial videos, which can be found on our YouTube channel. The best example to demonstrate how much emphasis we place on client relationships comes from Jackie Hyde, Managing Director of Stanmore Insurance, who I’ve personally known for years throughout my different businesses - video below.
What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?
Firstly, it’s important to let the team do what they do (that’s why we hired them right?). If they make a mistake, we learn from it as a team and now actively encourage some failure within the business.
Don’t spend too much time wallowing in mistakes or things that go wrong. Business is not easy, and you will fail more times than you win. But every failure is one step closer to your goal and make sure you learn from every one of those failures.
Lots of variables are out of my direct control. I must remember what I can control and what I can’t - that way, my mental health is preserved and I can be better at being better.
As many other businesses will have recognized internally, Covid has helped us become a more flexible employer, and thanks to this, we have a great team of people.
What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?
We have taken the plunge into our website and services. We plan to build this using our marketing expertise and help Alloy Wheel Repair business owners generate leads and sales without the need to invest in all the marketing themselves. The project is https://alloywheelrepair.services, we see this building becoming a business in its own right eventually.
Over the next five years, I would like us to break into the US market for our SEO services a little more. We’ve had a few nibbles from US law firms (as we’re developing somewhat of a specialism in this area) but nothing of any substance has come of this as of yet.
We’re also building out our web development team to make sure we keep ahead of the continued move from Google in rewarding faster and better user experience on websites in their algorithm.
Have you read any good books/podcasts in the last year?
A book I would recommend to others looking to start an agency, or just brush up on their knowledge, is ‘Traction’ by Gino Wickman - it’s essentially a blueprint for your business. That’s not to say that the business formula discussed will work for every business, but every Founder/Director/CEO will gain something by reading it.
I’ve also been enjoying The Authority Hacker podcast, featuring Gael Breton and Mark Webster. Each episode focuses on different areas of building a site’s authority and domain rating, which is a huge focus for our link building/PR team. Both myself and our PR team have found these episodes to be incredibly useful and have implemented many of the tips discussed, with success.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?
One of the biggest mistakes I see regularly is not thinking about pricing in a logical sense. Make sure you have the future growth of the business in mind when pricing early on. It’s hard to increase pricing when you want to bring in new members of the team.
Don’t spend too much time wallowing in mistakes or things that go wrong. Business is not easy, and you will fail more times than you win. But every failure is one step closer to your goal and make sure you learn from every one of those failures.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
We aren’t looking to hire at the moment as we just took on a new apprentice, Lucy, last week (Jan 2021 at the time of writing). She’s joined us as a Junior Content Producer Apprentice and will be helping in all aspects of content creation. It’s exciting to see the team continue to grow and see their individual developments too.
Where can we go to learn more?
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
