Welcome to Klu for Business
Hi, I’m Maria and I provide digital marketing and management support services to small business. I’m based in Kenmare, County Kerry with Nick, my other half and our two boys.
My background
My professional background began in business consultancy and project management – initially in the field of international development projects. Prior to freelancing, I held senior corporate roles in project management, finance, business development and training – and I loved them all. I delivered short-term assignments all over the world on an in-person and remote basis. Eventually I took up a full time project operations role in Nigeria for three years, before finally settling in County Kerry in Ireland. Between 2013 and 2020 I juggled family life, supported our family photography business and developed a portfolio of freelance project work in Sub-Saharan Africa.
A geek at heart
I was always a bit of a geek and I’ve been involved in building websites for fun and informal projects since the late 90s. My SEO journey was undertaken out of necessity; our own small business websites had gone through many iterations over the years; SEO and traffic building had become the day to day of running our businesses. I’d long since learned that it takes more than a beautiful website to attract visitors. As I got more involved and talked to other people about their own business website experiences, I realised that most of the successful ones had gone through a similar learning curve. Inevitably, I’d moved on to experimenting with digital marketing and content planning for our own websites. Being a bit of a data freak, I found it fascinating to be able to see the impact of marketing activities on a website, virtually in real time!
Along came the pandemic
A long lockdown
The pandemic lockdowns were a revelation to me. A combination of policy shifts and the endless lockdowns meant my world suddenly got much smaller. I didn’t miss the travel and home schooling aside, I found had time on my hands.
Much of that time was spent working on marketing and website activity of one kind or another. With many business having the same idea, there was no shortage of interesting projects to get stuck into.
It wasn’t long before I’d decided to refocus my career closer to home, doing something that I enjoyed.
On a mission
Business websites need to look good, function the way they are supposed to and deliver a volume of traffic that will contribute to your bottom line. Otherwise, what’s the point? I’m really passionate about bringing dormant websites to life, not by burning them down and starting again, but by making incremental improvements from the bottom up so that you can maximise the benefit you deserve!