East West Digital Marketing is an agency that focuses on building your brands and help you make a strong online presence worldwide. In this case study, I asked Chadwick how is his journey going on with Cloudways so far. What were the challenges he faced during COVID-19 and how Cloudways has got him back? Let’s begin!
Farhan: Hey Chadwick, could you please tell us a little bit about East West Digital Marketing. How and when did you start it?
Chadwick: East West Digital Marketing actually grew out of a billboard company. Clients kept asking who they could use to build out their web presence and East West Media (as it was called then) would recommend them to a few local businesses they were aware of.
They consistently got feedback from clients that these businesses were unreliable or did subpar work, so eventually, East West Media decided to spin up East West Digital Marketing in the fall of 2017 as an arm of the billboard company.
Farhan: You started as a graphic designer and ended up as a web developer. Could you please tell us about your motivation behind it? How did you overcome the initial challenges you faced?
Chadwick: That’s a really interesting story. I did start my career in this space as a graphic designer but prior to that, I was a school teacher, financial advisor, ropes course director, guide, and outdoor educator. My degree is in biology and I started learning to write code completely on accident about 2 weeks into a GIS Programming and Customization course at the University of Florida.
They mentioned we’d be primarily working in C# which I had never heard of before. So I learned it and went on to learn some HTML, JS, and CSS through Team Treehouse and just started exploring around a bit on my own.
Exploring on your own requires you dabble in a little of everything: creating your own graphics, your own animations, editing your own videos, all of it. When East West Media needed a new billboard designer, I applied for the position. I quickly moved into assisting with web builds, project management, and client relations.
I think what attracted me to web development was the ever-changing fluid nature of the task. You can build anything, with almost any tool: a site can be WordPress, react, just HTML, and CSS, it’s really just a toolset that’s ever-growing and changing and that challenge is fun. Finding new and innovative ways to solve problems and address client needs.
As far as initial challenges, I think it can be overwhelming. Where do I start? How do I start? I think because of this overwhelming information overload. A lot of developers who are just starting out really face an imposter syndrome like they aren’t real developers. When you help real businesses solve real problems, at some point, you have to squash that little voice and just tell yourself this is real to someone.
Farhan: It would be great if you can share the idea behind 10 Minutes Marketing? Please also tell us when are you going to create/upload other episodes?
Chadwick: 10 Minute Marketing was an idea birthed at the beginning of the pandemic. We weren’t sure how the pandemic was going to shape our particular area of the world and what that looked like for the marketing budgets of small businesses.
We opted to get ahead of the curve and start putting out some content really trying to emphasize the idea that cutting your marketing budget right now was a bad idea – people were about to be stuck in their homes, scrolling Facebook and Instagram, not driving past your billboards, and this was your chance to reach them right where they were.
It was something we were playing with more than anything and frankly, we have no idea when new episodes might go up. We’re currently covered up in work and shortly after that first episode got several calls for new web builds that people had been putting off. Whenever we have time I’m sure we’ll return to that idea but for now, it’s clients first.
Farhan: Your digital agency offers various services such as web development, SEO, email marketing, etc. Could you please tell us about your role there and how do you manage your team?
Chadwick: We aren’t really a traditional company with specialized roles and really only hire utility players. There are three of us currently but we pull in others as needed: John David, Abi, and myself. I primarily handle larger, more complex web builds, those that require a lot of integration with CRMs, development of workflows, etc.
Since we work with a lot of small businesses, they often need everything about their online presence: Facebook, Google Ads, Google My Business, business email addresses, Mailchimp, domains purchased, and anything a small business might need.
I walk them through what that looks like and how they can best utilize the different systems and we automate what we can. John David handles most creative things: logo design, branding, font choice, videography, photography, anything that falls in the more creative realm. Abi handles the social piece and a lot of the client relations: social media management, blog writing, content strategy, and checking in with clients.
When I say we aren’t specialized what I mean is every member of our team can fill in for any role if necessary. Some nights I’m editing videos while John David is building sites. Abi has built sites before and handles all her own graphic design for social media. I’m pretty particular about only hiring people that follow up the phrase “I don’t know how to do that” with “but I’ll go find out.”
Everyone here is curious, smart, and driven. I’ve had employees that were worker bees and that just doesn’t work in a fast-paced, agile environment. I need everyone to be able to take a client meeting, close a deal, build a site, run a photoshoot, and design a logo. That’s what we have.
Our team is specifically composed of driven and curious individuals. I don’t really have to manage them at all. I speak with Abi maybe once a month and if a client calls with a request, I’ll forward that to her but other than that she does what she’s supposed to do if a client has a complaint, she handles it, and I never hear about it. Same with John David but we live close to one another and see each other often.
There are no hours! We recently got rid of our office and went completely remote. John David teaches at the local forest school on Tuesday and Thursday because it’s something he wants to do and I trust he’ll get done what he needs to get done and I haven’t been disappointed yet.
Farhan: Where did you first hear about Cloudways? What were the reasons that made you switch to Cloudways?
Chadwick: I didn’t set up the digital marketing arm of East West Media in 2017 but Cloudways was chosen at that time. So I’ve never really made the switch to Cloudways, it’s just always been a part of my workflow. Though I have seen other similar companies recommended and done a fair amount of research to see if they might be more cost-effective for our business and keep coming back to the idea that Cloudways is the answer.
I’ll find a service that’s cheaper and then find horror stories regarding downtimes or lost backups or any number of things and frankly, my time is just worth the cost of not having to fix those problems. Cloudways always work, has the most responsive and knowledgeable support team, and has an intuitive backend. I’m not fixing what isn’t broken and Cloudways hasn’t failed me for the 4 years we’ve been using it.
Farhan: The global pandemic has changed the world and affected many businesses. What challenges you have faced and how did you tackle them? How Cloudways helped you in your tough times?
Chadwick: We’re in a market here in East TN and that’s primarily composed of small businesses. People eat at local restaurants, local shops, and hire local services and those are the types of businesses we serve.
The pandemic hit small businesses especially hard, they didn’t have large corporate backing to weather rough times nor the resources to totally pivot their whole business so for many of them to answer was just “well we’ll shut down till this is over.”
We spent a fair amount of time convincing clients that weren’t the answer and brainstorming ways to continue to operate within the guidelines imposed by the pandemic. Some clients were all in. We had our largest web build happen during the pandemic and our largest video production. We signed our largest retainer and really learned that people who doubled down on the digital space did really well.
Cloudways was more than up to the task of scaling with our clients’ needs during that time. We doubled our server size and still kept costs reasonable. The migration process with the plugin was also a great boon. Some clients just wanted to take their site and have it managed by a local company.
The Cloudways Migrator plugin allowed us to sell reasonable monthly retainers for hosting and maintenance that people felt good about since the money was going back into the local economy.
Farhan: Name a few challenges you were facing prior to moving to Cloudways? What problems did you solve with Cloudways?
Chadwick: As I said earlier, we started with Cloudways and will most likely never leave but I’ve migrated people from some other services and I’ve had to manage a few sites on other hosts and Cloudways just gives me the most answers.
When something happens, a site is down, a server CPU usage is high, an SSL certificate is failing, and a client calls in to ask what has happened to their site, I know I can always find the information on the Cloudways blog or in my dashboard to fix this issue or Cloudways support will be able to fix it in under 15 minutes.
I’ve never had a problem they couldn’t fix and frankly. I’ve sat on hold with other hosts for hours with no answer. I’ve never done that with Cloudways. Cloudways gives me confidence that if I don’t know the answer, they do and that really helps me with clients.
Farhan: What features make Cloudways stand out from the rest? How Cloudways fulfilled your requirements and improved your digital experience?
Chadwick: Every host seems to offer similar features if you scan their homepage but the one thing they all promise that Cloudways really shines at is customer support. I honestly can’t say enough about it. The fact that any time there’s anything evenly slightly wrong (usually my fault on some level).
I can just hop on chat. there’s little wait time, and I’m talking with someone who doesn’t need to hand an issue off to a “technical team”, “escalate an issue”, or “put in a ticket”. Any issue I’m having is usually fixed in under 15-20 minutes. It’s incredible!
Piggybacking off that – support is something I rarely have to contact because Cloudways just works. It’s incredibly reliable.
It’s also incredibly flexible. I had a client decide to leave for a different host and different web developer, they had a multisite and the new host didn’t support a multisite on their plan. It was a mess, they couldn’t make their primary domain their main site, couldn’t transfer any of the subsites and kept asking why this was a problem.
I honestly had no idea because, with Cloudways, this wasn’t a new pricing tier for a multisite. There were no restrictions on what I could do with the server. It just met their needs perfectly. I think that was a big learning opportunity for them.
Scalability. The ability to scale to exactly the size I need on my Amazon Web Servers is incredible. There’s no per install scaling model or only three tiers that I definitely fall somewhere in the middle of. I can scale my CPUs and storage independently of each other to whatever size I need. I don’t have to pick “basic, freelancer, agency” I pick 8 vCPUs because that’s what I need.
Bot Protection. I have a client that is an IT security firm working with Dell, Microsoft, DUO, etc, and another client that is tangentially tied to NASA. Both are hammered consistently by bots from other countries trying to access their backend. Cloudways Bot Protection not only tells us where those attacks are coming from but mitigates them brilliantly.
The IT security firm once ran a penetration test on their own site without telling me, within 10 minutes they’re marketing team was calling me telling me the site was down and they couldn’t access it. Turns out Cloudways had blocked their own internal IP because of the penetration test. Once marketing got on the phone with IT, they said we passed.
The feature I like about Cloudways are:
- Incredible Support
- Reliability
- Flexibility
- Scalability
- Bot Protection
Cloudways functions as a silent partner that never fails. My lowest paid employee brings peace of mind to all my clients.
Farhan: How long have you been with Cloudways and how is your experience so far? Would you recommend Cloudways to anyone?
Chadwick: 4 years. It’s been absolutely incredible. I recommend it to everyone.
Farhan: It would be great if you can share some pictures of your workplace.
Chadwick: Sure!
Sajjad Shahid
Sajjad is an Ecommerce Community Manager at Cloudways. He loves helping out Ecommerce store owners, merchants and marketers in establishing their businesses and startups. Sajjad enjoys playing table tennis and cricket over the weekend.
