Our Full-Funnel approach

We’ve had our fair share of awards and accolades over the years but the most rewarding outcome of all, is shared business success. That’s why the very first question we’ll ask at the start of every partnership or campaign is, ‘what does success look like?’

Modern day marketing metrics are mind-bendingly complex. The trick is to strip back to the top 3-5 real marketing growth-drivers that will achieve your business objectives. If you know what they are - fantastic. We’ll create a brand and communications strategy to hit them. If you need some help - you might like to engage some Fractional CMO services before you get the wider agency team involved. We also work on the ‘Total Marketing Investment’ or TMI model to make sure your budget investment at top of funnel aligns with a clear expectation of ROI out the bottom.

We’ve used all the traditional Brand Strategy and Brand Planning models – and can align with or polish any Brand Wheel, Brand Essence or USP you’d like to throw at us. But if we’re given a clean sheet, our preference is always to start with a Brand Positioning strategy that’s ‘RDC’ (relevant, distinctive and competitive). We’ll often express this in two ways; a short-form Brand Architecture model for easy reference, supported by a more emotive Brand Manifesto that brings the positioning to life in a few paragraphs.

Once you’ve got your brand strategy foundations in place, sometimes it’s just about cracking an amazing idea to set it alight - and amplify. That can be a quick-fire, make-the-till-ring tactical idea. Or, if given the opportunity, we’ll always prefer to craft a flexible creative platform that can tell a variety of stories, across multiple mediums and build brand equity over time. In our humble opinion; any halfway decent agency should be able to push-out a decent idea. But great agencies create ideas with lasting currency and value – leading to strong competitive advantage that should last for decades.

Sometimes all your existing Brand Identity assets are good-to-go. Sometimes a new positioning strategy requires a new name and a new brand identity – or simply a polish of an existing identity. Sometimes design sits at the very centre of the magic that will bring a campaign idea to life. We’ve always invested in world-class design capability because sometimes it’s craft that makes the difference.

This is where we excel. Our 10-Step Full-Funnel planning process has been tested on over 84 different brands and counting, across hundreds of campaigns and tens of millions in media and ROI learnings. We’ll craft a proper ROI-based funnel that uses the right mix of modern digital, social and traditional media to track investment in the top - and traffic, leads, prospects, sales and profitability out the bottom. Along the way we’ll demonstrate how to co-ordinate all the essential elements of the modern marketing mix such as traditional, social, digital display, SEM, SEO, CRO and re-marketing.

We recognise that finding the right agency partner is stressful and risky. Making sure the partnership fit is right is essential for the agency too. That’s why we’re happy to engage on small test campaigns and projects. Sometimes there’s no need for protracted contracts or expensive and time-wasting pitch processes. Let’s see if we can work together well, enjoy the process, and get the result on a small project first?

Social ads will often sit at the center of any healthy funnel. But day-to-day social content (to drive social proof) is a complex beast. That’s why in 2015 we established specialist social agency Social Sugar – the #1 Social Commerce specialist in NZ. Social Sugar specialises in targeted social ad campaigns to drive traffic, leads or e-commerce sales, plus world-class day-to-day social media management in New Zealand and Internationally.

Modern, ‘Full-Funnel’ marketing is impossible unless you have a simple, clear picture of your marketing ROI. Our 10-Step Full-Funnel planning process has led to the development of reporting tools and techniques that help untangle the modern attribution mess and generate proper insights that can be used to make concrete gains in profitability. We report monthly or bi-monthly - and these reports underpin many of our most enduring payment-by-results partnerships.