Digivate

Please describe your organization.

I collaborated with Digivate within a project for a large United Kingdom postal company.

What is your position?

I was the marketing manager.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Digivate?

We had recently launched a new website for our business and had had a rebranding, so we needed to gain a strong digital presence for our company's name. They served as our digital agency.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

Digivate provided three main areas of service: SEO [search engine optimization] strategy, pay-per-click campaign management, plus social media and content creation. I had access to an account manager who dealt strictly with SEO work. They provided monthly reports for us, and we had quarterly business reviews.

We had a different account manager for pay-per-click services. We were on the phone daily and had a monthly report for activity in this area. Digivate managed our Twitter and LinkedIn channels and created relevant business content for the website, in the form of articles, blog posts, infographics, and tweets. They were a full-service provider from an online web service perspective.

How did you come to work with Digivate?

I had inherited Digivate from my last employer, so I wasn't the one who found them.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

I cannot disclose the exact figures involved. Digivate is very flexible with regards to budget and can scale their operations to fit many company sizes. Their pricing is competitive.

What is the status of this engagement?

I worked with them for around a year and a half. The company still collaborates with Digivate.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The results of Digivate's work were phenomenal. Initially, we had managed our social media pages in-house, so we didn't have a lot of followers or general engagement. Digivate created a digital presence for us and attracted leads to our business. They contributed with the right kind of content for our industry and created ideas that we could utilize on the site. We were very pleased with the results.

Their company is result-focused. If, for example, we were running a pay-per-click campaign and not generating much traffic through it because the click-cost was too high, they proactively took measures and came up with different ideas, without the need for our intervention.

If their agency felt that we should explore different avenues for gaining traffic, they weren't shy to put their ideas forward. One of their ideas was for us to launch a Facebook page as part of our social media presence. The company didn't traditionally engage on Facebook, but it was a welcomed addition. 

How did Digivate perform from a project management standpoint?

I've worked with many digital agencies throughout my career. I find their structure for working with a client to be unique. Although we had an account manager, we also interacted with specialists within different areas. There was a person dedicated to pay per click, another one for content, social media, SEO, and so on. I, as a client, felt that I was receiving double or triple the value for money from their agency because of the online experts they provided.

Sometimes, as a client, you will work with only one person within an agency who will manage multiple online channels for you. Therefore, they'll have knowledge in those areas, but won't be experts in any channel in particular.

What distinguishes Digivate from other providers?

When we call their agency, we can talk to actual human beings, not to automated systems. We didn't get the feeling that we'd be considered less important because our budget may be lower. Everyone in the company was very responsive, and the overall communication was excellent.

Working with other agencies, I had a clear notion of us being the client and them, the supplier. Digivate were an extension of our team. I didn't see them as an external supplier. They knew our business goals and what we needed to achieve in terms of results. They had ideas and met with us when it was necessary.

Is there anything Digivate could have improved or done differently?

They could engage in more social interaction. There were a few occasions in which we went out with their team, which was useful from a relationship-building perspective. It's not something that they need to actively think about or change, though.

Overall, Digivate needs to maintain their way of working. They have an open-door quality as an agency.