The Benefits of Niching Down to School and Nonprofit Websites

Marcus Burnett:
Well, hello everyone. Welcome to the second episode of WP Agency Tracks. Today we’re going to talk about something that has been recommended for lots of folks to do with their agencies over many years and we have someone here to talk to us about how to do it and that is niching down your agency and how that can lead to greater success and efficiency. So my name is Marcus Burnett. Joining me as always is my co host, Cami MacNamara. How are you doing today, Cami?

Cami MacNamara:
I’m doing quite well, thank you. It’s a sunny day in Seattle and.

Cami MacNamara:
That’S always positive and unusual, I think.

Cami MacNamara:
Yeah, well, yeah, most of the time it is unusual.

Tara Claeys:
So.

Marcus Burnett:
Well, who do we have with us today? Kami?

Cami MacNamara:
Well, I am so excited to have my friend Tara Claes on today. Tara is the founder and creative Director of Design TLC and she’s based out of the Washington D.C. area and she’s a very good friend of mine. So I’m just super happy she’s here. And Tara, for those who don’t know you, can you give us a little introduction?

Tara Claeys:
Sure. Thanks. Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about this topic because I, I’m pretty passionate about it and it’s something that’s changed the way I do business substantially so I love talking about it. I have had my own business for almost 30 years, but not always a web design business. So I started in, I worked for a few different companies in marketing and advertising in my early days and then I had my first child and decided to stay home and did a little cottage industry design, stationary art kind of business for many years that grew. I had to have a website. The Internet became somewhat of a thing in those late 90s years. And so for many years I had a little stationary business that grew into a bigger stationary business but still all out of my home. And then around 2010 I decided I didn’t want to do paper anymore. I didn’t want to have my printer and my paper cutter and everything. So I started just learning WordPress. My website was in FrontPage at that time and FrontPage was no longer being supported so I had to learn a little bit more code. And over time Discovered WordCamps, I discovered Genesis. So just kind of really was surrounded by communities that helped me learn a lot about web design, about user experience, about running a business, all those different things, which is really instrumental in me being able to do what I do now. So I’m really grateful for the WordPress community, for WordPress in general, for what was the Genesis community and now the Beaver Builder community. So all the tools that I use. I know, Cami, you use them too. I know a lot of us have taken that path. Right. I just met with, I just had like a little chat with Carrie Dills a couple weeks ago and was just recalling the days when she had her live podcast and you know, several of us were regulars there and became friends through that. So, you know, lots of great memories of the earlier days of my career in WordPress. But now, after doing it for 15 years, about five years ago or maybe a little bit more, there was a lot of discussion about niching down. And I’m good friends with Sarah Dunn, who really sort of embraced this and made little YouTube videos about her efforts to, to find a niche to, to dive into. And I was very skeptical of that because I think my business was still, you know, was doing just fine, taking on anything that came my way. But I really was finding myself eventually being really dissatisfied with some of the content that I had to work with and the different types of businesses that I had to work with. Just not being easy to work with and not really being fun. You know, pictures of people shaking stock, pictures of people shaking hands in an office building and that type of thing just kind of got a little old. So I thought about what, what websites I really enjoyed and I had done a couple different education related enrichment program type websites. And a friend of mine started a school and I did her branding and her website and just really enjoyed working with that content. And it kind of jived with my own mission and values about having, just having a positive impact on the world. And having been a mom who raised her kids in public and private schools, just really passionate about education. So I decided to go for it. And I remember clearly when I decided to go all in was I went to Jennifer Bourne’s content camp. That might have been 2017.

Cami MacNamara:

17. Yeah, 2017.

Tara Claeys:
And I decided right then that I was going to just rewrite my, my site and go full on with schools. And so I did. Right, right then. So that was what, 2017? Yeah, that’s many years ago now. So that’s when I dove into it. And then I sort of had to pivot into that industry. So I don’t know if you want, that’s my general introduction of where I am. If you want to ask me some specific questions about it, I could go on and on, but I’ll let you guys ask anything that you want to know from there.

Cami MacNamara:
I have a quick follow up. So you mentioned that you were just kind of doing WordPress in general. Did you build websites for like construction and small business? And it was really just the gamut.

Tara Claeys:
It was a gamut. Yep, it was a gamut. And I had a strategic partnership with a friend of mine who did design and we took on some sort of larger projects. But yeah, I pretty much did anything that got referred to me and anybody that would hire me, I would do their website. And I think, you know, I’m thoughtful and strategic. So I think I, I did a good job with them. I just also realized that I’m somebody who wants to like get things done. I don’t like to have a to do list that’s open. Like this morning my day is totally thrown off because I was going to go to the gym and I woke up to an email that a client sent me late at night, a pro bono project. And I woke up and there was a long list of things to do it and I couldn’t go to the gym. I like had to jump onto it right away. So I know that’s how I work. So when you’re working with small businesses, that that example is unusual that I get that kind of, you know, middle of the night thing. When you’re working with entrepreneurs and small businesses, they’re used to working around the clock just like I am. And so they will message me or send me things at 10 o’clock at night. And it’s not that they’re expecting an answer then, but I am the type of person that will want to answer it and I will often use schedule send so it goes out the next day. But still it like weighs on me. So with schools I find it’s really comfortable for me because they leave the school and they go home and they’re not expecting to work on the weekends, they’re not expecting to work at night. So it’s a lot more comfortable for me. I don’t want to be mission critical and I want to work on E commerce and that type of thing. So it’s a good fit for the way I like to work because I will work late at night but. But it’s nice because I know I won’t be hearing from anybody to interrupt me.

Marcus Burnett:
Yeah, you. You shared that you worked with kind of anybody before you niched down. And we’ll get to the niching down in just a moment. What were. Besides maybe the timing, what were some of the biggest challenges of working with a broad range of clients? And were there like one or two in particular that you worked with that you were like, oh, this is how I know I want to work with schools as opposed to, you know, having to face the challenges of working with anything across the board?

Tara Claeys:
Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, the schedule is part of it. Right. An entrepreneur or a lot of the other types of businesses that I worked with were, you know, were solopreneurs or law firms or life coaches or those types of things. They are entrepreneurs. They usually don’t have a team, so they’re. They were usually smaller companies that were hiring me to work with them and help them launch or upgrade their current website. So in addition to that sort of mentality of entrepreneurship where you’re working all the time and expecting that, I also think that I found that some of the different types of businesses, and I can’t. I don’t want to generalize like lawyers or life coaches or whatever, but I just found that entrepreneurial mindset of person, oftentimes they weren’t as trusting of my expertise, whereas I find that the majority of the clients that I work with now, they are people who work in small independent schools or small nonprofits. They wear a lot of hats, and they trust me to do what needs to be done for their website. So we have a very good working relationship where I respect that they understand what they need to do in their organization and that they have a lot of things on their plate, and they respect and put a lot of trust in me and my team and our expertise to get things done correctly. And they trust me when I say that’s not the right way to do it, and they don’t push back. And if they do, it’s their website, they certainly can do that. But I just find that the clients that I work with now, we just have a very good working relationship for that reason.

Marcus Burnett:
Yeah, that makes sense. I also worked before my stint in hosting a couple of different hosting companies now, but I worked for an agency here in Florida for 10 years, just over 10 years. And we did make the decision to niche down at some point to kind of a outdoorsy market. And one of the things that we faced, which sounds kind of similar to, like where you say the trust, you know, the clients having trust in you we realized that we couldn’t know our customer, our clients, like, intimately across all of those different categories. We weren’t going to deeply understand doctor’s offices and construction worker, construction companies and, you know, you name it. So we picked a few different categories, you know, a couple of different categories in the outdoor space. Knowing that was something that we were as a company, like the people inside the company. This is a very small company, but we were passionate about the outdoors, fishing and boating. And we knew that we could really talk to that audience because we could learn that deeply because we really liked it. And that then gives trust, like you said, to the clients that you work with, because you’re like, I know this particular thing inside and out. So when I tell you this is how I think it needs to be, it’s not being pulled out of thin air. It’s because I’ve worked with companies that have tried it the other way. I’ve worked with companies that have tried it this way and succeeded. And the subject line that I know most about that I am an expert in. And so it totally makes sense that you really build that trust with your niched audience because you are an expert in that because of the work that you’ve done with more of those. When you decided to do that, and this was like our fee one, I’m just thinking back to one of our fears. When I was at the agency, when we did that was okay, our pool of options is everyone in the world. And now we’re going to narrow down our pool of options to just the specific category. Were you afraid that you were not going to be able to find enough business? And then how did you settle on schools and nonprofits knowing? I mean, it’s a passion, obviously, but I think schools and some nonprofits anyways kind of famously have a reputation of maybe not having a ton of money to spend. So how did you fall into that? And were you afraid that you weren’t going to be able to make the money that you needed to because you’ve kind of cut off anything that doesn’t fall in that niche?

Tara Claeys:
Yeah, that’s a good question, and I totally agree with you about that. One of the benefits of niching down is that you do get to you learn more about that specific industry and what works and what doesn’t work. So that does add to that trust. I mean, I chose schools because I had a little bit of experience in it and I enjoyed it. And I looked at the market a little bit, enough to know that there was an opportunity there. And so I think, yes, I was worried when I made that decision at content camp to totally make my website just be about schools. I had a number of existing clients who were on maintenance plans with me that were not schools. And most of those by now I’ve handed off to colleagues. But it really was a leap of faith and it took a significant amount of courage, I would say, to do that. And then also it caused me to pivot my focus of my community. So this was before COVID but it, when we really dove in was just about when Covid was happening and word camps were not happening anymore. And I really dove into the school marketing industry in LinkedIn and there are some other kind of listserv type things that service people who are in communications, marketing development within these private schools. And there are tons of independent schools, all different kinds of them, all over the world. So I actually met on Zoom with some other people who are consultants for schools, started just getting my name out there and networking, making friends in that industry, which has caused me to step back from the WordPress industry, the community a bit because I don’t have enough bandwidth for all of it. But in terms of where my business growth is going to come from, it’s coming from the relationships and getting my name out there in the industry that I’m serving. And there are some really big companies who make, who specialize in school websites. They’re really expensive, they’re proprietary CMSs and a lot of schools use them. And I’m not trying to compete with them. I have taken some, you know, some schools have come to me and had me rebuild their site on WordPress, but, but for the most part, there are so many schools, there are preschools, Montessori schools, there are so many that there’s a pretty big opportunity there. And once I do start getting, once I did start getting my name out there and doing podcasts and I have a podcast that serve that is targeted towards our potential clients with a colleague. You know, it has over time developed and now I’m getting referrals from other schools or people who have seen me on webinars or have seen, you know, have seen my podcast, heard my podcast, those types of things. It’s been effective over time in, in terms of diving into that industry. And I know I mentioned Sarah Dunn, she doesn’t really build websites anymore, but she has niched down and does SEO for the wedding industry and she goes to all these wedding conferences and she presents on SEO and she has a room full of thousands of people that she’s talking To. So I think you really have to dive in to where the people in that niche are hanging out to get known. You can’t just keep going in the way that you’re going and being as just a general WordPress person and being part of the WordPress community, where you might get referrals or you might not, but you really have to dive in and get. And really get your name out there in. In the circles that the potential clients are traveling in.

Cami MacNamara:
I have a question about how you decided to bring together schools and nonprofits, and what was the common factor behind the scenes there that made those two things work together.

Tara Claeys:
Well, most of the schools that I work with are nonprofits. So from the get go, they are nonprofits. They have boards, so a lot of them have, you know, all nonprofits have to have a board. Most of the nonprofits that I work with are education related in one way or another. That can be fairly broad. But, you know, I want to make a positive difference in the world. I. This is the last stages of my career. I am very, especially in this climate right now. I am not shy about saying what I believe in. And the types of projects that I want to work on are projects that align with my values. So nonprofits. And not even all private schools, not even all independent schools fit into that, right? Some. Some don’t. So. So I think that’s where it comes from is it’s. It’s what I want to give back to the world. Not to, you know, not to be too lofty about it, but really, like, I want to work on projects that I think are doing good things. So for people. So that’s where that comes from is that’s from my heart, not necessarily a business strategy. It’s really just, you know, and I do take on a few pro bono projects every year as well, because I can. And so that’s really what that’s about for me. And being flexible enough to do that is it’s a privilege that I have. And my business, you know, runs pretty well. And I believe that things come back around right. When you do, good things come your way too. So that’s been true for me, for sure.

Cami MacNamara:
Well, your business is named appropriately Design Tick. With that in mind, did you get a lot of pushback from your existing clients that you had when you made this switch in 2017? 17. Were they, like, upset that you were like, hey, you know, this isn’t my thing anymore?

Tara Claeys:
Yeah, not. I don’t think so. I don’t think really any of them even paid Attention to that. Most of those clients, that’s the other thing is they’re not that engaged with their website once it’s up and running. Schools are more so because they have events and different things that they’re doing. So a lot of the other websites would kind of get stagnant anyway. So I waited a few years and then just explained to them and pass them on to another colleague who, you know, who does maintenance for a variety of clients. I wanted to also eventually streamline my portfolio just so that it really was all into all businesses within my niche. I do have a couple of exceptions, but even those have mostly moved away to one degree or another. But no, I didn’t get any pushback.

Marcus Burnett:
On a bit more about like the logistical and marketing side of doing that. You know, besides kind of being able to put your heart into it. There are probably some other benefits I would think. Has niching down made things like marketing and operations easier? Like you can focus your marketing in one direction. That was another thing at our agency, like when we were serving everyone, like, how do you market yourself to be found? But when you’re in a niche, maybe you can really go a little bit harder on marketing yourself, the SEO, all of that stuff. Have you found any like, logistical and marketing benefits as well?

Tara Claeys:
For sure, yeah. Because you know who your audience is. So. Right. So I mean, I’ve sponsored webinars, I’ve gone to conferences for school marketers. I have a podcast for school marketers. I tried some LinkedIn marketing that was not effective. You know, I belong to a couple of different consortium type things for consultants for schools. So I’ve met a lot of other people who do like, you know, digital ads for schools. They don’t build websites. So you know that relationship. They can refer me. So for sure it makes marketing so much easier because you know who you’re talking to, you often know where to find them and you become an expert so you can become a trusted authority in that space as well. So definitely marketing is a lot easier when you’re, when you are niche down for sure.

Cami MacNamara:
Was there anything like any other benefits maybe that you found surprising that you’ve come across on snitching down that like, oh, now I don’t have to think about this or whatever the case is?

Tara Claeys:
Yeah, saying no, I mean, it makes it super easy to say no to your neighbor who’s starting up a, you know, lawn care business and needs a website to say, I’m sorry, I only work with schools and nonprofits. You know, your uncle who is starting a financial planning business. Whatever it is, it’s a lot easier to say no to those things. So yeah, that’s off the bat. Huge.

Cami MacNamara:
A question about the tools that you use to build your business. And I’m always just so amazed at how some women have the same origin story. Like Tara and I have the same origin story. We had a kid, we decided to do this web design thing. We ended up in the Genesis community. We even both have been in Jennifer Bourne’s community. It just, it comes to me. But I am so curious about the tools that you focus on in building these websites for schools and nonprofits.

Tara Claeys:
Yeah, I think the other thing too, and this could probably work whether you’re niching down or not, is. And you’re really good at this. Kami is having processes that you’ve perfected over time that you know, make it go smoothly, that you know, your clients can work with. So I really started doing a lot with just organizing everything in my starter site and making it really easy to sort of replicate. Because schools websites, we do not use any templates. I have a designer that works with me. We do Figma prototypes. We are, you know, we’re very professional and we do really good design. We don’t. We start from scratch, but scratch in the design, right? Not necessarily scratch in the development. So I can have a starter site ready now that I know how to, how to work with that. My developer who works with me knows how to work with. So we have consistent naming, consistent style names for things across all of our websites. You know, all of those things so that we can make our style sheets really easy to edit and to learn. We have instructions for our clients on the back end, which is really helpful. We use a plugin called WP Help by Mark Jaquet, which has been around for a really long time, but we use that to put instructions on the back end of our site. I use Beaver Builder and all the things that go with Beaver Builder. I either use ACF or Pods. You know, those are some givens that that we use on all of our sites. I have a good number of plugins that are tried and true that I’ve worked with for many years and you guys, I’m sure too, Gravity Forms and those types of things. And then I use Google Doc and Google Sheets. So I have a Google spreadsheet that is my project management from my clients. I’ve tried getting them into, you know, Asana or different things like that and they just never look at it. I’ve done client portals on my website, they never look at it. So I just put everything in a Google sheet. Everything. I pull my styles from Figma in there so they know their colors and their fonts and all the different styles. I put all their DNS information. I mean, it’s like 25 tabs in this spreadsheet. It’s got their schedule in it. It’s got, you know, the content audit that we do, it’s got everything. And I’ve got an index page at the beginning so you can click and get through. It’s really nice and it’s grown over time. Like if I look at the first one I did compared to where I am now, it’s really a nice document. And then something that we’ve really been focusing on in the last year and a half is accessibility. So we use Equalize Digitals. I get their, you know, business level plan. I go on their office hours every couple months and ask them questions to learn and they’re so patient and great in teaching us. So that when, now, when we launch a site, I can do an accessibility report to show them whatever is not accessible. It’s usually like PDFs that we don’t really deal with, but other than that we really do a really good job. And I think, I feel really proud about that, about that tool that we use because. And then I have a developer who’s also created our own custom accessibility plugin that when we add some classes to things like accordions and Beaver Builder is really working to make their stuff more accessible, but a lot of it still isn’t. So we are doing that too on our own. So that’s another tool that we use.

Cami MacNamara:
That’s great. Have you worked an accessibility waiver into your contracts since you are in this niche that really probably has to pay more attention than the average solopreneur probably does with accessibility in their website?

Tara Claeys:
Yeah, I do have a. I do have a clause in my contract. I don’t think it’s been reviewed by a lawyer. But. But I do have a clause in there that basically just says like we’re using this tool, you know, we won’t. We do not guarantee.

Cami MacNamara:
No guarantees.

Tara Claeys:
We don’t guarantee ADA compliance. We’ll give you the scan results on this scan. But you know, we don’t care if you want to do that, if you want to hire someone to do that ongoing, we can recommend someone to you. A lot of the schools that we work with, they’re independent schools. They don’t get federal funding, so. And the rules around accessibility don’t yet apply to nonprofits that receive federal funding. Its only reply applies to federal agencies. Eventually it probably will, but the requirements there are not required to do that.

Marcus Burnett:
Yeah, my question, my follow up there was going to be, I was curious about how like the client communication goes. You said you have the spreadsheet. Do you have like weekly check ins on that spreadsheet to kind of share what you’re doing? I imagine like you said, they’re not logging into a sonar like a basecamp type thing. It’s probably like the hundred emails back and forth is my guess. The communication tool of choice is usually email, I would think for schools. And so, you know, keeping all of that straight is important. So do check ins on that spreadsheet with them that are forced to make sure that everyone’s looking at those at a regular interval. And do you generally have like one point of contact or like you said, there are boards involved in a lot of these nonprofits and schools. Are you having to kind of figure out the design by committee, develop by committee thing as multiple people maybe talk to you or do they have to work that out first and then you have a single point of contact that, that you talk to for those.

Tara Claeys:
Yeah, so I don’t have like any kind of automated check in from the spreadsheet. We do use email and we have, there is a schedule. So there are deadlines on the schedule. We meet them. I send what is due, when it’s due. We do a lot of asynchronous presentation. So I do a lot of video presentation, which really helps. When they do have a board, we do have one point of contact and I try to guide them on how to best collaborate with their stakeholders and with me. And so the videos that we share are really helpful for that point of contact because they can share my response to any feedback without having to explain it themselves. And when it’s coming from an expert, if an expert says no, you can’t use that color because it’s not. Doesn’t have enough contrast or I don’t recommend having a slider in your hero area. Here’s research on why that’s bad. So they have me to back up any design or functionality decisions that I’m recommending that they forego or that they implement. So that that works really well. I’ve gotten on calls with whole boards before and done presentations and answered questions and I’m always happy to do that. I think a good rapport with my clients and they trust me to, you know, to speak to their board if they need me to. That’s rare for collating all the feedback and sending it to us. I have a meeting right after this, going over that and I can tell from some of the feedback that they sent us that, you know, they’re the per. The feedback they’re getting is opposite of the direction we were given. So, you know, we’ll have that conversation about what that means. So. So yeah. And in terms of schedules, we often have clients who are delayed. And I know I have it in my contract that if it’s delayed a certain amount, such and such happens. I’m really bad about enforcing that dormancy clause.

Cami MacNamara:
Yeah.

Tara Claeys:
Usually I’ll ask. I’m in that situation right now and they fully paid me for it like in 2024. But the site’s not going to launch till June. So you know, we’ve been paid for the work. That’s fair. But I still am now having to keep that in my queue. Right. It’s my other projects so I could ask them to pay or what I often will do is I will say we’re going to turn the site over to you and teach you how to do the content. You do that, we’ll do a pass on it before it launches to make sure it’s correct. But we’re not going to spend time copying and pasting content at this point because you’re so delayed. So like a trade off like that where I want to be fair to them. So yeah, so I will check in with them when if they’re overdue on things and I’ll just pester them. But it doesn’t happen that often because usually after I send the design or whatever we’re presenting, I have a link for them to schedule a follow up, you know, a feedback call. So they usually will do that. So that. That works pretty well. Yeah.

Cami MacNamara:
How long does it usually take you to build and you know, start to finish a school website?

Tara Claeys:
10 to 16 weeks or more. Usually somewhere in that range. And I’ll share this story, even though you’re not asking me about pricing, maybe you’re going to, but because I work with a lot of small schools, I have positioned myself over the past many years as a very affordable solution for them. And that means that my websites were like five or six thousand dollars to be completely forthright. That’s what it would cost to build a site. I’ve now brought on a designer. I have a developer. We have more overhead, but still not a lot compared to a big agency. And I mean, the schools will pay six figures and high six figures for websites from some of these proprietary companies. A lot of schools will pay a lot of money. There are also a lot of small schools, little Montessori schools that don’t have a lot of money. I don’t believe in changing my pricing based on what the school’s budget is necessarily. I want to be. I want to price it fairly. And so I’ve raised my prices and I just lost a contract today that I was. Had a great relationship and thought was going to be great. I was almost positive they were going to hire me. It was like months of conversation, great proposal. They did not hire me because my price was half of what all their other proposals were. And it was still a very high price for me. And that is like, that’s just so disappointing to me. And I’m thinking, I guess I should be charging more. But I also want to be able to help the small schools too. So I really, I’m in a process today now going forward of thinking about, you know, how what the value is versus what it costs me to do a project and whether, you know, if I do, if I do three huge projects, that’s all I need to do a year to get the income that I, you know, that I want to get. Does that make sense? So. So my positioning in the industry is possibly changing as we’ve gotten better, right? We’ve won some awards, we’ve done some really great projects. We’re now integrating with a really big CRM and portal kind of system, Blackbaud, that you probably have heard. We’re working with their API. We have some custom stuff, so that adds cost. So I’m really now in the next phase of my business where I’m, I think, becoming better known and really good at what we do to think about whether I’m going to be pricing myself out of those small projects and into higher, bigger ticket projects, which the value’s there for sure. They’re paying it to other agencies that aren’t even doing that I know are not doing as good of a job as we are. And I mean, I’m not trying to not be humble, but I’ve seen it, like, they’re not. We know what, we know how to do this. Like, we’re good at it. And I can say that with great confidence. So. So stay tuned.

Cami MacNamara:
But it’s a good problem to have. Right. Like, you’ve gone from just starting in this niche to being really well known. And you, you know, it is one of those things where you learn lessons.

Tara Claeys:
Yeah.

Cami MacNamara:
From the things that disappoint us actually turn into things that help us in the long run.

Tara Claeys:
For sure. Yeah. I will look back on this, I’m sure in some ways. And again, like, I want to be a boutique, special, specialized company. I don’t want to take advantage. I want to be fair. So, yeah, whatever that means, I’m not sure yet. But that’s the next lesson to learn, I think, is when you are niching down and you’ve been in it long enough time, like me, that you are super confident, as you can tell that I am. You know, what’s the value versus what’s the cost? And there might be some space in there to work with. So, you know, it just means I’m going to basically be raising my hourly rate again to reflect higher value, I guess. I don’t know.

Marcus Burnett:
Yeah, sting, absolutely. And that as you start to think about shifting some of that stuff in your business now kind of segues really great into the next question, which is what is your strategy for attracting new clients in the school and nonprofit sectors? Do you just call up a school and say, hey, your website could use some help. Let me help you. Is it all word of mouth? How do you find the next client?

Tara Claeys:
Yeah, I’ve tried a bunch of different things and that is not the way to do it. I’ve done direct mail to local schools.

Marcus Burnett:
Don’t like you telling them that their website is terrible.

Tara Claeys:
I’ve had an assistant, like, make a spreadsheet for me of all, all of my local schools and which ones are on WordPress and which ones are old and gone after them with mailings? Nothing. I’ve done LinkedIn marketing. Nothing. So, I mean, it’s like the way I’ve run my business all along, which is just kind of by luck in a lot of ways. I mean, I think in January, beginning of January, I was like, well, I’ve got this one really big project that’s going to be happening for the Next few months I’ve got this one project that’s already paid me, that’s going to launch at some point. I don’t know what else is coming. And now I have, in the past three weeks I’ve put out like, you know, 10 proposals. All of a sudden, you know, people are contacting me because they were referred by a colleague, you know, another consultant. I just did a couple webinars, they saw me on a webinar, they listened to my podcast, they found me on Google, they heard my name in a, you know, listserv that they’re in. So yes, I think it is word of mouth, 100% word of mouth. And you know, I’ve gone to conferences, I’ve not gotten any business directly from those, but I think that just builds authority. So building authority and then word of mouth is really the, the way to go. And it also I think brings in a higher value client in terms of how they’re going to work with me because they already are coming with some amount of trust and respect because of what they’ve heard about me. So I think that also is good rather than somebody who’s just blindly coming to me without knowing anything about me.

Cami MacNamara:
And you have a podcast. You mentioned your webinar. Are you doing like, are you on YouTube actively doing things like this or how is that?

Tara Claeys:
No, there just have been a few. There are a couple like school marketing. My, my co host of my podcast just did like a week long conference, online conference with where she had like 30 different speakers and so I did a talk there and I had a couple people reach out after that. So a couple different things like that where I’ve had opportunities to present. I’m probably going to a conference later this spring that I’ve gone to for school marketers. So I don’t really want to travel to do conferences because it costs a lot of money and it’s unlike the WordPress space to be to get a ticket to a school. Independent school conference costs a lot more than $50 or $100 and so I would have to get a lot of value from that. And I don’t find that’s the best place because you find people at the right time and it might take a while for that to pay off in a conference, you know, situation.

Cami MacNamara:
Is WP campus still a thing? Because wasn’t that geared WordPress for universities?

Tara Claeys:
Yeah, higher. Higher ed. Yeah. And I don’t really work. I’ve done one, I did a micro site for a university, but I’m not getting. I’m not looking to get into that space.

Cami MacNamara:
A whole other level.

Tara Claeys:
Yeah, our Sites are usually 50 pages or less, so they’re not usually huge sites. So yeah.

Cami MacNamara:
Okay.

Marcus Burnett:
As we’re starting to get down on our time here, I just kind of wanted to ask you for agencies that are currently general generalists serving everyone that feel like maybe that’s not quite what they want to do or that’s not quite working for them. Do you have any advice for them as they maybe look to niche down into a segment, you know, what can you offer them from your experience of doing it over the last eight years or so? You know, obviously you’ve been successful at it. What’s kind of some words of advice that you can give them? Looking to do the same thing?

Tara Claeys:
Research your industry, make sure that it’s something that you enjoy, you know, communicating with people about, because you have to do that a lot. I mean, I only do websites for schools, but I participate in conversations online and read blog posts and stuff to understand what’s happening in general in the industry. So it’s not even just website stuff. It’s what’s happening with leadership, what’s happening with policy, what’s happening, you know, what are the people that I’m going to be working with? What are they worrying about and thinking about and needing support for? What do I need to understand about them so that I can be a partner to them to not just about their website. So that’s the same for any industry. The people you’re working with, they’re not just probably doing just the website as part of their job for the chiropractor or the wedding planner or, you know, the fitness coach or whatever it is. You really need to have, I think, have a desire and interest in that industry in order for it to be successful for you? Because I think you need to be able to speak from your heart about helping these businesses or organizations grow. Maybe you are just working with new businesses, entrepreneurs, small businesses. Maybe that’s your passion that you go to your small business, local small business meetings and meetups and those types of things. So find the type of thing that you’re interested in talking about a lot and listening to a lot, because that’s where you have to focus your attention is in those spaces. So that’s really the most important thing. And make sure there’s an opportunity there that’s not controlled 100% by some other company that, that you have no inroads for, which is probably rare in anything. Because I feel like there’s enough business to Go around in every industry and. And yeah, and make friends with people who do that who are in that area as well. So you can have a little social interaction too. So I’ve made some really great friends who are consultants for schools and have a lot more experience in schools than I do.

Cami MacNamara:
You know, Tara, I am so happy to have you be like the second guest on the show. I was actually honored first. I was actually the first guest. And now, now I’m here all the time. But I want you to be able to share with everyone who’s listening how they can find out more about you and more about design, TLC and just, you know, share all the things.

Tara Claeys:
Thank you.

Cami MacNamara:
I can learn more about Tara.

Tara Claeys:
Thanks. So I will say the other thing that I’ve cut back on is social media for my business. I had someone posting. I was doing blogging every week and I had someone posting and I saw zero benefit from that. Except that my friends would say, oh, it looks like your business is doing so well. Because I see these posts online and I just. I’m not engaging in LinkedIn all that often. I will check it, but I’m a lot of people run it all the time, especially in this industry. So I am on LinkedIn and that’s probably the best, like business social media way to connect with me. But my website is designed TLC and you’re. You can reach out to me through that website, through the contact form if I’m happy to answer any questions. For anybody who wants to learn more about, you know, niching down or my process, I’m always happy to share about that too. And yeah, so LinkedIn and my website are probably the best ways to reach me. I’m not really on my business on social media anyplace else these days.

Marcus Burnett:
Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you, Cami. And we will see you next time.

Tara Claeys:
Thanks for having me. This is really fun. I appreciate the opportunity.

Cami MacNamara:
Always good to see you, Tara.

Tara Claeys:
Yes, Cami. Bye, Marcus.