Online Events

Our CFO surgery is for the folks with their finger on the financial pulse. You can ask questions, seek support, share wisdom, and troubleshoot in real time.

This month, we’ll be discussing managing your budget vs supporting your team.

• How do you juggle staff support with increasing costs?
• Should you prioritise the agency or the team?
• What strategies are you taking up to deal with this problem?

Join this month’s session to discuss all this and more – and help others in need of some advice.

Every month, the marketing minds of the Agency Hackers audience come together to discuss what’s going on in their world. 

This month, we’ll be discussing email marketing. 

• Do you use emails as a source of new leads?
• What are the pros and cons of email marketing?
• How can you best start to build a mailing list?

Come along to discuss all of this and more, and maybe even pick up some tips.

“What are you doing to make your agency more sustainable?”

Today, it’s inevitable one of your partners or suppliers is going to turn around and ask you this question.

If you’re not already doing something, what can you do about it?

“I saw a post from another agency owner reflecting on Ecologi,” says Alex Holliman, managing director of Climbing Trees.

“You basically input information about your business and team, and it calculates how much carbon you generate,” he says. “That was the first thing I did.”

“I then probably went away for a few months and felt quite good about being some sort of environmental hero, whilst having actually changed nothing.”

Alex eventually decided to get more information from other people in his shoes. This led him to look towards B-Corp accreditation.

“The process allowed me to double down on making foundational changes in the business that actually have real meaning,” he says.

“I genuinely think that environmental concerns should be at the heart of what we do as a business, as a country, and as a species. Every decision we make as a human will have an impact on the environment – whether you recognise it or not.”

Katie Parry started her journey from a similar place. 

She wanted her agency Supercool to become more sustainable – but had no idea where to begin.

“I started feeling a bit guilty about, you know, the world burning,” she laughs. “So, we started planting trees for every website that we launched for a client.”

“Then I realised, ‘Actually, this is a bit naff’. Planting a tree is nice, but it seems a little bit like greenwashing because we haven’t got any data behind it.”

Much like Alex, Katie enrolled in a course by BIMA to determine her agency’s carbon footprint (there is now a similar course offered by FutureLearn). This helped her calculate the carbon footprint of each project they delivered.

Now, Supercool have made multiple pledges on their website, and are looking into how they can influence others to follow suit.

“The more people talk about it and share ideas about what you can do, what’s worked and what hasn’t worked, hopefully the more difference we can all make,” says Katie.

Come along to find out the small steps you can take to make your agency more sustainable and listen to real life experiences from those who have tried.

“A squirrel eating an avocado got the most views I’ve ever had – like a million or something…”

“That just shows how LinkedIn has changed – people want more entertaining content.”

Each month, we get together to discuss what does and doesn’t work on LinkedIn. 

It’s a chance to share your social media struggles and successes – and get the low down on how to grow your brand. 

This month, we’re joined by Rob Illidge, who’ll be talking about using comedy on LinkedIn.

“It’s such a good strategy for potential clients because they see your content and say, ‘I just want to work with someone normal, someone who is just like me’,” he says. “You just naturally connect with other like-minded people, and then they see the work you’ve done.”

Rob is the CEO of social media agency Social Republic, and the creator of free LinkedIn scheduling tool Vulse. 

He’s been using comedy on LinkedIn since before it was cool – back when everyone just posted job advertisements and career milestones.

Now, he’s got a great new biz strategy for his agency, just by being himself. 

“We don’t do any advertising for the business. It’s all through LinkedIn content, and any SEO work we’ve done in the past,” says Rob. “We don’t have to actively go out and advertise, which is great.”

In this session, we’ll be going through:

• How effective is comedy on LinkedIn?
• What do you do when a jokey post doesn’t land or have the desired effect?
• Are there some jokes or topics that are totally off limits?
• What benefits does posting in this way bring to your agency?

Come along to quiz the comedy expert, and maybe even get some meme editing tips…

“As an agency owner, I now have a purpose and a sense of being bound to the work that I do, that I simply didn’t have before,” he says.

David Glennie, CEO at Voodoo Park, pivoted his agency’s purpose from being passively passionate about UX, to actively passionate about its people. 

Here’s what led him to this point:

• Voodoo Park’s clientele was predominantly travel and leisure, which meant the national lockdown in 2020 caused radio silence across the board.
• David was approached by a FinTech company; they asked him to put together a team of developers for them to use on a loan basis.
  The loss of clients and the pressure to pay his staff’s wages meant David was forced to accept. This allowed the business to continue its growth journey.

Still unhappy about his agency’s loss of purpose, David began to wonder what else he could do to reignite the passion to work amongst his team (and himself). 

First, he offered new perks and benefits, but he still felt like he could do more.

“If you have privilege and agency, I think you have an obligation to do something with that privilege and agency, other than just increase your own personal wealth,” he says. “We now have the ability to create action with our agency, we’re making money – so what can we do to help?”

So, they set up the Voodoo Park Trust: essentially a money pot to do good things.

“Money raised from the work that people do goes back into their communities via the trust,” David says.“We focus on women’s education, health and businesses. If you want to lift up a community, lift up its women.”

Some of the initiatives they’ve introduced include:

• Financing micro loans in Guatemala. 
• Training girls in Nepal to be guides.
• Paying sewing circles to produce period products for young girls in West Africa.

“Just start asking all the questions again, as if you didn’t already know the answers, and you will arrive at somewhere like this,” David says. “This is what people want to buy. This is where people want to work. This is what my unborn grandchildren need me to do.”

Come along and hear how David pivoted his agency to become community purpose-led, and how it’s transformed the way he feels about his business.

When it comes to lead generation, Alex Sibille likes to take things slow and steady.

“The way we do lead generation is considered very slow, curated, bespoke, and very carefully considered,” says the co-founder of Future Factory.

When it comes to mass emailing or automated marketing, there are risks.

• What kind of first impression are really you making?
• How well qualified are those meetings?
• Will a prospect even see your message – or will it go to spam?
• What about the minefield that is GDPR?

“The mass approach can sometimes be a risky or lazy move for agencies. For most, they’ve got a couple hundred prospective clients that are an ideal fit, and so to risk burning those bridges or closing those doors is short-termist,” Alex says.

How do you approach lead generation? Come along with your thoughts and experiences and share them with Alex – it’s not one-size-fits-all.

Each month, the client services reps and account managers of our Agency Hackers audience come together to discuss what’s going on in their world.

This month, we’re talking about upskilling and blended teams.

• What are the benefits of working with a blended team?
• How do you begin to transition to this structure of working?
• Is upskilling fair? Does this result in too much responsibility on one person?

Come along to discuss all this and more – and get advice from others who have given it a go.

Our monthly mastermind is the place for HR and ‘people’ people to ask questions, seek support, share their own wisdom too. 

This month, we’re talking about transparency.

• How ‘in the loop’ should your staff be?
• What boundaries should you put in place?
• What information is always off limits?
• How do you effectively communicate agency changes to your team (selling your agency, acquisition etc.)?

We’ll be covering all this and more in your monthly catch-up session, so be sure to bring along some questions.

Our operations mastermind is a great place for ops folk to check-in with each other, and gain insight into what is happening at different agencies. 

This month, we’re circling back to time tracking.

• What software do you use to track time and productivity?
• How do you convert billable hours into hourly rates?
• How can you forecast capacity using time tracking?

Make sure to join this month’s session to discuss all this and more – and help others in need of some advice.

Our CFO surgery is for the folks with their finger on the financial pulse. You can ask questions, seek support, share wisdom, and troubleshoot in real time.

This month, we’ll be discussing managing a downturn.

• Have you experienced this recently? How have you tackled this problem?
• What prevention strategies can be put in place to soften the blow?
• Should your agency be focused on new biz or keeping the business afloat?

Join this month’s session to discuss all this and more – and help others in need of some advice.

Every month, the marketing minds of the Agency Hackers audience come together to discuss what’s going on in their world. 

This month, we’ll be discussing proposals, pitches and planning.

• How do YOU prepare for a business pitch?
• Do you use templates? What needs to be on there?
• How can you make sure you and your client are on the same page?

Come along to discuss all of this and more, and maybe even pick up some tips.

Each month, we get together to discuss what does and doesn’t work on LinkedIn. 

It’s a chance to share your social media struggles and successes – and get the low down on how to grow your brand. 

This month, we’ll be talking about LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

• Do you use LSN? Is it simple to use?
• What benefits and limitations are there?
• Are there better alternatives?

We’ll be discussing all this and more, so be sure to bring along some questions. If you’re clued up on this already, please lend your expertise!