Iwi – Ngati Whakaue, Ngati Pikiao

Village PR & Marketing, which specialises in Influencer marketing and amplification, recently received support from Poutama to further grow the agency’s business.

Village has a reputation for changing perceptions.  Massive results for clients have included:

  • co-creating a video that went viral to 30 million people last year
  • being the driving force agency behind avocado’s rise of popularity in New Zealand, and
  • helping give Rotorua its mojo back from a media and influencer perspective.

Bridgette Tapsell

Two years ago, after a decade in business, Bridgette Tapsell (Ngati Whakaue/Ngati Pikiao) became the sole owner of Village PR.  She also assumed the significant role of being one of the few Maori women in New Zealand to solely own such an agency.  And that triggered a desire to increase Village’s own recognition factor, as well as that of its clients.

“Ironically, we were doing incredible marketing for other companies, but hadn’t made the time to work on raising our own profile,” says Bridgette.

“I wanted to do something quite different and decided to enlist a mentor who specialises in Linked In marketing.  I knew how to use Facebook.  But although I had over 1000 connections on Linked In, I had no clue how to effectively utilise this powerful marketing channel.

“I went to Alex Pirouz, the founder of Linkfluencer, who has been endorsed by Forbes Magazine and Huffington Post for being a leader in his field.  My experience of coaching with him over the last few months has been a gamechanger – and we haven’t even got to the Linked In mastery part yet.”

Bridgette says Alex told her from the outset that it would take four months of building the foundations, before they started actively campaigning on Linked In.

“Within this time I have completely changed the direction of Village’s marketing and sales approach.”

Changes have included employing a Creative Project Director to replace some of Bridgette’s hands-on role so she can focus on strategic business building, changing the documentation, fine-tuning the sales process, and totally refocusing Village’s business systems to increase efficiencies.

“We are also launching a new website which includes a powerful VDO featuring some of our key client endorsers, and we’ve started a process to integrate science-based methods to enhance the wellbeing, performance, empowerment and motivation of staff to achieve collective results for the company.”

Bridgette says the foundation work is preparing Village for sustainable growth.

“I’ve already set a new business goal of securing 50 percent of the current billings we have coming in monthly.  It’s day 10, and we are nearly halfway to achieving that already.”

Bridgette says she would love to help other businesses achieve the same level of marketing success.

“With our client Tatua Dairy, their sales have soared, as we not only worked on some of their branding, we did their social, influencer marketing, PR, video creation and amplification.  Marketing has to work holistically – it must be consistent, it must be targeted, it must be strategic, it must be partnership-based.

“You need patience to get in the marketing/sales slipstream.  You must be willing to start over again – and I’ve been there.  Or tweak, re-examine, keep curious, and keep up with technology.  And you must empower your staff.”

Village is a boutique agency that is more about quality than quantity, she says.

“We look to partner with people who have similar values and truly want to soar.”

Visit www.villagenz.com to learn more about Bridgette’s company.