Celebrating 20 years of marketing

We are very proud to be celebrating our 20^th anniversary this year!

Just before the turn of the millennium, our firm was established to offer outsourced marketing solutions to SMEs. While we initially specialised in offering bespoke, outsourced marketing services, we increasingly began to provide a wider range of services to clients in the professional services sectors, namely financial, legal and accountancy firms. In addition to our original offering, we now also specialise in the provision of client communications publications, newsletters and websites for the firms we work with. Such is the extent of our content production that we are now a prolific publisher, writing over 500 articles and producing over 100 publications every year.

We have a team of 20 people, covering different functions including design, copywriting, account management, business development, adviser marketing and digital marketing, all of whom have considerable expertise in working with our chosen sectors. Originally known as The Outsourced Marketing Department, we merged with a sister company in 2015 and rebranded as TOMD earlier this year to reflect our significant growth and development – around 70% in the past three years.

While initially we worked with just a handful of clients, our client base has since expanded to 1,500 firms every year, who we assist to achieve a wide range of marketing goals. We’re proud of the strong relationships we enjoy with our clients, some of whom we have been working with for over 15 years! Similarly, we have several team members who have been with us since the very beginning, and continue to support the business every step of the way.

Although our offices are based in Hertfordshire, our clients come from every corner of the UK and even further afield. Over the years, we’ve worked for clients based in both America and Europe, ranging in size from ‘micro businesses’ to a huge global corporation whose turnover exceeds $4 billion.

Over the past 20 years, we have quickly adapted to changes in the marketing environment, most notably the meteoric growth of digital marketing. Today, our digital team works with over 700 firms to build, maintain and host their websites, as well as to provide SEO and social media support.

Instrumental to our growth has been the recruitment of key people with the expertise required to deliver results in the niche sectors we work in. Our Content & Technical Director Jo, a Chartered Wealth Manager, brings with her a ‘wealth’ of financial services knowledge and a real understanding of how advisory firms work. Today, her expertise is in high demand as we now work with many major and well-known financial services distribution networks and services providers.

Commenting on the firm’s anniversary, Director Mike Johnstone, said: “It is a significant milestone and it has taken a great deal of hard work to get here.

“So much has changed over the past two decades, and the marketing landscape has evolved more quickly than any of us would have believed. As we’ve expanded, so has our offering; we now offer a complete range of marketing services to the professional services sectors. In addition to our ‘traditional’ services, about 50% of our client’s work is now online.

“The biggest growth has been the demand for content. Each year the word count of our articles totals about 250,000. This has led us to invest heavily in the development of innovative technology solutions to enable clients to publish this content and to help us manage the hundreds of websites we have built. We are excited to say that as a result of this investment, we will soon be launching our brand new marketing and content distribution platform.

“We are all extremely proud of what we have achieved so far. I am grateful to all our clients, suppliers and especially our amazing team, who have worked relentlessly to transform our business into what it is today.”