18th February 2019
We’re all prone to associating independence with success. From tying your laces for the first time to renting your first flat, these solo acts come with much praise and commendation for independence. How does this translate to your business or charity?
The success of your business is dependent on working in the best interests of others. Your relationship with customers or supporters will be evident in your product sales, or your donations. For the latter, you'll also be in a great relationship with a generous supporter base who want to be part of your story. In both cases, having strong internal and external relationships will take your business from good to great. Honing your relationship with external and internal partners is an integral element of your brand development and growth, yet something often looked over in the hustle bustle of, 'just get it done'.
You may have gathered, Studio Republic is trying to be a sustainable business. Not that we haven’t mentioned that before. You’ll hear us talking about sustainability in all its contexts.
Google dictionary describes sustainability as:
noun: the ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level."the sustainability of economic growth"
avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance."the pursuit of global environmental sustainability"
What some people don’t realise is how we ensure that this ethos is reflected in our relationships with our clients, and our charity work. When we are talking about sustainability, we’re bringing both economic sustainability and environmental sustainability to the table. We care about people and the planet. A lot.
When we say we create sustainable digital products for our clients, we mean products that will perform well for them on a continuing basis. We don’t leave our clients high and dry at the mercy of technological developments, as we know evolving with time is more effective than complete redevelopment every few years.
This is where we get back to independence and relationships. Acknowledging that ongoing support is needed to maintain a certain calibre of digital work may not sound favourable to those who strive for the success of independence. But that’s where we strip it back. For us, sustainable working is built on relationships.
Launching a new website, app or content campaign has been long associated with being the closing element of a project. But that’s not how we see it – and hopefully you agree.
We’re seeing a striking increase in the volume of businesses and charities who are looking beyond their launch day. The project spectrum now reaches further, with more people asking, “what’s next?” and viewing the deliverable itself as the start of our working relationship and not the end. Music to our ears.
We’ve seen many a project in our 15 years; some of which have thrived and reaped the rewards of listening to our Grandfatherly advice. During this time, we’ve seen other clients choose to step away from ongoing support following their project delivery. Financial constraints are often the perpetrator, understandable though often preventable. With no investment and assessment, websites become quickly outdated, slow, behind their competitors. With a site left to its own devices for too long, a trip to the digital emergency department won’t cut it – and that recovery procedure is going to cost you enough to make Helen in Finance spit out her cup of tea.
Thankfully our clients are becoming increasingly less afraid of commitment, and together we’re championing the art of sustainable practices. Our clients are looking to improve efficiencies and become more sustainable. They’re coming to us looking for a longer term relationship. We want the same thing. It’s not just about clean energy and your carbon footprint – it’s sustainable relationships that are imperative to the health and longevity of your business. That’s where we come in.
We gave ourselves a little makeover in 2017, shifting our ethos to what you see today. An element of this shift was reassessing how we manage and support our Ongoing Support clients, including what we'd call them. Four cups of coffee later, we had our plan set.
We’d call them Thrive. Because that’s exactly what they do.
‘Support’ was too cold and lacked the oomph we were looking for, in technical terms. We encourage growth, we teach, we nurture, we do so much more than simply ‘support’. We thrive.
These Thrive relationships have ... well, thrived. We’ve taken startups from concept to fully fledged brands. We’ve taken brands with heritage and built upon that heritage. We’ve evolved websites in line with business models, tech developments, and customer needs. In an ideal world, a two year old website would look quite different to a newly launched site. At the end of the day, a website needs to serve a purpose. Whether you need increased sales, bookings, donations, memberships, or anything else, you need your website to convert. You continue to thrive.
Relationships are important to us. We want you to be happy to pick up the phone from the moment we first connect. We’re here to answer questions at any point in the journey. We work closely to audit a brand. Helping a company start their own sustainability journey is intensive. Delivering a new website is rigorous. It’s important to us that this is the start of something new. The refined brand is good. The sustainability journey has had a good start. The new website is good too. Working together in the long term, we make changes that elevate good to great. Great is great.
We’ve been working with Step by Step since September 2018. Having undergone a branding process, they came to us needing their website to become an income generating tool for the charity. Over the time we’ve worked together, we’ve been able to use multi-variant testing to make changes to the site to decrease bounce rates. We’ve run an income generating campaign and developed the use of Facebook advertising to support this. We’ve started to support Step by Step with the management of their Google Grant account so that they can make the most of their $10,000 per month free ad spend, and developed powerful marketing campaigns together to support their website goals and brand values. Our partnership is on course to increase their relevant traffic and subsequent engagement with those perusing their pages. Increased donations, event participation, fundraisers, volunteering – ongoing digital developments are increasing the charity's effectiveness.
Close monitoring, industry environmental impacts reporting, a perseverance of strong relationships – that’s sustainability. Sure, renewable energy, energy and water savings are important too – but let's start talking more. We’re in this together.
Let’s thrive. Let's get coffee, because this is creative for good. hello@studiorepublic.com