STANTA St Albans Enterprise Agency’s latest business success story is based on their recent conversation with Lorri Ritchie of Socially Mindful, a London Colney-based Google and Meta ads consultant.
Why did you approach STANTA for business advice?
I had always worked in the corporate world as an employee but after having my daughter I decided I would set myself up as a business. I had heard lots of good things about STANTA and knew they would give me support on how to get started.
How has the business advice helped you?
The business advice I received at STANTA helped me grow in confidence. I felt supported and not so alone. STANTA helped me to register my business at Companies House. I was also put in touch with various contacts and they helped me find networking groups to build my network.
Most of my clients came through my networking activities and various online groups and the recommendations from those people.
At the start, I offered purely social media management and then I expanded that to include Facebook and Instagram (Meta) ads management. During Covid things naturally slowed down so I decided to use the time to learn more about Google Ads. I signed up for a very good Google Ads training course and really enjoyed it! So much so that now it actually makes up about 80% of the work I do.
So I changed track, evolving my business away from social media management to focus solely on Google and Meta ads management. By focussing on just ads management I’ve been able to develop a good “broad” grounding in digital marketing which allows me to provide a better service to my clients.
Today, most of my business comes from word-of-mouth recommendations, networking contacts, and various online groups. My clients are based throughout the UK. The online world we live in means that we are able to conduct meetings etc online, so it really doesn’t matter where clients are located.
Have you taken advantage of any of the workshops STANTA runs?
I’ve been on two great workshops – one was called Business Planning which gave me all the essentials for setting up in business, including registering with Companies House, understanding tax implications and bookkeeping.
The other was how to attract more customers to your site (SEO). Both were so useful in getting me started. Also attending these workshops with other startup businesses was so good for building camaraderie and connecting with other people.
And finally, how is your business doing today?
I’ve been in business since 2017, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. I am at full capacity on the four days a week I want to work, and the breadth of industries I work within keeps it exciting. The clients I have now allow me to explore different tactics and to test new campaigns. Both the Google and Meta ads platforms are always evolving, which keeps me on my toes but I enjoy the challenge.