Week 9 Review
Hey everyone! To be completely honest, been a terrible week for the lessons and the courses. Been traveling back and forth visiting my family and wife’s family for Thanksgiving. Since Thursday of last week, it’s been non stop traveling and non stop errands for the family. I hope to make this post as informational and helpful as I can with how our agency is doing based on what we’ve learned so far. I understand that the 12 weeks is almost over so we kind of need to get ready a start getting that last few sections down. There’s really not much to cover but just wanted to go over how and why we started and what we’ve been doing that’s helping us out from this course. So let’s get started!
My partner originally was the one that had the background in all this SEO and web development. Pretty much this whole digital marketing gig was his forte. Not only was he super knowledgable about digital marketing, he was driven and hungry about succeeding. I tend to gravitate towards people like that so naturally we got along and he helped me improve my knowledge of the industry. He introduced me to so many classes and courses that I should take so I can catch up to him on that particular level. That was my goal. I had to create another version of him in this company with myself. The better we are as a team, the less work we actually have to do and the smarter we work as well. We stumbled upon this scholarship through CXL Institute and I figured why not. Wouldn’t hurt anyone right? Just grind it out for 12 weeks and not only will we get knowledge, there’s a mini degree at the end of it. So then here we are grinding it down and using what we’ve learned little by little and applying them into our little startup agency. All our clients are very happy with our work and how we work also. It’s gonna be long journey until we start seeing some real results and have more and more clients.
One of the things that we’ve recently applied to our normal operational procedures are surveys. We weren’t the biggest fan of surveys in the beginning to be honest because it felt like it wasn’t really taking us anywhere. Now I realize that we were just doing some things incorrectly. Down to finishing websites or improving websites, these surveys have been a big help with improving us as a company and our work. We also use it particular surveys for our personal websites as well. Also some improvement in metrics there. Working closely with a client and asking the right questions in these surveys is so critical to the goal we’re trying to set because it really did help open up that avenue for us. Our surveys are not long, their much shorter to not bore anyone. Majority are pretty open ended questions since we do explain to people that take our surveys that it’s mostly for their benefit anyways if they can get a little deeper on what they really feel and think. Little changes like that is what made the biggest change in how we look at surveys.
Another major aspect that we’ve applied to our little startup agency is following a very user centric mentality when it comes to everything really. Our focus is our client and nothing else. Of course we guide them to the right direction when they themselves do not have one and they’re very happy with the collaboration that we all do together. Having them more involved especially with small mom and pop businesses is a big help for us and for them. Being able to get direct feedback right away and seeing their faces when we finish with the website or the result of our seo really does help them. That in turn opens our business up to being networked with people they know. It’s been a great way to find clients through word of mouth honestly. The relationships that we’ve built through a more user centric mentality has done nothing but benefit us and our clients.
The use of excel and google sheets within our agency and with our clients was also a massive help. Having to realize that excel and google sheet is the most powerful software in microsoft really blew our minds. The things we could do more efficiently and the less hours we have to work because of excel and google sheets. Our clients love them! Especially when we help them create a sort of booking system or some conditional worksheet that they need to run their business…they love it! That’s probably a big favorite of mine. Making something so difficult and making it very easy for them is really what makes excel and google sheet my favorite addition to our agency. Locking out cells in order to not make mistakes, adding color conditions to numbers that need to be beat by then end of the day or end of the month, and also using formulas to calculate massive amounts of data and in no time at all! Excel and google sheets are amazing.
There are a lot of other things that we’re still working on to apply to our agency that we’re learning from this course. I know we’ve just started but this CXL Institute minidegree course has really opened our eyes to few little things that we really didn’t even think about as well as reassuring us of things that we already do. I’m sure getting the proper instructors was not easy but I’m glad that the instructors that were chosen for the particular subjects really pulled through. Each of them had their own personality that made the classes and lessons less boring and more interesting. Adding their on take on the topic and things to watch out for gave us warning lights to look out in our own personal situations with our agency as well. I hope after this, CXL might have a chance to let us take another course on a possible different area of expertise. It’s been a fun journey and we’re pretty much in the home stretch. I’ll definitely need to catch since I am very behind because of how busy it is with the agency and just being in the holiday season and also making ends meet during this terrible pandemic. You really do start to appreciate what you have and honestly giving me more of a drive to try harder and work smarter to become more successful, which will in turn help me help other people become more successful as well. That’s the ultimate goals so until next week again! Be safe everyone, sorry for the delay and Happy Thanksgiving!
