ClickUp Case Study - Optimising

Optimising is a digital marketing agency based in Melbourne, Australia. They noticed a gap in the market for a transparent, customer-focused agency, and felt that we could really make a difference to the clients we were working for than what they were currently seeing from their agency.

The ClickUp team talked with James Richardson, the Sales Director for Optimising and one of the founders of the company.

Daniel and I started Optimising 10 years ago from a tiny shared city office with 1 small window, to now one of the leading Melbourne digital agencies with 14 team members. Our main focus is SEO, along with paid search and website development. However, our biggest asset are our people. The team who works at Optimising are dedicated to our clients, and always ensures we are at the bleeding edge. In a very competitive and constantly changing market, it's our attention to detail and transparency that really sets us apart.

We’re based in Melbourne, Australia - next to the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in the sporting heart of the world!

Optimising has over 100 client projects at any one time, with 14 staff working on various aspects of each campaign depending on their requirements.

Some parts of the campaign are repeatable, some are more unique. We need a system that allows us to keep track of what we have done (in detail), but also what we need to do and who is on top it.

ClickUp helps us keep a very clear record of exactly what is happening in a campaign, but most importantly, it helps us to work collaboratively.

Working on projects together, allocating tasks to appropriate people, time tracking - ClickUp is the first system we have used that seems to do all of this really well.

Honestly, we’ve tried a few systems over the years- some successful, some not.

We’ve tried Basecamp, Asana, plus a few lesser known systems, and even considered building our own system.

There was nothing wrong across the board with the previous systems. They all just had their own limitations which made it difficult for us to get full buy-in from everyone. We need a system that not only works well, but also makes everyone’s job easier, and not harder.

A system that does a majority of what we need as an agency, and is also fast, simple to use, are the most important deciding factors to us.

We know our requirements from a project management system are not like everyone else. So our favorite features might be a little different to most.

We love the rapid development of the ClickUp platform, including the the implementation of new features.

We also utilize their API to integrate with our internal systems. And lastly, would just be the performance of the interface, especially with the large amount of projects and tasks we need. We’re also big fans of dark mode!

Because Optimising has many clients but does similar work customized for each client, they have created projects for each client and then have the functions for clients as their lists. For most clients, this includes SEO and PPC work plus other lists for miscellaneous tasks. They also use colors for lists in projects and spaces which act as labels and provide a visual reminder. This consistency helps them keep client work organized from a company level, and provides a straightforward approach for each client.

Each of their tasks were clearly marked with a tag that also related to the list. Why do this? It gives a broad picture of how many tasks were associated with that particular action.

For instance, if client XYZ has SEO tasks and client ABC also has SEO tasks, they can quickly see how many SEO tasks they have across clients. That’s a great way to see how their team is spending the bulk of their time.

The Optimising team has set up private spaces for some of their team members to do work. This is great especially if you have sensitive information that other team members do not need access to (such as contact info or contract information), or to give clients/vendors access to only certain sections of your ClickUp account.

ClickUp offers simple and custom statuses to show where a task stands. The Optimising team has chosen to use simple statuses (done or not done) in some of their spaces and custom statuses in others. The type of status can be enabled in ClickUp at the Space level, so you can incorporate several different and diverse workflows within the same tool.