Beyond Interactive’s Year 4 half-time report
At the end of March 2010, Beyond Interactive will be exactly halfway through its 4th year and here are some thoughts on how things have been going:
This time last year the business was ticking along nicely but nothing more than that. In fact, it was a difficult time to predict anything and we had a job on our hands to continue our early years’ success. Whether a coincidence or not, the business has gone from strength-to-strength since April last year. We’ve picked up some fantastic accounts such as Weight Watchers, Astra Zeneca and JTI – to name a few. With these new business wins and continued support from existing clients, the 2nd half of last year was very strong and enabled us to finish much better than was originally predicted.
The start of our 4th year in October got off to a great start by picking up a few more new-business wins and 6 months on, we’re on target for an even better year financially with continued profitability. However it’s not been plain sailing and like everyone else, we’ve had to adapt to the poor economic situation. Fortunately being a smaller organisation, we’ve been able to this a lot easier than some of our larger competitors.
A big reason for our success has come from listening to what clients really want and not just jumping on the social media bandwagon. Yes, we offer this and we’ve seen some great results from ongoing campaigns, but we try and advise instead of pushing the latest trend to our clients. The last thing we want to do is create campaigns for the sake of ‘ticking the social media box’ and generating a new revenue stream.
We may spend less with certain job boards than we used to but we still see them as an integral part of our strategy and there’s nothing to suggest this will change. A certain client of ours hasn’t paid a recruitment agency fee for over 8 months; no coincidence since this is when they first started working with us! We’ve helped them to develop their online presence and engage with the right audience on the right job boards. Only now do we feel this client is ready to build on this success and embrace social media as part of their people strategy.
Another client has seen their cost-per-hire reduced from around £5K to £600. This success was again generated from using job boards in the right way. But more importantly, by listening to what the client wants and getting them to communicate openly and honestly.
Overall, we’re really excited about the second half of year 4. We’ll be embracing social media much more but only if it’s right for our clients. One thing’s for sure: trying to forecast and predict is almost impossible in this climate. However, if we stick by our principles of ambition, credibility, honesty and transparency, then I see nothing but continued success for the business.
What’s more, our new website (and blog) will finally be ready early April so watch this space.
