Marcus Richards
Vu Online is a small, environmentally conscious digital marketing agency based in Exeter, we build applications like websites, do a range of content creation and optimisation like copywriting, video etc.
We are probably best known for our Tribe services, which is an affordable marketing subscription for small businesses looking to do a bit adwords, content creation and start to generate leads through their website when previously it may just have been for show.
We offer 100% renewable energy web hosting and renewable workshops support and help our clients thing about their products and services from an environmental perspective.
Tell us about yourself?
My background is in design, I worked in a relatively understaffed company and had to turn my hand to product, packaging, web – you name it!
Looking back, it enabled very quick growth and gave me a pragmatic business approach to design in what can be an ego centric industry.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Oh good one. Hire great staff. I think the biggest learning financially was that we tried to grow quickly a few years back, we hired multiple juniors in short succession and it became difficult to manage alongside the requirement for greater sales.
It didn’t work and was ultimately a very expensive endeavour. We hire experienced staff slowly now.
What problem does your business solve?
For most of our clients, it is consistent lead generation.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
We have been around for over 13 years now, the perception of a new website often brings expectations of new clientele – sometimes this is the case, but often this is a misconception (especially initially) and the issue is about visibility.
We put ourselves in our clients shoes and said, how can we solve that issue for them? The Tribe was born. And has been responsible for dozens of small business owners sleeping better at night!
What is your magic sauce?
In an industry of agencies pursuing the sexy big hitting campaigns and awards, we saw the opportunity in doing a consistently good job every day for our clients. If theres a magic sauce, I think it might be that.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
Having lots of organisations signed up a couple of pricing tiers of the Tribe, we need to refine the offering for the next step. Our audience needs drives the service offering – so it has been a fascinating journey to be on with them.
We are starting to bring the environmental message into our clients organisations more and more so I would like to see greater progress there, we are currently working on the launch of a new green focussed network later this year – get in touch if you are interested in that.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
I think the staffing issue above was the biggest financial issue. I would say the biggest change of course for the organisation was about 7 years ago: Going from a website design agency to a marketing agency that designs websites.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
We are looking to collaborate with any environmentally focussed organisations and connect them with our Tribe network.
Vu Tribe clients are often overstretched business owners or marketers, struggling to do the activities that will bring them more customers, consistently, every month.
If you’re part of a small business, struggling with these kind of issues then we would love to have a chat, find out more on our website: https://vuonline.co.uk/
