Business name: Float Digital

Office location: Mor Workspace, Newquay

When was the business founded: May 2016

How many employees: 3 employees and a network of trusted contractors

Business Cornwall: How is the business best described?

Float Digital is a fast-growing and multi-award-winning Google Ads & SEO agency. We partner with the world’s most exciting brands from London to New York to deliver jargon-free Search Marketing campaigns. Our team’s diverse portfolio boasts over 150 B2C and B2B accounts in a range of industries.

Business Cornwall: Why was the business founded?

Prior to starting my own business, I worked in the digital marketing industry for 6 years. I gained experience in-house and within agencies, managing and delivering campaigns for small start-ups through to Fortune 500 brands in a range of B2B and B2C industries.

I thrived in an agency but I had the ambition to grow a business. The prospect of not having a guaranteed income every month to cover my mortgage was terrifying; however the fear of not trying and living to regret it was much greater.

I had an entrepreneurial spirit inside of me and I was excited to see where it would lead. Armed with drive and experience, I launched Float Digital in May 2016.

I heard horror-stories about how small business owners had been scammed by other ‘SEO Consultants’ in the past. I was told about how they’d been over-charged and they didn’t see any results. They’d lost so much money along with their confidence to hire another agency or freelancer. This upset me and I decided that I wanted to do something to change the perception of SEO and PPC agencies.

We established a gap in the market: Affordable High-Quality Search Marketing.

With this in mind, our goal was to educate small business owners and deliver affordable campaigns, without compromising on quality.

Transparency is at the heart of everything we do. Our customers come to us because we cut out the jargon. We appreciate that a report telling you that your website doesn’t have canonicals or that your taxonomy pages are causing issues isn’t very useful.

Instead we communicate the issues on the website in plain English and provide a simple solution. In our experience, supporting our clients to understand the process helps us to quickly turnaround our projects, yielding positive results sooner.

Business Cornwall: How does the business compare to competitors in the industry?

There’s hundreds of companies out there that claim they can get your business to the top of Google, it’s hard to know who to trust. When launching Float Digital there were a few things that we knew we wanted to do differently.

Search Marketing is our speciality – We don’t offer web design, we’re not social media marketers, and running newsletter campaigns isn’t our jam. We’re so busy doing what we love to the highest standard, that we don’t offer these other services.

Our strategies are bespoke – We understand the importance of getting to know a business to yield the best results. Most agencies offer a one-size fits all product, but we believe maintaining this attention to detail is crucial to the success of a campaign.

Everything we do is 100% transparent – There are hundreds of myths floating around in the digital marketing industry, which can make investing in SEO or PPC daunting. We demystify the process so you know where your money is being spent. Each month you’ll receive a breakdown of the campaign activity – goodbye ambiguous emails.

No minimum contract – We don’t stop clients if they want to leave (we keep them coming back with our amazing results!). Of course, we wouldn’t want them to go, but we know that sometimes circumstances or budgets change, and that’s totally OK. We’re confident in our delivery that we don’t need to tie our customers in.

We don’t outsource abroad – When you’re paying for industry experts to look after your Search Marketing, that’s exactly what you should get. None of our projects get subcontracted to low-quality freelancers abroad, unlike other agencies.

Business Cornwall: What are the business’s plans both short-term and long-term?

Everyday £100 million is spent on Google Ads, and the SEO industry is estimated to be worth £79 billion by 2020. If you asked somebody what SEO or PPC means just 5 years ago, the majority of people didn’t know, now the industry is growing people are beginning to understand search marketing, and that’s really exciting because we can see real opportunity for growth.

Earlier in the year, we received a priceless business mentoring session with Dragon’s Den star, Peter Jones. His advice has steered our business plan in an exciting direction. We’re executing and implementing lots over the next few months, so expect to see developments. We’re holding our cards quite close to our chest for now, but we anticipate exponential growth.

One thing we have spoken about publicly is an SEO and PPC tool we’re developing in-house at the moment. We’re hoping to launch the beta version of the tool in 2019. Initially, we began designing the tool because we couldn’t find a single piece of software that did what we wanted, or at least not at a reasonable price. We decided it would actually be cheaper, and more flexible if we just created the tool ourselves. It’s not for certain yet, but we’ll likely release this to the public. Keep your eyes peeled!

 Business Cornwall: How does the business define success?

Float Digital’s success isn’t defined by turnover. We set our goals based on performance, not money. Whenever we speak about targeting prospective clients internally, we rarely talk about money. First and foremost, we care about who the client is. We’re passionate about working with brands that we resonate with, and financial goals don’t dominate our business plan. We have a happier company culture when we work on campaigns we love, so we focus our energy on winning these clients.

It’s also important for us to position Float Digital as trusted experts in Search Marketing industry. Our aim is to demystify Search Marketing to change the reputation of SEO and PPC agencies globally. We do this by contributing to major publications in our industry, and delivering training and presentations at the world’s largest marketing events.

Float Digital presented to an audience of 3,500 delegates at Europe’s largest search marketing event, BrightonSEO, and also recently presented at the Marketing Business Summit in Milan, Italy. Float Digital also delivers workshops on behalf of the world’s largest marketing award body, CIM (Chartered Institute of Marketing).

You can find out more about these events on our social media channels:

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