Aaron Crewe of Novi Digital Created His Own Platform To Source Both Agencies And Consultants

Hi guys, welcome back to another episode of Growing Your Agency. I am Ryan Shank. Today, super excited, we have Aaron Crew with Novi Digital. Aaron, thank you so much for being with us today.

Thanks for the invite, really appreciate it.

Yeah, absolutely. So I've heard really good things, I've seen some really good reviews about your agency. Can you tell us a little bit about, you know, what you guys do and how you got started?

Yeah, absolutely. So Novi Digital is 10 years old, in fact, this month. So we've started in 2009 and since then we've grown exponentially year on year, both in terms of clients and revenue and also team as well.

Awesome. What's, what's your current team size?

So we are currently on 12 full-time in-house, but we have a number of contract consultants that we outsource work to whenever we require it. The fundamentals such as client management is all managed in-house.

Awesome. Yeah, so that's one thing I usually talk to agency owners about a little bit later, but I guess we can just dive into that right now. I'm curious, you know, do you— so you have like client relationship in-house, but do you have like— who does creatives for you guys? Are you using contractors for that to do like copywriting and design and that sort of thing?

Yeah, absolutely. So we as a company provide solely SEO and PPC. We don't really do websites, design, PR, that sort of activity. The reason that I say that is because we believe that, and we have done for a long time, that to be an expert, you have to focus and hone your skills. In terms of things like copywriting, banner ads, PR, we tend to use strategic partner alliances with key selected companies that we've chosen to work with through proven results.

Got it. So you work with different companies to sort of fulfill some of that, some of the copywriting and the other services.

Absolutely.

How do you source? So how do you originally source them? And also what platforms are you using to source talent or do you sort of just have your same go-to people at this point?

So it's interesting because we're actually building our platform to source contractors in. It's one of our USPs. We've got a large number of USPs, which I'm hoping you'll ask more about on the video call. But one of the focuses we found that's required for us in order to scale is to create our network and make it much wider and broader than it is at the moment. Being a very specialist, data-driven, psychology-focused agency providing SEO and PPC, we found that whilst we do stick to our core skills, a lot of our clients want additional supplementary services, and that's where we bring specialists in. We get a lot of inquiries, but we also source independently and We review our suppliers regularly because we want to ensure that we've always got the best people. With that said, running for 10 years, we've built up a wide network of individuals and companies that we can trust and rely on.

Absolutely. Talk to me about the marketplace and the platform you guys are building because it's interesting. On all of the interviews that I've had so far, almost 95% of the people are using Upwork to just source talent. So I'm sure you've maybe had, you maybe either used either Upwork, Fiverr, maybe even 99designs at this point. Maybe you're having a problem and saw like a little bit of a gap in the market. So I'm curious, you know, why you're going after a platform play.

Yeah, absolutely. So we have used Fiverr, we have used Upwork, freelancer.com, people Prowler here in the UK and a number of others. And what we found was that the quality of work is variable. So what we've done is we've created our own platform to source both agencies and consultants. And I can't really reveal the URLs quite yet because they're just not finished.

No worries.

I shall share those with you in the near future. And the reason that we've done that is because we sit in the middle. You know, we aren't the most expensive, but we aren't the cheapest either. So we kind of lose out on both ends because recently we had a FTSE 100 client. We did a massive pitch, we got down to final two, and they said the reason that they didn't choose us is because of our team size, because their whole marketing department is actually bigger than our entire company. But with that said, our team use 100% of their time to focus on service provision. So we don't have anybody not working constantly. With that said, we did this in order to win bigger contracts and also to not lose out on those that we potentially can't obtain because of size and scale, but those that we want to and aspire to. Additionally, we don't want to necessarily serve startups and small businesses. Directly, but we thought, well, we can serve both ends of the spectrum on providing our own platform. So that's on the agency side. On the consultant side, we want to grow the biggest network of independent SEO and PPC consultants in the world. So that's what we're doing to create that.

That's awesome. I want to kind of like take a step back into maybe back in the 2009 days because I think a lot of people watching want to be in your shoes, want to be an agency owner 10 years in, but when you first were getting started, I'm curious, how did you get your first customer? What was the first thing you did to really get the business off the ground?

So by 2009, I already had about 5 years experience in the industry. I worked in a number of different agencies from small to public limited companies, which was relatively large company and a number of agencies in between. And so I'd done sales roles, I'd done account management roles, I'd done managerial roles. And some of the clients along the way had stayed with me and asked for me particularly because I'd excelled at providing those services within those companies. Thus they approached me directly. Then we used to be called SEO 24/7 back in 2009. And we generated, as we do now, a number of enquiries through the website.

Okay, and then how are you— so I'm assuming you're using the same services that you provide to drive those increase to the website, like you're using SEO and PPC to drive inbound leads?

Yeah, absolutely. So we have a lot of our own proprietary tech that we've built. One tool is called Synonymizer, which can create landing pages relevant to particular industries, sectors, niches, locations, and can do so en masse. The key thing for us is relevancy. So we want to create content that's relevant to the user. We use synonyms to create content generation en masse like that, and that works really well for the location pages.

And are these for national businesses? So I saw on your site you guys do some B2B, or are you also doing local businesses as well and sort of optimizing like Google My Business pages?

We can do, and we do that for clients. However, most of our clients are national and international. We have a large number of international clients, particularly English-speaking countries or English-speaking service sectors. As a company, we specialize in B2B and high-end, high-transaction-value B2C, so it's not generally your sole traders or small companies. For us, we have a minimum requirement of requirement of $1 million in revenue per annum in order to qualify as a client.

That's great. So that'll sort of filter out the tire kickers and the people who don't really have the budget and be able to look long-term. I was talking to someone recently and they do something similar. It's not really annual revenue. I do like the annual revenue approach, but yeah, it's like you just don't want people that want instant results, especially if you're going after SEO and it really can take what, 6 to 8 months. How long does it take to see material results for an SEO campaign on average?

Yeah, I'm glad you asked that question, Ryan, because we get asked that a lot. Sure. So it's really variable. We don't give a timeframe. We don't guarantee any results. I like that. As a service provider, we give assurances such as a 3-month minimum term and 30-day cancellation thereafter. We don't tie clients in with us. We want them to stay with us because we provide a good ROI. We do lots of forecasting and projections. So what we do is we look for both services, we reverse engineer what the client wants to achieve. So we look at target cost per acquisition, not just on the PPC side, but for SEO as well. So if somebody's spending £1,000, £2,000 a month with us, maybe up to £5,000 a month, we then look at how many client inquiries and sales that we need to generate to achieve ROI. So if you're looking for 5% cost of sale or 10% cost of sale, then we figure out how many sales that would be required to achieve that.

And what kind of tools are you using when you're doing these evaluations of volume and of keywords and things like that?

Yeah, so we use a number of third-party tools such as Raven. Moz, Screaming Frog.

Screaming Frog? I've never heard of that one.

Yeah. So I think they're based in Brighton or something. I'm not sure if that's quite right, but based in the south of England. And it's a UK company. And it's just a tool that sits on your desktop, but it runs a big crawl on websites, allows us to do checks. And then we use our own proprietary tech. Such as Forager, which looks at keywords, not actual keywords themselves, but words within search queries that perform. It's not good enough to just look at the search query. What we do is we analyze the individual words within those queries to be able to predict the future performance of queries that haven't yet been typed in. Over 25%, I think, of all search queries have never been typed in before. That number varies. Sometimes you see it's 15%, sometimes you see it's 25%. So what we try and do is we try and predict what keywords will perform before they actually accrue data. Other tools that we use: Metronome, which is a tool that manages bid adjustments, time of day. Keystone, which looks at keyword research. We factor in loads of different variables such as phase of intent, which is a concept that we've come up with based on the Long Tail Graph. So we use external and internal tools to help us on our way.

That's awesome. And when a new client comes on, what is the pricing model? Are you guys retainer? Is it kind of hourly rate based on work or hours provided? Is it percentage of ad spend? How do you guys price?

So there's a number of different pricing options available. So if we split our services into managed retainer and project-based, project-based can include things such as training, consultancy, audits, and strategy, whereas all of those things can be combined in a management program. Sure. Our fees for SEO are monthly, so you pay per month on a retainer model. Like I said earlier, it's a 3-month minimum and 30-day cancellation thereafter. Clients stay with us for a long time because they like what we do. Produce a return. On PPC, we can do two options, which is again a price based per month or a smaller retainer with a percentage of spend, or we can also do a hybrid based on CPA. So if we know that the client website is great, we can give an option for a cost per lead, so they can pay us if the leads that we generate.

I like that a lot. Yeah, performance-based model.

Yeah, absolutely.

What, so kind of tying into that, what are the deliverables that you're reporting on and in conjunction, what are the reporting tools that you're using and also the cadence of reporting for your clients?

So we allow the client to choose. We use Raven, but we also use our own proprietary tools as well. And what that allows us to do is to cater towards clients' needs Upon take-on, we send questionnaires to clients. We do that as well before we do any proposal. We don't just send out proposals to clients without them giving some information. We need to be able to hone our proposals and cater towards their needs and requirements. And then in terms of reporting, that can be daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and then it's followed up with either a phone call, a meeting, or a video conference call. We essentially just tailor the service to the client. In terms of your question prior, how do we price? That is completely bespoke. We base it on 4 different tiers, so that's Standard, Enhanced, Premium, Premium Plus. But for clients that require a little bit more, then it's totally bespoke. Based on their needs.

Got it. Awesome. Cool. So what is, you know, what are the things that you're doing today that, you know, you've found are, you know, different than what you used to do back in the day in terms of either client acquisition or onboarding of the clients?

So we are far more selective than we used to be in terms of the businesses that we work with. Yeah, we turn a lot of people away. The reason being is because we really pride ourselves on providing the highest quality service possible. We analyze a heck of a lot more data than we ever did before. We look at making sure that the clients provide us with inquiry and sales data so that we can reconcile analytics, which isn't necessarily always accurate and doesn't provide you with lead quality. In terms of internally, what sets us apart is we look at mental health and well-being of our team. We have loads of flexible options such as work from home, flexible hours. We allow the team to give up to 2 days a month to work on charity work.

Oh, that's awesome.

Yeah. So we, we do loads of perks, but we don't do the conventional perks. So we're not like Google and have a slide. Because that's 39 floors down and that'd be a big slide. Can't do that. I don't think we've got permission for that. But we listen to our team a lot more than we ever did before. The team are our biggest asset, and if you have a happy team, then you have happy clients. And that's an age-old adage in business, and we really stick to that. That. We work really hard, extremely hard, but not just working hard, but we work productively and efficiently for maximum return. So with that in mind, you know, we focus on productivity, but we also focus on making sure that everybody in the company has a purpose and that everything we do aligns towards client growth.

Awesome. That is, that's amazing. Yeah, I've heard just so many times over and over again how, you know, it's, it's so important to just have really good talent. I mean, obviously, but it's like having really good talented people and how difficult it is to one, you know, source them and then also like retain them is just has to be such a high priority to, to build a successful agency. Um, awesome. So we're running up on time. One of the final questions we always ask is what is your morning routine?

Jim? So Eat breakfast before the gym, go to the gym every day if I can. Not on the weekends, but the morning routine on the weekday is gym and then into the office. I'm not always in the office. I travel around to see clients, conferences, events. Sometimes I choose intentionally not to go into the office because I like to just vary where I'm working from. I think it's more productive. And sometimes I just, I just work remote to work remote. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I encourage people to do that because it gives you a different perspective on the world when you, when you look at the world around you.

And I think also, especially depending on the, you know, the work that you're doing, if you just need to like grind out some work, I think it's, you know, depending on what you're most comfortable with, if you just want to work remote somewhere where you can just focus and not be in kind of like a, kind of like chaotic environment and just need to, you know, do something and, and laser in. I think it is good to be able to work remote sometimes, but I also think there's value in being in the office and being able to kind of, you know, mesh with your team as well. Awesome. So Aaron Crew, Novi Digital, where can everyone find you?

So novi.digital is our URL. We're also on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. All of the normal platforms, or if you Google or Bing for Novi Digital, you can find us there. You can also find me at aaroncrew.com.

Aaroncrew.com. Alright, Aaron Crew, awesome. So 10-year-old agency, SEO and PPC, 12 employees, you're using Raven Tools to do the reporting. You let clients really choose the deliverables, 4 pricing tiers. Your employees get to choose 2 days per month to work on charity work. Aaron Crew, Novi Digital, thank you so much for being on here, guys. That's another episode of Growing Your Agency. We'll see you next time.

Ryan, thank you so much. Have a great afternoon. Absolutely.