Keystone’s founder and MD Hayley Williams (above, far left) joined a panel of agency leaders at the MobHappy Meetup event on Monday 28th January; to discuss the challenges and opportunities in taking a niche approach to business development.
The MobHappy Meetup is a place for all creatives, freelancers and agency folk that are aspiring to scale and grow their business. Each event centres on a panel discussion with exciting speakers from local agencies, all who’ve taken that leap and grown from one to many. The session is aimed at those who want to learn from agency owners who’ve made the leap from freelancing.
Keystone was established over five years ago, initially offering generalist plug in marketing support to an array for growing businesses. In recent times, the Keystone focus and portfolio has grown, to become more specialist in its activities and sectors. It is this particular journey that Hayley shared insights from on the night.
Panel insights and audience discussion centred on:
- The opportunity that comes from doing what you know and what you love
- Establishing a point of difference in what you do/how you do it is key – as is showing the value and communicating it
- It’s important to work with the right clients – the ones you like, the ones you can do great work for and the ones that make commercial sense
- Building trust and relationships is the most important thing so don’t spread your services too thin, remain the expert in your niche and don’t dilute your capabilities
- How collaboration is viewed as valuable to clients – passing work on to other specialist agencies is much more common now as a trusted, credible approach…rather than trying to cover all bases yourself
- From a sales and marketing perspective you can niche, to get the bulk of your work. But you can still pivot for the right project
Hayley was joined on the panel by:
James Cotton, Onespacemedia
Founder and MD of Onespacemedia, with more than 20 years of experience working in senior technical and creative roles – including running a successful design agency for four years -before founding Onespacemedia.
Caroline Benson, Cuttsy+Cuttsy
Co-founder of Cuttsy+Cuttsy, an award-winning communications agency that has chosen to purely work in the healthcare sector.
The panel was facilitated by Kelly Molson, the brainchild of the MobHappy concept; which at its core is a peer to peer network for agency owners. The aim of the network is to increase the percentage of women agency owners, by supporting existing founders on their journey, and inspiring up and coming leaders.
The MobHappy Meetup runs every other month throughout 2019 at The Bradfield Centre’s Auditorium in Cambridge. View and sign up to future events here.
