Although Different Resonance was registered in April of 2021, we didn’t officially launch as Hull’s newest marketing agency until July 2021.
Over the past 12 months, we’ve continued our shift away from purely social media marketing to being a wider content marketing agency.
This has meant we’ve worked on more exciting projects, increased revenues and had even more opportunities to collaborate with other small businesses in the area.
But what have we learnt?
We’ve been having a think about what our biggest learning was from the last year but we struggled to focus on just one. So, we pulled together a list of five (sorry!).
5 lessons learnt from a year as a content marketing agency
Lesson 1 – The finish line moves as quick as you do.
When Matt started as a freelancer, he had goals and ambitions that he quickly reached. But then he had new goals and ambitions. When Different Resonance was created, there were clear goals set out internally. We met those goals. But now there are new ones.
In business, we get trapped in this cycle a lot. When we overcome one challenge, we’re instantly looking for the next. One thing we’re (still) learning to do is to take time to appreciate those wins, both big and small.
Lesson 2 – Treat people well.
This is something Matt has been keen on since he started as a freelancer. You don’t have to like everyone but you never know what role people will play in your journey.
Recently, Matt bumped into an old contact. Someone, who is at a different level to Matt. More experienced, dealing on an international basis daily and signs deals worth 7 figures.
When Matt saw him at an event, he went over to say “hello” but wasn’t expecting anything else.
A couple of weeks later, they’re meeting for lunch to discuss some ideas which could see us working on projects far bigger than anything we’ve done before.
This all came from Matt making a positive impression over time.
Lesson 3 – Know when to cut your losses.
Over the past year, there’s been a few times that we’ve known something isn’t working.
Whether that’s internally, with partners or even with clients.
We’re still not getting this 100% right, but identifying when something isn’t working, acknowledging it and then making a change can save you so much time and money.
Across the last 12 months, there have been several times when we should have cut our losses earlier and stopped whatever it was that wasn’t going well.
Learning to trust our gut is something we’ll be continuing to work on next year too.
Lesson 4 – Shoot your shot more often.
Back in November, we were working on a brochure for Visit Hull.
Throughout, we kept writing about how “family-friendly” all the attractions in Hull are.
This got us thinking. Surely most attractions in cities across the UK say they’re family-friendly. So, how does writing this differentiate them?
We then developed a couple of ideas and approached Visit Hull, asking for the opportunity to pitch them to them. They said yes, the meeting went well and we’re now close to launching a pilot for one of those ideas.
This wasn’t something they’d asked for. We just took the initiative to show them how they could be doing things differently and it paid off.
Lesson 5 – Give something back.
This may sound a bit preachy, but taking time out to give back to others has been amazing.
Not only have we won some new business through the connections we’ve made but we’ve also made a real impact well beyond anything we could do in our day-to-day work.
Working with Boulevard Academy, Hull & East Yorkshire Children’s University and HEY LEP, we’ve been able to see the impact of our volunteering and charitable work on young people in Hull.
Hull is an amazing city and we’re keen to promote that to people well beyond the city boundaries. But we’re also keen to ensure more young people within the city get the opportunities normally only afforded to those from affluent backgrounds or bigger cities.
Wrapping up
Hopefully, no matter what role you’re in, you’re able to relate to some of these lessons, or even take something away from them yourself.
We’re by no means perfect, but we love learning from others. This might be utterly useless for many of you but fingers crossed someone has found some value in it.