From Passion to Success: The Journey of Building a Thriving Digital Marketing Agency

Hey, hi everyone. Welcome to your show E-Coffee with Experts. This is your host, Ranmay, here. And today we have Peter, who is the Marketing Director at SF Media Solutions with us. Hey, Peter, how’s it going?

Yeah, really good, Ranmay. Yeah, really good. Thank you. Thank you for asking me to come on. Looking forward to our discussion.

Lovely. Peter, we will move any forward. Why don’t you talk us to your journey thus far? Let’s get to know the human behind the mic. Tell us through, how are you growing up as a kid? Why digital marketing? Why as CEO? How did you land up in the space? And also a bit about your agency. What do you guys do? Who do you specialize in? What are your core competencies? And we take it from there.

Yeah, okay. So my background has always been in IT. Through my college, I did an IT course because I was always fascinated by computers in the mid to late ’90s. And so from there, I’m not particularly a hardware guy. I’m not particularly that techy in terms of taking things apart and putting them back together. It was always in the software side. And obviously, then the introduction of the Internet. I my interest. So from there, I went on to do, after my initial IT course, went on to do a multimedia course where I started to really learn then Photoshop and bits of design skills and various different things. I draw and I do some art and design. So again, I was interested in the animation and transforming traditional art and design into digital art and designs. I pivoted towards the role of a web designer. And then my first job after college was then a junior content developer/web designer where I worked for a newspaper group which run a network of newspapers, 32 newspapers across the UK all owned as part of the same group. And so I was part of the digital team, if you like, that helped develop the content.

So we used to do various different things. There’s a sport team, and various different what’s on guides and things like that. Then I got a chance to move into the web team and actually start building sites, search HTML, etc. And then from there, just by chance, really, I moved into then online advertising. So there was software that ran the advertising across these 32 different newspaper websites. I almost imagine like the Google Display Network, but it almost in a very basic primitive form. So I managed theadvertising. And that’s how I pivoted, really, from design and and so on, CSS coding into the online advertising side of it. The first time, the first ever website I built as part of my job, I remember being fascinated then. Once it had gone live, before I even knew what SEO was, I used to then Google of various different keywords and just go, Oh, I was always puzzled. Why is this great website that I built? Why isn’t it coming back in Google? I don’t quite understand. So that led me down the route of just, I was fascinated by how the algorithm works. How does Google determine what site should rank over another.

Why is this site that I’ve put all my heart and soul into designing for this client? Why isn’t it coming back in the first page of search results? So it started from there. I already had interest in advertising through the banner advertising system. Then I started thinking about SEO and getting into to talk from there. And then those first early wins that you get when you start in SEO, when you’re starting to learn the process and the various tags and the way to optimize a site. When you first start seeing your site that you’ve worked on, your name are up in lights, you come in first position in Google for whatever keyword. It’s really satisfying. And after that, I was like, yeah, digital marketing is for me. I got a kick out of seeing that. So that’s how it stuck, really.

Lovely. Quite a journey. And how did starting your own agency came to your mind and how SF Media Solutions happened?

Yeah, I guess most agency owners, you start off in an agency. After I started to work with SEO and as part of this newspaper group, my first job after that was actually working for an agency. So I came in and ran the SEO team, but also then I started to learn a little bits of pay-per-click in terms of Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. And I think the motivation behind starting my own agency, you see the the worst of working for agencies. You see how clients are handled, you see how the work is processed, you start to learn how people do things. It always baffled me with some of the agencies I worked for that reporting was pretty poor or just nonexistent. I think clients paying for a service, and why don’t we report on what we do? There’s always this thing where a lot of agencies or a lot of people almost feel like the secrets they’re keeping close to them, they keep their cards close to the chest, and they almost don’t want to reveal the secrets. I think we can go online and you can read how to do SEO. There’s endless guides and blogs.

It’s not some magic that exists that only you know about. It’s readily available. It always baffled me as to why certain agencies don’t report to clients what they do. They don’t report to clients the results. You don’t set out KPIs. And myself and my business partner, who was a web developer by trade, we used to get together in the evening, you get on the call, you’d have a beer, and you talk about, Oh, I’ve seen this, I’ve seen that. You talk about the best and worst of agency life because he worked in an agency as well, but as a web developer. And we used to sit around and think, What would it be like? How would we do things differently? If we created our own agency, if we started our own business, what would we want to do differently? What standards would we hold ourselves to? What would be our core values as an agency. The catalyst, really, was just getting one client. I got a phone call out of the blue away from work. Someone said, No, I’ve heard that you know how to do SEO. Could you put us together a quote for to ask our side and getting us more traffic and more leads through Google?

And that was the catalyst. That one client allowed us to start the business. I think at this point, we didn’t even really have a name for the business or anything like that. So quickly overnight, we registered the company, got the email addresses, we bought the domain. And from that one client, we started a business. And we talked about it, but we never really thought that it would grow into something full-time for us both, but also where we can employ staff, we can train staff and grow. And so that was the motivation, really. And that one client then quickly became two clients, became three clients. And I I think I got to a position where I think I saved a lot of money to pay my mortgage for six months. And I said to my business partner, Look, I’m just going to go for it. I’m going to quit my job. I’m going to work from my spare room and try and get SF Media off the ground. And I did that. And within two or three months, he quit his job and came with me. And I think we set up in his dining room on a table with two laptops.

And that’s where SF Media began. And if I forward now, it’s the office and the staff. I’d say the rest is history.

Absolutely. And starting your own agency is no mean task. Forget about running the show for quite some time and making it a successful one. You and your partner have clearly done a part of it. What were those initial challenges, Peter? I understand you started off with your partner, but setting up a team, hiring the right set of people, going the organization, getting your first clients, setting the finances, the support functions, all of that in itself is a task apart from getting clients, doing sales, doing ops. How was it like those initial days and what actually worked for you guys to be where you are right now?

It was tough. I think the hardest thing in the early days was just generating new business. I’m not from a sales background and neither is my business partner. We’re both in agency life. I was a marketing person. He was a web developer, so we never really had any full sales training or anything like that. So the biggest challenge was trying to find clients. I used to spend endless amounts of time trawling through LinkedIn and trying to I worked online as best I could. Just go into forums, answering questions. People would ask questions about, Oh, I’ve done this to my website, or, To get more traffic to grow my business, how can I help? And how can I do that? I used to go on and almost give advice and position myself so that I’d try and win business or get into that conversation. They say, Okay, so is this something you offer? Is this something you can help with? I think that was the challenge. I think one thing that’s really helped as well is tapping into previous agency contacts as well, because a lot of the The team, a lot of the staff that I work with…

Because I used to want… In my first agency, I was the head of SEO there. A lot of the staff below me have obviously then moved on. They’ve gone into all the roles. Some of them have started agencies themselves. Again, I think part of the challenge is when you work in an agency, and especially then over the longer period as well, you’re in this little bubble of how you do things, and you don’t necessarily get to mystery shop other agencies to see, Okay, what was their process like compared to ours? How much emphasis did they place on off-site versus on-site? And are we doing things in line with other agencies? So being able to tap into previous agency contacts and just openly discussing what challenges are you facing, what difficult clients have you had, what understanding their Process has helped us then create a path forward as to how we want to do things. And I mean, the early days was tough. When you first recruit, I’ll be honest, our first hire only last with us probably 11 months. I don’t think they made it really right through the first year. We didn’t get the first hire right.

But you learn, everyone says you learn more in defeat than you do success. I think that’s true because we took those lessons learned from that first employee and said, Okay, how could we do things differently? What can we learn from it? From there, we create a framework so that we could employ apprentices, essentially, as a way of getting new people into the business and, being honest, doing it in as cheap a way as possible because you can get apprentices in, you can train them up. But then we had to have a and a system for that. We had to have a blueprint so that we could take anybody with the basic set of computer skills and the right attitude who wants to get into what we do. We can take them in, we can train them in a certain way, and they’re hit standards. Obviously, the early days, I had to sanity check and almost quality control every bit of content, every meta description, everything, which is hard to do then when you’ve got as your team grows and you get multiple staff come in, that becomes almost a job in itself, which then took me away from a transition from actually doing the marketing myself to then being a mentor for younger people, but also spending most of my time quality controlling, checking, making sure that their work adheres to the standards that we’d set out.

There’s probably lots more challenges along the way as well. But they were the ones, certainly in the early days, generating new business, but also then being able to make it easy to recruit staff and bring staff on board.

Absolutely. Are you able to delegate now or are you still anxious about?

Absolutely. The size of the team now, and we have a structure in place, we have people doing SEO, people doing PPC. Above them, there is an SEO manager, there’s a PPC manager. Even above that, there’s a Marketing Manager which oversees that. My role now as a director. Obviously, I support the rest of the team, but most of my role now is promoting the business, so sales and marketing of our business. There are things in place, there’s metrics in place, and the right structure within the business now where I don’t need to to do that. But it’s taken 12, 13 years to get this far. It’s taken a while to be… I guess there’s always a bit of nervousness at the start when you’re handing the reins over to somebody else, and I’m so used to checking the standards and the quality. And making sure 100% everything is spot on. Having that trust to be able to pass the reins to someone else, it takes time to do that. It’s not an easy thing to hand over. But no, I found eventually I got to a point where I can’t do this and I can’t grow the business by being so involved in the day-to-day work group on advanced websites.

I need to let that go so that I can move things forward.

Absolutely. Delegation is the key because you cannot be doing and looking at everything. As a founder, as a co-founder, you need to be promoting your own business as well while the team takes care of whatever that is already there on that plate. So I really get it where you’re coming from. And I’m talking about strategies, Peter. What strategies do you feel have been instrumental for you in terms of surviving 13, 14 long years in the business, COVID included, and also ensuring that the growth and expansion is also on the right track?

As for me, you mentioned obviously COVID and the lockdown period. That was actually quite a boom period for us, going into that period.

Yeah, for the initial phase, yes. Yeah, for us, yes, absolutely.

Just because I think there’s a lot of businesses, a lot of clients that we know now that at the time, they’d always put off, I need to do my website, I need to do my marketing. I have not time to look at it. It’s only when the world stands still, do they get around and go, You know what? These things I’ve been putting off for a long time. I’ll actually now move forward. Again, I kept myself busy through lockdown, trying to virtually network as much as I could and ran some seminars with our business coach, where I was just giving free advice to businesses on online marketing. And again, it just helped keep my name in front of clients and keep the phone ringing, keep those conversations happening where people would come and say, Okay, actually, I’m not in a position now, but give it three, six months When things change again, we really want you to take us forward. But one of the key strategies really to grow in our business has been through other agency relationships. I referred previously to tapping into some of my other colleagues and to find out what they’re doing.

Not necessarily that, but positioning ourselves as a partner or as an extension of other people’s businesses. What I mean by that is we work with a lot of purely development agencies that don’t have any marketing capability. We work with certain marketing agencies that are more traditional print and display advertising, but don’t really have this or the SEO, BBC, that online marketing service covered. Working with video agencies where, again, they’re creating great video content for the clients, but There’s no strategy of how to get that video seen and how to market that video in the right way. We try and leverage ourselves as an extension to other agencies so that it’s a steady stream of referrals from them But also it widens our network then because then they know all the people, they know all the partners. Whilst we do market, I do networking, and I go to other events locally to drum up local business, one of the key drivers for our business growth has been creating these partnerships with other agencies. It’s not, to be fair, it’s not just other agencies as well. There’s other businesses. For example, we work with a care company, and these are care consultants that help other care firms.

One of the big tasks care companies have is occupancy. They want to make sure that their care home or their nursing home is close to 100% occupancy as much as possible. They’ll go to their care consultant and they’ll say, How can you help me with the sales and marketing of my care home? Of course, the care consultancy said, We know the perfect partner that can help you succeed online to keep this occupancy up. It’s creating relationships, strategic relationships, not just with other agencies, but with accountants that have huge books of businesses that need help, business coaches, care consultants, any type of business that has access to clients where they need support from a marketing point of view, we can position ourselves in that way where the leads come from all different angles. That’s been one of the key drivers, I think, to our success and my growth over the last 10 years, for sure.

Absolutely. I’m talking about client relationships because that is very critical in our space and our niche. How have you been able to crack it or what tactics have worked in terms of building those long term and mutually beneficial client relationships.

I think I touched on it earlier in terms of when I talk about the journey, and I mentioned about reporting and how it amazed me. Yeah, that was very crucial. Yeah, it amazed me to see how many agencies didn’t actually value the reporting or send it to clients. We’ve inherited clients where I talk to them and they say, Oh, I’ll pay X amount per month for my SEO service. I don’t really know what they do. Did they do whatever they do in the background? I don’t get it. I just get a bill every month. We set out at the beginning, we talked about our core values, we set out at the beginning to do something different. We built our own in-house client center where it has a work log. Every time a member of the staff, a member of the team does any work, it’s timestamped and the task is logged. So everything’s itemized. Every bit of content, every metadata tweak, every test, whatever it is, is all logged in the work log. So the client has 100% transparency over what it is that we do. As part of this platform as well that we built as a reporting tool, it has to simplify statistics.

So again, a lot of our clients used to just get sent from other agencies. They get sent an analytics report at the end of the month. And we all know from analytics, there’s data on top of data, on top of data and graphs and charts and metrics and what does it all mean? We tried to simplify that and streamline the reporting that to the key things the client wants to see. There’s other things as well in terms of tracking, tracking, tracking, tracking, tracking ranking, actual keyword rankings, There are various other bits as part of this tool. I think that tool alone has helped us. I know, obviously, all the agencies have reporting software that they either partner with or they built in house. But for us, that was one of the key drivers because clients could see we were different. We were transparent. There’s none of this questioning, will I pay X amount per month? I don’t really know what the agency does. It’s all there in black and white. I’m lacking it when I take my car for a service, not a mechanic. I don’t know half of what’s on the list. I don’t understand what it means.

But I understand the value because I can see the work that’s gone into it. I say, I couldn’t be honest, but I can see, Okay, actually, this looks like and feels like a lot of work. We try and use that same ethos to the client, can say, Yeah, they don’t understand SEO because that’s why they pay us to do it? But they can see a log of everything that’s been done so that they can understand the value that we bring and the work that goes on in the background to achieve what they want to achieve. That’s one of the key drivers, but I think then communication. I know it sounds obvious, but communication is key as well. We try and have regular face-to-face. We have regular one-to-ones with clients. More importantly, if something’s not working, then we’ll always be the first one to come to them and say, Okay, this approach isn’t working. Let’s do something else. A lot of agencies, again, we come across, they’ll bury their head and go, We’ll keep quiet. Whilst the client keeps paying them, we won’t say anything. And there’s just hope one day that they don’t just go, Why am I paying for this?

We put communication and transparency at the key of everything that we do.

Our transparency is very crucial. And then, like you mentioned about reporting, we also quite focus on it in terms of how the client wants to be. We have that dialog in terms of what parameters are important for you from a business standpoint. We ensure that we got it covered. You want weekly, bi weekly, fortnightly, monthly. And another very important thing which you mentioned, Peter, is having those face-to-face meetings. I know the world has moved towards online Zoom meetings and all, but still, if we can have that face-to-face meeting, let’s say once in a month or once in a couple of months, it actually works wonders. A lot of it is trashed out on those meetings, even if there is any discrepancy or any thought there, versus having it all online. So I’m pretty vowed for that.

I think there’s value in actually seeing Goussian physically going and visiting the premises of the business as well, because you get such a better sense of scope. Yeah, the people, the energy in the place, the size of it as well, because I’ve had teams meetings. I’ve been talking to somebody. It’s just one person sat in a little office, and I’ve got no… I’ve seen pictures online, but I’ve got no real feeling of how big or small the company is. When I’ve gone to visit them, I’ve looked at the premises and go, Wow, the production facilities are fantastic. There’s a large team, various different departments. They’re a well-oiled, drilled professional business, but you don’t always get the sense of that, especially when people work from home as well. I deal with certain clients where that particular business, the staff work from home. You’re talking to somebody bedroom, but no idea of the scope of what the company looks like. We always try, and especially with every client meeting in the first instance, is that we’ll go and see them regardless of where they are, because I think it’s important to look them in the eye, to walk through the door, and to just get a feeling for that business.

You can do that so much more face-to-face than you can online.

Yeah, absolutely. I was having this conversation with one of our clients, and then I realized, in fact, this is quite generic. I think you would relate to this as well. So they want the phone ringing, right? That is the expectancy from the conversation, and you have these discovery sessions and everything. But what happens after the phone rings? Our job is to get the traffic, get the leads. But what happens after that? Because if your client is not getting revenue, you are out of your contract with them. The bug does not stop at getting those leads doing just SEO. And like you mentioned, if it is not pretty well-oiled or let’s say they are not operationally that efficient, let’s say it’s a small mid-size business, I think it’s beyond our contractual obligation, yes, but we should take that one step further and understand their business and see how operation inefficient or let’s say not so efficient, not so up to the mark they are and see if you can help there as well. For example, a person picking up the phone, how they’re greeting, how they’re talking to the client, the follow-up status being made, and all of that.

Because it is about the entire ecosystem and not just getting them leads. It’s just the way we look at it. Because even if you look at it from your own benefit perspective, from a business standpoint, for your own agency, if they are making money, you are in business. That’s the simple mechanics of it. At times, you got to go beyond it. I can completely relate to the fact that you said you need to walk to the door, see the person in face, understand the business, the production facility, and depending on the different business niches that our clients are in. But yeah, that is quite important.

No, 100 %. And I think one thing you mentioned there that was interesting, I think SEO, for us anyway, it was all about traffic. It was all about traffic. And now traffic is not enough anymore. Our SEO service is almost blended into part CRO grow almost part business consultancy to a certain degree because especially- To a certain degree, because especially-It is to a certain degree.

We might not admit it, but they’re related to the sales revenue and it has become revenue now, right? Yeah.

And it’s Especially from a PPC point of view as well, when it’s a little bit more black and white in terms of you spend this, you’re brought in this. One of the first questions I ask a client in a meeting is, what are your profit margins on your product? I’ll say for your main, because you might not be, but the amount of clients that can’t tell me Sometimes it’s astonishing. I always try and work backwards and say, in order to makePPC successful, you need to know what profit you’re making on each sale. You need to know then how frequently does your sales team convert? How many requires does it take to make a sale? We need to then then so we can work backwards because it’s the only way, especially from a PPC point of view, it’s the only way to work so that you know what the desirable cost per lead is in order to make the whole thing profitable, make the whole thing work. It’s a bit like from SEO as well. I say, How do you track? How do you log inquiries? If it’s not direct sales, but if it’s a service-based business, how do you log inquiries?

What is your main method of inquiry? Is it forms? Is it emails? Is it phone calls? Is it walking in store? If it’s a physical location? Even to the point where I have to provide some clients with a template lead tracker to say, Look, use this. Make sure you record them, because for a lot of businesses, they don’t. That data is paramount for what we do because it’s the only way to justify that it’s working and that there’s a need to return on investment.

Absolutely. We’re having conversations on discovery sessions, and we have spoken with founders and really good founders, brilliant founders. When we asked them, Why did you start this business? Why did you start XYZ. Com? What was the thought? What problem would you want to solve? These are questions which they only would have thought or asked to themselves before they got into the business, but they will not be able to answer it, let’s say, three, four, five years down the line because they are engrossed in day-to-day ops and getting the revenue of the charts. So they go back to their drawing board and then come back to you with those answer after some time. So it happens. It actually happens. And it is important for us to understand psychology before creating that brand voice for them. So we ask these questions, and it’s five, six times out of 10. This one, they go back and say, You know what? We need some time to get these filled for you or get these answers for you. It makes a lot of sense. We have had brilliant conversations where they come back and say, Thank you for doing this because this has taken us back.

Now we have gone back to the story in terms of why we started, what actually we wanted to do, and stuff like It is important to have this conversation. I really glad you mentioned about cost per lead by the EPC and tracking the leads because it is so crucial to ensure that the entire process is a bit data-driven and not just going on the face value of it that, Hey, you know what? You are getting good traffic. Hey, you know what? You’re getting good company. But from what source, what is the lead size, and what is your target audience, what are the demographics, and all of that. We say, it all lies in the details, so we need to get more detail and get more data a bit of them there.

The one thing I hate all the time when I speak to a client and say, Oh, tell me how business is going. And they say, It feels busier. And I just go, Well, you can’t pay bills on a feeling. You can’t recruit staff based on the feeling. What does that mean? It feels busier. And so that’s why I always try and run from that message of making sure that they record everything that you need to. And just to justify that things are going in the right direction. It was interesting you mentioned about having the conversations with going with business founders and always going back to the start as to why did you set up in the first place? I think one of the key things to our is run just pre-COVID. We started working with a business coach. I will mention, obviously, before my business partner and myself’s backgrounds, we’re not business people, we’re not sales people, we are a marketer and a developer. One of the good things we did was we employed a business coach to act as a third wheel because obviously when you’ve got to be of a similar age, you can see myself as a business partner.

We very much think the same way. We wanted to challenge ourselves and have… The business coach came from a completely different… He’s from New Zealand, so he’s got a completely different upbringing and lifestyle to a certain degree, a bit older than us. He’s got his background in accounting. So it’s looking at things completely different. And that gave us a whole new perspective on things. He asked us the same question. We said, Why did you go into business beyond you want to make a living and blah, blah, blah? Why are you here? What does SF Media stand for? It was It’s interesting because you get so far down the journey, and especially in the early years, your main aim is survival. You want to get through year one, year two, year five. Feeling a bit of growth, or we’ve employed an extra member of staff this year, or for some businesses, literally just, I need to make it year to year, just still being here, keeping your head afloat. And he challenged us on what the end goal was. What do we want to stand for as an agency? What do we want to be associated with?

But also personally, from a personal point of view, what’s your goal? Where’s your end goal? Where do you want to take this? Where do you see the future? These are questions that we didn’t really think to ask because sometimes you’re afraid to ask. You’re afraid to ask what the end goal looks like. But now that was really useful in us in trying to start to change our mindset to stop thinking like a business owner. Actually then starting to talk about the transition between handing the reins over and working independently in terms of promoting the business as opposed to working on the business rather than working in the business. That was the biggest thing the business coach helped teach us. That was hugely beneficial in our journey as well.

Absolutely. Good, Peter. This has been a brilliant conversation. But before I let you go, one piece of advice for our young listeners today who are trying to start out on their entrepreneurial journey. Because you have an example. You work in an agency, started yours, worked through the time for the last 13, 14 years, and have made it quite a success in terms of what you people are doing at SF Media. For For the young listeners, any piece of advice from your end?

I think the biggest advice I can give is to just go for it. I think too many people try and create the perfect thing from day one. I think something that business coach says, and I totally agree with it, is start now and get perfect later. Don’t put off what you can do today just because you don’t think it’s ready or just take that leap. Take the leap, trust the back yourself, trust your own ability. If it’s something you believe in, then do it. You can’t wait to be perfect. Make mistakes along the way, but just go for it. Just do it and perfect it later.

100 %. I agree, Averita. Thank you so much for taking your time to do this with us. Really appreciate it.

Yeah, you’re welcome. No, thank you. I enjoyed the conversation. Now, thank you for asking me to come on. I’ve enjoyed it.