The idea was pretty simple; Have a relaxed, casual chat with an agency owner about a specific aspect of his/her business that can provide value to other entrepreneurs who run service businesses.
When I call it an experiment, it really was that. I had no idea if it would be interesting to our audience of mostly small digital agency owners.
Some of the videos ended up being among our most popular posts on this blog.
We're no buzzfeed yet, but it's a good start
Here's what we have published to-date:
- How Jason Grew His 100 Person Digital Agency And Sold It For Profit
- How One Agency's Pro Bono Project Got Them Massive Exposure And Clients
- Growing A Freelance Practice Into A Full-Service Video Company
- How To Drive Sales In The Travel Industry Using Social Media
- How An Agency Grew Their Monthly Recurring Revenue By 1066% In One Year
These interviews were fun to make, and they seemed to resonate with our target audience — digital agency owners — better than written articles.
Last year overall, the Proposify blog has helped us provide value to our audience and drive traffic and conversions to our proposal software. We've now got a decent foundation to build on top of.
But here's the challenges we're facing with our current blog:
- How do I provide valuable, up-to-date content for agency owners when I don't actually run one myself? The well of ideas has started running dry.
- Our geography means we are limited to only doing in person interviews with agencies in the Halifax area. There's no flights to New York or London in the budget just yet.
- The cost of shooting a video is relatively high, so we can only feasibly launch a video every month or two. As we all know, sporadic content doesn't get as much engagement as consistent content.
This is where a podcast makes sense. A weekly podcast means:
- We're not limited to just Kevin's and my own past experience, we can talk to agency owners who live it day in and day out, and have more experience to draw from.
- We can talk to anyone in the world and aren't limited by distance.
- Podcasts are cheaper to produce, so we can easily release one every week.
Say hello to Agencies Drinking Beer
The format of the show is going to be 30 minutes, every Friday, and include an interview with an agency owner. I'll be talking with companies of all sizes and types, but mostly stick with design, development and marketing agencies.
Here's some of the topics each episode will discuss:
- Entrepreneurship
- Sales, pitching, proposals
- Marketing strategies and tactics
- Design and technology best practices
- Working with clients
- Managing a team and building a culture
Our first guest will be Heather Carson from the awesome PR/Marketing agency, Onboardly, who is going to share her story and discuss how she and her other co-founder have built a focused agency dedicated to serving funded startups.
How to get involved
Please enter your name and email address to get on the podcast notification list, and I'll email you when we release our first episode February 6th.
If you would make a good interviewee, please email kyle@proposify.com.
Keep in mind I'm looking for people who have been running a successful design, marketing, or development agency and especially entrepreneurs who have a unique story to tell or lesson to share with our listeners.
I'd love to hear any ideas, suggestions or feedback you have to offer. Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think!
