Tell us about your business and why is started
My business, Marketing Tech, helps small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) generate a positive return on their marketing investment by building customer loyalty/engagement and converting followers into paying customers. In short, we build cool customisable apps & websites to help your business grow.
Ofcom’s communications report for the UK market (published 2017) shows that SMEs significantly lag behind larger corporations when it comes to the use of technology for their business. Affordable, efficient, customer friendly technology such as mobile apps, adaptive websites, chatbots etc are widely available to small businesses across the world. My mission is to help as many businesses as possible harness affordable technology to help them grow, whether it is progressive web apps or native apps today, adaptive websites or chatbots tomorrow or something else that’s been commercially tried and tested.
What are the challenges you have faced?
I didn’t know what the hell I was doing in my first business and didn’t do my homework when deciding to work with service providers who, unfortunately, talk a good talk but don’t deliver and don’t care. If you want to throw away lots of your valuable time and money, this is the way to do it. Also I didn’t have the right team or partners in place to support me. In this business, I’ve learnt not to repeat the same mistakes and to invest in myself first.
What are your plans for growth in the next 12 months?
To ramp up sales activity and introduce a new complementary product and new income stream.
What advice would you give to a young entrepreneur or new startup?
If you come from the corporate world of monthly paychecks and regular exotic holidays, be prepared to rewire your brain and learn loads of new skills when you run a startup.
We can’t all be tha-a-at busy – if it matters to you, be alert to and make time for new opportunities and be prepared to change if necessary.
Also, learn from those who’ve been there and done it – the entrepreneurial journey can’t be taught by someone who’ve just taken a course or read a book!
