By @SimonCocking, great interview with Kirk Williams Founder: ZATO. PPCer who will be coming to Ireland to speak at the upcoming 3XE event on Thursday October 19th. See more and get tickets here.
1 min pitch for what you are doing now?
I am currently the founder of ZATO, a Search and Social Marketing agency based in Montana, US. I spend my days wearing many hats, from client communication, to sales, to brewer of espresso, though I also try to keep up with my 4 children and my wife’s photography business. We are intent on grabbing every bit out of life that we can!
How was the last 12 months, what worked well, what didn’t move as quickly as you would have liked?
The past 12 months is exactly the amount of time that I have had my first employee, and because of that we were able to add on additional clients as well. From the beginning of my agency (in 2011), I have made an effort to push out content to multiple publications and speak over the years, and 2017 was the time we began to finally see all of that hard work pay off in a continual stream of solid client leads. The flip side of that, is that adding on additional clients requires additional time in communication and management, so I have been working through the pressures of managing that well. Delegation and organization are things everyone would agree with, but I have found actually implementing them within your own context can be more difficult than one would expect!
What are your plans for the future?
I want to continue to grow ZATO as a highly skilled, boutique ecommerce technical PPC agency. I don’t have any goals of tripling business within 3 months or craziness like that. I want to provide (1) excellent service for my clients, (2) exceptional workplace for my employees, (3) a smooth growth curve that allows for both of those things to remain hand-in-hand. I would rather grow a little slower, than see one employee or client dropped due to negligence.
What will you be talking about at this event?
I’ll be discussing how you can do Search Engine Marketing well on a limited budget. This is really an important topic, in my opinion, because lots of people love to discuss big accounts and major things to test with lots of traffic and spend. Yet, the reality is that many of us are in accounts where we can’t make testing decisions as quickly as we would like, and we do have the reality of capped budgets. I want to give us some extremely practical, technical ways that we can manage Google AdWords and Bing Ads better with small budgets.
Another successful #3xedigital we learned about #revenue-advertising, #video is new mobile and #UX! See you at next 3xe event 19-October! pic.twitter.com/cSmYzk6s3u
— 3XE Digital (@3XEDIGITAL) May 19, 2017
What inspired you to attend it?
I was referred to the event by my friend, Matt Umbro (of #ppcchat and PPC Hero fame).
Which influencers and websites do you follow to keep up to date with the latest developments?
Twitter, Search Engine Land, PPC Hero, AdWords/Bing Ads blogs.
How can people find out more about what you are working on?
I’d love to connect through my website here: https://zatomarketing.com. Although I will most easily be found on Twitter here: @PPCKirk.
Anything else you’d like to add / we should have asked?
My wife and I haven’t had a true, no work vacation in roughly 5 years. After the Conference is over, we are going to (quickly, we have small children, remember) hit Dublin, Glasgow, and then London and we cannot *WAIT* to actually breathe a sigh of work-less relief as we tour these beautiful countries.
I present to you the fine art collection “Evolution of the Lego XWing” now on display in the ZATO office: pic.twitter.com/Aml1aDJYcf
— Kirk Williams (@PPCKirk) August 30, 2017
If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at [email protected] or on Twitter: @SimonCocking