Today’s is my 44th birthday and I decided to write a blog post to celebrate it.
I also decided to take half a day off, which seems like nothing but considering how busy we are it’s certainly something.
I want to use this blog post to give a bit more details about Increasily backstory and a bit about my backstory as well.
This is my and Increasily real story. It might not be the right story but it’s certainly a real one.
Increasily Backstory
Increasily was in the making for at least 6-9 months when I started feeling disconnected by my job at the time, Director of Account Manager, EMEA at ADARA.
I spent three years working at that startup. The first year was amazing. Everything was exciting. I was the first European employee and we were working out of a basement.
Then business grew and I was working so much that I got physically and mentally ill. I started having panic attacks at the church, on public transports (LUAS), at the GP’s.
I was also unhappy with my personal life at the time. I think I hit burnout.
This was shortly after my dad had a heart attack, from which he recovered physically but never really did mentally.
It was then that I decided to change my life. I started going to the gym and eating healthier.
I closed a relationship I was unhappy with. I stopped organising meetups and volunteering for a local charity.
I started watching Youtube videos, listening to podcasts and reading books by Tony Robbins, Les Brown, and more.
I got so into it than in the space of 6 months I had made the decision of leaving my job and starting my own business: Increasily.
What Does ‘Increasily’ Mean?
Increasily is the combination of ‘Increase’ and ‘Easily’.
At the time it sounded like a nice combination. My idea was to give people the suggestion that increasing their sales, traffic and revenue was not as difficult as they might have thought.
The original logo with the increasing charts, which are still part of the current branding, was created by myself on an online logo generator.
After registering the domain, every time I search for ‘Increasily’ on Google, the search engine thought I made a spelling mistake: ‘did you mean increasingly?’
From SEO to Digital Strategy
Initially, I thought about Increasily as an SEO agency. This because SEO was an area of Digital Marketing I was feeling comfortable with.
However, soon clients started asking for services like social media management, web development and Google Ads.
For this reason, I decided to broaden the range of services and make Increasily a full service agency.
I didn’t want to create another digital marketing agency. I thought I could do more by focusing on the gap between digital marketing strategy and its execution.
This is why the original Increasily mission was to fill the gap between strategy and execution in digital marketing.
From Digital Strategy to H2H Marketing
Years went by and I had some success with the company securing deals with national and international brands.
However, I soon realised how hard it was to keep faith to Increasily mission.
Part because of the circumstances, a.k.a. financials, and part because of being busy, Increasily never really lived up to its mission.
This is why nearly four years after its foundation, I decided to rethink Increasily’s positioning and messaging.
This time I wanted to focus not on something right but on something that truly reflected who Increasily is.
I soon realised there might be companies offering better services or prices than we were but our customer focus, flexibility, responsiveness and personalisation was not very easy to replicate.
In a nutshell, I decided to focus on the human factor and reposition Increasily as a H2H, Human-to-Human Digital Marketing agency.
What is a H2H Marketing?
I wrote an extensive article on what H2H marketing is:
H2H marketing stands for Human-to-Human Marketing. It refers to the fact that every marketing interaction, between businesses and consumers or between businesses and other businesses, is an interaction between humans.
Increasily Values as an H2H Digital Marketing Agency
These are our values, based on our positioning as a H2H Digital Marketing agency:
- Speak like a person, not like a marketer
- Don’t simply sell products but offer solutions that solve problems
- Choose to be authentic: nobody is perfect and everybody makes mistakes
- Replace ‘case studies’ with stories
- Apply personalisation instead of automation
- Leverage the content that your users generate
- But remember, context is more important than content!
- Optimise your online presence on social networks and local search
Increasily Mission
Our mission is to build a connection between brands and their target audience online.
Increasily Vision
To humanise Digital Marketing.
I hope this helps you understand a bit more where Increasily comes from and where we are headed.
I said I would take half a day off but it’s already 3:30 pm so I better go.
PS I hope you all have a nice weekend. I am doing a virtual wine tasting this evening at some friends’ house.
Featured image: me at Mount Usher Gardens, Wicklow
