Marcus Richards
ESA Digital is the data-driven eCommerce SEO agency, turning traffic data insights into scalable £1M+ revenue growth and trusted by successful UK eCom entrepreneurs, backed by well known Dragons’ Den investors.
Tell us about yourself?
We are eCommerce growth experts obsessed over great user experience, and business growth.
As a team we dive deep into the data and operate on awareness, activation and payment stages of eCommerce product management. We value frugality and thinking differently that breeds resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention.
Our founder and CEO Dennis Lazarenkov is a well-known European IT-Entrepreneur (Top 30 under 30 in Belarus), Google Campus Alumni and Exceptional (Tier-1) UK Talent visa holder. He launched 7 successful digital products in Europe across eCommerce, MarTech, AI, LegalTech, Marketplace, and EdTech. Winner of the €50K Poland Prize for non-Polish startups in MarTech (2019). Dennis is a digital marketing expert with verified certifications in advanced Analytics (SQL), Product Management (SPOC), UX Research (CustDev), and digital Marketing (OMCP).
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Never give up and enjoy every minute of your life. After all, it is happiness that is the main meaning of life, isn’t it?
What problem does your business solve?
We help middle-size eCommerce projects to become £1M businesses using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) and digital analytics. We grew the Dragons’ Den alumnus eCommerce monthly revenue x10 times in 9 months, and achieved sales of £1M+ with SEO and Paid Ads – you can read the case on our website here: www.ecomseoagency.co.uk
What is the inspiration behind your business?
We are focused on the eCommerce middle-sized segment with monthly revenue from £20,000 per month, when paid advertising has been launched already. We work with SEO to differentiate traffic channels and risks, as organic traffic stays with the website for a long time after.
Moreover, we have noticed that organic Google Search traffic has almost a direct correlation with the number of orders on most of the eCommerce websites. Thus, growing organic traffic we also grow online revenue. 18% is an average monthly revenue growth that we make for our clients on a regular basis.
What is your magic sauce?
We are exclusive partners of Galaev&Co. Investment fund that make a portfolio management of many successful eCom UK brands, backed by well-known Dragons’ Den investors. We are providing growth for several eCommerce Dragons’ Den Alumni now and increasing their number in our agency.
Also, we have a strong Research direction. We mixed the classic organic audit with business analytics. We give founders that we are starting to work with not only how much organic traffic it will bring them, but how much money they will earn: how much it will take to precisely to invest and what indicators of return on investment (ROI) they can count on. We go in with mathematics and every month we calculate where we are on the big Roadmap. This service is especially popular with investment funds.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
We are a team of 10 now, and planning to grow even further. In 2022 we plan to double the revenue of our agency, and in 4-5 years become £1M+ business by ourselves.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
We tried working with a small segment of the eCommerce businesses with revenue less than £ 20,000 per month and it was not very efficient. At the initial stage, the main growth should come from paid advertising, social networks and email marketing. Only when the funnels are built and a sufficient amount of traffic is purchased through the auction, you can proceed to SEO and CRO to double your monthly revenue or even triple in the near future.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
We would like eCommerce owners with £20k+ monthly revenue to book a free ‘Napkin’ traffic audit either you can become a £1M eCom business with SEO or not. You can do it on our website here: www.ecomseoagency.co.uk
