Back in 2012, Zak and Dustin put their heads together and realized their local Peterborough was brimming with potential for a new digital marketing and web design agency for fledgling businesses ready to soar. With more and more businesses in different industries clamoring for an online presence, there was space for an agency to deliver high-quality results.
Not content with one epiphany, they also realized that they were the perfect duo to get this agency off the ground. Dustin’s digital marketing background let him promote fitness equipment and full gym refurbishments for a large ecommerce business. As for Zak, he used his computing knowledge to make website updates and improvements for local connections. What if the sum of their skills was greater than the whole?
And that’s where the story of Echo begins.
Since its inception, Zak and Dustin, along with the rest of the Echo team, have dedicated their burning passion for digital success to helping online businesses.
Let’s take a look at the challenges this Cloudways Partner Agency has mastered on its way to success.
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Beginner Challenges
The biggest challenge Echo faced in its initial days was one common to most new agencies – gaining the trust of new clients. Given Echo’s ethos of helping all kinds of businesses grow, the agency refused to confine itself to one particular niche, searching instead for the right partners regardless of industry.
However, there was also a challenge with, as the founders put it, “aligning ourselves with businesses with similar outlooks and goals to us. We want to work with businesses who have the vision to grow and be the best online whether that’s locally, nationally or internationally.”
To find the right partners, Zak and Dustin early realized the significance of delivering exceptional results every day. Slowly but surely, business owners slowly started recommending Echo’s services to others. Positive word-of-mouth led to a healthy stream of work, and the agency hired its first member of staff.
So while providing services for a range of industries was a challenge in itself, it allowed Echo to supercharge its services across the digital sector and excel in online marketing.
Zak and Dustin’s most challenging project, however, turned out to be taking on board a fresh produce client. This client had to quickly turn themselves into an ecommerce business that could handle extremely high volumes of traffic at the start of the national lockdown in the UK. Echo rose to the occasion, handling the client’s huge operational change, and ensuring their marketing capitalized on the current situation as well.
Echo’s Biggest Achievements to Date
For Zak and Dustin, their biggest achievement has been their growth during COVID.
“As with many businesses, we were unsure about how this would affect our businesses and the industry as a whole but we’ve navigated it well and are in a better position now than ever before.”
The Ingredients to Echo’s Success
Success is a matter of principle at Echo. “We always strive to be better, be straightforward and be daring. Our success comes from us always wanting to try new things, produce better results and being open and honest with our clients.”
Zak and Dustin also point to their business partners as factors in their success. Their choice to go with managed hosting provider Cloudways was all about delivering high-performance websites using the latest technology. “It gives us the peace of mind that the many servers we run are in safe hands, with access to constant support, and at very economical prices. We can deploy the exact spec served for our clients’ website demands and scale extremely quickly.”
The duo cites Cloudways’ easy-to-use control panel as an effective tool, along with its welcome technologies to help website performance and security.
“It’s a one-stop-shop for the best cloud-based servers, taking away many potential points of failure.”
The Apps Echo Recommends
Zak and Dustin understand the significance of project management tools for efficiency. They label three apps in particular that help them achieve day-to-day productivity:
- Asana for task tracking
- Everhour for time tracking
- Skype for internal communication
Tips from Zak and Dustin for New Agency Owners
- Don’t limit yourselves too much too soon.
- Deliver great results for clients and then scale up.
Also, check our webinar on how to get high value clients for your marketing agency.
Arsalan Sajid
Arsalan, a Digital Marketer by profession, works as a Startups and Digital Agencies Community Manager at Cloudways. He loves all things entrepreneurial and wakes up every day with the desire to enable the dreams of aspiring entrepreneurs through his work!