100 Days In: Key Takeaways from Starting a Digital Marketing Business in Cardiff
Oaks Digital’s MD Mark Oakman shares his takeaways from our first 100-days in business..
Last week marked 100-days since I launched Oaks Digital as the latest digital marketing business in Cardiff. As you can probably imagine we have been head down building our client base, working on quality campaigns and making new connections along the way.
We’ve had some real ‘pinch me’ moments already, as well as a couple of setbacks (business owners aren’t lying when they say that ‘running a business is an emotional roller coaster’). We thought that we’d quickly share some key takeaways from our experience in business so far in the hope that it helps anyone thinking of taking the plunge by setting up their own business or perhaps only recently set up themselves:
1. ‘Do the little things’ every day
I wrote the words ‘gwnewch y pethau bychain’ on my office white board on our first day of trading, and it is still there 100 days later (and will probably always be there). These are the famous last words spoken by St. David, patron saint of Wales which translated means ‘do the little things’.
I’ve looked at that saying and applied it every workday, especially at times when there’s multiple tasks to action and things have seemed overwhelming. I’ll often reflect at the end of a working day of the positive ‘little things’ that have been done – whether that’s speaking to a client, responding to an email, sending a proposal, arranging a meeting or catching up with accounts, and feel fulfilled that progress is being made day-by-day with every little task.
2. It’s about progress over perfection
To date, we’ve completed some one-off projects for branding and web builds and gained our first couple of 5-star reviews on Google in the process. We’ve also delivered a handful of training sessions and are well into several digital marketing campaigns for our retainer clients which in time will be our standout case studies.
We’ll continue with our mission to help businesses to achieve results with a personal service to establish ourselves as a reputable digital marketing option, but with the understanding that things will NEVER be perfect – and that’s ok. ‘A culture of continuous improvement’ is our approach, and we’ll continue to reflect and ask ourselves ‘how can we improve’ – whether that’s a client campaign, our communication touch points with clients, or the material that we use in our next workshop.
3. It’s not a sale until it’s a sale
One of our first pitches was to deliver a website design and build for a nationally recognised brand that would have been a real statement project to be associated with so early in our journey.
As a startup company we had no case studies of our own to showcase so imposter syndrome was in overdrive going into the pitch. By the end of the process we were told that we the preferred option. The project required funding which they were confident of securing at the end of that month. As it turned out the funding didn’t get approved as their finance team wanted to use some internal resource to save money and we didn’t get the gig!
As gutted as we were to find out that the project wasn’t going ahead, it was a real confidence boost that we were the preferred choice.. and lucky enough we didn’t have to wait much longer for our first ‘big win’. So, as the old sales saying goes – with every ‘no’ you are closer to your next ‘yes’.. so just role with the punches.
4. Focus on your brand purpose and career experience
As referenced already, Oaks Digital was fresh out of the box with no case studies or client reviews to reinforce our brand proposition of being a digital marketing business that puts as much focus on building relationships with people as we do on delivering good performance. I thought the lack of references would hinder our initial progress, but it 100% has not. What we’ve experienced is that our clients like to champion the underdog and love that we have a clear purpose and that they are at this stage part of an exclusive group of clients.
Despite being new, our team has decades of experience of being able to deliver digital marketing projects so we focused on that experience and our desire to turn our next client to out next case study for further successes. Our success will be based on the success that we deliver for our clients, so bringing a tenacity and added value where possible is at the forefront of our minds to not only help us win more business, but to retain and satisfy the clients that we’ve worked so hard to win already.
5. I’m a business owner now, not a sales director
Early doors I was getting frustrated on tasks that I believed could be better spent on growing our sales pipeline and helping clients. Things like sorting through HMRC stuff (and there’s a lot of that initially), accounts, IT, talking with suppliers and writing blog posts like this one.
Previous to becoming a business owner I was employed as a sales & marketing director, and before that a commercial digital director. Both roles were ultimately focused on generating and retaining business, and although this is essential to growing a successful company, so are the ‘little things’ that take time and attention to build a successful business.
Changing my mindset to being a ‘business owner’ which is all encompassing rather than solely focused on sales targets and KPI’s has been a real positive shift, but takes a bit of time to get used to when you’ve been used to being an employee for all of your career. Outsourcing tasks to IT professionals and accountants to free up my time to focus on other tasks has also been a huge positive (let me know if you’d like an introduction).
6. Social media is great
Yeah, of course I’d say this as a MD of a digital marketing business, but we wouldn’t sell it as a service if we didn’t believe it would benefit other businesses. It’s been great to experience the impact of social media for ourselves so that we can apply our own learnings to client campaigns.
After announcing Oaks Digital on social media in early April we generated a number of enquiries from people in our network that we’d built a connection with in previous career experiences.. particularly on LinkedIn. Through having a consistent presence with a strong message of how we can help businesses to succeed online has generated several enquiries and ultimately sales for the business. If you have any ambitions of becoming a business owner (or even if you don’t) then make sure you invest time in growing and supporting your business network online.
7. Networking is crucial
A number of those enquiries from social media can be tracked back to connections that we made at networking events, particularly from a BNI group that I was a member of almost a decade ago.
As such, we’ve been out and about making new connections and catching up with existing connections at local networking events such as Chambers Wales, Zokit, Cardiff Connect and the Caerphilly Business Expo. The main networking group that we have committed investment and time to is the brilliant Cardiff Bay BNI group that meets up every Tuesday morning to support each other with business growth. If you’d like an invite to attend an upcoming meeting then let me know and I’d be happy to introduce you to the group!
BNI Cardiff Bay Meeting
8. There is never a right time
I saw a Steven Bartlett post on LinkedIn that referenced a Barack Obama quote to him. It said that “You don’t have to get to 100% certainty on your big decisions, get to 51%, and when you get there, make the decision and be at peace with the fact that you made the decision based on the information you had”.
I applied this when deciding to set up my business after a period of procrastinating ‘when is the right time?’. I’ve also applied this to early decisions on things like which partners to collaborate with, and where to reinvest money into growing the business. To date, this mindset has been really helpful for me to be at peace to free up my brain power to focus on more helpful things that will actually take Oaks Digital forward.
Final Thoughts..
.. The first 100 days have flow by, it has been an emotional rollercoaster and a lot of hard work and that will continue to be the case. But the highs are bigger than ever and far outweigh any negatives. I’m excited at the prospect of what’s ahead for Oaks Digital and what impact we will make to the success of others.
I had a lot of discussions and support from individuals who had made similar decisions to leave employment and set up their own businesses, so I’d like to offer my time and support to anyone reading this blog thinking of doing the same. I’m happy to be quizzed and talk from our first-hand experiences. If you think it would help you to gain some clarity, or benefit you in any way then feel free to drop me a message.