The Top 5 Questions We Get from New Clients

At PHOS, we’ve seen that our most fruitful partnerships begin with curiosity from both parties—which we love! As we navigate the digital marketing landscape together, the right questions are our most powerful compass.

Our clients’ questions have helped refine our approach over the years and continue to refine the services we provide and the way we provide them. As I summarize the five most common questions I’ve received in hundreds of new client conversations, I hope to give you a deeper sense of what it’s like to work with PHOS and why we operate the way we do.

1. What Does PHOS Do Differently from Other Agencies? What Makes You Unique?

In short, there are three things that make PHOS unique:

• Our People
• Our Process
• Our Purpose

Let’s look at each one.

When you work with PHOS you get a team of thought leaders—a true partner in your business, not a professional box-checker. Rather than facing a deer in headlights, you’ll be working with a team that runs toward market challenges head-on. You’ll get honesty, empathy, and courage from your PHOS team because we’re not only interested in your business’ growth but in your growth.

Aside from our experienced team, though, PHOS has developed our own repeatable process that has delivered exceptional results for our clients over the past ten years. There are literally thousands of other agencies that offer similar services as PHOS, but our conviction is that it’s not sufficient to simply check marketing boxes. Sure, we can run your social media calendar and Google Ads campaigns, but it won’t have any lasting effect if we aren’t clear on the brand we’re bringing to market.

As I’ll highlight in Question 2, we spend the first 30 days of our process understanding you and your audiences before we ever speak a word online on your behalf. We’ve found our clients have much better results when we take the time to build a strategy that reflects their true brand identity.

Lastly, we’d be remiss not to mention our ultimate purpose as a company, Our Why. PHOS exists to cultivate true flourishing in people and organizations while reflecting the love of Jesus to the world. As we partner with you for your top- and bottom-line revenue growth, you’re partnering with us to open 30 care centers by the year 2030 that will serve women and children impacted by extreme poverty and sex trafficking. A tremendous part of what makes us unique is our Purpose.

2. PHOS Uses the First Month of Our Partnership for “Strategy.” What Does That Mean?

If you were going to build a new house, you’d probably like to know that the construction company drew up precise blueprints. It would give you peace of mind knowing that they were not going to rely on their gut or their memory when they went to lay the foundation and install the plumbing.

In the same way, we’d expect you wouldn’t want a marketing team to build your online presence without a strategy. We certainly wouldn’t want to get to work without drawing up some blueprints ourselves.
In the first 30 days of partnership with a new client, we dive deep into their strengths and weaknesses online, social media presence, website design and performance, and keyword rankings (or lack thereof).

We’ll also note where their current marketing is overperforming, underperforming, or any missing channels and opportunities for improvement. More than a marketing audit, though, we’ll take time to understand who they really are as a business, so we can effectively tell their story to the right people, through the right channels, at the right time.

Without these 30 days of strategy, we would not be able to build your online presence as effectively. Thirty days will set us up for the next three months and even three years of partnership.

3. Another Agency Said They Could Build Me a Website in 4 Weeks. Why Does Your Process Take 4 Months?

From what we’ve seen, the only way to build a website in under a month is to use pre-built, cookie-cutter templates. And while these can be a great fit for younger companies, if you’re running an established business, then we believe your website should look like you’re running an established business. To keep up the construction analogy from the last question, you could get a house built in as little as three months, but wouldn’t you prefer a house that took 12 months to build? While the wait might be inconvenient, you’d expect the 12-month house to last longer, look better, and be safer than the three-month house.

More specifically, our thorough website process allows our clients to receive a website that’s both performant and uniquely tailored to their mission and brand identity. In our process, our expert designers and developers will walk you through:

• Website design (for brand consistency, UX, and sales conversions)
• Design revisions
• Web development
• SEO setup
• Staging
• Testing
• Optimization
• Launch

Every week of our process is purposeful, and we’d rather take the time to ensure you’re 100% satisfied with the end result than rush through the process.

4. Do I Really Need a WordPress Website? How Is It Different from Other Platforms?

The WordPress Content Management System (CMS) boasts a massive market share (43% of the Internet lives on WordPress) for a number of good reasons. It does not require any coding skills for you to make updates, has built-in SEO tools to help you rank for organic searches, and houses a library of thousands of “plug-ins” to enhance your website’s functionality and user experience.

WordPress is also an “open-source” CMS, meaning the quality of the platform is constantly being monitored and improved by actively devoted community members (developers). While some agencies will hold your website hostage by using their own proprietary development frameworks and Content Management Systems, WP’s open-source nature makes it easy to ensure you’ll retain ownership of your website no matter who built it for you or who hosts it.

5. How Can I Be Sure I’m Going to See the Results I Need to See? (OR…What Type of ROI Should I Expect from My Marketing Investment with PHOS?)

Since we can’t predict the future or control its outcomes (see our Founder’s new book for more on this theme), we content ourselves with being faithful to our process which has yielded great results for 700+ clients throughout our 10 years in business. Across our four core verticals (Home Services, Healthcare, Higher Education, Nonprofit), all our clients have seen growth from working with us. Here are a few examples:

• For one of our pest control clients, we have used Google Search Ads to increase their click-through-rate (CTR) by 223% and reduce their cost-per-conversion by 93% (from $146 to around $10)!
• We helped one of our nonprofit clients increase their one-time donors by 21% in their first eight months working with us.
• One higher education client previously let months pass in between student communications. We helped them reach 500+ potential students with five crafted emails in an enrollment campaign that toppled their own standards.

Further still, our clients who have seen the most success have shared the following characteristics:

• Strong brand identity with a clear purpose
• Clear marketing strategy with quarterly and annual goals
• Long-term mindset towards marketing efforts

Intentional marketing efforts across several marketing channels (email, website, social media, paid, etc.)
While no marketing agency can guarantee results, we can confidently say that our clients have seen greater traffic, conversions, leads, and sales as a result of working with us—and it all starts with a clear strategy and a trustworthy brand.

Boost Your Marketing Success with PHOS Creative

We hope you have a clearer picture now of how PHOS operates and why our process is designed the way it is. If you’re looking to boost trust and awareness for your business online, you can schedule a free consultation with our team to discuss your current situation and goals whenever you’re ready—we can’t wait to hear from you!