Managing Director of The Migration Agency, Sarah Thapa discusses how her law firm gets clients, how to build a referral network, why investing in people is so important, what types of digital marketing have worked well for her law firm and non-profit organization FONA.
Click here to listen to the full detailed podcast from Legalsites.
In this podcast, founder of Legalsites, Brendan Kelso asks key questions that summarizes valuable insights from The Migration Agency.
Relationships are fundamental
Marketing is an interesting area for an immigration business as there’s no shortage of people that want to immigrate to Australia. “So if we advertise ourselves as an Australian immigration firm or whatever, we get inundated, [everyone] wants to enjoy the life of Australia” – Sarah says.
The Migration Agency places strong emphasis on partnership networks, that forms from years of investing and building relationships with other firms. Credibility comes with referrals and is the is super powerful tool that is continuously invested in by Sarah herself as well as every team member at The Migration Agency. As organizations move – it sometimes provides an opportunity to be introduced to new potential clients.
“We’ve grown our business through relationships, I would say, that’s been fundamental to us” – says Sarah.
Keep the content relevant
Educational content is one of the best ways to talk to the audience looking for the particular service, it is valuable to place bigger emphasis on the type of content your organization specializes in. The Migration Agency has valuable insight in the world of immigration with key insights of what is happening in the market. Communicate niche content as consumers & clients are overloaded with daily advertising & marketing. Factual information supported with strong research and communicated at the right time
Channels go hand in hand with communicating the right content and back to the first questions, referrals are one of the most powerful tools to reach the right client with the right content, partnerships and referrals give content that extra credibility. Reporting is another important factor to consider measuring the success of content. The Migration Agency’s marketing team monitor online interaction and the engagement of content shared through digital channels.
Marketing, in-house approach
Marketing and advertising spend must provide a return on investment.
“We had a marketing agency, and we had a social media agency, and we burned a lot of cash and didn’t see a lot of results, and in some instances saw zero results. And that’s a bit disappointing, because, you know, when you put money into marketing, you want to see some return on investment” – Sarah says.
Outsourcing multiple marketing deliverables can create inconsistency and most global firms in the world today move all marketing in house. The sift provides better visibility, collaboration of ideas and it also works out more cost effective.
Shifting to an in-house marketing agency can benefit an organization in the long run, having a team that is responsible for the brand, upholds the vision and standards of all channels and client/customer touch points. Growth requires dedicated resources, resources that can manage the key areas in a business.
The Migration Agency mostly focusses on B2B clients advertising on major social channels such as LinkedIn, Facebook & Instagram with variations depending on the market. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) through Google is a key area of growth and is a priority. The end goal is to create a ecosystem of automation that can generate monthly quality leads in respected markets.
Setting up the audience is the first step to running any campaigns or spent advertising on digital platforms. LinkedIn & Facebook requires the right audience setup for the particular service that a firm delivers and can fluctuate depending on the market. Organic reach and content is also very powerful. Leveraging off connections via LinkedIn and partners sharing content online can lead to a larger overall reach compared to a paid for campaign. The key is to have focused paid for campaigns and continues organic content.
FONA – Social impact generates organic growth
Sarah continuously work with partners to build on it’s social impact. FONA – The non-profit foundation of The Migration Agency tells a story of giving back to community. An educational focused infrastructure for children in remote communities, making a dream a reality of creating a world class educational building to be able to provide a community with access to education.
FONA began as a philanthropic organisation responding to the disaster of the 2015 earthquakes in Nepal, with individual donations and an endowment from Sarah Thapa and her Nepali born Australian husband, Amit Jung Thapa. Since then, FONA has gone on to become an international organization with over 13,000 members worldwide, bringing on board partners from the private sector and academia to develop innovative and influential models to drive positive change.
Already, FONA is helping to influence public policy and approaches to international development particularly by charities and non-profit organisations, through its collaborative and whole systems approach.
“Whenever we post anything about how our business is helping others, our metrics just go through the roof, people are so engaged” says Sarah.
This type of content linked to other parts of your business and support from partners generates massive organic engagement. Partnerships and relationships are key to the long-term growth
Click here to have a listen to the full podcast discussion and some valuable insights from Sarah Thapa.
