What do you get when you put a digital designer and a strategic marketer in a single room? Well, this may give rise to something unique, like a flourishing digital agency called Squarebird that specializes in nurturing clients.
Squarebird is a UK-based web design agency in Bristol that intends to do things the right way based on reasoning and subject expertise. Two brothers – Nick and Jon Bird – started the agency together with no prior experience except for their power in strategic marketing and digital design.
Squarebird’s Humble Beginnings
Squarebird started its journey in 2015 and has grown quickly from a small bedroom office to an amazing team of 17 staff plus many photography and video freelancers. It delivers high-performing, creative, and money-churning websites, and supports SEO and digital marketing strategies for organizations of all sizes.
Squarebird’s story has been a real bedroom-to-boardroom saga. They are now working with many national and international organizations, such as Thatcher’s Cider, GLOBIS, Lancer Scott, EVONA, NHS, and Linux, to name a few.
Their team has developed over 300+ websites and has worked with more than 450 clients since their inception. Squarebird’s growth has been wholly organic, built through word-of-mouth and reputation. And they pride themselves on delivering high-quality results and services to their clients while ensuring the referrals keep rolling in.
Squarebird’s Achievements
“Our biggest achievements to date are being finalists for 3 awards, having a client on BBC’s Dragons’ Den and working for multiple clients around the globe. Furthermore, we are yet to invest in advertising which we believe is a testament to our quality of work.”
Nick and Jon both believe that actions and reputation speak louder than words. This is the reason why they haven’t been aggressively spending on advertising and building on client relationships in order to build on reputation.
Overcoming the Obstacles
Initially, Squarebird saw every day as a new challenge, especially with the business’ digital side. Finding work seemed to come naturally, resulting from word-of-mouth recommendations and referrals, which always attract the best kind of work. Hence, reputation was everything for Nick and Jon, so they worked extremely hard to over-deliver.
“Build your reputation and everything else will fall into place.”
One of Squarebird’s biggest challenges was finding the best partners to work with, especially concerning agency hosting.
Nick highlights in this interview:
The experience with the previous hosting providers was very poor, and that was hindering our business’ growth, providing poor technical support, poor website load times and an unfriendly management platform. This was until we found Cloudways!
Cloudways has helped streamline our processes and offer fantastic support to boot. We couldn’t be happier!
Want to Grow Like Squarebird With Cloudways?
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According to Jon and Nick, their holistic and proactive approach to the delivery of digital marketing and website projects is what makes Squarebird unique within the industry.
In most cases, a client looking for a new website will have to find or consult a marketing strategist, copywriter, web developer, graphic designer, illustrator, photographer, and more to develop a recipe of expertise for success.
Liaising and organizing with all parties to understand creative briefs as per the frequently occurring changes can negatively affect cohesion. However, that is not the case with Squarebird. Their clients gain additional value because each of Squarebird’s services is undertaken and directed by a team with complete strategy knowledge and a creative brief that underpins the very purpose of the project.
Jon and Nick further added that it would be easy to assume that the level of quality of each of their services may suffer due to the range of skills required, but thanks to their diverse team of professionals, this is far from being true.
“The results we achieve are deliverables that are clearly aligned with the original strategy, which was achieved in a slick and timely manner, vastly reducing the amount of administration, repetition, and delays that a client would usually experience.”
At Squarebird, their in-house team provides all of its services, unlike many other digital agencies. They do not outsource creative work. The brothers believe employing and empowering teams of talented, growing individuals is better.
Squarebird’s Success Story
The team at Squarebird was proactive enough to discover that many growing businesses needed ongoing marketing support that their web hosting providers couldn’t offer.
Many of the startups they engaged in within the early days (and gave time to where others wouldn’t) began to take off. This practice helped the client’s businesses grow, thereby generating more client-based work for Squarebird. Thus, Squarebird’s investment in clients and partners paid off very quickly. Their clients’ success is their success which became part of their philosophy – getting results breeds more work. This not only pertains to clients directly but also in the form of recommendations as well.
Finding a family-run business in this industry is extremely rare today. Squarebird’s approach of delivering and being present throughout the entire project lifecycle, maintaining an ongoing relationship, and caring for their client’s success (along with the founder’s reputation for getting results) separates them from other agencies.
The brothers conclude that their team’s potential is much more than that of an independent web developer and that they regularly beat many national agencies in pitches.
There’s no agency in the market today that offers a range of skills and expertise at an affordable rate as Squarebird, and clients can see that their team cares on a personal level. All of these combined attributes to Squarebird’s position in the market.
Squarebird is a member of the Agency Partnership Program at Cloudways, which unlocks enhanced support features, a range of co-marketing opportunities, and a lot more! If you are an agency owner and want to grow, this is the perfect program for you!
Tips from Nick and Jon Bird for New Agency Owners
- Build a reputation first and everything will fall into place.
- Deliver in a slick and timely manner while reducing administrative and repetitive delays a client otherwise faces
- Employ and empower teams of talented individuals
Shoaib Israr
Shoaib is a passionate digital marketer who believes creativity is everything. His interests lie in content, digital marketing and he loves to help agency and ecommerce business owners in growing and expanding their businesses. In his free time, Shoaib loves to play football or binge-watch some interesting shows on Netflix.
