Creative Mode | Web Design Brisbane

14/05/2026

I had a couple of questions for Sarah Hackett after her talk tonight at the Brisbane Business Hub. In a room full of people, with others waiting, Sarah had all the time in the world, was absolutely 100% focussed on me and my question, full eye contact and simple, honest answers that were definitely useful. Moments before she'd said one key to success was making people feel important. She did. You can feel it. I have been a fan since listening to her on the Bothsides Podcast in early 2025 so it was fantastic to attend, hear her talk and meet her in person.

On my notepad:
- Daily brand rituals and consistency
- Make people feel important
- Change is good embrace it
- Pivots came up a lot
- Mission and values essential
- Continual improvement and growth
- There are no ceilings.

'On the Couch with Sarah Hackett' at the Brisbane Business Hub this evening.

16/02/2026

This is the home of a digital strategist in Brisbane. This was my view this morning. It fills me up and makes me happy every day. As the child of a single Mum in the 70’s (before all the support for women) I moved around a lot. In fact I went to 13 different schools so it makes sense that my dream life has always included owning the sort of home that can be generational. Some kind of old fashioned goal that can seem impossible with the current state of things. Buying this place was a stretch and then all the interest rate rises happened. The house here is a run down old Queenslander that sucked a lot of moola right from the get go and you sure can’t see where a single cent of that went looking at the house either!!! It was all repairs and its not pretty 🤣 So it’s not likely to show up on instagram anytime soon 😬 but I’ll take that to keep this view and the quiet 😃 and the wildlife and the ability to plant wherever I want and create habitat (natives of course). In the meantime I am slightly besotted with Queensland architecture, renovations, landscaping… all the things that make a building beautiful. Instagram is full of beautiful images. I’m quite the armchair critic now too 🤣 And one day there will be time and space to bring some of these ideas to fruition in my own home 🥰 So that’s my dream. My business will help to get us there.

13/02/2026

I stepped in front of the camera again to answer: “How can you tell if your digital marketing is working?” Of course, that’s a no-brainer question because if it’s working...
.. you’ll be getting email enquiries and phone calls. You’ll also see an increase in direct searches for your brand name as more people get to know you in your category.

It is very easy to set up at-a-glance reporting for this using Google Analytics and Looker Studio. Of course you don’t need reporting to tell you when enquiries are not happening (you know this) but as a small business owner you definitely need to be across the data reporting to gauge what’s working and what isn’t, so you don’t waste time and money! This also helps you see changes in the market ASAP and plan ahead once you have data to show seasonal changes! Stay tuned to this channel. I’m going to give some more info on setup here soonish and on my website.

If you’re interested, I didn’t do as many content takes this time. I just broke it up (and lowered my standards of perfection) to get it done. No filters, no AI, and perhaps it’s going to be my thing is to be a bit dorky because . I’m fine with that 🤣 It’s raining in Brisbane today and if you know me you know my hair is a better indicator of rain than the rain radar so I just rolled with it.

Hope this got you thinking about your digital marketing again.

10/02/2026

'I haven't done Shopify before but I know digital marketing and I'm sure I can make a difference'.

Numbers are relative and need context so I do roll my eyes a bit at these sort of posts but this was affirming for both myself and the shop owner. To start with I don't usually do retail online stores but I know that my digital marketing skills can be applied to most problems even if I haven't done it before. And, for the owner to trust someone again after the previous year didn't deliver growth (with a bigger spend too) it was a real leap of faith.

With their full support to jump in, I was able to make adjustments across search, social and ads. I took it slow, watched results, adjusted more, explained what I was learning as we progressed, took on their advice regarding products and shared what was in the data. Doing this delivered a 49% increase in sales revenue over the first 90 days 😄 initially with no change to the ad spend, and later a small extra campaign for Christmas. A total of about 2 days work over that time.

It has been good to see revenue growing for this owner and fun to do something different (and I'm also really glad it worked out!!).

The image shows a graph of the first 90 days revenue comparison whilst Creative Mode managed search, social and ads via the Digital Marketing Plan (apologies, the actual numbers are hidden for client privacy but they are GOOD numbers!).

02/02/2026

Everything you need to know to get started with digital marketing for small business. https://www.creativedigitalmarketing.com.au/

14/01/2026