So, here goes. Deep breath.

Today we launch Growth Digital into an Irish marketing landscape that is already pretty saturated with digital marketing agencies.

Now, why would we do such a thing?

Well, because there are a huge number of Irish SMEs and smaller businesses that are poorly served by the agencies that are at their disposal. And we are going about this a bit differently.

The Pitch Bit

There are oodles of businesses that cannot afford a full-time, highly experienced professional marketing person, much less a team of same. Yet, they are often going toe to toe against international companies with budgets and teams that make it difficult to compete, let alone win. In many cases 'the marketing' consists of social media posts managed by a young junior because 'they understand all this social media stuff'. It's lobbed in with the rest of their role and competes for time from someone who doesn't really have the experience or the expertise that is really required.

This 'solution' has possibly been arrived at after the company has been burned by a marketing agency that promised the world but where the only real impact has been on the company's bottom line - and not in a good way. Business owners are wary of marketing agencies because they believe them to be expensive and a very risky investment.

On the other hand, they know that marketing is a necessity. You can't do nothing and hope for the best. But it all seems so complicated.

But what if there was someone who had the experience and expertise you need and was able to

• create a marketing strategy and plan that made sense for the company
• implement those plans
• using relatively inexpensive, simple to manage technical platforms
• that enabled them to deliver at a sensible cost
• whilst also upskilling your own staff (through a free online digital marketing academy)
• so that your team could take on more of this work as time goes on

Well now, that would be a bit different, wouldn't it?

The Technical Platforms Bit

Growth Digital Marketing has bought into a global digital marketing franchise that gives us access to some very lovely, yet very simple platforms. This means we can do a lot of stuff remarkably efficiently, such as:

• Design and build high quality, very fast, reasonably priced websites that are simple to maintain
• Mobile apps that are not cost-prohibitive
• SEO that makes sense
• Social media made simple (you actually won't believe how simple)
• Reputation management
• Email marketing
• Ad reporting and analysis

These platforms are genuinely cutting edge and constantly updated. They leverage AI quite a bit to reduce the time required and therefore keep costs down.

The beauty of these solutions is that they are integrated so you have one dashboard that controls the lot and you can see how your key metrics are performing at any time of the day or night.

The Unfortunate 'Braggedy Brag' Bit

An unfortunate necessity when in a people-related business like this is that one has to bang on a bit about one's achievements in order to establish credibility. So, on the basis that a faint heart never won a fair lady, please forgive me in advance (another deep breath!).

Adrian O'Farrell has over 35 years experience across the full gamut of marketing disciplines. He has worked in ad agencies, below the line agencies, media, client side. He was employee number one in Ireland's first dedicated content marketing agency and led same to a global gold at the Content Marketing Awards whilst also securing a shortlisting for Agency of the Year. As Marketing Director, he launched the Bravo Outdoor brand and led it to win Media Brand of the Year and the largest contract available to the company in the state. He is a former Chair of the Association of Promotional Marketing Consultants, He has won awards from National Newspapers of Ireland Advertising, European Federation of Sales Promotion, and over a dozen APMC awards. He is a highly experienced marketing strategist who has led numerous rebrands and highly profitable campaigns on behalf of clients.

Can I stop now? You get the point, I hope.

The Support Staff Bit

Whereas for the last several years I have been operating as a sole trader at the heart of a nexus of collaborating freelancers, now I have created Growth Digital to, well, grow. The basic idea is to take on highly qualified junior staff, who are educated to Masters level in Digital Marketing, train them in how  to operate the platforms and have them implement according to the client plans agreed.

The first of these is Gabriela Braga, a superbly well-rounded digital marketer, who is employee no. 1 in the Growth Digital family.

She joins with Houssame Majdalene, our technical whiz, who assists us with coding, website building and all things super-technical. Houssame is a bit of a genius, basically.

In addition, we have access to a global team of experts within the network who can either a) advise us on how to achieve certain tasks or b) actually complete the work for us.

So we have tremendous flex in our capacity.

If you are looking for the holy grail that is the right marketing solution for your SME or local brand, then pick up the phone or your mouse. It's definitely worth a phone call.