Online Marketing Sydney, Internet Marketing Australia Freestyle Media

If you want some reassurance that its time to switch agencies below are the top 5 ways to determine when enough is enough.

1. Your agency is Slow to get your campaigns out the door for you – Have you noticed that your campaigns take forever to get out the door? Is it taking even longer and longer to get things from your agency? I will let you in on a secret, you are either a small client in a big pond or a big client in a small pond. When you are a small client in a big pond it means you are not a very profitable client as the amount of work it takes to give you service is not profitable. You might want to look for a smaller agency. If you are a big client in a small pond you will get good people working on your account but then you will eventually find that these will be replaced by others that aren’t as good. The good people who used to work on your account are now hunting for another client. My advice here is to look for a bigger agency.
2. Your ads aren’t coverting but your agency is winning creative awards – Awards are great but sales are better. If your agency isn’t really a direct marketing agency and they keep talking about the creative concept as opposed to the triggers that will get your advertising converting, you might want to switch agencies to a more direct response focused one.
3. Don’t understand direct response –Just like with your creative looking all pretty but not selling if your agency isn’t advising you on ways to increase qualified response you might want to consider switching agencies. Its easier to create sales generating campaigns when your agency talks the same language and you don’t have to keep coaching them on basic tactics to make the creative sell. Its time to stop being frustrated by your agency pushing back on you telling you that the creative would be better with a smaller call to action and a more creative headline. You know what works and its time to work with an agency that work for your targets not for creative awards.
4. When a campaign performs poorly your agency doesn’t care – This is a clear sign that your current agency is just treating you like a number and don’t care about what you are trying to achieve. The better agencies know your targets and feel the pain as much as you do when a campaign doesn’t work. Proactive suggestions on ways to get the campaign to recover as opposed to waiting for you to make a decision as to how to fix the problem is what you are looking for.
5. The costs don’t justify the value – Champagne “long lunch” agencies are fine if they deliver high quality work along with their high price tags. If you are looking for direct response hard hitting creative that converts and wins ADMA effectiveness awards I would suggest a more value orientated agency would work better. The creativity and speed of delivery of the campaign to get it to convert is what you are looking for. This way you will probably do a larger volume of campaigns or increase your media exposure of your campaign with the money you save.

If you are looking for a new online marketing agency here is a guide to choosing one.

How would you feel if your website wasn’t accessible for a whole day?

Does the thought of that happening make you kind of sick in the stomach?

Well this is exactly what happened to a site I visit regularly (we’ll let them be anonymous to avoid embarrassment).

One evening their site got linked to by a major overseas newspaper and the incoming traffic all through the Australian night was 10x normal … until the site crashed under great stress … and took 24 hours to replicate and bring back up again on a different server.

Prevent this happening to you:

• Get your site optimized by a specialist internet marketing company – the techniques to make a website user and search engine friendly also make sure that is fast and efficient
• Make sure your web host can handle sudden unexpected peaks of traffic – ask them if they can guarantee your website will survive what’s known in the trade as the slashdot effect
• Monitor your website 24/7 and assign an IT manager with a pager/mobile which gets notified if the site goes down so they can react quickly.

Supercharge Your Online Marketing with the New Freestyle Media powered by Q ltd!

Yesterday Freestyle Media was 100% acquired by Q ltd. It was announced on the stock exchange and it a lot of trade journals like B and T and Adnews.

Online marketing agency Freestyle Media announced today it has been acquired by Q Ltd, a leading Australasian group of companies that provide services within the interactive advertising sector.

Q Ltd has acquired 100% of the share capital of Freestyle, one of the leading online marketing agencies in Australia. Freestyle works with clients to develop online strategies aimed at maximizing the capture and interaction of a brand with its target consumers.

The founders of Freestyle, Fred Schebesta and Frank Restuccia, will continue as joint Managing Directors under a 3-year employment agreement with the Q Ltd Group. The business will continue to operate under the Freestyle name.

“We are looking forward to being apart of a bigger group,” said Mr Schebesta.

“We will get some more powerhouse campaigns out there that pull millions of customers in for our clients. Keep building great converting websites and keep ranking our clients websites at the top of Google!”

Schebesta said that Freestyle plans on growing to 20-25 by the end of the year and will be opening an office in Melbourne in July.

“Freestyle provides outstanding services to its clients, assisting them to cost effectively target, capture and interact with consumers online, ensuring an ongoing relationship not simply a transaction. At Q Ltd, we believe all brands can benefit from the powerful online interactions Freestyle facilitates for clients and we are delighted that they have joined the Q Ltd team” said Q Ltd’s Managing Director, Paul G Choiselat.

Kevin Campbell, Q Ltd’s Chairman said “Freestyle compliments Q Ltd’s expansion with services that continue to add value and breadth to the interactive advertising and marketing services of the Group. We believe there will be strong synergy gains between Freestyle and the rest of Q Ltd and we welcome Fred and Frank as part of the Q Ltd team.”

The purchase price comprises an upfront payment of $1,362,000 in cash and Q Ltd shares, with deferred consideration tied to the future earnings of Freestyle through to 31s` December 2009. The deferred consideration is to be paid in a combination of cash and by the issue of ordinary Q Ltd shares.

-ends-

For further information or interviews please contact:
Catriona Pollard
CP Communications
P: (02) 9969 9668 M: 0411 023 974
E: cp@cpcommunications.com.au

About Freestyle Media
Freestyle Media specialises in driving traffic to websites and converts online customers into purchasers of products and services. Freestyle specialises in the integration of online strategy through a combination of web site development, search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimisation (SEO), online advertising and marketing. Some of Freestyle’s leading clients include Sanitarium, Laser Sight, Rabobank, PMI Mortgage Insurance, Goodman Fielder, Computer Associates and The University of Newcastle. www.FreestyleMedia.com.au
Fred Schebesta’s Blog www.OnlineMarketingSydney.com.au

About Q Ltd (ASX:QXQ)
Q Ltd is a leading Australasian group of companies that provide services within the interactive advertising sector.

The Q Ltd Group is engaged in providing interaction between a client’s brand and its target audience via websites, search engine marketing, permission marketing, email, mobile, and list marketing.

Q Ltd subsidiary companies are specialists within their respective specific sectors of the advertising industry and are leaders providing services to marketers in targeting, capturing and interacting with consumers (B28 and B2C) via interactive channels.

Let me just say its business as usual here. Q isnt going to split up Freestyle Media and move us around the country. We are actually working with them to open up in Melbourne in July to better service our existing clients in Melbourne and hopefully work with some new ones.

3 ways Q ltd will be able to help your online marketing

1. Enhanced performance from better access to expertise - You can now gain better and more effective expertise and access to online media, mobile marketing, lists, search and technology than before. Freestyle will be working very closely with its partner companies to leverage their offerings and enhance your results. (I am very excited about the whole mobile marketing thing!)
2. Easier access to Freestyle Media team - You will be able to access Freestyle Media’s service offering in Melbourne, New Zealand and eventually other parts of Asia Pacific through Q ltds expansion of the business. Better access means more love for you from Freestyle! More love = better online marketing results.
3. Better creative for your campaigns - If you are already working with one of the Q ltd companies then you will now have access to Freestyle Media’s creative services of banner, website, landing page, flash game and Content Management production services. You will get faster campaign production and better results from an integrated approach from your agency.

A lot of people ask me what makes the business Freestyle Media different from other web design companies. I will tell you an analogy to explain this. Ask yourself right now and be brutally honest, Do you have a brochure website or is it a marketing tool? Have you just wacked up a site and hoped for the best. If you work with a web design company they will build you a website without a single regard for how you are going to get traffic.

“Web designers are builders NOT marketers.”

Its like if you get an engineer to build you a house. They dont care what it looks like that is the architects job. The engineer if they had their way would make the whole thing 1 story and plonk all of the rooms together to make them as structurally sound as possible. With your website you dont want the most technically sound website you want one that brings in the most traffic and makes the most sales. Get an online marketing agency to build your site if you are a marketer not a web design company nor an advertising agency.

3 quick ways to tell if you are working with an Online Marketing Agency or a Web Design company

1. No keyword recommendations - If your company isnt providing you with keyword recommendations before you build your website fire them. That is like building a super market and not knowing where the people live. If your site isnt setup for attracting visitors to your website from the beginning you will be forking out for retrofittings from search engine optimisers to make it attract visitors.
2. None of their websites rank well in the search engines - Browse their portfolio and see where the sites rank in the search engines. No rankings… fire them.
3. They can’t code in CSS and xHTML - If your agency cant code in CSS and xHTML fire them. There is no point coding in tables as opposed to CSS and xHTML as it will cost you the same amount. Choose the premium way to code and get the piece of mind that you won’t be retrofitting your site with SEO addons.