Marketing Services
Whether you’re local to Wales, the UK, or elsewhere in the global village, our digital marketing services will help you to make a shift.
Marketing Services for SMEs
Think of this as a pick n’ mix of services we can offer to you. For something more structured, see some of our packages below. Need something unique at all? Reach out and we’ll craft a customised plan!
Virtual CMO
Your very own marketing department at a fraction of the cost of building it internally.
Content & Copywriting
Blogs, website content, publications, PR releases; I'm your wordsmith.
Graphic Design
Get easy on the eye graphics that garner attention and momentum for your brand.
Websites
Elegant website creation, enhancement, and management using WordPress.
Consulting
Skillfully navigate marketing projects and challenges; let's strike gold together!
Website SEO
Get found online by ticking Google's boxes and delivering great user experiences.
Social Media Marketing
Build an audience and trust on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more.
Social Media SEO Services
Get found on a range of social platforms by optimising your accounts and content.
Marketing Strategy
Map your marketing territory, how to navigate it, and grow your business.
Recruitment Marketing
Job ads, promotional graphics, and paid ads for growing your team with alignment.
Email Marketing
Create and send emails that grab attention, add value, and sell more.
PPC Ads Services
Craft irresistible ads that grab attention, build loyalty, and generate sales.
Get Website Insight: Request A Review!
Discover how to rank your website online, sell better, and improve its performance with a free hand-made report and guidance video. Click the button below to request your review!
- See how well your site works for visitors, such as loading times.
- Get an expert opinion on your site's look, feel, and visitor journey.
- Get actionable, no-nonsense tips for improving your website.
- Understand how to rank higher on Google and Bing.
Our Marketing Service Packages
Jump Start Your Marketing
Our business launchpad package offers everything that you need to give your marketing a solid launchpad and a plan to take off with. It includes:
- 2x consultations for developing your quarterly plan and project strategy.
- Either a freshly created website with 5 or less pages, OR a website and social channels review, action plan for them, and implementation by us.
- 2x SEO blogs at ~1000-1200 words, complementing your marketing plan.
- 2x new promotional or content based graphics, inc templated versions.
- New logo design or a refresh of an existing logo.
- Marketing plan for the next 3 months, based on consultations & research.
Pricing: the package is £1750 and all work is delivered within a month and a half after purchase. Deliverables and price can flex with your unique needs.
Gather Traction, Build Trust, Sell More
Your online flagship is one of the best investments you can make. Our website packages all involve creating a unique, stylish, and persuasive website that keeps attention, builds trust, and creates sales. We offer the following:
- Startup (£800-£900): 1-5 page website, see below for inclusions.
- Business (£1400-£1600): 5-15 page website, see below for inclusions.
- Enterprise £2000-£2200): 15-25 page site, see inclusions below.
What comes as standard: 2-3 brand/background assets for a fresh look, up to 5 functionalities or plugins (e.g reviews embed, booking forms/calendar, CRM), as well as hosting for the website and your emails if desired. If you need more features such as e-commerce capabilities, we can cater to this.
Your Trusty Marketing Department
At a fraction of the financial and time-based costs, access all of the strategic and hands-on expertise that you need to grow your business. As your outsourced marketing department, we take a partnership based approach. We tailor the pricing and deliverables around your context and needs, but here’s some things that we offer as standard pieces of our retainer packages.
- Quarterly plans and strategic monthly/quarterly marketing consultations.
- Regular monthly blog content and social posts for all channels.
- Website enhancement including gradually improving your site's SEO.
- Budget-based regular campaigns on search engines and social platforms.
Our Process
While each client service is unique, I follow these key steps to shift your marketing journey.
For meatier projects and ongoing services, we’ll ask you all of the usual questions about your brand, business, goals, value proposition, and your audience. But here’s where things get exciting! We go a step further by piecing together how all of these variables fit into a storyworld for your market, how your business fits into it, and how you can reach your audience, connect with their lived lives, and ultimately, solve their problems and grow!
It’s all founded on a deep understanding of our clients and their audience, how these are shaped by lifestyles, psychology, problems and goals, how they are understood and talked about, stepping into those shoes for a real feeling that we can relate to and address, and more.
With a map and compass of the stories and events across your market landscape and unique journey within it, we’re in a much better position to help you to make a shift that you can see and feel. We’ll present our insights to you, how the current stories at play can be changed, why, and how we’ll get there. At this point, you’re going to feel relief, clarity, and a nice dose of excitement!
We’ll create a pathway to make this vision for change a reality for your business. We’ll work with you to gradually and systematically execute this plan, incorporating your feedback and new ideas across the process (we’re magicians, not robots!)
What more is there to say? We’ll do it on time, on-budget, and make sure both you and your audience love it! If you don’t, no sweat, we’re not perfect, but we’ll always take the next step to set things right and help you to achieve your goals.
Marketing Services FAQ
How Much Do Marketing Agencies & Services Cost?
In the UK, a small to mid-range marketing agency usually charges between £50-£200 per hour for their marketing services. A monthly retainer of regular services will usually cost between £1000 to £8’000 per month. Currently, Story Shift is a one-person agency. My goal is to offer quality marketing at a rate that is affordable to startups and SMEs. I focus on selling a package focusing on a goal, giving you a reliable price and reliable outcomes that make a difference.
Should I Build an Internal Marketing Department or Outsource my Business's Marketing?
Building an internal marketing function really can be a journey! You have to invest your time, attention, and efforts into building a strategy, executing it, while hiring and upskilling a team. From the big-picture stuff right down to navigating the nitty-grittys of using marketing tools and concepts efficiently, a great deal of the cost in this approach lies in time and focus, rather than money. Another cost is diluted execution, assuming you’re team isn’t too seasoned in marketing just yet.
But, let’s talk about the positives too! On the plus side, it can be easier to control your branding, get the details around what you do and your offers consistently right, and over time, you’ll get more bang for your buck. Having people in your team who are exposed to your customers and work daily can really help them to pick up on what makes your business appealing. Some agencies will use templates, and they may not really take the time to understand what you do, why, and for who. Marketing at its best, channels the beating heart of your business to the people you want to help. If you work with a marketing partner, they can be of great help with helping you to grow and mature your marketing too; the key thing, is to make sure they ‘get it’ and care!
Should I Use Pay Per Click (PPC Ads?)
Of course, this depends on context. A lot of businesses burn their money on PPC with social media platforms and search engines without a profitable return. Here’s some reasons why:
- They’re gunning for highly competitive or too broad keywords against brands with more firepower and know-how. Precise and ruthless targeting of the right people is a key for success in the world of pay per click, especially for smaller businesses.
- The pages that their ads link to have not been optimised to guide visitors and help them to buy! Even worse, some can fail to deliver what the ads had promised or load too slowly, which can lead people to stray away even if they clicked.
- The ads lack an irresistible and well-written offer that gets attention and clicks from the right people.
- Poor conversion tracking, using the wrong metrics (e.g focusing on clicks and impressions, which do not map neatly to impact) or not using tools for this such as Google Analytics 4.
Why Is My Website Struggling to Get Traffic and Sales?
Of course the specifics will vary for each business, but in principle it will be due to one or more of these factors:
- SEO: The website is poorly optimised for search engines: they load slowly, are poorly structured, don’t use the right keywords, and people leave quickly, which can hinder the authority/trustability of your website with search engines like Google.
- Poor CTAs: Your website may lack calls to actions that are clear, compelling, and easy to take up for your visitors.
- Responsiveness: If the website isn’t optimised for mobile and tablet displays (roughly 50% or more of your traffic will come from these devices!), this can hurt the user experience, SEO, and as a result, your ability to get found, build trust, and convert.
- Lack of Strategy: Whether its complementing your online presence with social media marketing, content marketing, or paid ads that direct traffic to your site, a lack of a integrated strategy can leave a website in a dud-like state! A strategy that brings it all together can be a multiplier for your marketing and your growth.
- The Content Doesn’t cut the Mustard: There’s a lot of reasons as to why a site’s content can let you down! Maybe it’s not clear what you do, maybe the tone of voice isn’t resonating, there’s a lot of text across every page, or the structure of it all isn’t helping people to buy into your brand and understand what makes you special.
What Makes Story Shift Marketing Different? How do I Know You're the Right Marketing Partner for Me?
Let’s answer these two questions in one! We’re a breath of fresh air and potentially an ideal partner for you because:
- We offer SME and startup friendly marketing expertise at an affordable price.
- We’re ideal for businesses with either no real marketing function or a small one that can do with some practical and strategic support.
- We know a one-size-fits-all approach can’t add the most value to each unique client, so we’re happy to tailor our services to your needs and goals.
- We focus on the fundamental tool behind powerful marketing and sales: storytelling. We know the psychology behind it, and use our hearts and heads to create connections with the people you want to help.
- We really care about ethics, integrity, and quality. We believe in looking after our clients, being human, honest, down to earth, and not letting ego run/ruin the show.
How Long Does Marketing Take to get Results?
This depends! One reason PPC is a popular marketing tool is because it has the potential to deliver results in the space of days or weeks, whereas content marketing and SEO can take 3-6 months to produce shift-worthy results.
All good things need development over time, and marketing is no exception to this. The real power from marketing comes from how different parts of your marketing mix come together as a whole.
How do I Know if a Marketing Agency is Right for me?
Some of the key signs you could benefit from a marketing partner are:
- You lack the time to do justice to your marketing.
- You don’t have specialised know-how for aspects of your marketing, such as SEO, PPC, and social media.
- You’re not getting results! This will often show up as a lack of consistent leads or a lack of measurable impact from your marketing campaigns and creatives.
- You’re in a middle-spot where you lack the resources and expertise to build a solid marketing function internally, but need to take your marketing up by a notch, or two!
Will I Lose Control of my Marketing With an Agency?
Not at all! In general, marketing agencies will take a partnership-based approach with you; that often looks like regular meetings, brainstorming together as thought-partners, discussing results and goals, and helping you to make decisions that are effective but also aligned with your vision. From this, the marketing agency will take care of the steps behind making it all happen with more or less input from you along the way, depending on your needs and preferences.
Book A Fireside Marketing Chat
Want to get to know us? Talk a problem or idea through, or discuss how we can shift your growth story together? This is the best place to do so! Here’s some things you can use this meeting for:
- Get to the root of what's blocking your marketing success.
- Get ideas and a pathway for moving forward.
- Find out how to make your website rank and sell better.
- Discuss a service and how we can deliver a shift for you.