what is Digital IQ®?

Digital IQ® framework

Ready, set, grow. I’ve developed the unique Digital IQ ® Framework to ensure standardised and consistent service that guarantees the creation of digital growth.

We begin by applying a 10 step formula to help identify and realise your desired business outcomes. Usually this is the achievement of a financial goal – such as achieving a revenue target, a business valuation or securing monthly recurring margin. Let’s pick an example, such as “generate an additional annual income of £100,000 within 12 months”. This now becomes our engagement vision. To realise our engagement vision, we apply the 10 step formula to create a strategy with metrics to measure and report the attainment of our goal. We do this by working backwards to reverse engineer a pipeline towards our target (this is a technique known as backwards imaging), then using a mixture of inbound marketing and growth driven design services, we create the digital assets required to attract, convert, close and delight new customers. Here’s an example of how I apply a ten-step formula to create digital growth…

1. The delight phase. We put our customers at the centre of everything we do. Our goal is to delight them. Our customers then become promoters of our business and this generates referrals. However, word of mouth referral isn’t predictable, so we need to generate a pipeline of new business that is predictable. To do this, we begin by redefining our products and services by understanding who our dream customers (buyer persona’s) are, what they need, and how we can meet their needs and ours simultaneously. Or in other words, how can we delight our customers? To do this, we research the buyers journey and look for ways to improve our products and services and the way we offer them.
2. We provide our products or services to our customers for a nominal fee. In this example, our services are sold via a monthly retainer to the value of £1,500 per month. We invoice our clients with an accounts package that integrates with our CRM system so that we can track this metric.
3. To achieve our engagement vision, we need to gain an additional 1.5 clients per month, or 3 clients every 2 months. We record all clients in our CRM system.
4. The close phase. This requires our winning of 1 in every 2 deals we bid for (our close rate). This is our sales pipeline and is stored for review in our CRM system.
5. To achieve our sales target, we require 3 sales qualified leads (SQL’s) per month in our sales pipeline. By closing 1.5 deals per month, we create the clients to sell our products and services to.
6. The convert phase. We create clients by converting marketing qualified leads (MQL’s) into SQL’s. In this example, we require a 30% conversion rate each month. A MQL is a prospect stored in our CRM system that has provided consent to contact them in exchange for a piece of golden content, such as such as the ultimate guide to inbound marketing and growth driven design. We measure our conversion rate of turning MQL’s into SQL’s via our CRM system. This is a practice known as conversion rate optimisation (CRO) and uses tactics such as creating offers to move prospects through a funnel.
7. The attract phase. To achieve our engagement vision, we need to attract 10 MQL’s per month. We do that by creating golden content that we offer through a website or landing page, which is optimised for search engines (SEO) so that our buyer personas can find it. We recall the buyer’s journey and segment it into four phases – awareness, consideration, decision, delight. We create golden content that resonates with our buyer persona’s for every stage of their journey. Crucially, we’re not trying to sell to them at this point. We’re looking to educate them which is how we build trust.
8. We now need to capture 100 monthly clicks in order to achieve our engagement vision. We measure this with Google Analytics.
9. To capture 100 monthly clicks, we need to achieve a 1% click through ratio (CTR) from 10,000 monthly views via search engine results pages (SERP’s). We measure and report this metric with Google Search Console.
10. In order to achieve 10,0000 SERP’s each month we’d simply build a bouquet of keywords that delivers this volume of traffic. For example, inbound marketing attracts 2,400 SERP’s each month, growth driven design attracts 70 searches per month, and so on, until we build the required number of SERP’s. Our keyword selection is key, words matter. therefore, we select keywords that contextually align with our buyers needs and phase of the buyer’s journey. everything should naturally align our buyers needs with our products and services.

We begin with a simple agreement containing one page of terms and conditions, written in plain English. My business model is unique in that I seek to align my business interests with your own at the very outset. Our sole focus is to create digital growth, measure it and prove a Return on Investment. Both parties agree to a 12 month retainer, and an option to identify grant funding opportunities to create a pot of funds that we will use to create digital growth for our mutual benefit. Concurrently, I charge 1% of turnover that is measured via VAT quarters. If I fail to create digital growth, the client doesn’t have to pay the 1% of turnover. This mechanism ensures that we’re both seriously focused on creating digital growth and sharing the rewards. Once we have an agreement in place, we’re good to go.

Ready to go? Download the red carpet on boarding form, complete and return. I’ll then have the basic information I need to begin working for you. We’ll then hold a kickoff meeting whereby I’ll learn all about your business, and present my findings back to you and your team with a service introduction.

I’ll then provide a Services Team Strategy and Growth Driven Design Process worksheet which details the steps we’ll need to complete to execute the Growth Driven Design process correctly. Next, we need to document the engagement vision, conduct our buyer persona research and identify the buyers journey before creating a single piece of content or code. We do this using the Goals Document and Forecasting worksheet.

This enables us to identify an SEO strategy and create a Google Measurement Plan with which to begin executing and measuring your inbound marketing plan and growth driven design campaign. Each action item required will be agreed in advance using a monthly sprint methodology and documented in the Goals Document and Forecasting worksheet. Progress will be reported via Monthly Service Reviews, following best practice Service Delivery Management techniques.

Now that you understand what the Digital IQ ® delivery methodology is, you probably have some questions, such as is it affordable? Does it come with any guarantee?

“growth guaranteed”

…with a golden guarantee