The Step Change Blog

Every business today needs a good SEO strategy to differentiate themselves from everyone else. Those who manage to rank in top search results get up to 33% more clicks.

But even when you have done everything you could to boost your SEO efforts by creating great content or optimising your website to showcase who you are and what you’re offering, it’s easy to get lost in the fold with over 1.3 billion websites in existence as of January 2018. That’s a whole lot of content and links to sort out.

Running a business or managing a team is no walk in the park. Along the way, we realise that failure is unavoidable and sometimes even necessary. In this fourth video of a five-part interview series, we asked former Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts on what we can learn from failure and how to make the most of it.

If I told you there was a way to earn three times as many leads without spending any more money on marketing, would you believe me? Because that’s exactly what happens when you switch from the traditional outbound marketing to content marketing.

A four-billion dollar merger is underway between two of the country’s media player giants, Nine Entertainment and Fairfax Media. The new company name after the merger is Nine, and it is set to become Australia’s formidable integrated media player.

With two giants combining forces to create one formidable integrated media player, there is one worthy question that begs an answer.

Marketing automation assures us of one thing: it’s a powerful, remarkable, personalised way to engage with your audience. And if it’s done right, it can give you an edge over the competition in the war for customer attention.

In the language of strategy, we often say, “There’s a need for strategy because time, dollars, and focus are scarce and limited resources.” A strong business strategy is the application of these resources for maximum leverage.

But in developing a solid business strategy, you first need to check that you’re actually doing strategy and not something else entirely — like business planning.

When your employees make a serious mistake, what’s their initial response? Is it making excuses? Finger pointing? Or do they have a great sense of ownership for business results that they take action to solve the problem and learn from their mistake?

Buyer personas. Either you have them but your team doesn’t know how to use them, so they’re good as gone — or your team simply skipped creating one to get to the ‘real work’.

While many companies are aware of the general importance of personas, they don’t fully understand what it is they’re trying to do when they create them.

Big announcements from the agency on our roadmap to growth, plus a look at the Step Change culture — all in this week’s Step Change News.

Today’s customers and prospects know exactly what they want and go online to find it. To market your business in this new age, you need more than just the right message to stand out and drive customer loyalty. You need to do more than just create the right offer.

Even Amazon‘s $685 billion market value couldn‘t save the Amazon Fire. Launching a product online takes a lot of work — and it‘s something that can elude even the largest companies in the world.

In the midst of constant discontinuity, only one thing is certain: technology will disrupt every aspect of our lives and drive how business is done in the coming years. For CMOs, it is crucial to know and understand what these technologies are and how they are disrupting the way we do business today.

Digital transformation — you may have heard this term in a recent digital conference you’ve attended, or you may be even assigned to lead one. And you’re not the only one, because right now, it is a big focus in growing organisations.

Many agencies who are at their optimal performance are striving to achieve peak performance thinking that is what is needed to win.

So we asked former Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts how to maintain peak performance in your team and as an individual. In this video, he also shares how he has been able to put this into action to get to where he is now.

If you have thought about venturing into a new market to expand your reach, promote brand awareness, or increase revenue, there are few key points you need to consider first. And it’s not as simple as you may think.

Over the years, growth hacking has been a widely used buzzword among startups. And although a lot has happened since Sean Ellis coined the term in 2010, many are still unsure about what growth hacking is and why it matters to their challenger business.

As more brands turn to video to get their content noticed, the need to put out engaging content is no longer an option but a necessity.

In today’s crowded marketplace, the need to stand out from the competition is crucial. But more importantly, in order to win, Financial Services companies need to look into existing challenges that may be stopping them from achieving true differentiation in their industry.

Every year, we work with a hundred clients everywhere and anywhere, from Wellington to Toronto, and in one of our strategic sessions, Step Change chief Ashton Bishop was given a challenge: Out of all the strategy work that the team has done at Step Change, how can we add the most value in 5 minutes? Here’s his response to the 5-minute challenge with his five tips on strategy.  

No matter how far-reaching a leader’s vision may be, the reality is that transforming organisations is a difficult and arduous task. Many businesses today are so deeply rooted in operational efficiency and stability that they continue to struggle with how to effectively manage and sustain change.

If great strategic thinkers like Anita Roddick, Jean Nidetch, and Mother Teresa would run your business, how would they transform your customers into raving fans?

Are you working unpaid overtime and struggling to see the value of this for yourself or for your organisation? We are interested to understand the positives and negatives of unpaid overtime, for individuals and organisations. Help us shed light into the matter by taking this survey. This is open to everyone working in Australia.

One of the many challenges businesses face today more than ever is connecting with their audiences, whether it's their customers or employees.

What may be a significant policy update that can lead to positive change, if delivered in the wrong tone or framed in the wrong way, could end up being received poorly by the team.

A blog is a powerful tool every business should have. If you want to stay relevant and competitive, if you want to be found online, a business blog is a necessity. It’s simply the most effective tactic that allows you to attract, engage, and nurture leads as they go through the stages in your marketing funnel.

It was Steve Forbes who famously said, “Your brand is the single most important investment in your business.” But some, if not most, businesses tend to misunderstand this. Here’s why.

In the second part of this series, Insights from Kevin Roberts, we ask the former CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi what goes on in his head when he talks to clients.

Look into any business and marketing is usually the first budget to be ignored — or cut out entirely. 

What really makes people decide to buy? And no, it doesn't have a lot to do with singing kittens riding bikes. Find out what does work here:

Every year, businesses spend thousands of dollars on campaigns that would just fail. Why? Because they missed to focus on one vital thing: relevance.