Features / The surgery
Business surgery: Artemis Clarke
Year established: 2015
Where the company is based: Iron Acton
Sector: Recruitment
Number of staff: Two
Owner: Kate Clarke
Key clients: A wide mix of organisations across the South West and London including FTSE listed PLCs, accountancy & tax practices and not-for-profit companies.
Website: www.artemisclarke.co.uk
Company overview
Artemis Clarke offers a dynamic and insightful approach for businesses seeking to recruit qualified accountancy and tax professionals.
The company was established in 2015 after founder Kate Clarke decided to give up her corporate career to pursue a lifelong ambition to run her own business.
She originally trained with one of the Big 4 accountancy firms but it was her experience of running The Mitie Foundation that was really pivotal in her decision.
Kate explains: “In 2012 I was given an amazing opportunity to set up the Mitie Foundation, a charity which focuses on helping the unemployed into work. This experience sparked ‘the idea’ moment – why not combine my finance background with my enjoyment of matching candidates with job opportunities”.
A background in finance means staff are more than just recruitment consultants. For clients less experienced with recruiting they can help scope roles and test candidates’ technical abilities, ensuring only suitable CVs are put forward for shortlisting.
Their approach is that of a search and select firm, with fee based on success rather than a retainer.
Their vision is to build a workforce of recruitment consultants who have experience in finance and share the company’s values of integrity, transparency, professionalism and empathy. Employees will be encouraged to work flexibly around their family commitments.
The Challenge
Much of our existing business is with large organisations and corporates. We have developed a specific service offering for small and medium sized growth businesses aimed at ensuring that the risks involved in initially recruiting a qualified finance team are minimised. What ways would you recommend to raise our profile with these types of growth businesses in the West Country?
FEEDBACK
Sarah Sturt, Partner at Deloitte
The South West is a hotbed for exciting, fast-growing SMEs seeking to develop and expand. You could blog about current and potential challenges local SME finance functions face, using social media to spread your message. This would demonstrate your understanding of the market and help position your firm and offering amongst your target clientele. Also keep up-to-date with local business news and identify sectors in the region that are experiencing particular growth, so you can tailor your messaging accordingly.
Alongside raising your profile through planned PR activity and social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter, get out and about as much as you can and meet potential clients in person. Join relevant business or networking events taking place throughout the region to spread the word about your service, make new contacts and raise your personal profile.
Would previous clients on whom your offering has made a real impact, and also the people you’ve placed, agree to share their experiences? Sincerely worded client testimonials can be very effective. And short video clips, with people giving real life examples, could bring your offering to life in a much more powerful way than a well written case study.
Don’t forget that your background as a big-4 qualified audit and tax practitioner with experience in industry, makes you stand out. It would be wise to play this first-hand experience to your advantage when differentiating yourself from competitors, attracting new clients and also candidates. Leveraging your old big-4 network where alumni may now be in industry may also prove fruitful.
Lis Anderson, Director, Ambitious PR
There are four areas I’d consider. These include playing to your strengths, doing your research, being relevant and measuring your efforts to help shape future profile raising activity.
1. Be targeted – SMEs cover a vast range of business, so maximise your marketing effort by focussing on a couple of sectors where you think you might have the most success. Maybe you already have one or two SMEs as clients in one of the region’s key sectors or is there is a need or reason why one particular sector would be more likely to need your help in recruiting someone with tax & financial expetease?
2. Find out where they go – where do the SMEs you want to target go? What networks are they members of? What do they read? What sites do they use online? What social media do they use? Be clever and target them in the places they already are and build your profile raising campaign of activity with this front of mind.
3. Make it relevant – don’t be generic. You’ve identified sectors that you might have a shot at, so make sure you talk about something they care about. What are the specific sector issues keeping green tech SMEs awake at night, for example?
Map the need for your help onto these and use tactics such as media relations, social media marketing, content marketing and speaker opportunities to raise your profile in a helpful and informed way. For example, the charity sector is facing increased scrutiny on where their money goes in light of the Kidsco closure? They need proper financial running and a person in place. You can help.
The green tech space is highly competitive for getting investors on board. They need to make sure they sell as hard as they can to potential investors and need someone who can ‘do’ the numbers and showcase potential. They need a proper financial person in place. You can help.
The creative sector is a sector where there are huge opportunities to claim back R&D tax credits for all sorts of work many business probably aren’t aware of. They need someone who understand tax. You can help.
4. Set yourself some goals and make sure you measure the success of what you’re doing so you can monitor, keeping doing it or change.
Building awareness (and therefore a reputation) is a long term game, but with good insight and planning you’ll be more relevant and helpful to those you’re wanting to engage.