A week ago today, we launched Rise at Seven. Our own creative SEO agency founded myself and the famous Stephen Kenwright.

After working at agencies Branded3 and Edit for 7 and 5 years respectively, we decided to take our passion for SEO and creative Digital PR and content to launch our own specialist agency for people who want more.

It was a decision we made quite a while back but became a reality just recently. You can read my private story of deciding to launch Rise at Seven here.

With an investor behind us, and 3 client wins secured – we started planning just 5 or so weeks ago. We kept it quiet, didn’t tell a soul but it was all worthwhile as the launch and announcement blew all expectations out the park.

Pre-launch

The launch was carefully planned, using social media channels, online communities, events and industry and local press as the publicity channels for our new business. We created not just a 1 week launch plan but a 6 week launch plan which began way before the official day.

Ahead of launch, we focused on building a community. A community of people who were interested in what we had to say. Sharing our opinions, insight, and ideas within the industry, connecting with like-minded people across Twitter and LinkedIn as the main profiles.

We spoke at SEO and digital conferences teaching others and positioning ourselves as experts, sharing our years of experience of working in digital to build our own profiles.

This was key to a successful launch as people buy into people and we essentially sold without selling.

Every social media announcement post was pre-written and scheduled (for 7am of course), including both business and personal profiles. We made a list of people we know, events we will be attending or speaking and online publications we could contribute to. We prepared a press release to go to industry titles, photoshoot for visual content on Instagram and pre-created office video tour content for social media stories.

We registered our domains and social accounts ready to go on the big day but other than the pre-launch prepping stuff, most importantly we knew exactly who we are, where we fit in the market, what the industry needs, what makes us different, and what type of clients need our help. We have a plan, a 3-month, 6-month, 1-year, 5-year, 8-year and 10-year plan and my god are we going all out. We are here to make a difference to the search industry with two of the most passionate people around to drive it.

The content on our website very clearly shows we aren’t your full-service agency that thinks they’re good at everything. We’re the specialised agency that’s just as awesome at technical SEO as they are at creative content marketing and digital PR, that’s what clients would come to us for and we have plenty of results and awards to show for it.

This was important. The messaging of who we were was key tomaking the launch successful – we couldn’t and wouldn’t ever be “just another digitalmarketing agency” and because of that, our news was extremely well received.

So here it is, a week since the official day and we couldn’t be more grateful for the support and backing from everyone in the industry. The response from friends, family, followers, colleagues, past employers and clients we’ve worked with has been amazing and we thought we would share the launch results with you.

In 7 days we achieved...

9,233 website visits447,004 social media impressions1378 total followers4,498 launch post likes3,443 profile clicks16,309 engagements16 inbound leads23 job applications

We made headlines on Prolific North, The Drum and Decision Marketing and was featured by the University of Leeds.

And the support/responses from everyone within the community has been amazing! Even described as the...

Thank you!

We started our journey on stage at SearchLeeds and excited to continue contributing to the industry.

And we would be disappointed if the internet didn't react like this and photoshop our launch photo. Thanks to Mark Rofe.

Thinking of launching a new brand and want some help making an impact? Drop us a line.