SME

Your Allies named Most Outstanding Marketing Agency 2018 – UK

06/19/2018 by Linsay Duncan

The awards celebrate business leadership, women in business and more across all seven continents of the world. Your Allies was chosen after successfully beating off competitors throughout the far-reaching and intense selection process.

Our commitment to marketing excellence

Earlier this year we were named Marketing Agency of the Year by the Innovation & Excellence Awards 2018 so it’s a great honour to once again have our work – and approach – acknowledged.

Your Allies (formerly Marke2ing) has grown consistently over the past few years – proof that businesses need part-time experienced marketing director support. Commitment to marketing excellence for our clients has also been a key contributor to this growth. To once again receive recognition for this is something we’re incredibly proud of and highlights the value of our flexible business model.

We’re excited for what the rest of 2018 holds and look forward to continuing our work with our esteemed clients and brilliant partners.

Your Allies awarded Marketing Agency of the Year 2018

01/12/2018 by Linsay Duncan

Corporate LiveWire’s panel of judges nodded to our dedication to SMEs and to our ethos that growing businesses should have access to the same calibre of professional marketing as larger corporations.

Outsourcing marketing responsibilities can free SME business leaders free from the ties and restrictions that come with full-time employment, or often expensive contractors. It gives our clients to access proven strategic support and professionally executed plans – always with the freedom to dial support up or down, just as they need it.

Also highlighted was Your Allies’ (formerly Marke2ing) agile approach to maximising marketing investment through pragmatic budgeting. The judges saw this as a big plus for SMEs faced with industry, economic and social changes such as Brexit.

This SME-focus and agile approach were also acknowledged last year by the UK Business Awards when we were recognised for our Excellence for SME Marketing. We are looking forward to continuing to grow our support offering for SMEs throughout 2018 and if you are interested in learning more visit our services page.

Your Allies in James Caan’s Your Business magazine on “How to choose the right marketing resource”.

12/11/2017 by Linsay Duncan

No one said it would be easy. There are tough decisions that very business owner faces in their first couple of years of building a business. You want to do everything, be seen everywhere, but know that the business doesn’t have the resource (time nor money) to do it all!

So, where should you be focusing your marketing efforts?

This is a topic we discuss often with clients and on our blog. Recently we were invited to contribute to James Caan’s ‘Your Business Magazine‘ which is designed to help entrepreneurs and growing UK businesses make more informed decisions in their early years.

For the Autumn edition, James has brought together experienced contributors to share their practical advice on how to structure a business plan, how to recruit the right people and tips on using social media to your advantage.

Your Allies (formerly Marke2ing) contributed to the feature focusing on how to grow your audience and spread your business concept like wild fire! Founder Linsay Duncan, shared insights into how much businesses should spend on their marketing activities, and on which channels investment should be made. This touches on blogging being both an essential tool for establishing authority in a marketplace and for driving quality traffic to your website. She also shared tips for intelligently using advertising and sponsorship to accelerate brand awareness. Read more of the ten tips here.

In a separate article, we share our experience of how to approach selecting the right marketing resource for your business. Whether choosing an agency, freelancer or full or part-time employee, we outline the key questions to ask. These will help you to establish not only the quality of the candidate in front of you, but also how well they will fit into your company culture. Here’s how to choose the right marketing resource.

Your Allies in the Fortuna 50: one of the fastest growing women-led UK SMEs

03/10/2016 by Linsay Duncan

The Centre for Entrepreneurship has ranked Your Allies (formerly Marke2ing) 2nd in this year’s Fortuna 50!

The Fortuna 50 index lists the fastest growing women-led UK SMEs. And this year Your Allies is one of those businesses recognised for its growth and entrepreneurship.

We couldn’t be more pleased to be placed number 2 in the Fortuna 50. Helping London SMEs grow through corporate calibre marketing is what we do. To be recognised for our own growth is a real acknowledgement.

Next on our growth plan: more marketing directors

As we grow we can offer more people with the right marketing director experience to grow with us. Women tend to look for flexible work options more often than men. That’s why they’ll find find our associate model attractive.

Our part-time business model means that they can work on marketing director jobs starting from just 1 day a week. Presence at clients is required only for some of the time. Primarily the work is delivered from their home office, collaborating with the client and the Your Allies team via the cloud.

Of course there’s the added benefit of being part of a team of senior marketing people. We all work together in this flexible, cloud-based system. Then once a month we come together to talk about learnings and what’s next.

We keep each other on our toes, support each other and grow Your Allies together.

The biggest learning from our growth so far

We’ve achieved a good growth rate, plan to grow further and are looking to recruit associates. It’s all down to hard work. Anyone thinking about becoming their own boss needs to be prepared to put in a lot of time and effort to make this happen.

One thing we’ve found really useful as new entrepreneurs is to bring in expert advice. This can be in the form of a mentor who has done what you’re trying to do. Or a consultant with relevant experience.

Hindsight’s a wonderful thing – we wish we’d brought in expert advice sooner. You want someone to question your assumptions, hold you accountable and bring something new to the table.

One thing is for sure: founding our own business has been a rewarding experience. We’d do it again. And we’re likely to go on to go on to found another.

Congratulations are in order

Congratulations to all fellow female business leaders who’ve also been recognised as fastest growing women-led UK SMEs alongside us. Here’s to another year of phenomenal business growth.

Read the Centre for Entrepreneurs’ press release here.

Image credit: Red Chairs by Jeshu John

How Small Businesses Can Close Big Deals – Infographic by Salesforce

02/25/2016 by Linsay Duncan

Enterprise sales is of course a different beast in comparison to selling to other SMEs.

Salesforce guest author Danny Wong stresses advantages of the nimble such as speed and innovation over bigger competitors that are already established enterprise vendors.

The infographic includes a 7 step process by sales expert Jorge Soto to get SMEs started in their shift towards enterprise sales. It also packs a number of helpful tips about how small businesses can close big deals by making successful project bids against larger competitors.

As you would expect some marketing tips are in here too. We’d have more advice to add if you’re thinking about expanding your SME through enterprise sales.

Click To Enlarge

Via Salesforce

London SME Trends 2016 Infographic: Challenges and Opportunities

02/18/2016 by Linsay Duncan

As a marketing consultancy working with London-based businesses we were interested in the key challenges and opportunities impacting SMEs in 2016. You’ll find the results of our research on London SME trends 2016 summarised in this infographic:

https://yourallies.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/London-SME-Trends-2016-Infographic-Challenges-Opportunities.pdf

Please feel free to share this infographic on your website using the Embedly functionality.

SME leaders have people worries

Whether they’re targeting the UK market or do international business, London businesses share issues around human talent and resources. Offering a career path is more difficult in a small to medium-sized business in comparison to corporates. Keeping top talent engaged and from moving on can therefore be harder for SMEs.

Given the challenge to find the right skilled staff in certain areas makes it even more disruptive when employees that have often been trained and developed move on.

When looking at the London SME trends 2016 sorting out their people worries is an essential task for SME leaders this year.

For SME owners time trumps money

Of course time is money in every business. However, SME owners stand to gain value from making time to plan for growth and think strategically. Getting bogged down in the day-to-day running of the business happens all too easily.

Wearing many hats is part of growing a SME. But it’s crucial for continued growth to start delegating when the time has come for SME bosses to focus on managing rather than doing.

The London SME trends 2016 suggest that once the right people are in place – either as internal staff or as an outsourced function – SME owners can focus on making growth happen.

How positive do you feel about your SME growth in 2016?

When you benchmark your growth expectations against the London SME trends 2016 where do you stand?

Whether you have a very optimistic growth forecast or expect growth in line with GDP: if you’re an SME leader short on time or resource, you might be considering outsourcing as a potential solution. Our article “Outsourced Marketing Costs & Benefits” weighs up the pros and cons of outsourcing and gives an idea about costs to help business leaders in their decision-making process.

SME