When we set up our digital marketing agency in Hertfordshire, we knew that it would be the perfect place to do it. Here are four reasons why:
- The talent pool is vast and talented.
- There is a thriving business community.
- It’s well-connected, with great transport links.
- It’s a great place to live and work!
The Beginning of our Digital Marketing Journey
TU Marketing has been around for a long time (in digital marketing terms we are grandparents!). In 2007 Neil and I (Claire) were both working in the corporate world, working crazy hours and missing out on time with our children.
My days were long, dropping the kids at nursery 7:30am and getting home 11 hours later, just in time to feed, bath and put them to bed. We really didn’t want to carry on that way, especially as we had a new baby on the way.
It was around that time that we started talking about setting up our own business. At the time we both worked in an IT environment and had seen first-hand the impact that technology was having on business, not just in the way that they operated, but also the potential from a marketing point of view.
Why Hertfordshire?
We lived in Birchanger, which is more Essex than Hertfordshire, but saw the potential in the region, lots of SME type businesses that weren’t online yet, but would need to be very soon. We knew that a market was emerging, but at the time knew very little about the ins and outs of actually doing the digital marketing work.
So, we decided to bite the bullet fairly soon afterwards and set up our Digital Marketing Agency in Hertfordshire. We spent a long time simply learning how to ‘do’ digital marketing. In fact, it was over a year before we felt ready to start taking on clients.
The Early Days of running a Digital Marketing Agency in Hertfordshire
When we started out, most companies didn’t have a website and very few had even heard of SEO. So, a lot of the early days were spent meeting with business owners and educating them on what was likely to happen going forwards. We attended networking meetings, employed a lead generation company to cold call on our behalf and worked on our own website to make sure that when business owners were looking online, they found us.
It was tough, I won’t lie. We had no income; this wasn’t a side hustle for us, and we put everything into it. But we persevered and it started to pay off. The clients we signed told us they liked our honesty, that they felt we explained things properly and didn’t make promises that were unachievable.
We were working hard and long hours, there were two differences though. The first being that we were building a business for ourselves, sales income was for us, and we weren’t lining the pockets of others. The second, was that regardless of the number of hours worked, they were on the whole more flexible. This meant that I could pick the baby up from nursery, take my daughter to after school clubs, take an afternoon off mid-week to catch up with friends.
How our Herts Digital Marketing Agency grew
Over time, we gained more clients and it got to the stage that we couldn’t manage it on our own. Taking on our first team member was scary and exciting. But we jumped in and found it freed up our own time to spend it on growing even more.
It wasn’t long before we had a sustainable business and could start reducing our hours by delegating to our amazing team. We started working with larger companies and became very focussed on results, everything we do for our clients is about getting the phone to ring, generating those all-important leads.
Mistakes along the way
Our biggest mistake was thinking we wanted to keep growing and building a bigger and bigger team. We achieved that goal about 7 years ago now, instead of creating something we were proud of, what actually happened was that quality went down, we were working crazy hours again and started wondering why we had put ourselves right back into a position that we had worked so hard to get out of.
So, we scaled back, were very selective over the clients we worked with and found a balance that works for us. We are able to give our clients the level of attention and service that really makes a difference to their business. In return, we work less hours and can spend time enjoying things outside of the business.
I’m not saying everything is perfect, we would like a couple more amazing clients, but they have to be the right fit for us (and them). I would like to work a little less sometimes even still. but we have managed to build something that is right for us.
And so that is why we set up a Digital Marketing Agency in Hertfordshire.