Hadrien Brassens
Co-founder at Reef Digital Agency
Member Since November 2012
North Sydney, NSW,
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I am an accredited digital marketing professional with experience working with some of Australia's leading brands and across various industries.
While my core specialties are Paid Search, Display and Social Advertising, I am passionate about everything related to online marketing and Entrepreneurship. I take pride and joy helping clients, whether large or small, achieve and exceed their business objectives.
I now lead the Paid Media team at Reef Digital Agency, a 'boutique' agency in Sydney
Qualified skills
Reputation
Good question. I only have experience with Shopify.com (very similar to BigCommerce) but I found the fees more interesting. The interface, including the product inventory management was also extremely easy to use. Design wise, you can download free or paid templates and then customise them at your own will, or you can get a developer to do it for you (or start a new design from scratch which will cost you more). Satisfied overall, I would recommend this service.
What accounting software package should a small business use?
I have used freshbooks.com which is very simple to use, affordable and integrates to a wide variety of other online tools. I would recommend it for very small to mid-size businesses.
Hi Julie,
Thanks for your answer. The key with Adwords is to always ensure full relevancy at all levels (keywords, ad copies, landing pages). This is the only way to generated targeted traffic. But even when you think you're doing everything correctly, there may be another reason as to why your campaigns are not performing (hence my initial question about the complexity of Adwords).
I've recently audited an Adwords account which was well built but the majority of their Adwords budget was being spent outside of NSW (where they DO NOT operate...).
Rookie mistake to some of us, but it really highlights how easy you can get it wrong.
Matt, thanks for your feedback. You are right, Google has launched Adwords Express (along with many free Adwords vouchers!) in order to simplify the creation of Adwords campaigns for SMEs. However, I've also reviewed an account built on Adwords Express recently which only had keywords on broadmatch, did not have a single negative keywords, did not use any ad extension, etc.
Yes, the ads were running, but the traffic quality was terrible and budget was exhausted mid-morning every day. Not a great experience for an SME owner who cannot afford thousands of advertising dollars.
It may be a simplified version of Adwords, but I believe you still need knowledge and time to optimise your campaigns accordingly.
What is the most effective way to drive traffic on a budget?
Wendy's answer is correct. SEO takes time and the more quality content you have on your site, the more traffic will come. If your content is interesting, visitors will begin sharing it and you will see incoming links pop up online.
While SEO is free traffic, it may take a while for you to gain significant traffic. Also, you can influence the type of keywords you would like your website to rank for, but you cannot guarantee a top result in search engines for those keywords. There are advertising platforms that still have affordable CPCs (Cost-per-Click) which may drive traffic to your site without costing you 'a bomb'. If you do advertise, you will see the traffic come to your site much faster.
I would recommend you focus on both online advertising and SEO efforts for 6 to 12 months, and once you are satisfied with the incoming traffic volumes coming through organic rankings, decrease your advertising spend (unless profitable).
Note that durations will vary depending on your site, how niche your vertical is, how competitive the market is, etc.
Great answers, very helpful.
Before even finding out if the business coach is suitable for you, how do you initially search for one? A google search for 'business coach' returns many results, but would you rather reach out to personal connections in your network instead?
Can any of you share your experience on how successfully found your 'best match'?
Good question. I only have experience with Shopify.com (very similar to BigCommerce) but I found the fees more interesting. The interface, including the product inventory management was also extremely easy to use. Design wise, you can download free or paid templates and then customise them at your own will, or you can get a developer to do it for you (or start a new design from scratch which will cost you more). Satisfied overall, I would recommend this service.
What accounting software package should a small business use?
I have used freshbooks.com which is very simple to use, affordable and integrates to a wide variety of other online tools. I would recommend it for very small to mid-size businesses.
Hi Julie,
Thanks for your answer. The key with Adwords is to always ensure full relevancy at all levels (keywords, ad copies, landing pages). This is the only way to generated targeted traffic. But even when you think you're doing everything correctly, there may be another reason as to why your campaigns are not performing (hence my initial question about the complexity of Adwords).
I've recently audited an Adwords account which was well built but the majority of their Adwords budget was being spent outside of NSW (where they DO NOT operate...).
Rookie mistake to some of us, but it really highlights how easy you can get it wrong.
Matt, thanks for your feedback. You are right, Google has launched Adwords Express (along with many free Adwords vouchers!) in order to simplify the creation of Adwords campaigns for SMEs. However, I've also reviewed an account built on Adwords Express recently which only had keywords on broadmatch, did not have a single negative keywords, did not use any ad extension, etc.
Yes, the ads were running, but the traffic quality was terrible and budget was exhausted mid-morning every day. Not a great experience for an SME owner who cannot afford thousands of advertising dollars.
It may be a simplified version of Adwords, but I believe you still need knowledge and time to optimise your campaigns accordingly.
What is the most effective way to drive traffic on a budget?
Wendy's answer is correct. SEO takes time and the more quality content you have on your site, the more traffic will come. If your content is interesting, visitors will begin sharing it and you will see incoming links pop up online.
While SEO is free traffic, it may take a while for you to gain significant traffic. Also, you can influence the type of keywords you would like your website to rank for, but you cannot guarantee a top result in search engines for those keywords. There are advertising platforms that still have affordable CPCs (Cost-per-Click) which may drive traffic to your site without costing you 'a bomb'. If you do advertise, you will see the traffic come to your site much faster.
I would recommend you focus on both online advertising and SEO efforts for 6 to 12 months, and once you are satisfied with the incoming traffic volumes coming through organic rankings, decrease your advertising spend (unless profitable).
Note that durations will vary depending on your site, how niche your vertical is, how competitive the market is, etc.
Great answers, very helpful.
Before even finding out if the business coach is suitable for you, how do you initially search for one? A google search for 'business coach' returns many results, but would you rather reach out to personal connections in your network instead?
Can any of you share your experience on how successfully found your 'best match'?
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