At Freelo, Suzzie's floating agency plans her monthly workload, tracks her time and makes sure she doesn't go over the agreed budgets with her clients.
For Freelo asks Kateřina Jozífová
Zuzana Ševčíková is responsible for Suzzie
Published:
Sure, I'd love to. Since 2016 I have been intensively involved in online marketing. My primary domain is social media including paid advertising, strategic web content and email automation. I also write about topics from the world of ”online" on the blog Suzzie.cz. I have done several public and individual trainings for clients in B2B and B2C environments. For Impact Hub coworking space, I mentor smaller entrepreneurs and successful start-ups in the field of internet marketing. Since 2020, I also mentor as part of the #HolkyzMarketing project.
As for marketing agency - I personally feel that these words have a negative connotation on the market, so I try to avoid this term. We are a team of freelance marketing specialists. We specialize in content creation on the web and on social media, but also in paid advertising and emailing. You'll find great creatives on our team, each excelling in a different area of marketing. I appreciate every team member who helps our clients compete in the ”online jungle." 🙂
At the beginning of every month, I schedule tasks for each day in Freelo. Thanks to that I have an overview of what I have to accomplish every single day.
Most important difference is probably that we do not present ourselves as a marketing agency. 🙂 Our potential clients usually have bad experience with marketing aganies from the past. I try to make sure that our clients are not afraid to contact us and have a good feeling. So we adapted the communication on our website accordingly.
Another difference is that everyone in our team has several years of experience in the field and is constantly improving. I often notice situations where a junior gets a job in an agency, leaves after a few months (years) and starts to work as a freelancer. Often happens that someone junior works on projects in the agency and the work results correspond to that. I definitely want to avoid this in the future.
I'm glad we're breaking the myth that you can't just work online. Therefore we belong to the so-called floating agencies. We do not need to pay expensive office rent, we reduce the costs and the final price of our work for clients. We work and communicate mostly online, so we do not waste time with meetings, etc. We are available for our clients with ideas online and offline of course.
I notice that companies' approach to content marketing often consists of focusing on the target product or service. Little is said about what the customer will get out of it.
In terms of interest in online marketing services in general, I can say that the coronavirus crisis has probably helped the most, because everyone wants to be ”online now." Of course, on the other hand, it means more competition - both on social media and on Google, so we have to try even harder to help our clients.
In Freelo I can see how much time and budget we have left until the end of the month. Therefore, I'm able to do something extra for the client or warn him that we are over the budget limit.
I notice that companies' approach to content marketing is often focused on targeting product or service. Little is said about what the customer will get out of it. That's why we optimize a communication strategy for our clients, which is based on the customer's purchasing process. It means that we try to address the customer with a message that reflects his purchase phase. Then we try to distribute such a content to places where the customer is.
It is definitely automation for me. I think that in all fields, automation is an increasing topic. From a marketing perspective, we can imagine this as delivering the right content to the right audience at the right time. In practice, this is a bit more difficult to achieve, but the idea is good. I am glad that we can offer such automation to our e-shop clients for example.
Furthermore, I can't talk about trends, because these things we know for a long time, but little is still being done – such as messenger marketing, which is actually also a form of marketing automation. For me it is certainly also good quality content, which is missing in many companies, both in the form of articles or video content etc.
I like that Freelo has all features that we need for our work, but at the same time it has a simple user interface. When we switched to Freelo, most of our team knew Freelo from other projects already. I think it was a rather welcomed change for everyone.
Our team consists of 5 specialists focused on copywriting,SEO and PPC advertising. We also cooperate with other external experts who provide us professional photography services and video content for our clients.
Personally I plan to work a month in advance. For long-term clients I have specific days in my Google calendar. I don't have to switch between several clients and I'm able to concentrate better on my work. I work faster and efficient, which my clients appreciate when invoicing. 🙂 I schedule tasks for each day of the month at the beginning of each month in Freelo, so I know what to do that day. We have repetitive tasks for most of our clients so the acitivites are scheduled ahead. I track the time for individual tasks, just like other team members. Then I can control whether we are or not within the agreed budget for the particular cooperation. Team members organize their time according to their needs – I only demand a good quality output in the agreed deadline.
Our clients are very diverse – through medicine to robotic automation. Automation was probably the biggest challenge. I think we handled it well in the end. Creating content that explains this topic simply and in interesting way was not an easy task (thank you Marketa).
I am especially proud of the results of our work with a client running an e-shop with sports supplement, who gained by 600% new users from organic search during our one year cooperation. This was reflected in an increase b 200% in sales. I have to admit that I thought there is statistic error somewhere at first. 🙂
Also I have to mention our clients, for which we set up email automation – everyone returned the investment the same month. Most of them use emailing as the most conversion marketing channel with a high return on investment.
Keep an eye on all the deadlines so I don't forget anyone. Freelo is a great help to me. Furthermore, make sure that we do not exceed the agreed budgets for clients. In Freelo I see how much time and therefore financial budget we have left for the client. Thanks to that I know if we can do something extra for the client or not due to agreed budget.
It is also a great challenge for all of us to follow all marketing news and trends. This area is constantly changing, so we have to stay vigilant so that we do not miss something.
We try to follow our marketing "colleagues" - both in the Czech Republic and abroad. In addition, each of us attends professional conferences, courses, webinars and some of us also like podcasts. I personally like offline training and conferences the best - I always take away a lot of ideas from them. So I hope that things will calm down soon and we will have these opportunities again. We also keep an eye on the activities of our competitors - that way we can avoid some mistakes or notice where the competition is doing well and take a cue from them.
We write all the ideas in Google documents – then we have links nicely together for each project (client).
The biggest problems are deadlines, so I plan them a few days (sometimes weeks) in advance, if possible. The reason for not submitting the task, however, may not always be unreliability, but also illness or creative crisis (happened to me as well). In addition, sometimes submissions may occur, but the output still needs editing and reworking. I think keeping some extra time is good. Thanks to this, we avoid handing over poor quality output or&missed deadline.
I am glad that we dispel the well-known myth that it is not possible to work only online. Therefore we belong to the so-called floating agencies.
Firstime I worked in Freelo with our client Brani.cz – at that time we were still using Trello, which was unsatisfactory for us. Mainly due to the creation of tasks, confusing tracking of tasks, inability to monitor the current number of hours spent on a given project etc. I like that Freelo has all these features that we need for our work, but also has a simple user interface. When we switched to Freelo, most of our team already knew Freelo from other projects. I think it was more of a welcome change for everyone.
Personally, I lack the opportunity to sort tasks in the calendar – I would like to sort them according to the priorities of the day. In To-Do lists, I lack the option of time budget, which could be visible only to those who work on the To-Do list. The time could also be reseted there as for projects.
I would also appreciate when using repeated tasks, creation of the new task even though the old one is not yet completed. That would definitely help us a lot.
So, of course, readers should not miss our blog , where they will find a lot of interesting information from the world of online marketing. 🙂
Thank you for the opportunity to be interviewed, maybe again next time. 🙂
