Maciej Fita of Brandignity started his entrepreneurship dreams early. At just six years old, he tried to start his personal skateboard brand as well as his own company. After years of trying out more ideas and gaining more knowledge and business, Maciej’s dreams finally came true.
Today, Maciej Fita is a bonafide entrepreneur. He co-owns a Boston-based clothing line, and he founded a digital marketing agency called Brandignity, which manages inbound marketing campaigns for businessmen like himself who may need help in realizing their entrepreneurial dreams.
After graduating from Northeastern University in Boston, Maciej Fita worked in various industries to gain much-needed work experience. He stayed there until 2008, when the opportunity to launch a company came by. While working in SEO and website marketing, Maciej co-founded BHK clothing. After that, he began to build his personal portfolio, comprising many successful marketing and branding campaigns.
Maciej Fita founded Brandignity.com two years later. With the company, he wanted to “bring [my] own unique twist on SEO to the business world.” For Maciej, SEO is an art, rather than a science. He believes that most companies focus only on the technical aspect of SEO, neglecting a marketing-based approach. With Brandignity, he wants to offer business a working alternative to old-school thinking. He knows that campaigns only succeed when they fit the company they’re serving. While SEO can solve a lot of marketing issues, Maciej knows that each problem requires its own creative solution.
Aside from his work at Brandignity, Maciej Fita has also contributed to several leading business publications, each of them representing different industries. These outlets include Entrepreneur.com, IT World, Mashable, Washington Post, PC World, and Recommend.ly.
Check out more interviews with tireless business leaders here. You can also watch Maciej Fita explain SEO here.
Jerome Knyszewski: Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
Maciej Fita: Sure thing! I started working in sales for a company that built B2B business directories about 15 years ago. I actually hated the sales part of it and really enjoyed figuring out how to drive more traffic to the directories I was responsible for. This was the catalyst for my digital marketing future. Shortly after that I became an entry-level SEO at an agency in Boston. From there my passion only grew. When 2008 hit and the world crumbled, I inherited a few positions at the agency I was working at and got one of the most unbelievable crash courses in digital marketing. From there I became a freelancer and then evolved my freelance business to more of a digital agency business model.
Jerome Knyszewski: What was the “Aha Moment” that led to the idea for your current company? Can you share that story with us?
Maciej Fita: I was at a point where I realized just how important SEO was for business. Not only that but approaching your marketing like an ecosystem was more important than ever before. Companies didn’t just need SEO, they needed social media, they needed content, they needed PPC. Being a multi-pronged agency is what I needed to build.
Jerome Knyszewski: Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?
Maciej Fita: The economy was still recovering and I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to generate leads for a new company at that time. It took lots of early mornings at the computer hustling to stand out and a boatload of coffee. I’ve always been big into inbound marketing so I knew putting out a lot of marketing assets would get the right people to my website.
Jerome Knyszewski: So, how are things going today? How did your grit and resilience lead to your eventual success?
Maciej Fita: Things are good! I’ve always hustled with everything I did. Whether it was career-related or for recreation. With that said, no marketing company was truly ready for COVID and what it did to marketing budgets across the globe. To say the current landscape is a challenge is an understatement.
Jerome Knyszewski: Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?
Maciej Fita: My company name! We had to change it 2 years in and it was a pain in the butt. The original name was too focused on SEO and I was realizing at the time that most businesses needed a multi-pronged marketing approach. We didn’t want to just be an SEO company. We had to change our name in order to reflect that.
Jerome Knyszewski: Can you share a few examples of tools or software that you think can dramatically empower emerging eCommerce brands to be more effective and more successful?
Maciej Fita: Heat mapping is crucial. Tools like Hotjar can provide unbelievably valuable information on how users are moving around your website. From there you can make changes to the UX that could further enhance the experience and improve conversion flow. Live chat features also work great. People want answers right away.
Jerome Knyszewski: As you know, “conversion” means to convert a visit into a sale. In your experience what are the best strategies an eCommerce business should use to increase conversion rates?
Maciej Fita: Really it just comes down to understanding how users find and use your website. Sifting through Google Analytics data and understanding which pages are under performing is huge. If you have an important page with a high bounce rate and low on page time you know that something is broken on that particular page.
Jerome Knyszewski: Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to create a very successful e-commerce business? Please share a story or an example for each.
Maciej Fita:
- Cool factor: Your business must have a cool factor to it. Cool sells. If your brand has a strong cool factor and a personality people tend to come back more. Check out this brand, chomps.com. Checks off both boxes amazingly well.
- Fill a void: Do not try to recreate the wheel. Your product should either have a strong differentiator to your competitors or you should be first in your category (if possible). Red Bull is a good example of this. They virtually created the energy drink category.
- Good Technology: Your website must be awesome. It must be easy to use, have good product images, fast and mobile-friendly. Visitors should always be a click away from shopping. The obvious example here is Amazon. Even though the changes over the years have been minimal it is an eCommerce beast.
- A Good Team: You need to surround yourself with a good team. If you can’t hire staff right away, you need to find good partners that know what they’re doing online. Without online visibility, you will not generate any sales.
- Customers: This sounds obvious but make sure there is a strong need for your product. Just because it has been your life dream to sell your idea doesn’t mean it will sell.
Jerome Knyszewski: How can our readers further follow you online?
Maciej Fita: My agencies website is brandignity.com.
Jerome Knyszewski: This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this!
