SOUTH WALES START-UP PREPARES FOR GROWTH FOLLOWING DIGITAL SUPPORT
Tuesday, 07 May 2019
Posted by Blaenau Gwent
SOUTH WALES START-UP PREPARES FOR GROWTH FOLLOWING DIGITAL SUPPORT
The founders of a South Wales IT firm that specialises in cloud-based technology are planning to employ their first staff member following the success of their digital marketing strategy.
David Golding and Richard Fowler, of Mimo Communications, hope to employ someone to manage the firm’s social media and marketing full-time after a Superfast Business Wales workshop on digital marketing led to them securing a significant contract.
The pair, who launched the firm last year, work from separate offices in Abertillery and Barry, and provide a range of IT services to businesses based in the UK and overseas - including systems management and support.
We use cloud to run the business
“Digital technology is vital to everything we do,” said Mr Golding. “We help businesses with cloud migration from physical to shared infrastructures, but we also use the same technology daily to run the business - particularly Google tools. It’s great for collaborating across our two offices and for communicating with clients, saving us time and money and helping us run things more efficiently and securely.”
When the duo started their business, they knew they would need an effective website and a strong online presence to grow. After initially taking a “scattergun approach” to see what worked best, the firm sought external expertise from Superfast Business Wales.
Superfast Business Wales helped us take a more focused, strategic approach
“While we are IT experts, we wanted digital marketing support to help grow the business,” said Mr Golding. “The workshop and follow-up sessions helped us evaluate what we were doing and allowed us take a more focused, strategic approach. It has also given us the confidence to take on a new member of staff to drive our marketing forward.”
After attending the free Superfast Business Wales digital marketing workshop, the business had a follow-up, one-to-one session with a digital business advisor. The advisor evaluated the company’s digital marketing approach and helped it develop a custom-made action plan to help it progress.
We have already secured contracts with larger businesses
Mimo Communications started using LinkedIn to raise awareness of its expertise and services, building its credibility and growing its network of potential clients. It worked: a London-based finance firm contacted the Mimo via LinkedIn and is now an important client.
The business then launched a YouTube channel and is creating animated videos to explain different IT services in an accessible way. Mr Fowler has also learned to use Google AdWords to improve the business’ search engine performance, driving more traffic to the website.
“The Welsh Government’s support helped us along by giving us additional professional insight,” Mr Golding added. “It was nice to have positive reinforcement that we were doing some things right, and it also helped identify things we could have done better. It’s difficult to measure the financial impact of the support we received, but the business is already securing contracts with larger businesses than we had anticipated this early on, which is fantastic.”