History
Schooling
I went to school in Doncaster South Yorkshire, Danum grammar school to be exact. I enjoyed my time at school and participated in many out of school activities. I even represented Doncaster in the schools basketball championships. Yip I’m quite tall. While attending I gained GCSE’s in arithmetic, science, english and art.
W.E Builders
From leaving school and while I was attending Leeds metropolitan University I worked for my father in the building trade.
We worked on all size of building project, from the small projects for individuals to large project for Doncaster County Council. The idea was I was to take over my fathers business upon his retirement and learn a trade in case I had trouble gaining employment once I left University.
I have a city in guilds in construction which was gained from night classes at Doncaster collage, but I really have my dad to thank for pushing me in this direction.
My father became ill in 2001 and he had to wind up the company. I still enjoy working with my hands but there is nothing like being sat in a warm air-conditioned office on a wet winters day.
I do various jobs around friends and family but I do not build professionally anymore although I still think I can hold my own on any building site.
Summit Media Ltd
After leaving school in 1989 I started a business degree at the university of Leeds whilw working part time for my father. Around halfway through the degree I was offered a placement with Summit Media Ltd. I almost turned this down to finish the course and gain my degree, but at the time my family was experiencing financial difficulties and and Summit was offering me a wage which helped out at home it was really a ‘no brainier’
Summit Media placed me in the unique position to work in a fast paced, international online media and marketing company, right at the start of the internet boom. They gave me the real life experience which I badly needed and gave me the opportunity to learn new skills. I really can’t sing their praises high enough.
While at Summit Media I was trained by Google’s in house PPC training team (back in the early days) and was one of the first people in the UK to gain a GAP (Google Ad words Professional) qualification.
I worked for Summit Media for three and a half years. I am a very competent online marketer specializing in paid search, search engine optimization, direct email marketing and campaign strategy and implementation.
My time at Summit Media was great and I worked on verticals as diverse as utilities to high end country pottery.
They gave me the experience I needed to run successful email shots three per week in one campaign, to media advertising acquisition. They also taught me about the importance of tracking, analytics and customer/user targeting.
At Summit I gained a passion for SEO (search engine optimisation) and PPC, which I now specialize in. Some of the client campaigns I ran for Summit media are:
- Dabs.com
- Powergen (now Eon)
- Emma Bridgewater
- Microsoft
- Play.com
- And much, much more…
At Summit Media I progressed from junior marketing manager right through until I was head of online marketing, with a team of 5 campaign managers who each had a team of five marketing managers under their control.
My duties were to over see all aspects of the paid and natural search, to train new members of the marketing team, to project manage new campaigns and liaise with the development team. I was also to consolidate client reports for the management team.
I was tasked to produce invoices for each of the clients with activity and performance reports.
I enjoyed my time at Summit Media and it gave the the very valuable experience I needed to progress in my career, but all good things come to an end and so I moved on.
Pharmacy2U
I started working for Pharmacy2U straight after I had finished my career with Summit Media.
As Pharmcy2U was one of my clients while working at Summit and they decided to leave the services of Summit just before I left the company they called me and asked me if I would like a temporary role within their company until my position with Visual Position started.
As I had already made a commitment to Visual Position Pharmacy2U knew that the position I held would not be permanent I held the position for me a period of four months until my next position started.
The Pharmacy2U Brief:
- Creating a two year email strategy
- Bring their PPC campaign in house with new product research, existing customer demographic research
all integrated into a new targeted PPC keyword portfolio - Take control and manage their affiliate campaign
- Support their site development team from a marketing perspective
- Plan product targeted campaigns
- Set up user targeted email shots at set time periods depending on product shelf life
- Create html and text emails on a weekly/monthly basis
I completed all of the above tasks set in under the four months time frame. I was supporting the web development team and played an integral part in the new web site design after researching customer buying patterns and web site entry points, bounce rates and buying paths and identifying sticking points. I was also creating flash product banners for their affiliate program.
I brought all the paid search in house and implemented an ‘out sourced’ tracking program which enabled me to optimise the campaign to the fullest.
Visual Position Ltd
Visual Position is an online marketing company, specializing in: Pay per lead (PPL), Pay per click (PPC), Search engine optimization (SEO), Email marketing strategy, Media buying and Social network brand promotion.
I am currently working on Visual Position Ltd as their online marketing manager. This involves researching new opportunities and future projects, which allowed the company to work on a revenue share basis.
I also oversee and implement all their paid search marketing for such clients as More Than, The AA and Direct Line.
We have a massive client data base, way to many to mention here, but most of our clients are based in the financial sector. As I’m sure that you are aware, the financial vertical is very competitive and all the accounts need micro managing on a daily basis.
Campaign manager is not my only role within the company. I also take the role as office manager and HR manager. Basically I make sure that all the team is happy and if any of them would like to discuss their continued professional development or have a problem then I’m their first point of call. I make sure that the office runs smoothly.
I also bring together all the different departments to make sure that we all have the same goals and deadlines for our clients.
PriceByPrice.com
While employed by Visual Position Ltd we created a large financial comparison web site called PricebyPrice.com which gives visitors the ability to compare car insurance, among other products online.
This comparison web site was made to be fully search engine friendly and accessible to any visitor who may use the site no matter if they had a sight impediment.
I was instrumental in the development strategy from day one. Giving advice to the development company of SEO best practice.
Now Pricebyprice has been launched I have created and implemented a four year marketing strategy for the site, which includes all the major fields I cover on this web site.
PricebyPrice is going from strength to strength, as we have acquired contracts with some of the leading UK charitable organizations to provide white label feed results which they can use to target their members and gain a donation from PricebyPrice for doing so.
This is a unique approach from us and has enabled PricebyPrice to gain valuable market share in an already over saturated and competitive market sector.
In six months since the launch of the bespoke marketing stratergy we have seen revenue in grow in excess of 90%, gain a page rank of 5 for the home page and 3 for the main internal pages.
