Agency Spotlight: How Brand On Fire’s Focus on Recurring Revenue and Transparent Pricing Changed Its Agency’s Game

Brand On Fire, LLC is a web design and development agency, which also offers internet marketing consultation and hosting to its clients. They become their clients’ partners in growing their business and boosting their brand.

Brand On Fire started working in WordPress in 2011. Since then, they have supported small to medium-sized businesses all over the world, and have been able to successfully implement a variety of unique projects in different industries.

Brand On Fire’s Niche

Brand On Fire LLC focuses on small to medium-sized companies, especially brick and mortar businesses with a local target market. This is so that they can provide these companies with the greatest ongoing value for their brand and business.

Brand On Fire’s Biggest Achievements As an Agency

The agency takes pride in powering its clients’ brands and making growth easier for the clients. Their biggest achievement for them is being able to help brands move onward and upwards. Brand On Fire’s team has designed, implemented, hosted, and managed over 100 high-performing WordPress websites. They consider this a huge achievement for them and they are definitely proud of where they have reached in their agency business journey.

Figma vs. Sketch: The Best Collaborative Design Tool for Web Design Agencies

Brand On Fire’s Greatest Challenges and How It Overcame Them

The agency’s main struggle was to filter out the right candidates for its team. They were trying hard to find the right people who could manage tasks in the long-term. They were quick to identify the main reason behind their concern, which was their awareness regarding the fact that contractors and employees don’t last forever.

In order to overcome their problem, they decided to have process-oriented documentation that allowed any new team member to jump right in and take over. This saved both time and effort on their end.

Brand On Fire’s Recipe for Success and Three Strategies That Have Proved to Be Most Fruitful for Their Agency’s Growth

The agency’s recipe for success is a mix of three very important ingredients that have been pivotal to the agency’s growth.

Here is a list of the three strategies they implemented to achieve success:

• Referral based Marketing
• Process-oriented documentation to train new contractors/employees
• Generating new revenue by strategically adding services that work for you and your clients, like unique marketing services or hosting

Clickup vs Monday: Why Do Agencies Choose One Over Another?

The Most Challenging Project for Their Agency and Their Learnings

Brand On Fire implemented three websites for a single company that was both an EMS (Electronics Manufacturing Services Provider) and major steel hydraulic/bridge contractor in northern Germany. It was a new enterprise-level project for them that involved extensive planning, strong attention to quality and detail across all platforms, and great care regarding client relationships.

For them, the first part of the project involved creating an entire branding portfolio for the company, all the way from the logo through to the signage used on the manufacturing floors at two large-scale locations.

For the website, they were able to create an extremely successful outcome by modernizing the entire platform for hosting, managing, and growing the websites in the long-term. They also integrated some extremely cool 360° VR videos/photos as well as drone photography.

The Three Software Tools/Apps They Use at Their Agency

Brand On Fire uses Figma and Adobe XD for prototyping, Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro for video editing, and Photoshop and Illustrator for design.

How Has Cloudways Contributed to Brand On Fire’s Growth? What Features Do They Find the Most Helpful for Their Business?

When we asked Brand On Fire about how Cloudways has helped it achieve success, they had the following things to say:

“Cloudways makes it extremely easy to spin up a new development project right away and get things started. The hosting platform no longer “gets in the way” like it would with cPanel or many other outdated approaches to hosting in the WordPress space. See cPanel alternative.

Sure, many platforms make it easy to spin up a new WordPress site, but it doesn’t cost me anything extra to do it with Cloudways. If you already have a single server set up, you can always add a new Application in seconds without paying another penny.

Most other managed WordPress hosting platforms charge per site or for a batch of sites, which doesn’t make sense for me as an agency provider. E.g. – I don’t want to pay for 50 sites when I only have 30 active clients and the next lower package is 20. I don’t need to play those games with Cloudways.

Some of the key features that come out of the box make it so easy for working with clients as well:

• Password protection
• Staging sites
• No need to set up a domain to view your site w/ hosting URLs”

Miro vs Mural: Why Agencies Choose One Over Another?

Some Tips That Brand On Fire Has for People Who Wish to Work in Their Niche or Start a New Agency

“The first thing you need to do is network. I started my business by learning a bit about WordPress, and then offering my services to local business organisations, in addition to friends and family. The key is meeting people in your area or online and finding a target group of clients that you can offer your services to. Not every client has to be in the same niche, though it can help to have a focus on a specific area, like healthcare/doctors for instance.

Another critical thing I should mention is that offering some kind of recurring plan for ongoing maintenance, support, or hosting has been a vital lifeline of revenue and a source of ongoing partnerships, referrals, and growth opportunities for both us and our clients.

Finally, set up your pricing plans early on. Don’t be flexible and give any price that you think a client can afford. Fix your prices and be transparent with your clients about it. I recommend offering no discounts for your core services, and perhaps only discounting “add-on” services in some cases.”

Sadia Zia

I work as a Senior Digital Content Producer at Cloudways. Creating content keeps me busy for the most part, but I relish discovery, adventure, and thrive in challenging situations and environments.

Get Connected on: Twitter Community Forum