Home Articles & Features People of the North: Adeline Bibby, Founder & Director of Addi’d Value

People of the North: Adeline Bibby, Founder & Director of Addi’d Value

People of the North: Adeline Bibby, Founder & Director at Addi’d Value
People of the North: Adeline Bibby, Founder & Director at Addi’d Value

Established 2016, Addi’d Value provides a complete marketing consultancy service to mid-sized businesses and organisations across the North West which want to better understand their customers, develop their brand and create a long-term marketing strategy.

With over 20 years’ experience working with well-known brands in travel, retail, construction and professional services, Adeline works directly with clients on a very personal level to understand their market, develop their proposition and create a marketing strategy that is true to their values, will have a real impact and will, ultimately, deliver results.

Adeline has worked in marketing for over 20 years, largely working in house for big brands in fast-paced industries, and worked her way up to senior management level. After adopting two young girls in 2014, Adeline took a year out and decided she wanted to find something that offered her flexibility but which enabled her to continue working at a senior level and use her wealth of skills and experience to help businesses achieve their own growth and success.

Addi’d Value was founded in 2016 to provide mid-sized businesses with a personal and high-quality service built around 20 years of marketing expertise, at the fraction of the cost of an agency.


How long have you been running your business and what does your business do?

Addi’d Value is nearly five years old. We – I say we, as I collaborate with some amazing people – aim to help businesses to get their marketing to actually deliver results and achieve their business objectives. This could be by generating more enquiries, creating more conversions, or upping their game to enter new markets.

We’re able to provide really high-quality marketing services to firms that are established but don’t have the marketing expertise internally to form their own strategy or figure out what they need to do.

We create an approach for a business’ marketing and, if needed, deliver it too so that clients aren’t left trying to find suppliers or to project manage it themselves.

What the inspiration for starting Addi’d Value?

I never set out to run my own marketing business, it was a combination of things which inspired me to take this path. The flexibility to do work which challenged and excited me, to control my own destiny and the freedom to learn and develop myself, all alongside looking after two young children.

Professionally, I have been inspired by the businesses I have come across on my journey and knowing that I can help them better connect with their customers and achieve their own success. I also enjoy providing them with a high-level of marketing expertise and a more personal alternative to an agency, where they would be a small fish in a big pond and which would cost nearly four times the amount.

One bit of advice you wish you’d been given before you started your business?

Have a clear purpose and stick to it.

Early on I came across many intelligent, and well-meaning, people who told me to change and adapt to certain customers and to do things like develop marketing training, give talks or specialise in social media.

But that wasn’t me. Although I’d tried to work with very small businesses – as I wanted to help them – my level of service was usually above what they needed.

I went back to my original purpose and began to seek out the right customers that I had a great match with.

The one most important thing you’ve learned during the experience of running your own business?

Talk about money up front. Don’t shy away from it.

I’ve had business owners tell me money is not an issue repeatedly – and then it is. Avoid any misunderstandings or wasted time on your part or the customer’s part and talk about money in the first meeting – ballpark figures of what they’re comfortable spending. Don’t quote a figure at the first meeting though! You need to think and work out what they need before providing a quote.

What do you see as your future business challenges?

Post Covidit will be about helping businesses to see beyond the short term.

Short term fixes like special offers and creating content for social media all have value, and they have their place. However, the longer-term things, like building your brand and investing in comms to do that, are equally important.

Businesses have been cutting out the longer-term stuff to save money, which is understandable, but in isolation short term fixes aren’t sustainable. Short and long term marketing activity working together give far superior results – they have a multiplicatory effect. Past recessions and performance data show organisations that do both recover quicker and grow faster than those that don’t.

What would you like to leave as your business legacy?

That I cared and became embroiled in the client and being part of their team. I think that care shows in being passionate about solving their problems and making sure their marketing delivered results and it wasn’t just pretty.

What do you consider to be your biggest business achievement/success so far?

I am really proud of the work I carried out for ANTZ. I took what was an amazing service,but which was confusing, and created a proposition that is clear and easy to understand and a creative new brand that completely fits them and their values.

I also managed to convince the CEO of an airline, at a time when big cuts were being made across the business, to make commercial changes to their loyalty programme in order to retain business customers who would otherwise have switched to another airline.

When you are not running your business, what do you do to relax?

I’m a huge animal fan and love taking our two dogs out for a walk in the woods or across the fields. It’s great to see them running free together, and their joy of life, and it’s good to be out and about.

Once Covid is finally behind us, I’m going to get back into horse riding. I’m a bit rusty and had lessons planned for the last 12 months and haven’t been able to do them.

Your biggest achievement outside of business?

Being true to my values. I live by the values in the bible – seen as old fashioned, I know – but I believe the principles in there are ones worth living up to and make you the best person you can be. We’re not perfect and it’s not about perfection, it’s about doing the best you can. There is lots of really practical advice and principles in there and it is a fascinating book that explains so many things.

I’m a logical person, and when you read in the bible that “the earth is a sphere… hanging upon nothing” written thousands of years before we knew for a fact that the earth was round, and it wasn’t held up by an elephant or various other things, that logically has to come from a being more intelligent than we are.

What do you think you would be doing if you weren’t running your business?

It couldn’t be just one thing, I’d have to have a few things on the go!

I love learning so I think that would be a big focus for me, whether for business or pleasure, I’d have a course of some sort underway.

I’d also do some part-time work, maybe for a charity or another organisation that has similar ethical, people focused values to me.

And if money is not an issue, I would also make sure that every week I spent a morning with my mum and dad, went for a treat with my best friend, took the dogs on some adventurous walks, and spent time riding horses with my friend, Jess.

 

Find out more about Addi’d Value at their website.

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