What's been happening at Build A Brand?

Build A Brand has grown up a bit!

I can't quite believe I'm saying this, but Build A Brand is now seven years old.

SEVEN.

When I first started Build A Brand, I don't think I really knew what it would become. I knew I loved marketing, I knew I wanted to help businesses, and I knew I wanted to do things a little differently to the traditional agency approach.

Seven years later, I think we've grown up a bit. Not too much, obviously.

So, what's been happening at Build A Brand?

Honestly? LOADS.

We've been working with healthcare brands, engineering companies, B2B businesses, ecommerce brands and local businesses, alongside some BIG website builds that we've absolutely loved getting stuck into. We've also had some brilliant content days with clients, getting out from behind our laptops and actually capturing the people, products and personalities behind the businesses we work with.

One of my favourites was the annual Daly Group Charity Golf Day, where they made the questionable decision to let us loose in a golf buggy for the day. We were there capturing everything as it happened, creating content and sharing the event live across their social media.

And that's actually a really good example of how we like to work. We're not sitting miles away from our clients waiting for them to send us something to post. We want to understand the business, be part of what's happening and spot the opportunities for marketing along the way.

Making the magic happen with marketing support

Something we've really focused on at Build A Brand is making sure we have the right people doing the right things. Because good marketing isn't about deciding that this month we're concentrating on social media and forgetting about everything else.

It all has to work together.

We might create an amazing piece of content, but where are we sending people afterwards?

We can run a brilliant Google Ads campaign, but if the website isn't converting, we're wasting money. We can build a beautiful website, but if nobody can find it, what's the point?

And we can get loads of people onto your website, but if we aren't looking at what they're actually doing once they arrive, how do we know what's working?

That's where our team comes in.

I'm Gemma, Managing Director, and I tend to sit across everything from the initial strategy and understanding the business through to planning what we actually need to do to help it grow. I'm also still very hands on because, seven years in, apparently I've still not mastered the art of leaving things alone.

Gemma Walker works across Web Development, Shopify and SEO, taking the strategy and making sure the website and ecommerce side of things actually works. She's also brilliant at spotting opportunities to improve user experience, analysing what's happening on websites and figuring out why something isn't doing what we want it to do.

Lauren, our Digital Growth Manager, takes over when we need to make all of that work harder. Google Ads, Meta Ads, analytics, tracking, ROAS and figuring out what's actually generating results rather than just looking nice on a report.

Cloudia, our Social & Brand Executive, brings the creative side to life through content, social media and branding. She's the one helping turn ideas and strategies into something people actually want to stop scrolling and look at.

Codi supports us with development, helping us tackle the more technical website work and bring some of our bigger ideas to life.

Tyler, our Junior Tech Support Assistant, is our remote technical helper and an extra pair of hands behind the scenes. He supports us with website updates, data entry and the day to day technical tasks that help keep projects moving and everything accurate, while continuing to build his skills across website management and digital support.

Individually, we all have our areas.

Together is where the magic happens.

Because we're not prioritising one part of your marketing at the expense of everything else.

Strategy talks to creative.

Creative talks to advertising.

Advertising talks to the website.

The website talks to SEO.

And the data comes back and tells us what we need to change next.

That's what I mean when I talk about providing full marketing support. It isn't necessarily about doing absolutely everything for every client. It's about having the right people around the table who understand how each part affects the next.

Making websites easier for the people who actually use them

We've also been doing loads of work recently around CMS systems within websites, and this is something I'm really passionate about.

A website shouldn't be something you're scared to touch once your web developer hands it over. You shouldn't need to email us every time you want to change a sentence, add a new team member, upload a project or update a service because you're terrified that pressing the wrong button is somehow going to delete half your homepage.

So with a lot of our recent website builds, we've been putting much more thought into what happens after the website goes live. We're creating easy to manage CMS systems that allow website owners to update the things they actually need to update without having to go anywhere near the design and structure of the website.

Want to add a new project? Fill in the fields.

New team member? Add their details.

New case study? Upload it.

The website does the rest.

It means our clients have more control over their own websites, while the carefully designed bits stay safely out of harm's way.

And for us, that's just another part of building websites properly. It's not only about how something looks on launch day. It's about making sure it actually works for the business that's going to be using it every day.

We know what we're good at

When you're growing a business, it's really easy to fall into the trap of saying yes to everything.

Can you do this? Yep.

Can you help with that? Yep.

Can you just quickly...? Probably.

Over the years we've worked with hundreds of businesses across loads of different industries, and that's helped us understand where we can make the biggest difference.

We've become much more focused on looking at the whole digital picture.

Your website doesn't sit separately from your Google Ads.

Your social media doesn't sit separately from your brand.

Your SEO doesn't sit separately from your website.

Your email marketing, Google presence, Meta Ads, analytics, content and ecommerce store all work together.

And increasingly, that's how we're working with our clients too. Rather than just ticking off a certain number of social posts or running an ad campaign and disappearing, we want to understand what's actually happening in the business.

What's working? What's not? Where are people finding you? What are they doing when they get to your website? And, most importantly, is any of it actually making you money?

Getting local businesses together too

Another thing I've been really excited about is joining forces with Shona at Lilac HR and Tracey at Coco Accounting to launch the Wisbech Business Hub.

The idea was simple. Create somewhere local business owners can come together once a month for just an hour and talk about the things that are actually happening when you're running a business.

Questions. Support. Ideas. Success stories. And, very importantly, the occasional rant.

Each month we meet at our offices in Wisbech with a key topic to get the conversation started, but it's very much an open space for businesses of all shapes and sizes to come along, ask questions, share experiences and hopefully leave with something useful.

Between the three of us, we bring three very different areas to the table. Marketing, HR and accounting. But the whole point isn't for us to stand at the front and talk at everyone for an hour. It's about getting local businesses talking to each other.

We've now had our first two Wisbech Business Hub meet ups and they've been brilliant. It's been lovely seeing people share experiences, ask questions and realise that half the things they're dealing with are things other business owners are dealing with too.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how the Hub grows and hopefully creating a genuinely useful little community for businesses in and around Wisbech.

No awkward networking.

No 60 second elevator pitches.

Just an hour, a useful topic and a room full of people who understand that running a business can sometimes be bloody hard.

We're getting our own house in order too

You know the saying about builders never finishing their own houses? Marketing agencies are exactly the same.

We spend all day working on everyone else's businesses and then suddenly realise we haven't posted on our own social media for approximately 84 years.

So we've been giving BAB some attention too. We've refreshed how we want our own social media to look, we're creating more content, working on our own website and putting better systems and processes in place behind the scenes.

Some of it isn't particularly glamorous. Nobody gets excited about an SOP. Well, maybe somebody does. But it's all part of building a better business.

I don't want to build the biggest marketing agency

This is probably one of the biggest things I've realised. For years, growth always seemed to mean more.

More people. More clients. More services. More everything.

But I'm not sure I believe that anymore.

I don't want Build A Brand to be the biggest marketing agency. I want us to be really bloody good at what we do.

I want clients to feel like we're part of their business rather than an agency sitting somewhere on the outside. I want us to be able to say when we think something isn't worth spending money on. I want us to care whether something actually works rather than just being able to say we've completed the task.

And I want to work with businesses where we can genuinely make a difference.

Maybe that's what growing up looks like. Knowing what you're good at, knowing what you don't want to be, and being comfortable enough to say it.

So, what's next?

More of the good stuff.

More websites. More Shopify. More ecommerce. More SEO. More ads. More creative ideas.

More helping businesses work out what the hell they're supposed to be doing online.

We'll keep testing things.

We'll keep learning.

We'll undoubtedly keep swearing at Google.

And we'll continue building Build A Brand into the kind of marketing support I wanted to create seven years ago.

A team that genuinely cares about the businesses we work with.

Turns out Build A Brand has grown up a bit.

Don't worry though. We're still not that grown up.