C4B Media are Celebrating 10 years of Determination, Imagination and Creation.
But you and your brand are still at the heart of everything we do!
Anyone who has started business knows what a rewarding and exciting rollercoaster journey it can be. 10 years after C4B Media opened its doors, we take a look at what we’ve learned…
Back in 2010, two creative and marketing agencies happened to find themselves based in the same South Cambridgeshire office building, close to Royston.
Next door to each other, in fact.
For a while, Zen Creative and Contacts4Business went about their business independently. But then they started first introducing their clients to each other, quickly moving on to sharing clients by offering their respective services to them.
The partners also found they got along really well, so before long they were firm friends.
Then in 2012, one of them said to another: “Hey, since we’re working so well together, why don’t we join forces and form a new agency? Wouldn’t that be great?”
A few months later, on 13th February 2013, C4B Media came into being. With 4 directors, 2 members of staff and lots of clients for whom they could now add a considerable amount of extra value.
Ten years on, and C4B Media has grown by 500%, has an enviable roster of local, national and international clients and has weathered the credit crunch, austerity, Brexit and the pandemic.
Why the success?
The success of the newly formed agency came from a merger of complementary skills and expertise, as well as a hugely overlapping set of shared values:
- Integrity
- Compassion
- Adaptability
- Reliability
- Enjoyment
We now share these values not just internally as a team but with our clients too.
So what have we learned?
Back in the beginning, you might say it was a lot about learning, but not a lot about earning! Here are some of our top learnings:
You get out what you put in
Long days, late nights and weekends were spent working back then. We even lost money on some of our projects as we didn’t really know how to invoice properly for the value we added.
Clients. It’s all about clients!
When we started out, we put our clients, and their brands, right at the heart of everything we did – and we still do today.
The ups can be as scary as the downs
Growth has to be managed carefully. Knowing what kind of clients we can work for – and what kind we can’t – is a really valuable skill.
Clients will come, stay and go – and that’s fine
New clients come and go, but pleasingly, many will stay. In fact, we’re proud of our average client retention rate of over 6 years. It’s a testament to our commitment and – of course – to the quality of what we deliver.
Our people are our greatest asset
Our success over the last 10 years would have been impossible without our amazing team, many of whom have grown with us.
We must keep on learning
We’ve had the support of many experts along the way. They have helped us, encouraged us to push a few boundaries and ensured we continue to deliver the very best work we can. At the same time, technology, practices and principles evolve fast, so we need to work hard to keep across new developments.
Be good at a lot. But focus on clients we know we can help
As well as offering bespoke, project-based services, we also found a niche providing outsourced marketing to businesses with no in-house marketing staff. But we’ve learned that we can’t always help every client. So we know what we can’t do, as well as what we can, and this has occasionally meant having to part ways before getting too embedded projects that don’t feel right.
A big ‘Thank You’ from our agency!
We need to say a massive ‘thank you’ to everyone who has helped us, everyone who has trusted us, everyone who has worked for us, everyone who has supported and supplied us over these 10 years.
To our wonderful clients who entrust us with their marketing, brand, communications, website, email management, social media channels and content we say again – thank you.
And for our superhuman team for their commitment, professionalism and enthusiasm: we applaud you.
At the end, it’s about determination, imagination and creation.
Your success is our success.
Thank you again.
