I hereby appoint Kayleigh the digital sustainability queen.

I first met Kayleigh Nicolaou through the VIVAS vegan women’s group, which is now a part of Vegan Business Tribe. She also contributed a fab story to Vegan Marketing Success Stories last year, and is someone I think of synonymously for graphic and web design, with values. She was also the first person from whom I learned everything we do online emits carbon!?!

Let’s learn all about Kayleigh!

When and how did you go vegan?

My journey to veganism from vegetarianism was a gradual process, so I don’t have a specific date, but it was some time in 2016.

I started to cut meat and dairy out of my diet for health reasons, namely to reduce my risk of cancer as my mum had just been diagnosed with breast cancer.

Once I started exploring vegetarianism, I discovered the impact meat and dairy have on our environment, and from there I was quickly exposed to the horrors of the animal agriculture industry and what billions of animals endure every year.

It was then an obvious transition to full veganism and now my reasons have flipped on their head to be animal equality first, then environmental and then health. Well, there are too many good vegan junk food options available now!

How did you get into marketing, and what kind of marketing you do now?

I worked in the advertising and media industry for over a decade, working with some of the biggest consumer brands in the world. At the same time my partner was working as the art editor for a best-selling, global magazine brand.

On paper, we were hugely successful, but we were unfulfilled and decided that it was time we went our own way.

From there Kakadu Creative was born, a full service branding and design agency with a mission to do good work for good people. Using our skills and expertise to help purpose and values-led businesses grow, stand out and make a bigger impact in the world.

What kind of work fires you up right now?

We love working with purpose and values-led businesses and organizations as there is so much passion behind them. And whilst profit and income are important, there’s so much more depth to these businesses and a higher mission that we work together to deliver.

We thrive when we get to push a business outside the box, enabling them to create a unique and engaging brand and marketing materials that put them head and shoulders above their competitors.

As we say, we all have a part to play in building an ethical and sustainable world, but nobody said it has to be with boring and generic design and branding.

Share your best marketing win, and one marketing horror story.

The impact of having a stand out brand and marketing materials can be hugely undervalued. We worked with a client a couple of years ago who didn’t think that it could have that big of an impact. Six months after we’d finished the project and the new brand and website had gone live, he was stunned by the results.

A 77.61% increase in organic traffic, a 20% increase in session duration, 103.95% increase in page views and a 600% increase in their prospect reply rate.

It was really rewarding to see the change in our client’s mindset towards branding and design and get this review from him:

“I’d never truly appreciated the difference a professional brand and online presence could have on a business until working with Kakadu Creative. Once the project completed the results from all of our sales channels increased. It’s given us a strong foundation to have better conversation with lenders and clients and in turn grow the business. I’m so pleased we made this investment, I just wish we’d made it sooner.“

As for a horror story, thankfully we’ve not had any as part of Kakadu Creative. I’d like to think that that probably comes from working with such passionate and ethical people who are focused on doing the right thing.

Who or what vegan company do you think is crushing in marketing right now?

I’ve got to give a shout out to Mike and Joe from One Planet Pizza. As founders of the business, it could be easy for them to leave everything to the wider team or external partners, but they get fully stuck in. You can see their passion for their business and that’s infectious. You just want them to succeed!

You talk a lot about digital sustainability. What does that mean to you?

It can be easy to forget that every single thing we do online has a carbon impact. The emissions generated from our online activities are larger than the emissions generated by the global aviation industry, and this impact is predicted to grow significantly over the next few years.

Because of this, we’re on a mission to raise awareness of the issue and share actionable tips and advice that every single person can take to reduce their own digital carbon footprint.

Through Kakadu Creative, we champion low carbon website design and development. And alongside this, we have Kakadu’s sister business, The Green Hosting Co., which as you can tell by the name, is dedicated to providing green website hosting services.

Do you have any resources available to help business understand their digital carbon footprint?

We sure do. We have a free website carbon audit service where we run a carbon audit of your site and send you a page-by-page report detailing how much dirty carbon it kicks out. And best of all, we’ll recommend some steps you can take to reduce it.

Plus, we’ll also advise on whether your site qualifies for Climate-Positive Website Accreditation from the Eco-Friendly Web Alliance.

That’s great. Do you have anything else to help ethical businesses succeed?

Absolutely! As you know, having a website is essential for any business. However, simply having a website isn’t enough to guarantee success.

To truly thrive in the online world, you need a comprehensive marketing strategy that goes beyond your website’s virtual walls. A strategy that drives traffic to your site, captures the visitors while they’re there, and then nurtures them along their buyer’s journey towards making their final purchase with your business.

Our free 24-page guide, “Going Beyond Your Website: Driving Traffic & Increasing Conversions,” is here to help businesses do just that.

It’s free to download and is packed with proven strategies to increase website traffic and convert more of the people who visit it.

Be sure to visit Kayleigh’s sites at KakaduCreative.com and GreenHostingCo.com.