Agency Feature: Alchem Digital

How do we define Alchem?

We are Alchem Digital. We are a bootstrapped tech + social media marketing startup based in Chennai and Chicago. The agency was set up by a bunch of us who worked together in an agency before, with solid experience in the field of branding, design, tech, and social media.

We call ourselves the Alchemists as we never fail to add alchemy to our client’s businesses. We are extremely young and savvy, which makes us quite nimble to swiftly adapt to the changing trends and requirements. EOD, we love building brands. Period

What's in the name?

Inspired by the book, “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho. Google says, “Alchemist is a person who transforms or creates something through a seemingly magical process”.

Well, we intend to exactly do the same leveraging digital and tech for our clients. Hence named, "Alchem Digital".

What we do?

Alchem Digital offers tech + digital solutions for our clients.

In the digital marketing front, we provide:

• Search engine optimization
• Creative social media strategy + consulting
• Social media management
• Online reputation management
• Paid social (across all major social media platforms)
• Content marketing (SEO based content writing + Copywriting for social posts and ads)
• Brand consulting + Branding services
• Graphic designing

In the technology front, we provide:

• Technology consulting
• UI/UX Designing
• Website design + development
• Website revamp
• Web application design + development
• SaaS product design + development
• Web maintenance

Why we do it?

We love building brands and we love working together.

We are extremely passionate about building seed-level startups, SMBs and enabling them to grow exponentially leveraging our tech + digital services. That being said, we also have corporate clients and constantly challenge the status quo, to up their digital game as well and have a credible long-term relationship with all our clients.

We want to be known for enabling profitable growth for various brands and are here for the long run.

How we evolve?

The industry is growing so fast and we are still keeping up with the trends. Things you do to keep up and evolve.

In digital, we are consumers first, creators next. We evolve as we learn. We learn as we work.

We never fail to keep ourselves updated and experiment with the latest trends in tech and social media. We are proud that we have a team that is extremely curious about learning new things, figuring out smart hacks, and never fear of setbacks at all. This ultimately helps us push the limits, both for our clients and our quality of work.

Social responsibility in social media

Now that everything is so transparent and all concerned parties are exposed to all the information. How does one handle the social responsibility aspect from an agency point of view?

The basic responsibility for any agency would be to NOT affect sentiments of any group and we abide by it.

We have a strict policy of keeping the leads data, that are generated through our campaigns for our clients extremely private and anonymous backed by NDA agreements in order to keep the user’s data completely secure. We take accountability for each of the social media communication that we put out, which makes us more responsible in creating content that does not promote gossips, hoax, and hatred.

We are what we are because of the tonnes of content that were up on the internet. So, as a part of our agency’s social media communication, we constantly post educative contents that are practical and are based on our own experience.

Need of the hour

Social networking laws are not properly drafted yet. Things we consider that need to be taken care of from our experience.

It is extremely concerning with the kind of roller coaster ride these social platforms are going through with the regulations, laws, and government relations. We’ve seen what has happened to Facebook’s privacy breach, a few years back and the recent Apple Vs Facebook controversy.

But, what one can do is – Make Non-disclosure agreements mandatory, take responsibility, and stay accountable for the work we do for our clients.

We learned the hard way

We started the agency just a month before the Pandemic hit and almost all the businesses were going through a downfall.

The best client acquisition hack, on all weathers, is to do great work for the handful of clients we have and it snowballs into bringing the next set of clients without having to spend a penny on ads and hence, we still haven't had the necessity to take on board a business development team.

Great work magnets great clients, is what we have learnt.

Also, a pro tip: Hire before you plan to scale or pitch for new client(s).

Did we just share that?

We have come across a fair share of weird/funny inquiries for work. One such was from a real estate guy. It was all well when he asked if we can build a brand for his company, run ads, and generate leads until he said if we can do it in our agency’s (Alchem Digital) name and profile completely.

We had to take a lecture on how digital brand building works.

They work with us

We at Alchem have clients in the United States and in India. To name a few: Embrace Prevention Care, Aptus Finance and Aptus Value Housing Finance India, ACI Automation, Langscape, Ailaysa, AazhiBooks, CAAPID simplified, and the list goes on.

Industry as we foresee

Pandemic has made it more necessary for the brands to embrace digital, no matter what and irrespective of the industry. We see a lot of age-old traditional companies as well as startups enquiring about digital and how they can leverage it as a new customer engagement and acquisition channel. With several companies successfully using social media for their business, we believe it shouldn’t be long before social media becomes the predominant marketing tool for businesses.

The future of the industry is quite bright and we are striving hard so that it benefits all the stakeholders equally: The consumers, brands, and the agency.

A day without Internet

Being connected now is like breathing. What would a day without Internet be like?

It would be a perfect day to realize how dependent we are on the internet and how it made the entire world small and integrated on a 5.5” smartphone. Phew! Wish that day doesn’t happen at all.

Lastly, are you hiring?

Yes, soon.