📸 From Photography To Digital Mastery: Celebrating 23 Years Of SF Digital Studios

Live at T&C 2022, meet with some of our top survey partners and community members of the Digital market community. Today I have something very special for Farzana Kharawala. That's SFDigital, one of our top CPS and married to Uzair, which everyone's probably seen quite a few times, but it's the brains behind the man. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Mark.

Absolutely. All right. Pleasure to be here. Lightning round. We're going to talk about something really quick. Some aspects of your business that's really killing it or something you've really seen lately that's been a difference for you and your clients. Okay. I think the killing it part has to be about consistency. So this is a message that many of you have heard, they're banging on about.

And if you look at our journey over 20 years, it's our 20 year anniversary of the business next week. The business is very different to where it was 20 years ago. But throughout that journey, I've been reflecting, what have we done? We've consistently been consistent. And whatever our business has changed, that's the thing that I think is the top tip as to what we do that makes a difference to our clients.

And hanging in there, because often clients, when you’re at the start of a journey with a new client, they're not really getting the message why you keep going on about this. But they've soon seen the results and doing things that might be outside of somebody's comfort zone, actually pushing through and giving them that confidence that work on this.

Hang in there, we've got your back. Let's do this together. That, I think, is something that makes it up a little bit different. Love it. Well, I love the principle of consistency. I know it's easier for us to talk about doing 100 videos, doing a video a day. Is that what you mean when you say consistency? Consistency in that way, yes.

That's a part of the delivery of giving your client results. Also consistency in your relationship with them, because we’re all very evangelical and very buzz, buzz, buzz when you win a new client and it's easy to be on the phone to them and let's hook-up on a zoom call, that's easy to do. It’s been consistently present for them in that relationship as well, because by listening to them and hearing their issues within their business, that’s when you're going to be able to get them better results, because you understand them.

So the consistency is not just about delivering great results, but also building that relationship because the more they trust you, the more you trust them. And it becomes a great relationship just in terms of production. Let's talk on that side. I know a lot of people have me. I'll talk about me, I'm sorry, you get into a rhythm or you have a good campaign and get rolling on it, but I think it tends to be for marketers because we know how to do so much and we can really adapt things that we want because we know all the channels.

It's easy to get distracted and go off the path and stop being consistent. So what's your best advice for someone who wants to get consistent? To get consistent processes? You really got to hammer down those processes because behind the technical aspect of what we're doing, setting up campaigns, making those run, we are actually, at heart, creative. And that's where it's easy to go off on a tangent and start thinking of a new campaign or going a little bit crazy.

But if you're going to be consistent, you need to have your process in place, because the more you follow process, the easier it is to then scale those processes. And through repetition, you then become better at something and your clients see better results. So that, for me, is really where things hang. But equally, processes shouldn't constrain you because if you’re going to use your processes well, that frees up your time to be creative.

So, for example, a campaign that comes to mind is one of our clients. They were a bricks and mortar organization. They were a bit of a food hall, bit of a foodie place, if you like, a farmer’s market condition place. And they were hitting their 60th anniversary of their business and they have been through everything now. Yes, we are running digital campaigns for them for 60 years is a special time.

Not many businesses can say that. And so we came up with a campaign coming a little bit obviously from the print industry, originally of a beautiful presentation newsletter, an archival memory keepsake. And they were a little bit nervous about trying this because, again, outside of their comfort zone, it wasn't something normal, wasn't a normal area of where we operated.

But the creative juices were going and they came back sort of two, three weeks later. They did a big fanfare weekend cake, birthday cake, all this kind of stuff, through our encouragement. This is a big PR moment. You need to use this. Create the content as well. Create video footage to use afterwards. They came back and said, we have had the best ever August ever in 60 years, even beating Christmas.

Now, that is something I'm quite proud of. It's just one example where they're at your processes, stifle your creativity, get it going, deliver to your clients, go above and beyond, give them something special, make yourself memorable and they won't leave you. I love that. It actually totally flips the argument because usually it’s trying to convince small business owners or marketers to create process in the first place.

But you're right, in terms of like a long-term build business that's successful, you could have processes that were out of date ten years ago and they’ve just been done for over half a century. So you can't think outside the box to change that. You're right, Mark. And, you know, if we standstill, we're not going forward. We've got to take those steps within our business.

Why are we here? We're all taking time out of our businesses to be here to learn from each other, be inspired and then adjust what we're doing. I'm buzzing when I get back home to start implementing some of these things that I've picked up over so far. Only two days and it's going to be an exciting are we on day three now?

I'm still jet lagged my birthday. Yes, we got that as well. Well, that's fantastic. I love the approach, I love the consistency. I also love the flexibility to be able to take a 60 year old company and actually make them evolve into a digital company that actually had the best month they've ever had in August, too. August.

I know, exactly. Well, congrats on that. Thank you. And thank you for being part of my partner and the top CEO. Thank you so much. Thank you for your support and yeah, we really enjoyed the whole digital marketing principle and we’re very committed partners and we'll be encouraging other partners to come on board because I think the value you give is immense.

Fantastic co-workers. Find out more about you. The best place is to visit our website, www.sfdigital.co.uk. Take it from there. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you. And it was great seeing you guys. Thank you. Thank you forever away. Thank you.