Payge H. Kerman is the guiding force behind Wink Digital. With a background in interactive art, UX design, and web design, she’s translated her skillset into developing an agency focused on a holistic, effective, and enjoyable approach to marketing. Her strengths lie in implementing multi-faceted plans to connect goals and ideas with action. As a creative, Payge boldly embraces non-traditional uses of color and texture to create engaging visual experiences. As a business owner, Payge prides herself on building a people-first company, where the joy of her staff, the success of her programs, and the online visibility of her clients is elevated by the relationships she builds.
What is Wink Digital all about?
Wink Digital encourages brands to break through. In an increasingly digital landscape, innovating visual and emotive methods of connecting consumers to your brand is critical to its success. We create comprehensive marketing solutions that utilize custom brand & web designs, sophisticated business technologies, and optimized marketing strategies to offer a growth blueprint that actually works.
Wink Digital works primarily with eCommerce brands eager to scale their revenue through custom websites, built with advanced app functionalities to extend the capabilities of Shopify. We focus on enhancing user experience, leading to higher conversion rates, more frequent purchases, elevated purchase values, and strengthened brand loyalty.
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
Perseverance. Being an entrepreneur requires a lot of persistence when it comes to learning new skills, client acquisition, facing rejection, and more. In order to succeed as an entrepreneur, I believe you need to know when to grab a cup of coffee and keep pounding the pavement until you get what you’re working for.
Self-accountability. When someone else is not holding you accountable for your time management and the effort put into your deliverables, it’s easy to skate by without pushing yourself. Holding yourself accountable for your actions (or lack thereof) is critical for success and personal growth as an entrepreneur.
Relationship-building skills. Without relationships, your business amounts to nothing. The relationships you hold with customers, vendors, partners, and your community largely contribute to the way the public sees you and your brand. Positive relationships will inherently lead to more sales. Good guys (and gals) don’t finish last.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
We emphasize autonomy in our technology choices. While we love our long-term relationships with our clients, we also want to empower them to utilize their own marketing assets. For us, this means developing custom CMS’s for all of our clients’ websites (read: custom-coded websites that get converted into drag-and-drop editors for our clients), creating reusable templates and style guides, and building sustainable advertising and marketing campaigns that allow for autonomy. We do this because it supports our mission of helping clients be in control of their own technology and marketing endeavors.
Oftentimes, when a client engages with an agency, especially for websites, they will be forced to pick between these two options:
A templated site that was semi-customizable to them (usually built off a theme), but that still doesn’t feel exactly right. Clients often settle with this option because they can, at least, make their own changes to the site.
-OR-
An exquisitely-built custom site that fits their brand perfectly, but doesn’t give the client the ability to edit their own content. This option, for most agencies, involves locking clients into long-term support contracts.
Wink Digital is the result of my wanting to patch this hole in the market. I wanted to create and utilize technology where our clients could get the best of both types of agencies: a thoroughly-built custom website -AND- autonomy to manage their own content.
What were the top three mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
I will be the first to say that I made a LOT of mistakes in the early stages of my business. The most prevalent one in my mind is picking the wrong business partner. In my first 6 months in business, I had a partner that did not share my same vision for the growth of the agency. We both held onto lots of resentment because we were working towards different goals and different ideas for the future. Once we parted ways, I was able to truly understand what my goals were and how I planned on reaching them.
The second mistake that comes to mind revolves around my personal “safety net”. I didn’t have much of a financial backup plan, so when things got hard, I was forced to pull a lot of all-nighters and to push myself to the limits. If I could go back to the beginning, I would have told myself to wait a year or two (until I had more of a financial safety net) so that I wasn’t as dependent on pushing myself as hard as I did. I’m grateful for the lessons those long nights taught me, but I think I could have done without quite as many of them – ha!
Tell us a little bit about your marketing process, what has been the most successful form of marketing for you?
Our marketing efforts have been relatively minimal, but two of the things that have proven most impactful for us are:
Conferences and events. Although these can be a steep investment up-front, they are also a way to connect and engage with your target market. Our attendance at conferences and events has allowed us to connect with some of our best clients, as well as make an impression on those who engaged with us.
Cold emails. Cold emails can be spammy and unbearable, but not the way we do them. Our cold email process has been so effective that we get about 80% of our clients through them. Our cold email process has also been so effective that we have been able to help build cold email sequences for our clients as part of their marketing strategy.
What are the top 3 online tools and resources you’re currently using to grow your company?
There are many tools we’re using to grow our business, but here are a few we love.
- Asana. Tried and true. This project management software does it all and really does have everything you need to utilize it to its full potential. We have found that although it is not always the most aesthetically pleasing, it works the best for different styles of communication and learning. Engineers need tools very different from designers, and Asana does a very good job of creating a tool that works for almost everyone.
- Streak. For mail merge and email tracking, Streak is amazing. It allows you to create links to share emails, too, so your team can see conversation threads, and it also allows for great pipeline management. Although it is not a robust CRM, it is one that we’ve found works very well for the things it does do.
- Quickbooks Online. Though a very clunky platform, I just have one word: damn! It simplifies the invoicing and A/R management process. Our accountant and bookkeeper both recommend it above all else, and it has helped make taxes seamless at the end of the year.
What’s a productivity tip you swear by?
Mail merge is one of the most beautiful inventions, in my opinion. I’ve been able to send personalized emails from a spreadsheet instead of copying and pasting the body of the email. This allows me to send more emails, quicker, and still have them be personal and not spammy.
I also have a forecasting spreadsheet that I swear by. It shows me all expected and actual revenue each month, as well as projections for lost contracts. This helps me understand how much needs to be sold in any given month to maintain our profit margins.
Can you recommend one book, one podcast, and one online course for entrepreneurs?
I cannot recommend the book Scale: Seven Proven Principles to Grow Your Business by Jeff Hoffman and David Finkel enough. This book talks a lot about reducing the path of resistance to growing your business, as well as encourages more critical thinking about your choices in business. One thing I am especially fond of about Scale is that it provides interspersed exercises and worksheets. For someone who learns by doing (like me), that is immensely helpful in understanding the lessons, instead of just reading them.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
If I had $1000 to start a business, I would invest it in obtaining powerful marketing materials. Cheap marketing is likely not going to be good marketing, so pick a team or person to work with that does the quality of work you want to display to your customers. As you’ll hear me say a lot, “How you do anything is how you do everything,” so make sure that your branding and marketing materials are communicating the right message. Spend the $1000 on materials that you will be proud to share and that people will enjoy consuming.
What helps you stay driven and motivated to keep going in your business?
My vision for what Wink Digital will become one day keeps me motivated every day. My hope is that in a matter of years Wink will become a thought-leader in creative agencies, from the sales process to the design process, to the development process, to the client retention process. Our work continues to be something that I’m immensely proud of, and as we expand our team and capabilities, our positioning in the market will only be strengthened. Working toward this goal keeps me energized and focused every day.
What is your favorite quote?
My favorite quote is, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” This quote is especially meaningful to me because it highlights the importance of excellence in everything you do: in relationships, in your home, in your business, and more. The effort you put into one aspect of your life communicates messages about the way you function in all aspects of your life.
For example, if someone walks in your home and sees that it’s disorganized, filthy, and cluttered, they’re going to assume that you likely operate that way in business, too. Whether this is or isn’t true, committing to doing everything with all your effort will subliminally communicate the correct messages to friends, family, prospective clients, strangers, and more.
Who should we interview next and why?
Another young entrepreneur I’m inspired by is Grace Stephenson at Glimmer. She is paving the way for female-centric sexual and mental wellness, with an emphasis on safe spaces for LGBTQ+ and BIPOC folks. I think an interview with her would be absolutely fascinating.
How can readers get in touch with you?
The best way for people to get in touch with me is to email me or send me a message through Wink Digital’s website. I will usually be able to respond within 3-4 hours, though it may take me up to 12 hours to get back in touch.
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