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Agency growth case study: Page & Page

 

Quick facts

 
Company name, date formed Page & Page, formed 2014
Office locations Tunbridge Wells and London
Prior year approximate fee income £700,000
Ownership Owned by Kate and Stephen Page
Number of staff 9 employees
   

Staff Breakdown

 
% of staff creative:  33%
% of staff account/client servicing:  44% 
% of staff digital  
% of staff strategic 11% 
% of staff admin/finance: 11%

Describe what you do, why you do it and who you do it for.

We specialise in health, wellness and lifestyle. We apply our imagination – along with our experience – to make brands more effective.

We are here to help extraordinary people do extraordinary things. Things that take more effort, more imagination, more guts.

We are focused on giving people the tools, the people, the room and the support to turn thinking into real success. And that focus means that we simply cannot afford to waste time on anyone who doesn’t think differently. So, we are selective about our clients.

We provide creative facilitation, brand development, campaign development and digital communication.

Looking back

What has been the hardest thing about getting your agency to where it is now?

I suppose ultimately, we’re only limited by the number of people we can find who buy into our company values. However, we would say our company values are the thing that is most unique about us and that people might struggle with.

The people who succeed at Page & Page are keen to help us grow the business and understand that this means building meaningful relationships with one another and the clients that approach us.

This goes hand-in-hand with our number one value: consideration for others. This is consideration for other team members and for our clients. Ultimately, it is what we sell and what provides the P&P brand with energy: thinking on behalf of others. We love the CS Lewis quote, “The person who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through the eyes of others.”

However, we seem to live in a day and age when people are sometimes a little self-obsessed to the degree that they struggle to form meaningful relationships. People like this do not succeed within the P&P team and to be frank, the clients we succeed with as a business are not like this either.

Right now

What might slow/prevent your growth to the next level?

Apart from the above, which is by far our biggest challenge, like any growing business our biggest challenge is managing our working capital. Winning bigger means investing bigger.

To convince the clients who want to spend more we have to demonstrate we have the infastrucutre they can believe in – especially as we don’t pitch for business. This means investing, the speed of our growth means investing ahead of earning and building working capital. We’ve been fortunate enough to be in a position to invest ourselves. Even so as we grow we will look for outside investment too.

What’s next

What are your aspirations for the business?

To build a team that wants to take ownership. What we mean by this is to find the right sort of people, who want to work together, grow the business, own shares within the business and build the Page & Page brand. Our greatest enjoyment is in passing on our 25/30 years experience. We have lots of prospective client contacts and we enjoy seeing mutually beneficial relationships flourish.

Page & Page's advice to growing agencies

  • Work out your value proposition: what value you bring to your clients. It doesn’t have to be totally unique but position yourself against the others in your immediate environment and amongst your potential clients. In this way you can aim to work with like minded people. People who share those values with you. It is far more productive to discover new solutions with people who happily bounce off one another than to constantly fight up hill trying to win someone over.
  • Manage the money carefully, detail matters from the contract you have with a client to the things you invest in.
  • Find good people for your team. Are they like-minded, are they going to raise the bar for you, will they challenge you, do they add a new dimension?
  • Choose a specific communication channel and build a profile targeting your potential clients.
  • Be wary. There are bad people out there who seek to take advantage so keep your eyes wide open.
  • Keep a focus on your purpose, at the end of the day the work you do and the quality of that work will say the most about you and return back to you the energy you’ve invested with the satisfaction that you made many people happier.

Image credit: Adrian Franklin 

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