How We Grew Our Marketing Agency To $1M Per Month [Update]
This is a follow up story for Impression. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 3 years ago, check it out here.
Tell us about what you’ve been up to! Has the business been growing?
Over the last two years, since I first wrote our starter story, the way we present the agency to potential clients has changed significantly. This shift reflects the evolving business landscape in which we now operate and coincides with our expansion both internationally and domestically. From our offices in Nottingham and London, we have grown to establish a presence in Manchester and the north of England, as well as securing a foothold in North America through our New York office.
For many marketing agencies, simply following ‘best practices’ isn’t enough to succeed. Now more than ever, brands need to go beyond investing solely in channels like Search Engine Optimization or Paid Media to achieve growth. From what we have seen, the brands that succeed are the ones who adopt a ‘test and learn’ approach to their marketing processes and can capture and leverage high-quality data - especially in a world where being able to do so is becoming increasingly difficult. In 2024, this has become our approach to our value proposition and key messaging, supporting us in standing out in what is already a competitive agency landscape.
To match this, we’ve launched several new departments over the past two to three years, capable of delivering services such as digital strategy, creative, media solutions and digital experience. As an example, we’re now able to provide much more in our offering, such as being able to build bespoke digital strategies to put the business need at the heart of marketing campaigns, brands gain access to ad creatives that not just look fantastic but perform exceptionally, as well as having experienced data science analysts on hand ensure brands have the right evidence they can turn into actionable insights.
As a result of our new value proposition, service launch and pitching process of ‘pitch less, win more’, we’ve been able to achieve monthly recurring revenues of $1M, and secured new national and international enterprise-level accounts with a pitch conversion rate around 50%.
But it’s not our performance that has been a huge success for us, because as of October 2024, we celebrated our second year of being B Corp™ and won B Corp Company of the Year at the 2024 UK Company Culture Awards. B Corp™ has been our North Star, helping us to make the right decisions, not just for our shareholders, but for all of our people, and we’re committed to the values of the B Corporation because we’re confident that our decisions will provide us with a bright future through sustainable growth.
We’ve grown to over 110 full-time employees which is impressive for an independent agency and this is spread mostly across our UK offices in Nottingham, London and Manchester. As we look to expand further in North America, soon we’ll have full-time employees in New York. Flexible working is something we have kept in place since the pandemic, which allows staff to work in conditions which best suit their needs, however, we have made amends to this policy, which requires some meets and events to be in-person. 80% of our staff currently use our office spaces with flexible working in place, but it provides people with the opportunity to work abroad in countries such as Mexico, Australia and Spain. Each year we run a benefits focus group which looks at several of our policies, reviewing them, making amendments, and introducing new policies if required. Some of these policies include enhanced parental leave, enhanced sick pay beyond statutory sick pay, and a dedicated menstruation and menopause policy.
We continue to conduct an external salary benchmarking activity every year, which we now complete in partnership with the Agency Benchmarker survey. Overall, we feel our Total Reward package, including reducing working hours (moving from a 5-day working week to a 4.5 working week), various leave allowances and salary is competitive in the industry, but we aspire to further improve in this area as we're able to, through strong business performance.
As a result, by the end of 2024, we achieved an annual staff retention rate of 94%, a figure we’re extremely proud of. Our efforts have been recognized by organizations such as Great Place to Work. Looking ahead to early 2025, we’re set to launch an Early Careers programmed for individuals passionate about building a career in digital, continuing our partnerships with local universities as part of this initiative.
