Business Profile: Digital Twenty Four
Contact: Niamh Taylor (nee Boyle)
Business: Digital Twenty Four
E: niamh@digitaltwentyfour.com
M: 07737122955
Can you describe your business?
We pride ourselves in removing the mystery involved in succeeding online and ensure our clients understand every step of the process. I started Digital Twenty Four as a marketing consultancy to help businesses find customers through smart PPC (pay-per-click aka Google adwords) marketing, clever copywriting for search engine optimisation, social media management, affiliate marketing programmes, creative landing page design, conversion rate optimisation website testing, email marketing and remarketing. My team and associates are all experts in digital marketing – offering our clients a 360 degree solution that enables them to maximise their online presence and use digital marketing to grow their business. We pride ourselves on being a digital marketing agency with a difference – one focused solely on delivering return on investment for our clients.
Why did you start your own business?
Years ago when I won the Chartered Institute of Marketing Ireland Senior Professional of the year I was inundated with job offers and headhunters contacting me. I met a few of the headhunters and almost all of them said I needed to go out on my own (which was a strange thing to hear from a headhunter!). At that time I loved my job heading up a team in the marketing department for Sliderobes UK and Ireland. But after seven years I was no longer challenged and my heart wasn’t in the role. I had spent five years working alongside Google in Dublin and learning from the best and so I decided to go out on my own and help small businesses – with my digital experience – grow online. The main reason was that I didn’t want to look back in years to come and regret not trying. I started to surround myself with entrepreneurs and other strong women and finally built the courage and confidence to believe that I could become an entrepreneur. It’s not something I feel I was born with; it’s a skill I’ve worked hard to build and develop.
What are the best things about running your own business?
You’re the one in control – to be your own boss is pretty great. And you get to shape and flesh out your own dreams. If you work hard and put in the hours then it really pays off. Best of all, owning your own business can have you waking up with a smile on Mondays eager to start work rather than dragging yourself into someone else’s business. However, I rarely get much downtime and work every day of the year but it does allow me to have a more flexible lifestyle. The beauty of working in digital is that I can be anywhere in the world and work… I just need my laptop, mobile and wifi.
What are the main challenges facing the business?
The main challenge is scaling the business. We are having to turn away potential clients as we are working at full capacity. Not ideal, but I don’t want to take on additional work and start to let existing clients down. I am recruiting at the moment but struggling to find exceptional digital marketeers with a wide range of digital marketing skills. Another challenge for me personally is the amount of people who contact me looking for a coffee and to pick my brain. I hate saying no, but it takes up so much of my time when I could be working on growing the business.
What advice would you give to someone starting a business?
You need to be prepared to put everything into what you’re doing and be prepared to work long hours. You have to be ready to go without treats such as holidays, and even necessities such as salary, for what may seem like an endless stretch of time. And you have to do all this without the safety net that as a salaried employed you would have been used to. However, it is the most rewarding thing you’ll ever do in your life. It is by no means an easy one. It takes way too much out of a person — physically, mentally and emotionally. Situations don’t always turn out the way you think they will but you just have to have faith that everything will work out in the end. Surround yourself with people going through the same as you… I wouldn’t have survived if I hadn’t. You will need a strong support network which leads me on to networking. We all hate it but when you are starting a business you need to get out there.
Can you describe your experience of running a business in three words or less?
Organised chaos.
