Thoughts on Q4
and how it's been going thus far...
It’s October which means a few things - the weather is about to suck, the NBA season is about to take off, and most importantly, it’s the start of Q4.
The final sprint of 2022.
If you’ve been reading this newsletter long enough, you’d know that this year has been full of experiments, and consistent check-ins on business progress.
It’s safe to say the start of Q1 is looking nothing like the start of Q4.
So where are we now?
For everyone not paying attention, I’m scaling a digital product studio called August.
And because August often partners with our office-mates Junto, I spend time working to help progress both organizations’ respective goals.
What the hell is a digital product studio you ask?
Simply put - August builds websites, apps, and other digital software products.
The first few months were definitely a learning curve, but things have stabilized and we’re collectively assessing how to win the final 3 months of the year.
A few months ago, colleague Chris wrote about “the art of staying alive,” except now we’re not only looking to stay alive but consistently grow the business with the type of client we’re most passionate about.
It’s safe to say, this is what I spend most of my days thinking about.
What We’ve Achieved So Far…
Improvements to Operations 📠
I already talked about the work we put into building a better company operating system, but wanted to reiterate since it’s become essential in helping us track everything relating to new business - especially helping track our conversion rate on proposals won/lost.
Once I get a chance, I’ll upload a template of the Notion OS - I think it could be helpful for anyone running a small team of 1-20 and I’m proud of all the thought that went into it.
Monthly Events 🎉
Since “retiring” from nightlife at the beginning of the year, I still find myself knee-deep in events - we’ve hosted at least one event every month since June.
The personal highlight for me was welcoming Ogilvy’s Rory Sutherland for a two-hour rant on the psychology of marketing.
Initially, every effort we were making relating to events was trying to solve one problem:
People need to know we’re a real company, that’s actually based in Toronto.
With so many agencies farming out work overseas and simply adding a margin on top, there is value in showcasing the actual people behind the business, and getting face time with the community.
Visits to our office have been an effective signal for clients about how far we’ve come, a great way to build trust, and a lot of new relationships have been built through our event series.
Overall, I’d give our event efforts a B+ overall thus far.
The problem with all of our events thus far is that they haven’t exactly been relevant to the type of work we’ve been doing.
While inviting a marketing genius for a 2-hour workshop is great, it does nothing to indicate that we build great websites & mobile apps.
People would often leave saying something along the lines of:
“that was amazing, but why did you guys put this together?”
Not everything needs to correlate to the services we’re providing, (in fact, I think it’s awesome to do cool stuff for the sake of it) but we’re looking to refine our events over Q4 to make them more relevant to the audience we’re serving.
(That being said, we still have two awesome events coming up worth attending - message me for details!)
Consistent Content Marketing 🚀
Ditto for our social media content - at first, every post was all about letting people know we’re a real company…
Real people, in a real office, doing real work.
This led to a lot of community-related content, with little to establish domain expertise.
The good news is, we’ve ironed out a pretty solid content strategy we’ll be launching over the next 12 weeks that should highlight our domain expertise effectively.
My hope is that it should compound on top of what we’re already doing and help continue to build our reputation as subject matter experts for all things digital.
A quick aside…
When new websites are being built, the majority of clients care about two things:
How It Looks
Does It Work?
For the most part, nobody really seems to care about a lot of the details, so when you throw in technical jargon throughout, it can cause potential barriers.
It’s kind of like when you go in for an oil change and the mechanic tells you that you have all sorts of internal issues with your air filter.
Not only do you not know what he’s talking about, but you also don’t want to hear it…
You just want things to work.
Hopefully - by continually signaling domain expertise through socials, we’ll be able to educate potential clients on real considerations that need to be made and signal we’re not a fly-by-night mechanic trying to pad the invoice with line items.
The good news relating to our content strategy is that we’ve seen strides in our follower counts across LinkedIn channels both company and individually.
Some Quick Stats:
August’s Company Page Impressions (Sept 2021 - Present)
My Personal LinkedIn Impressions
Overall LinkedIn Follower Count Growth
Since our LinkedIn content strategy began at the end of May:
I’ve added 182 (real) people to my network, (that I’ve actually met) and,
The company page has grown its audience by 456 (also real) people.
Junto has lagged behind (in #’s) but was also starting from scratch, so it’s to be expected.
By year-end, I expect August to crack the 2k mark, and pass the 1k mark myself. 🤞
Not all that bad considering, previous to 2022, I barely had a working LinkedIn profile.
While I don’t care about follower count on a personal level, anyone in a growth role knows how important audience building is, and since the intent is to build real connections rather than spam thousands, it feels less like a chore than an opportunity to meet new, interesting people.
Last But Not Least…
Our final content piece is a weekly newsletter we launched with interesting tech news & company updates.
As it currently stands, we’ve managed to grow this to 200+ subscribers.
I expect this to be a slower climb, but hope it will be our most successful channel for building a strong relationship with our community.
But Will It Lead To Business?
Every agency owner I talk to can’t accurately say how fruitful these content marketing strategies are for generating new leads, and while we’re no different, we are hopeful it helps elevate the brand and keep us top of mind within our existing network.
Follower count doesn’t equate to revenue, but I like to think of it as optimizing for chance - the more seeds you plant, the more potential referrals you should (hopefully) get 6-12 months down the road.
Walk Before You Run
If it feels like a lot, it’s because it is - and I haven’t even mentioned our partnership program or productized services we’ve launched to try and bring in more leads. (I’ll spare you for now)
But the question I’m grappling with is not, “how to do less,” but rather “how to do more.”
For every idea we’re executing, we have 5 on the back burner, and it’s taken discipline to roll things out one at a time and make sure everything that we’re doing is actually adding value.
We are maintaining a sense of urgency, but also keeping a long-term view, remembering to trust the process and that progress is incremental.
The V1 might not be exactly what we want it to be, but 20 minutes of scrolling through Wayback Machine is a good enough reminder to get started rather than wait for things to be perfect.
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast…💆
Our goals are clearly set for Q4, and while I might not be looking forward to the weather turning terrible, I’m optimistic about what we’ll be working towards for the next 3 months.
Hopefully, you feel the same.
That’s all for now - Happy (almost) Halloween!