Musings, interviews, product stories & more to boost your digital marketing.
Brought to you by the people behind Brightpod.
Interviews

How Marketing Agencies Stay Productive: Es Chandra of Glide

June 15, 2017

This week we feature Es Chandra, Founder of Glide. Glide Agency is a marketing agency in Northbridge, Western Australia that helps businesses generate more leads online, convert better and reveal return on investment.

In this interview, you can read more about his work at Glide, favorite marketing tools, productivity tips as well as his advice for budding marketers.

Your location: 1/28 John Street Northbridge — the heart of multicultural Perth.

Your favorite gadget: My Google Pixel — it never leaves me.

You start your day with: Turning on my mobile — checking updates, then into my home office literally.

Your favorite time-saving trick: I like to list ideas as they come to me, for blogs and campaigns, and then come back to them. I try to apply the KISS principle with everything to save time — Keep It Simple Stupid!

Your top 3 blogs you read daily: Moz; Gary Vaynerchuk; and Forbes.

A picture of your workstation or the view outside your window if that inspires you:(My big screen where we can run gaming, monitor social trends, or internet searches to keep up to date.)

‍A picture of my workstation

“Every action has a reaction, till you find the best tailored outcome to improve ranking and conversion”

Describe an average day at Glide?

The early bird gets the worm. I’m always online, so aside from my morning workout, I tend to jump onto my emails and social check-ins to get ahead for the day (and it’s the same when I get home).

I’m a family man, but I like to balance the two. I also use my hours outside the office to plan and prepare for client meetings, plus Glide’s own internal strategy and content creation, to position ourselves as thought leaders. It’s as much about working on my own personal brand, as it is refining the direction of the agency. Digital is an ever-evolving beast that you can’t tame, only keep abreast of. That’s why I often listen to podcasts on my way to work, to keep my finger on the pulse.

After I drop my son to school, once I’m in the office, I like to have my ear to the ground and see how the team are travelling. My second in charge keeps the team and I well fed and fueled through the day, so we run like a fine machine.

We’re a family at Glide, and are big on data and accountability. We love to keep constantly tweaking campaign aspects, to improve our analytics and results, supporting each other to learn and get better daily at what we do.

My day is often filled with back to back meetings. Whether it’s ongoing WIPs (internal meetings), new business proposals, or campaign pitches etc.. We like to encourage unique thinking and our individual quirks, to get the top results for our clients, as that also equates to the best results for ourselves. I’m a perfectionist, and I think the team replicates this within their work and personal lives.

As a founder, what are some of your favorite productivity hacks?

Internally, we use a number of systems from dapulse to Active Collab to refine our internal processes and communication with clients. Productivity can be greatly improved through clarity, communication and most importantly speed. It’s all about making sure everyone is up to speed and keeping with the pace, and digital decisions are made quickly to stay relevant, rather than reactive.

As a person who is well-versed with online marketing/inbound, I’m sure you rely on a few marketing tools to automate your efforts. What are the top 3–5 tools you use?

Aside from those just mentioned, we also use:

Slack for immediate conversations around the office, and brainstorming purposes. We’re big on everything Google, aside from our bread and butter — Google Analytics and Data Studios for reporting. Getty Images and Canva to quickly create our own great graphics and whitepapers internally. Searchmetrics to monitor and report on organic keywords. SharpSpring to automate marketing for ourselves and our clients. Then our team also uses new initiatives such as: Automator (like a toolbox of things so we can tell apps what to do, for example, tell a PDF preview to export all the pages as JPG, then resize the JPG, and email them all in one action); Magnet (to keep your workplace organised); Duet Display (for productivity via iPad); CodeKit App (for fast built websites); Zeplin (for design collaboration); Craft by InVision (suite of plugins and tools for Sketch and Photoshop that let you design with real data); iA (for note taking, tasking, scripts and proposal work); WorkflowMax (for quoting purposes); Process Street (for procedures); Zapier (for integration); 1Password (for passwords); Junecloud (for web development); and Hootsuite, plus Hashtagify (for social shares and monitoring hashtag trends etc.).

How do you use the insight gained from working with clients to power your marketing efforts for your agency?

Recently, I’ve started to work on a series of Vlogs that are set to be released, which delve into the main questions and situations that I’ve encountered throughout my career in marketing. These Vlogs are filmed on site and the aim is to provide raw real insight, to help our growing client base and the community at large. Knowledge gives people power, and I want to be a free source of reference, to educate businesses looking for answers. That’s why I often speak at events to provide guidance on digital marketing. We aim to be thought leaders within our industry.

What is your strategy for getting people to your site and then converting them to a client?

Driving paid traffic i.e. AdWords, Facebook etc..

We’ve recently updated our website www.glideagency.com to acknowledge the evolution of Glide over the last decade. At our core, we are a lead generation agency. In everything we do, we prioritise conversion and return on investment. We search for the results that will achieve these aspects, to speed the conversion process. This is done by ensuring prospects are nurtured, based on their persona, to fill the sales pipelines of our clients, by providing the right content content at the right time of the buying process. Whether it’s driving paid or organic to sites, via display, AdWords, SEO or social tactics, it’s all about the correct strategy for the individual client. That’s why we’re big on analytics so that every effort can be held accountable. If something doesn’t work, we see and change it, and the data doesn’t lie. Treating things like a science helps assure results; every action has a reaction, till you find the best tailored outcome to improve ranking and conversion.

Is there any advice you’d like to give to budding marketers to help them work smart and stay productive?

It’s not just about content creation. If you create blogs, for example, you need to promote and share them to increase your following, and be seen as an authority. Keywords are important, but at the crux of every piece of content is answering a real question. Your reader needs to walk away, feeling like they genuinely gained something, so your content should be outcome oriented. Your creation must be based around education, rather than self-promotion, as that will lead to something that resonates with your audience and ultimately converts. That’s the key to success in digital.

How do teams at Glide have fun at work/ make work fun?

‍The team at Glide Agency enjoying their downtime.

We work long and hard, but we also like to have fun and let our Geek flag fly, whether that’s playing computer games in our down time, or embracing multi-cultural activities. We like cutting loose after work on a Friday as a team with drinks, VR or karaoke, and bonding during work retreats to generate enhanced productivity and evolve ideas.

How do you make use of your downtime? Any hobbies, out of work interests that rejuvenate you?

From creating my own inspirational quotes and memes for Instagram, to sharing office insights on Facebook, or capturing classic moments of the team on Snapchat — I never really switch off. It’s a curse — like my staff, we’re committed and pedantic — it’s who we are, and we’re true to ourselves. But like any businessman, a round of golf helps spawn ideas and rejuvenates me.

A big thanks to Es Chandra for taking the time out to answer these questions! We wish Glide all the very best for the work they are doing.

The ‘How Marketers Stay Productive’ series asks marketers their tips & strategies for staying productive. Every week we’ll feature a new guest and the tricks that keep them working smart. Know someone you’d love to see featured? Email Us.

Managing marketing projects shouldn’t be chaotic —Try Brightpod for free and start focusing on what matters.

Brightpod

Project management software for smart marketing teams.

InterviewsHow Marketers Stay Productive: Ivan Stepanovic of StayIn

This week we feature Ivan Stepanovic, CEO of StayIn. StayIn is a free app that will recommend a perfect movie for your mood. The idea was to create a fun, easy and fast app that will pick a perfect movie in less than 10 seconds

InterviewsHow Marketers Stay Productive: Jernej Pavlic of Loop

This week we feature Jernej Pavlic, Head of Growth Marketer at Loop. Loop is a web, mobile & desktop email client that works with other email providers. It helps your team get things done on email. It connects with your existing inbox and simplifies teamwork with these features.

InterviewsHow Founders Stay Productive: Andrew Rogoff of Resource Guru

This week we feature Andrew Guru, Co-Founder of Resource Guru. Resource Guru is a resource management software. A fast, simple way to schedule people, equipment and other resources. It is a cloud-based resource scheduling application is suitable for organizations of all sizes.