For this interview, we sat down with Perpetual10, a UK-based marketing agency focused on driving measurable growth for modern brands. We discussed their approach to performance marketing, client reporting, and how agencies can turn data into a competitive advantage. Below, they share insights on scaling results, strengthening client relationships, and building systems that support long-term growth.
Enjoy!
Perpetual10’s Story
To start, we’d love to understand your background. Can you share your professional journey and how you came to found or lead your firm?
Before setting up Perpetual10, I spent 14 years working at various digital marketing agencies. During that time, I’ve been involved in Project Management, Account Management, Sales, Operations, and have set up 2 SEO teams and 2 Client Service teams. I also spent 2 years working client-side as a Marketing Director to gain experience on the other side of the fence.
This led me to set up Perpetual10 with the ambition of creating an agency focused solely on delivering marketing campaigns with a clear sales objective. That means we only take on campaigns where our clients can provide the revenue figures they need to see from an assigned spend.
Serving Entrepreneurs & E-Commerce Businesses
Many of our readers are entrepreneurs and e-commerce operators. Based on your experience, what are your top three principles or best practices for building and sustaining a successful online business?
- Really get to know who your core audience is, what problems they have, what they struggle with, what keeps them up at night, what do they enjoy doing, what motivates them – everything. The more you know about them, the better your messaging will be and the more effective your marketing will be
- Be honest with yourself about what your brand is known for. Whilst branching out to new markets is a legitimate strategy, doing it at the expense of your core audience is suicide. For example, Patagonia is known as an environmentally friendly, sustainable, high quality outdoor clothing brand. If they suddenly tried to appeal to the fast-fashion, trend-culture audience, they’d create a real sense of betrayal among their current audience and lose them overnight.
- Most businesses focus on acquiring new customers rather than on retaining existing ones. This is because when they first start trading, they don’t have any existing customers to focus on. As your business grows, however, you should focus at least 50/50 on getting existing clients to purchase again vs. getting new customers. The more you can get existing customers to repeat purchase, the larger the lifetime value of every new customer.
Lessons Learned
No journey is without challenges. Can you share a specific challenge, setback, or mistake you’ve encountered along the way — and what you learned from it that others could benefit from?
Recruitment is the hardest thing to get right in business. There have been several times when I’ve convinced myself someone was right for a position, even though deep down I had reservations. Stick to your gut, and don’t be shy about the type of culture you’re trying to build. Just like every customer won’t be right for your products, not every employee will be right for your business.
What’s Next
Looking ahead, what initiatives, services, or changes are you currently rolling out at your firm, and what outcomes are you hoping to achieve?
We’re trying to adopt more AI & Automation across the business. We’ve started setting up various processes for the simple things like creating reports, setting up monthly tasks, sending chase emails etc. The aim is twofold.
- Reduce the team’s focus on repetitive, dull tasks to increase their motivation and ensure they’re focusing on the tasks that really deliver value to our customers
- Reduce errors by standardising common tasks so our clients receive a better service
The combined result of both of these is better results for our clients at no extra cost.
Advice for the Road
What advice would you give to founders or operators who are earlier in their journey?
Write down all the tasks you do in a month, then categorise them to identify what tasks help grow the company vs. those that keep it running day-to-day. Start delegating the day-to-day tasks to others, either by recruiting someone to do the job or by outsourcing them to a third party. Don’t think of the money you spend on this as a cost you could save, but a way of buying back time that you can then spend on tasks that grow your business.
Take managing your accounts, for example. Maybe that takes up 1 day a month. Outsourcing that to an accountant might cost you £200 – £300 a month. But you’ve now got a day back every month to develop a new marketing campaign, launch a new promotion, optimise a struggling product line, negotiate better terms with your fulfilment company, develop a new automation to provide a better customer experience, or any number of other tasks that will have a significantly larger impact than the £200 – £300 saving you’d get if you continued to do your accounts yourself.
Where to Find Perpetual10
Finally, we’d love to point readers to your work. How can our readers stay in touch with you?
Our site can be found at perpetual10.co.uk. We’re currently offering a free SEO audit on e-commerce sites. All your readers need to do is fill out the form on this page. The audit is completely free with no obligation to work with us once it’s delivered. People can also connect with me personally via my LinkedIn account.