Each week we interview one of our members to find out a bit more about them and their work in the Greater Manchester digital sphere. This week we're speaking with design and Google Ad specialists, Made By Factory.
What does your organisation do?
Made By Factory is an independent digital marketing agency, co-founded by a seasoned design specialist and a former Googler. We specialise in building high performance Google Ad accounts and websites that are geared towards scoring highly from an SEO perspective.
Because there’s no ‘one-size-fits-all’, we take the time to understand individual business needs. We care about what we do, we listen, work with our clients and provide the solution they actually need, not the one we want to sell.
What do you think is currently the biggest issue facing the tech industry?
There are many to choose from, and technology is such a broad term for so many disciplines so i would say for my sector, which is paid search agency, its finding the talent it takes to be able to work with daily fluctuating data in order to keep client's accounts performing at their best.
What is your organisation’s biggest achievement?
We were hand picked for Google Elevator, an elite training programme by Google and world class business coach, Robert Craven. The programme ran for around five years and chose only 30 UK agencies a year to take part, from over 5000. Working with Google and then teaming up with an account strategist from the Google team, whom now is the co-owner of Made By Factory, has been instrumental in our success with paid advertising, taking our ad revenue from around 500k to around 15 million in 18 months.
What would you consider to be your organisation’s biggest challenge?
Our biggest challenge has always been size. As a boutique agency, there can often be the assumption that we don’t have the necessary resources or skills to carry out a client's needs. The opposite is true. We only work with clients we know we can help, and we allow that to direct our growth.
We see a lot of mishandling of accounts, and management by junior or unqualified people, we also know many agencies aren’t confident with ads but run them for their clients regardless. It's a challenge to garner trust from new prospects, when they may have been burned several times and lost money. By the time they come to us on a recommendation, they aren’t sure a smaller agency will be able to do the job if a bigger one can’t.
We currently generate over £15m a year in ad revenue for our clients, and have increased some of our client's monthly ad revenue tenfold, whilst driving down conversion costs.
What do you think the future looks like for Manchester’s tech sector?
I would like to think Manchester will become the UK's main technology hub, in the way that it has always historically always been the seat of industry. I may be overreaching there though! It's great to see how much tech the North attracts, from the media all the way to the numerous boutique digital companies dotted around the city.
Tell us something that we might not know about your company?
Running a small business takes you places you never expected to be! We’ve had insider tours of the Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram in the UK. We had a private dinner for 12 with the Wolf of Wall Street, met Dynamo in an elevator, sat in a briefing room at 10 Downing Street, had canapés at the Irish ambassadors house in Dublin, and had a personal one to one tour of the Houses of Parliament.
Want to raise your profile?
If you want your business to feature across our website, social media and newsletter, contact thom@manchesterdigital.com to get involved.
