By Narelle Coulter
When entrepreneur Sukhbir Mehla started his web design business while completing his MBA 15 years ago, he was commonly asked questions like what
was a website and what was email?
“Today a well-designed, interactive, website is great. But a lot of businesses have those now. Engaging content and creative marketing strategies are what will
help deliver your business message clearly to your target audience and make an impact,” Sukhbir said.
Sukhbir and his wife Anne are the brains behind Zeemo, a marketing and web design business located in Narre Warren.
“With changes in consumer behaviour came the need for more innovative ways of marketing a business. Standing out from the crowd became critical for business survival. Zeemo has continued to evolve with these changes to ensure the businesses we help better engage with their customers,” Sukhbir explained.
What started as predominantly a website design and development business has expanded to include content strategies, photography, creative branding, marketing collateral such as brochures, and eNewsletters.
Zeemo’s client base is varied from a gardening superstore to a book publisher, pool builder and furniture retailer.
“I like to call it a bag of allsorts,” Anne said, laughing.
“It’s great for me, being a creative person. I like the challenges different industries present.”
While Anne is the creative engine, Sukhbir is focused on brand development.
The couple work well together in their different roles and try not to take work home with them.
“We dedicate our weekends to family time because we have two young children. During the week work can extend into the evenings if required but I think we’ve been able to find a great work-life balance. Being able to switch off is extremely important,” Anne said.
What also helped the family’s work-life balance was relocating the Zeemo office from Clayton to Narre Warren.
“We live in Upper Beaconsfield and travelling so far to work each day meant we were wasting a lot of time on the Monash car park,” said Anne.
Since starting in 2002, Zeemo has developed a very loyal client base all over Australia. The couple believe their customer loyalty comes as a direct result of Zeemo’s ongoing, innovative approach to finding new ways of connecting businesses with their target audience.
Anne has started attending the networking breakfasts organised by the Casey Cardinia Business Group and went to last year’s women in business luncheon.
“It’s really nice to get involved. You start to see a lot of familiar faces and it’s a great opportunity to understand the challenges that other business owners are
facing.”
Giving back to the community is also important to the couple. Last year Zeemo donated its services to not-for-profit start-up SleepBus.
“We decided it was a really worthy cause to put ourselves behind. So we donated our time and resources to this project. We helped develop their brand identity and a fully responsive website, with all the bells and whistles,” Anne said.
“We’ve been really fortunate to get to where we are today and we recognise that sometimes other companies need that helping hand to get off the ground. It was
a really uplifting experience.”
Sukhbir is proud that Zeemo has withstood the tests of time and puts that down to building relationships and listening to his clients’ needs.
“Building strong relationships comes from giving the right advice. We always recommend services to clients that we believe will help them overcome the challenges they are facing as a business. I think that’s one thing we’ve done successfully since day one.”
