Sunday Best Digital Agency: Our origin story

Well, it’s finally launched!

Ten months in the making, Sunday Best Digital Agency is out in the world and I am so excited to be able to share it with everyone. 

But the journey to starting this agency begins far earlier than ten months ago. 

In 2018, I was made redundant from an agency position as Content Manager.

It was a little surprising, and then it also wasn’t.

There were a few secret meetings going on. And then on a Monday, the owner of another agency showed up and we were all called into a meeting.

We were told that the agency would be getting bought out, but that they would be having individual meetings with us in the days following to see what our headspace was and what we were going to do. 

I went back to my desk, texted my then-boyfriend (now husband) that we were getting bought out and then went back to work while browsing LinkedIn and half-arse applying for other jobs.

I didn’t really understand what was happening or what the implication would be. Maybe I didn’t want to. 

I had my meeting with the new agency owner, and pretty quickly I decided that the new agency wouldn’t be the right fit for me.

Still not concerned. After all, I had until the end of January to find another job.

But it turns out I didn’t. The next Monday I was pulled into a room and told that I would actually be finishing up on that Friday while the rest of the team continued until January.

It seemed cruel. But it also seemed that hiring me had been the straw that broke the camel’s back: the last to be hired, the first to go.

I was made redundant with a week’s notice, one month before Christmas.

It was pouring rain, and I drove to my friend’s house crying. I called my mum. I was embarrassed. I had only been there for 6 months. What would my resume look like? How would I pay my rent? I had been saving, but not as much as I should have. 

They gave me the next 3 days off.

I came back on Friday. Had a last lunch with the other 2 employees and said goodbye to one of the directors – the other had left for a meeting in the morning and never said goodbye. I remember thinking how rude that was.

And so began 3 weeks of applying for jobs, sitting for interviews, and waiting for callbacks.

At the same time, I started building a website. Thinking about working for myself scared me, but I didn’t have any other option.

I applied for a job at Officeworks as an SEO copywriter 2 days a week. The interview went well and I was then given an SEO task to rewrite a web page and make it more SEO optimised. I started the task but soon got overwhelmed and called my then-boyfriend (now husband) feeling like I was a failure and I didn’t know anything. 

He told me to just pretend I was still at the agency and do what I would normally do.

Sure enough, I got the call a few days later that I was hired. In fact, I was just about to go into another interview when I got the call which made it increasingly difficult to answer the interviewer when she asked “Why do you want this job?”, knowing full well that I no longer did.

I was told that the brand team also needed a copywriter for 2 days a week so I had found a job at a leading Australian retailer for 4 days a week leaving me a day to work on freelance jobs.

I worked as a brand and SEO copywriter for a year before being promoted to SEO lead. 

Now, I hate technical SEO. I don’t know it all, but I know enough to know that I have no interest in it. Unfortunately as SEO lead, I was expected to be involved with technical SEO so when a role at Kmart arose for an SEO Content Writer, I jumped at the opportunity.

It was the first time Kmart had hired an internal SEO team and it was just me and an SEO manager.

Anyone that has worked in enterprise SEO (large-scale SEO) knows just how difficult it is to get things done. Basically, any company website that was built before 2016 is custom, which means more technical SEO issues and more internal stakeholders to work with. 

By this stage, I was 2 years into my own business (Remi Audette Copywriter) and was experiencing growing pains. Not that I wasn’t growing, but that I was growing too quickly. 

Every lunch break, every evening, every weekend I was on the laptop trying to finish off client work. 

I even engaged a business coach (Sara from Inka Creative) to guide me through being a business owner, trying to streamline processes and services.

But at the beginning of the second year of Covid, I had had enough. 

I knew that I would never be able to grow the business while working full time.

Around that time I was working through some mindset changes with Sara.

I had always been adamant that I wanted to be a solo business owner. But she made me realise that this was because I had a bad experience with the other agency.

It was all table tennis tables and outsourced plant watering. It was also a bit of a boys club (I was the only girl but at least I got my own separate toilet).

So I danced with the idea of having an agency and I liked it. 

Then the planning began.

I booked a brand strategy session with Inka and they perfectly articulated what I wanted my agency to be.

I realised that I could create my own rules and I didn’t have to do something just because that’s what I thought agencies had to do.

Choosing a name was the hardest part of the process.

I had Google docs full of lists of names to choose from. I wanted something cool, gender-neutral, and ambiguous so that if my services changed or expanded, the name could stay.

I randomly messaged Kim from Cartable Creative Co asking her which names she liked best. I told her what I was trying to go for and she suggested “Sunday crossword” because I was going to be doing a lot with words.

And then it hit me – Sunday best. You put on your Sunday best to look good, and that’s exactly what I wanted the agency to do for businesses – get them looking their Sunday best.

So a quick domain and ABN search and the name was free.

After finding the name, I engaged Poppy Higton to do my brand design and suddenly it started being more real.

Working out what services I would offer was a struggle. 

I didn’t want to be like most SEO agencies that offered ongoing monthly SEO optimisation services and didn’t want to really call Sunday Best an SEO agency at all.

My favourite part about SEO is content and customer experience. And while in theory, these should both be a given when doing SEO, most agencies focus solely on getting the best rankings for clients so they can say “look how high we got you on Google”. 

But after working in corporate and being exposed to fantastic marketing, brand and customer experience teams, I know that getting great results for clients is not just about rankings.

Because showing up on the search results is just one part of the equation.

So I chose to do things a little differently. 

First and foremost, we’re a content marketing agency.

We create and distribute valuable and relevant content to attract and retain an audience leading to measurable, profitable outcomes.⁠

And this content lives on your website.⁠ But you can still turn it into an email, share it on Instagram or use it in a Facebook ad.⁠

So we are, first and foremost, a content marketing agency but we use SEO strategies to get your business the results it needs.⁠

I think another reason I wanted to stay away from calling Sunday Best an SEO agency, is because I’ve worked in SEO long enough to have heard absolute horror stories about agencies doing the wrong thing.

Clients spend thousands of dollars but their websites haven’t been improved. Monthly reports are snapshots of a Google Analytics report. No ROI at all.

Unacceptable.

And unfortunately, I’ve found that the larger the SEO agency, the worse they are.

With the exception of Studiohawk – I’ve worked with them and they’re amazing. They’ve grown because they do such a good job.

Sunday Best Digital Agency is where SEO makes sense.

It makes sense for the business, it makes sense in the marketing strategy and it makes sense to invest in.

We combine the art of content marketing with the science of SEO and create content that gets clients results that help them grow online.

We’ll make sure you’re showing up online in your Sunday Best.

Want to partner with a content marketing agency in Melbourne? Get in touch with us today!