About Phlywheel
The who, what, when, where, why and how of it all.
Coles Notes version? We got really bummed out seeing business after business fall short because they couldn’t afford a digital agency. So we decided to build something that was affordable enough for a smaller business, but powerful enough to get results.
THE WHO
Phlywheel was founded by Toronto-based strategic marketing firm, Truly Inc. Truly is an award-winning firm that has worked with Nokia, REALTOR.ca, CAMSO, Michelin, CPA and many more.
20+ years of experience
We’ve seen it all.
With decades of marketing experience and industry insight under our belts, we’ve got real value to offer you and your brand.
We know how to do more with less
We’re a small business. We’ve worked with many other small businesses. In a time of ever-decreasing budgets, we understand the importance of efficiency.
In-market proven techniques
The contents of everything (from our Masterclasses to our Cheat Sheets) have actually been tested in the market. We’ve used them for clients and ourselves, too. We’ll only give you what’s been proven to work.
A broad range of deep expertise
We bring the full range of digital and traditional marketing to the table. The Phlywheel team has experience in fields such as strategy, research, design, writing, optimization, multimedia and more.
Tara
Hunt
Named as one of the most influential women in tech by Fast Company and an Entrepreneur to Watch by Entrepreneur Magazine, Tara Hunt has been writing on the subject of market research, consumer insights, and marketing strategy for 20 years.
Kristine
Squire
Kristine delivers projects from start to finish... She has worked in a broad range of industries with diverse teams. Her experience in PR, social media and communications gives her the ability to work within tight deadlines.
Stefani
Forster
She's a creative leader, problem solver, and copywriter extraordinaire, but if anyone asks, she's a content strategist who loves to tell stories. Before joining Truly, Stefani served as an editor and content strategist at Corus Entertainment, Hello! Canada magazine and The Huffington Post Canada.
Fernanda Sana
Fernanda has been an illustrator and graphic designer for 20 years. Before moving to Canada, she managed her own design office and print studio in Brazil, coordinating with a full-time team graphic designers.
Celestina
Aleobua
A Jill of all trades, Celestina is a content creator specializing in digital media marketing. With a background in film + TV, she enhances the marketability and pushes the narrative of any project she’s on.
Angie Liu
Angie explores storytelling and communication through all mediums in her journey as a writer and producer, and has previously contributed to CBC Radio’s Metro Morning and blogTO. At Truly, she is the managing editor of Futurithmic, Nokia's digital publication.
Ammo
Somal
Ammo is an engaging writer, researcher, and communicator, with a penchant for humor. Back in the UK, He worked in communications and creative for everything from insurance companies to video game festivals.
Zachary
Green
Zach has a strong entertainment background. After spending time in the music biz, he transitioned into digital marketing where he has kickstarted growth for small businesses like Filthy Rebena, Museum London, and Forest City Film Festival.
THE WHAT
When we started out this project, we thought it would be simple…but the more we started building and planning, the more we realized that we’d need to tackle it from a few different angles. Therefore, Phlywheel has three different flavors of interaction:
THE WHEN
Truly born
Truly launches Living Room with REALTOR.ca
Truly Grows, Moves into Bigger Offices
We start dreaming up Phlywheel
Phlywheel Shop Launches
First Office
Truly Finalist for Best Content Strategy for Living Room
Truly launches Futurithmic with Nokia
We register Phlywheel.com
THE WHERE
We’re proud Canadians, located in the heart of downtown Toronto, Ontario.
If you come by on a Friday at 5pm, you can join us for Happy Hour!
THE WHY
Here are 10 things that inspired us to build Phlywheel:
Things are changing. Fast. When you’re deep in the trenches of running a business, it’s all too easy to get tunnel vision and miss out on digital marketing trends. Just like an agency whose job it is to have their fingers on the pulse, Phlywheel makes sure your campaigns will always be cutting edge.
We love seeing small businesses succeed. Heck, we’d help every SMB on the planet if we could! Sadly, a lot of smaller businesses don’t have the budget to spend on the time needed to invest in doing this right. We created Phlywheel in order to help service these clients. With the right guidance, we knew they could drastically improve their marketing efforts.
We don’t bring you fish. We teach you how to fish, turning your in-house team into the expert anglers. This reduces your dependency on external experts and helps your organization market smarter. Phlywheel provides the materials and tools, you put in the time to implement…and everyone wins!
Running in circles is no fun. Clients come and go, yet our unique strategic approach has never wavered. We decided to stop running and focus instead on what we do best — giving people the knowledge, insights and tools they need to succeed.
Different clients… same ol’ mistakes. What if we could show you what not to do from the get-go — before you’d gone full-tilt with your marketing efforts? You save time, money and headaches, and so do we. It’s a win-win.
Calendars, templates, worksheets, oh my! We’ve developed, tested and shared a whole whack of custom-made materials with clients over the years. These resources are invaluable, and have helped us achieve real, lasting results. We thought it was such a shame they were inaccessible to non-clients, hidden away under lock and key (well on a cloud drive, anyway). Until now!
Your strategy won’t get anywhere fast without flawless execution. When building kickass strategies for our clients, we created uber-efficient processes that are just too good to not share.
Duh, we’ve been doing this stuff every day for the last 20 years. The Phlywheel team includes a group of seasoned professionals, trained in their respective areas of expertise. Just like a Megazord (yep, that’s a Power Rangers thing), combining all of our strengths into a one-stop, mega marketing machine was a no-brainer.
Getting Phlywheel off the ground gave us the golden opportunity to work on a bunch of new tools, templates, and features we’d had our eyes on forever! Getting the chance to grow is awesome, but knowing that of this helps smaller businesses is the icing on the cake.
With agencies and smaller businesses in this strange, budgetary stand-off, it seemed like small brands were going to slip through the cracks forever. Not anymore. Now your brand has a marketing powerhouse behind it for a fraction of the cost.
THE HOW
Hahahahahaha. Nice try. We can’t divulge our secrets, but we do have a method to our madness! The following is our unique approach to marketing strategy and implementation and it’s woven into all of our work:
Behind the Masterclasses, behind the resources, behind the tools and documents, behind everything that is Phlywheel, is the unique Truly approach to strategy:
1. Research + Learn
We start with finding out: who your customer is, what they read, where they hang out, what motivates them, what are the issues you’ll come up against trying to reach them.
2. Strategize + Plan
Now that we understand your customer, we build out a full strategy and plan to connect with them.
3. Create + Produce
Now that you have your plan, it's time to get creative! Applying everything we know about your audience, we create the content that connects.
4. Post + Optimize
This is the part of the process where content is optimized for the platform and findability. Tags, descriptions, formats and boosting included.
5. Listen + Engage
This is where you build a loyal, engaged audience. Interacting and engaging with your readers/viewers will go a long way to creating growth.
6. Measure + Report
All of these efforts need to be tracked and analyzed on a regular basis to ensure you meet the goals you set. What you learn here will help improve your efforts every day.
Honed over more than 20 years, we’ve developed, tested, and proven the Truly approach time and time again, achieving real, lasting results every time. The heart of this approach and methodology is core to Phlywheel.
If you have any other questions or feedback for us, we’d love to hear from you! Otherwise, we hope you get gobs of value out of what we’ve built here!
