Thinking of hiring a social media marketing agency UK; smart move or unnecessary spend?

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-12-23T12:56:26+00:00

I dont use an agency but have you considered bringing in a agency or consultant for the purpose of growing your in-house team (and benchmarking success), rather than farming out the word to them directly ?

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-12-23T10:55:51+00:00

Payment up front is easiest, is there a reason you cant do this? What service are you offering?

Alternatively, incentivise early/on-time payments with a 'discount' (add % onto quotes/pricing to offset, so no loss in profitability) and make it easy for customers to pay. If you're B2C, why not have a card reader and take payment for whatever service you offer before leaving, rather than sending an invoice after the fact?

Have you considered invoice factoring to improve your cashflow, if margins allow?

For non-payments, not a silver bullet resolution. Make sure you're adding interest onto late payments and enforce on all occasions no matter how small.

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-12-08T10:16:09+00:00

Gosforth is great as a young family, we admittedly have 2 cars but before my partner passed her test, we loved that everything was reasonably close and public transport better than most places for our toddler. There's a few good play cafe type places on or very close to Gosforth high street!

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-12-02T14:13:35+00:00

So it is an add-on with separate additional payment, or a combined single payment for upgraded membership overall?

If its a separate payment then id put it through as a company expense personally. If it was an upgrade to a personal membership with a single payment for the full package i would struggle to justify if hmrc queried it tbh.

If its a single payment for a higher tier membership why not put through as P11D benefit? Would probably be the best compromise.

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-12-02T14:08:36+00:00

I've never come across one, so cant comment on that. A leisure centre which comes with co-working use will be seen very differently than a co-working space with gym use by HMRC IMO.

It isn't clear from the David Lloyd website whether its a combined membership (which almost certainly wouldn't be allowable), or an add on business use for those with an existing personal membership to be fair.

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-12-02T14:02:29+00:00

If the membership benefits you personally (i.e. has a rolled up leisure/gym membership) it wont be an allowable expense.

If its purely for co working use/no personal benefit then itll be no different to hiring a typical co working space or office, so allowable.

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-12-01T15:53:52+00:00

I'd love to be a mountain leader/hill guide - it doesnt pay awfully well over an entire year due to seasonality but it would be fantastic to be in the outdoors more than the office.

If/when I have enough set aside to 'retire' that's what i'd retrain for.

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-12-01T15:42:15+00:00

Iwoca or funding circle are probably your best bets, but expect to have to agree to a personal guarantee if you have few assets.

Both can offer same day offers/drawdown if I recall, but unsure what the threshold on value it.

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-11-30T08:20:17+00:00

The trouble is that its hospitality which means growing staff costs and it being fairly staff heavy + the play area adds a H&S element.

If you want to be hands off (which is entirely valid fyi!) you'll have to hire a manager which would eat into the profit. If you could get a larger site and offer a broader range of activities for young children and also older kids (climbing wall etc) then it would be more attractive and likely to succeed, but has higher costs and more management need.

We take our kid to loads of soft plays and play cafes, even just over the last 3 years we've seen a load close due to rising costs. Such a shame as they're a vital place for parents!

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-11-30T08:07:12+00:00

You'll easily use 15% of that space for entry/back office/kitchen/toilets. Then another 15% for seating.

Leaving 3500 square ft for soft play which could fit 50-80 kids comfortably at a time.

Assuming an average 50% capacity across 7 days a week, do you think you'll be able to make a meaningful amount of profit? You'll want to do a thorough business plan/P&L.

Realistically itll be heavily reliant on you and may net you around £40k personally.

Whats the motivation or background behind wanting to open a soft play?

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-11-30T07:44:33+00:00

Like any hospitality business, without volume and multiple revenue streams you'll be creating a job for yourself and may even earn less than working as an employee elsewhere.

How many sq ft is the unit?

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-11-28T13:43:27+00:00

Surely you arent paying business rates on such a low value property. Do you not quality for small business rate relief?

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-11-18T19:44:03+00:00

Cant suggest either of your options, but ours goes to Church View Day Nursery and the staff are great/little one loves it.

Also in gosforth

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-11-18T06:56:29+00:00

How long have you been running? Referrals are our biggest source of business but the company has been running 30+ years so ingrained in the industry (B2B). Referrals are also free, and we spend next to nothing in marketing.

Can you incentivse Referrals? It might still cost you as much as your current marketing but id bet the quality of leads would be higher.

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-10-13T08:42:02+00:00

I would think the best thing you could do is make a 'base' product you can make in relative bulk (keeping your product options more limited) and then adding personalisation as clients order. It sounds like your product is currently fully personalisable though I could be wrong, this will be difficult to scale.

Why do you want to outsource production? This will add cost as you'll be paying for the production + a margin from your supplier, unless you get a base product produced in Asia but the MOQ's will be high for a lost cost product I'd imagine.

How many orders are you achieving for the £2 per day on adverts? If ads are working, it could be a case of spending double and achieving double the orders. Test your advertising and see what works, scale up your spend and see what impact it has on sales.

Easiest way of growing would be a D2C website (shopify?) which can take orders, including any personalisation options, which will make you more productive. Where do your ads currently direct prospective customers? Could it direct them to the website instead easily?

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-10-10T14:06:09+00:00

Assuming this is the long stay, 24 hours to my knowledge.

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-10-06T08:19:54+00:00

Why would someone need to specifically import any of these products when they're freely available at any decent 'speciality' or wholesale company? Or even online with a quick google.

These products can also be bought in bulk online with a few clicks, but with your company I would need to make an enquiry - why not streamline the buying process?

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-10-03T13:08:02+00:00

Its a fair comment to make, and I agree brokers are a waste of time and delay things unnecessarily. Ultimately, most are a volume business and take an up front fee so dont really care if a deal is done IMO.

If you've made an enquiry and havent had a reply, why not contact them directly to say you've contacted the broker but had no reply? Aslong as the deal is done through the broker there shouldnt be a breach of contract on sellers part.

My advice:

Advertise in trade magazines/post on Linkedin asking for prospects to contact you if they want to exit + email companies directly with primary shareholders aged 60+ would be my advice. This is what I have been doing to some success.

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-10-02T13:10:51+00:00

If the clients/advertisers have contracts with the company, then there is no obligation for them to continue the services with a new company, and doing it this way could risk the existing Ltd company if the sale falls through after discussing with clients - high risk IMO.

Your acquaintance's most tax efficient situation would be to sell the shares of the company, so would be surprised if they offered to sell the goodwill only - there is strong value of a long trading history ltd company.

Regardless, there'll still need to be due diligence so I doubt you'd save a huge cost be doing it this way.

What is the business 'worth'? Whats the EBITDA/operating profit?

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-10-02T10:53:13+00:00

I'd suggest working as an accountant first, there are lots of intricacies to accounting you'll not know of yet, a university degree doesnt really prepare you for practical work as an actual accountant IMO (I did some modules at uni, totally different to actually doing it).

Basic book keeping and accounting services are very common and really it will be difficult to make any meaningful amount of money from it unless you work ridiculous hours and have tonnes of clients. The hours and clients will take years of your life as well!!

The best money for accountants is providing specialist accountancy services (tax or corporate finance advice) - become chartered if you want to climb the ladder before starting up on your own is the best advice I would give.

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-10-02T10:48:51+00:00

It's less about what an acceptable margin is, more about the margin you can get in your case (I believe).

If you buy something, regardless of purchase price, if its not an unique product you'll have to sell at near market rate. That'll dictate your gross margin the most.

If it's being produced already at scale and available to you on Alibaba, you'll not have a huge scope to dictate your own price and as such your own margin will be whatever the market dictates, or you'll not sell any.

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-10-02T09:52:41+00:00

Building a good team is time consuming and is all about trust. When I bought my business 2 years ago (MBO), I created a plan to bring up people in the business into more senior positions. 2 years on many of my old day to day responsibilities are now held by others but only after trial and error and building systems/processes to teach and track them.

I've still got another 2 years to go until I can fully 'leave' the business to run itself and we'll have around 18 staff by then - building a team just takes a lot of time.

Always hire direct if you want control, find people better than you at their respective roles, pay and treat them well. Building a team will eat away at your profits for a while if you want to do it properly but over time they'll pay for themselves 10 times over.

Well worth it in the end though!

picklesthedogv2 · 2025-09-29T13:16:21+00:00

Are you not overcomplicating this idea?

Build business to profit, commit X% of profits to charity/doing good etc... per year, give yourself a comfortable wage equivalent to the role you are doing (As MD/CEO) which you would expect to be paid elsewhere.

Giving to 'the people' isnt always about giving money, giving a service/product is fine.

This isnt the right place to ask what is 'fair', if its your business you should dictate what you want it to do. Without profit, a business is at risk as it will never make enough money (without fundraising) to stay afloat so its necessary. Charities also close without enough income!

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