FAQs

We will always keep your personal information safe. We ask for your information in exchange for a valuable resource in order to:

• Improve your browsing experience by personalising the Thrive Marketing site to your needs
• Send information to you that we think may be of interest to you by email or other means
• Send you marketing communications that we think may be of value to you

If you have any questions or concerns in relation to data collection and how we store your details, please contact:

Rachel Townsend Green,

Director, Thrive Marketing,

Xcel Centre,

Long Tens Way,

Aycliffe Business Park

DL5 6AP

You can also reach Rachel via our office landline on 01325 778 786 or address an email FAO Rachel Townsend Green via hello@thriveability.co.uk.

View our privacy policy for more information about data privacy and storage.

In a word, yes. We don’t call ourselves that because it can be seen as a negative and truth be told we can’t do everything in-house, but we do have a range of strategic partners. Our digital growth agency promises to remain completely transparent and wherever possible we do complete projects in-house.

We guarantee that all design and development projects are completed by our in-house team. We also guarantee that we complete all work relating to inbound marketing retainers, PPC campaigns and organic/paid social media work in house too. 

Should we outsource any elements of your project to another agency or individual, we ensure that they are rigorously checked before we undertake their services and the final project is proofed by our in-house team before being handed to the client.

We are always on the lookout to bring fresh talent into our agency. If you are studying at college or university, or have recently graduated, and you believe your expertise could support our team, we’d love to hear from you!

Please visit our Careers page to find out about employment and internship opportunities, as well as how to submit your CV and portfolio for the consideration of a work experience placement.

Alternatively, if you're a budding marketer, why not submit a guest post for consideration?

We’re more than happy to take work from your organisation that requires business funding and wherever we can help we will support you through the process. If you’re North East-based we have excellent relationships with many of the major funding organisations, including NBSL. We’ve completed many projects using business grants, including website builds and branding projects, plus marketing strategy and support.

Yes! We offer social media workshops, buyer personas workshops, branding workshops and 1-to-1 WordPress and CMS training for customers. We’re also open to offering bespoke workshops and training 1-to-1s for your specific needs, just enquire about our expertise and we’ll be happy to provide a quote if we believe we can add value to your business.

Absolutely not! We work with organisations across the UK on projects across our spectrum of services, we’re more than happy to meet at your workplace or e-meet via Skype or other video calls, as well as over the phone. We are particularly experienced with managing HubSpot and inbound marketing retainers for companies across the country, including London. However, we also have a number of longstanding clients who hire us for branding and development projects.

Yes! The method of inbound is an approach you use with your whole marketing efforts. You can do digital marketing, direct mail campaigns and everything else you like, but if you don’t strategise and deliver it in an inbound manner, you’re not getting the best from your efforts.

Inbound means that you deliver these activities as part of a strategy that is focused on the right customers, in the right places at the right time. You deliver educational content that they’re looking for, rather than disrupting them with cold calls, billboard notices or radio advertising.

Read our blog posts on inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing is not an easy task and it certainly won’t be completed overnight. Inbound is an ongoing process that requires you to spend ‘reasonable’ or ‘significant’ time on the process. This is made both shorter and easier if you have an external agency – Thrive – to support and guide the journey.

It depends. Unfortunately, there is no clear way to answer that question, until we have had our initial discussions with you about the current state of your marketing and website. After an initial review, we will be able to give a car answer about whether or not a new website would be required. We can either integrate HubSpot into your existing website – if it’s already looking good – or we can build you a new site on the HubSpot COS.

Discover more about this stage of our process.

We typically advise that a new HubSpot package customer can wait six months for leads to come through via organic website traffic. External factors will affect this estimate – particularly the quality of your existing database, social media presence and contacts in the industry.

Companies often gain a full ROI after the first year. This again can be impacted on external factors, such as the level of commitment placed on content marketing campaigns, how efficient the organisation is at implementing their Thriveability Plan – if they have undertaken one, etc.

Businesses commit to inbound because it aligns to their values and they believe it is worth the long-time value that it inevitably brings.

Thrive will assign you with an Account Manager who will hold monthly performance and analysis sessions with you to ensure that you stay on track to achieve your growth goals. 

Yes! However, we must advise that this is typically not in the best interests of your company. Without a strategic plan for how your moving parts will work together – social campaigns, email marketing etc. – how can you see what impact it’s having?

Inbound marketing works to ensure that all of the pieces slot together and you can see the results of both each tactic and the strategy as a whole.

Ebooks and downloadable resources, plus gated tools, all work to enable you to capture data and build lead nurturing campaigns. By providing your website visitors with the offer of valuable information to help them, why else would they turn to you for advice? This transfer of data for a download is a great way to ‘prove’ your talent and capability.

In a word, no. There are a number of alternative automation platforms on the market, we can discuss these with you. As well as these, there is also the option to put together a DIY version of HubSpot, affectionately named FrankenSpot. The process takes longer and there are still costs involved, however it does work as a cheaper alternative.

With Thrive, you can choose from one of three HubSpot Support Packages, all of which include the basics, and varying additional levels of content marketing support, enabling you to implement a full inbound marketing strategy.

Traditional marketing forms, such as advertising, do not ask for permission from their target audience – they simply expose them to promotional content, such as spam email, cold calls, TV advertising, billboards, PPC or web adverts.

Inbound marketing, on the other hand, requires prospects to opt in, meaning that they give permission – and their contact details – to receive marketing communications. Thanks to our internet-driven world, most prospects undertake their own research process when it comes to selecting a product/service provider. This means that you need to be sharing educational and resourceful updates so you’re on their radar during their buying journey.

We usually begin with a new client 2-4 weeks after a signed service agreement. We use the time before starting services to prepare our team for service launch. We do things like transfer knowledge from our engagement strategist to your dedicated marketing team members, find a writer specifically for your business and prepare tools and templates for you. This preparation helps us create a smooth and easy transition with our clients.

Absolutely. By following the inbound marketing process, we ask for your details to provide you with some worthy reading and supportive materials for your marketing strategy.

Keep us in mind next time you have marketing questions!

Yes! The design team at Thrive work hard to build professional and relatable brands for companies of all sizes and sectors. We also have different packages available to suit varying budgets and project sizes.

You will be taken through one of our Branding Workshops if you wish to undergo a full rebrand project, alternatively we can provide a brand refresh or create new stationery, promotional materials and marketing assets with your existing brand guidelines.

Find out more about our branding workshops here.

No, not the actual artwork files, unless agreed upon in the proposal. However, all approved web images and high-resolution images purchased are 100% yours once the project is fully complete and paid for.

A finished project is yours upon receipt of final payment. At your request, we will supply the electronic files to you via Dropbox, WeTransfer or email.

We also keep a copy of your project on file on our secure in-house server, should you lose your copy of these files or require updates to your project.

Unfortunately, this is typically a question best answered with, ‘How long is a piece of string?’

Your website design will depend upon your requirements, including the website size, necessary functionality and the state of your existing brand.

However, we will give you a guideline for the length of each stage of the design, build and proof process. We will also maintain open lines of communication via our account manager if there may be any changes or delays to proposed deadlines.

In our experience, web projects are held up by miscommunication, a lack of content or changes to the project’s scope.

With this in mind, we no longer start web builds without the final content being signed off and received by ourselves. Alternatively, we provide an in-house content creation service.

Upon receipt of the content we can start the design and build of your website. We aim to keep al projects on track, with specific deadlines set for various stages of the project.

Later content amends or project add-ons, such as changes in functionality or extra pages, will alter the timeline.

Yes. We offer upgrade services to existing design and functionality. Often, your website looks good but is still falling short in some way such as not reaching conversion goals. After we complete a website audit, sometimes the recommended upgrade can be as simple as adding a more effective calls to action, for example.

Yes, we can provide a website build from brand concepts, website design, build and hosting, should it be required. We work with reputable hosting providers to ensure that there are no tasks for you to complete.

We will register your domain name, provide hosting, design and build your website, plus create corporate email addresses and a Google My Business presence, if required.

All of the add-on products and services we offer will be agreed as part of our proposal.

All our websites are created with search engines in mind. However, it is a good idea to speak to us about SEO support packages and retainers, if you would like to focus on your SEO performance. We can offer bespoke packages or engage one of our specialist partner agencies.  

As standard, we set up a Google Analytics account, which tracks and records your website visitors, as well as looking into how they found you.

As an additional service, we can provide monthly Google Analytics reports to enable you to put in place the steps to improve your web presence and web traffic.

The website belongs to you once the design has been completed and paid for.

All three packages come with:

• In-depth monthly reports of their accounts’ performance
• Increased engagement and social following
• A dedicated account manager

After that it is largely defined by the amount of time, per week, we allocate to building your account - the more time we spend, then the more scheduled messages and engagement you will get. All three packages are designed to have a positive impact on your online presence and we will choose a package that best suits your business, its demographic and your marketing goals.

Find out more about our social media offering here.

Followers and likes, amongst other numbers, are what’s commonly referred to as “vanity metrics” – they look nice, but don’t always mean a great deal. We will work to organically build your engagement and reach metrics, but we do not guarantee an increase in followers or engagement s this is impossible to promise to a client.

We can offer paid advertising campaigns that will boost your reach, for an additional cost.

Easy! We review each social media account for each client every month and hold an internal monthly analysis session to discuss your account’s growth and performance for the previous month. We will then share this data with you via email or in an in-house marketing meeting.

You will receive a PDF report of your monthly social performance every month so you can also monitor developments on your platforms.

Not necessarily! To have a successful content marketing strategy you need to be posting your blogs and social media updates in a strategic manner.

This involves an editorial calendar, a social posting schedule and a variety of content types for both social and blogging purposes. We build a month-by-month social schedule and include end-of-month reporting.

Of course, it’s crucial that you continue to strive to create content and it’s great that you’re out there and spreading the word. In this case, we can cheer you on from the sidelines after producing a custom marketing strategy for you allowing you to ‘get on with it’!