Starting up a marketing company

The idea of starting up your own marketing company carries with it a potent mix of excitement, enthusiasm and apprehension. You may have been considering taking the plunge for a while, or it may be a relatively new idea. Whichever it is, though, you have to ensure your finances are in order and you have a clear and practical business plan. There’s no point marketing other people’s companies without knowing how you’re going to move your own forward.

Marketing is rapidly becoming a highly specialised discipline, with search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising driving traffic to websites, and complicated new tools for analysing and targeting customers as well as interpreting data.

It’s also an extremely competitive industry, and if you want to make a name for yourself you’ll need to decide which areas you’re going to focus on and how to position yourself. If you are an acknowledged expert in a particular marketing field, start by building a business around this and branch out when you’re established. Alternatively, providing you don’t stretch yourself too thinly, offer several services to see which one is most successful.

Are you able to offer services for print, digital, radio, or TV? Are you best suited to business-to-business (B2B) marketing, or do your talents lie in business-to-consumer (B2C) where you’ll be aiming directly at customers? Are you experienced in:

• Event marketing
• PR and press relations
• Copywriting – blogs, websites
• Content marketing for specific audiences about products or services
• Email marketing
• Social media
• SEO
• PPC

It can be difficult to quantify results in the marketing industry but your clients will expect a tangible ROI. Report regularly on everything you undertake; they need to feel you’re an integral part of their team. Be honest about what you can and can’t do as it will pay dividends in the long run.

Whether you are a whizz at social media or you prefer to keep your personal life offline, it’s an absolute essential for your new marketing business. You can’t expect to be taken seriously as a promoter if your own website is bland and uninformative, your last blog was a year ago and you take weeks to respond to comments on your social media outlets.

As with any start-up business, sound financial preparation is crucial. It’s a depressing fact that 60% of new businesses in the UK will go under within three years, and 20% after just one year. Starting off in a tax-efficient set-up with sensible budgets in place can mean the difference between success and failure.

Here at Perrys Chartered Accountants we pride ourselves on our practical, professional approach. Our no-charge start-up business service, Get Up and Grow, offers new entrepreneurs an informal meeting with one of our team and provides guidance on how best to manage your accounts and bookkeeping. You’ll come away with plenty of expert advice on trading options, financial records and tax options. We are experienced marketing accountants and understand the pressures created by working in this fast-moving industry.

Get in touch and get your fledgling marketing business off to the best possible start.