Wow's benchmarking study shows recruitment and relocation was key to agency growth in 2013
The Wow Company, the accountancy firm that specialises in the creative industries, has recently released the findings of its latest annual agency benchmarking study, which shows that recruitment and relocation proved to be the biggest factors to agency growth over the last 12 months.
The Wow Company works with hundreds of creative agencies, from start-up to £5m turnover, and with access to financial data from so many companies, they’re able to annually collate information anonymously and share key trends, stats and averages to allow agencies to benchmark themselves against their peers.
They’ve recently combined this data with the results of a nationwide survey of the creative industry, run in conjunction with The Drum Network, to create a unique insight into what the UK’s top performing agencies are doing right now.
Key findings of the study showed that almost 50% of agencies who responded to their poll said that they are planning to grow by more than 26%, with 19% of respondents planning to grow by more than 50% during 2014.
Comparisons with their 2013 research showed that last year 18% of agencies had grown by more than 26% and 17% had grown by more than 50%.
The key to this growth, according to respondents, has been recruiting higher quality people, particularly in the areas of new business development, moving offices and opening new offices in new territories, a better approach to marketing for new business and simply by increasing prices.
Figures showed that during 2014 48% of agencies are planning to increase their prices, this figure is twice the 24% last year who said they were going to increase their prices, which in itself shows more confidence about clients budgets in the year ahead.
Findings also showed that while the war for talent has been hard fought over the last few years, that battle to recruit the best people is going to get harder with almost 80% of agencies saying that they are going to be recruiting in the year ahead.
To read the full findings of Wow’s full report click here.