Marcus Richards
Heavyweight Digital is a digital marketing agency based in Essex , we work with small and medium sized businesses as an outsource digital marketing department, essentially becoming an extension of your business.
We pride ourselves on being competitive but at the forefront, we offer a comprehensive service where performance is paramount.
Our agency is awarded the coveted Google Premier Partner status for consistent growth and performance for our clients. We are also accredited by Meta (Facebook) and Microsoft Ads.
Tell us about yourself?
I have worked in digital marketing since 2000 when Google AdWords was launched, at the start as a freelancer. I immediately adopted the platform, at the time for my father who had recently retired and was starting a holiday homes rental business in Spain.
Other platforms existed at the time which were also piloting pay-per-click platforms – i worked extensively with all of these but always found Google to be dominant, so focussed the vast majority of my effort in the early days on Google AdWords
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Measure any marketing efforts over a minimum of 30 days, preferably longer if possible. Many advertisers can make knee-jerk reactions to a small subset of data.
It’s also advisable to formulate a narrative to the data you’re seeing. If you identify a certain area of a campaign working, why is this working so well? Is seasonality playing a part, is there increase or decrease in demand and is there anything you can think of effecting this externally.
What problem does your business solve?
Platforms such as Google Ads, Microsoft Ads and Facebook Ads have all become more sophisticated over time. With this in mind, it has created more complex systems to manipulate which for smaller advertisers is becoming an increasing problem.
Heavyweight Digital exists to bridge the gap of knowledge and marketing skill to ensure small and medium sized businesses can still utilise paid search and social to grow their businesses.
Furthermore, we have an anti-click fraud solution for Google Ads & Microsoft Ads that monitors for excessive clicking, which can sometimes be accidental, but most commonly malicious, budget busting clicking.
This system is branded in it’s own right as Click Guardian and advertisers benefit from 24/7 automated protection where blocks are made if suspicious click activity occurs.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
With a recurring theme of pay-per-click clients who repeatedly asked about the potential of competitors clicking on their ads, we set about to research whether there was a wider problem emerging surrounding click fraud.
The results were such in 2014 that we set about developing a platform that could monitor this kind of malicious behaviour – because of the automated aspect of blocking those that were deemed as being suspicious, this side the business grew very quickly.
On the more traditional side of our digital marketing business, as a small growing business ourselves, we are inspired to help other small and medium sized businesses get the most from their advertising budget on paid and social platforms.
What is your magic sauce?
The foundation of providing an excellent service that prospects and clients buy into is having a highly skilled team who are enthusiastic about getting the most from a client’s budget.
Communication is absolutely key in what we’re all about – we always try to articulate what we’re doing in an easy-to-understand manner and demonstrate statistically that we’re able to produce positive results.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
Our plan for the next 5 years is to continue on the same path of exponential growth. We plan to continually upskill our existing team and employ the best talent available.
Along the way we will absorb changes in an increasingly sophisticated industry anb continue to adapt to support our clients advertising efforts.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
I often talk to freelancers and businesses where they’re struggling to know how they’re going to break though and commit to starting to employ.
This was the same for us and it’s also a steep learning curve but extremely rewarding.
It’s not uncommon to speak with small business owners who are expanding that have this exact same problem – my advise is that once you’ve reached a certain financial milestone, commit to employing and it will open up the growth of your business and it’ll all seem less daunting once you’ve done it once…
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
Do you want to get more from your paid search & social? Or maybe you want to grow organically through SEO. Contact Heavyweight Digital at www.heavyweightdigital.co.uk or call 01245 206456 to speak with one of our friendly, knowledgeable team.
