Category: Team Blogs

Made By Factory Are Joined by Googler Ben Tennant

We are super chuffed to announce the arrival of a new partner in our small but growing digital team at Made By Factory. Enter Ben Tennant!

Joining us on January 1st is Ben, who will join us as a company director, co partner and head of PPC.

So, Ben joins us from tech giant Google UK, where he worked as an Agency Development Manager. We were one of the agencies assigned to his portfolio.

As a badged Google Partner Agency, we are assigned a highly trained AdWords expert at Google to support us with our account builds, client support and reporting. An Agency Development Manager will work on up to sixty agencies client accounts at once. Moreover, Ben has managed and optimised thousands of customer advertising accounts to improve performance and conversion rates.

Although we are a small agency, we are committed to following best practice and forward thinking. We keep our skills up to date to deliver the highest level of client service. As we continue to work with more Google Advertising spend, bringing a highly trained Google expert onto our team is the best way to ensure we are giving our clients the best value for money.

As a Manchester PPC Agency, we are badged Google Partners and accredited in Bing, LinkedIn and Facebook. Between us, we have managed millions of pounds of client spend. From small business to corporate and blue chip clients we reduce wastage and improve conversion.

Want to stop pouring your money down the drain on a poorly performing advertising account? Why not set up a consultation with Ben today and see how Factory can help you reach your business goals.

Factory Advise Business to ‘Go and Grow Online’

This year We are part of a campaign called Go and Grow Online. Even now, in 2017, almost 50% of business have no online presence.

That’s why we have joined the team at Enterprise Nation this year to advise business in all things digital.

What is the Go and Grow Online Campaign?

The Go and Grow online campaign, has been created in partnership with Microsoft, Verizon and Curry’s PC world and is aimed at giving those micro start ups the best advice possible to help them reach customers online. The campaign launched with a cool party in the Shard, but here’s what It’s really about.

We will be offering two workshops, (Maybe more) in Manchester. It’s a twelve step program. Well, actually, it’s eleven, but we could add one on! Heres’ what we will cover.

The eleven step programme

Hardware

What kind of devices are you using? If you are trying to be the next Amazon with your trusty Packard Bell from 1994, It may be time to switch.

Domains

Do you have a domain? bestcompanyever.wix.com with an email address of entrepreneur@gmail.com just may not make the cut!

Hosting

Hosting. Make it fast, make it secure. Consider your storage, traffic and platform. We can give some sound advice in this area.

Office

Office Software. Choosing the right options. As a digital Agency, we don’t use Office much. For some of our clients however, it is their spinal column.

Web Presence

Your website. We develop bespoke webs and applications. Now, We could have you online in a couple of hours. Could we have you visible? No. So we don’t make quick websites. Does that mean though, that having a quick and dirty website is rubbish? Not at all. you should have some presence, to send your contacts to. We can advise on some of the cheaper ways to get yourself online, without making it hard to extricate yourself later on.

Legals

Legal stuff. we will talk about what you need to be legal online. This will depend largely on what you do and where you do business.

Email

Email marketing. That old chestnut! How do you set up your campaigns for success? how do you stay relevant? We can show you how to keep clicks and opens high, by using simple segmentation.

Social Media

Social Media. Many start with this. But if not, how can you get set up? In the sea of networks, which ones should you use?

Online Visibility

Rising up search. Ok, this is where we are experts. We will tell you what works, what doesn’t, and where you could potentially do it faster.

Marketing Automation

Automation. We can demonstrate some of the tools you can utilise to make life easier!

Measurement

Finally, nothing is any use if you can’t measure your success. We explain the basics of analytics and other measuring tools and help you make sense of the data in it’s simplest form.

Finding Your Feet In The World Of Business

I come from a small satellite town in Manchester. Big business vacated our little homestead a long time ago when the cotton trade, nut and bolt works. Coal mines moved away from town. Growing up we got very little exposure to big corporations around here, until we ventured to the big city. This is a story about my transition from believing I’d never make it working for myself, or that people would ever take me seriously, to being the qualified, confident, Google Certified, Trusted Digital Media Advisor that I am today.

Back in September…

Back in September last year my business partner Andi and I embarked on a journey to the Netherlands. We were on a trade mission with a number of other delegates in the homewares industry. It was a jam-packed two days. We both arrived back in Manchester late one Friday evening absolutely buzzing from the two-day mission. It’s taken me 6 months to pluck up the courage to edit this article, and have the nuts to just bang it out there. Here goes nothing (it’s been sat in my WordPress drafts since October).

We’d been on a mission with Enterprise Nation’s Go Global before, so we didn’t expect to get much rest. (Or food as has become a tradition on our missions). This is to be expected as we had a lot of ground to cover. However, we both came back absolutely thrilled and inspired to get back in the office get cracking on some new ideas.

It’s never out of your reach …

The mission was centred around the homewares market. So you’re probably wondering what the hell we were doing there?! We go on these missions as a business to network, meet people, and try to find out what’s generally going on out there. But personally … I guess I’m always seeking acceptance into a world that I felt was too far out of reach. Let me explain. I’m from a small town in Manchester. The kind of place that looks to the big city with aspirational eyes. It’s easy to forget your place in the world. Back in the day, I found it hard to ask someone for £200 to build a website. I didn’t value what I did.

How on earth could I make enough money to pay the same as a stable job at a big company? The world of business seemed like a place that was reserved for men in crisp suits, not a modest young skipper from Atherton. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when you look at the big city. When I look back at what we’ve managed to get through over the last two years I really didn’t have anything to be afraid of. I just needed a push to get me to change the way I thought about work and life in general. I never felt like I belonged in a place like the city.

In Amsterdam

It always seemed out of my reach. But then when you’re sat at the top of the World Trade Centre in Amsterdam with around 30 other entrepreneurs looking to get their products into one of Amsterdam’s biggest department stores – and you find that they have the same questions as you – it kind of blows that feeling of overwhelm out of the water.

We are a part of this world

I spoke to so many business owners, professionals, government officials, and countless other legendary people. It brought home that we are a part of this world, a world that seemed a long way away from my humble upbringings in a Manchester satellite town. It made me realise that everyone is in the same boat. We are all in this together. At one point in the past, we’ve probably all been stood in front of our bosses nervously clutching at a resignation letter.

You Do Belong Here

Some of the brands and companies that we were with are award winning. We were speaking to, and rubbing shoulders with some of the big players in the homewares industry. Lead buyers from De Bijenkorf (Dutch Selfridges), and John Lewis, The UK Ambassador to the Netherlands Also the founder of Makerversity. When you look at the magnitude of their positions, and their organisations, it’s easy to lose perspective. The view that in fact, we’re all just people. They didn’t care that I was from a small town in Manchester. Or that I have a rather unusual accent, or that I use daft Wiganese slang words most the time. They wanted to learn the way of the web, and about our business, about Manchester, about us as people. There was nothing scary about any of it.

Do What You Can’t

Everyone who we spoke to was buzzing about what they did. They do what they love, and in most cases turned their hobbies into jobs. Life’s too short to spend your days staring at a keyboard, doing something you don’t want to. Slogging away at a 9 to 5. Change the norm, break the routine, escape the traditional constraints to what society tells us “work” has to be like. To quote Casey Neistat … Do what you can’t. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG7dSXcfVqE

Links and Thanks

Thanks to Enterprise Nation and Emma Jones (@emmaljones) for their hard work and for making all of these missions possible. Shout out to Makerversity and Tom Tobia (@TomTobia) for showing us round their place, and for being just straight up legends. Same for @Iamsterdam! And an even bigger shout to all the mission delegates who were an absolute pleasure to meet and be around for a few days: @UuniHQ & @Conor_Garland(awesome pizza oven), @_repeatrepeat (sexy bone china mugs), @Goodordering (retro chic bags for all uses – should be bossing it in Amsterdam), @XLCORK (total leg-end and massive cork manufacturer), and loads of others that I’ve forgotten tags for but you can see more at: #GoGlobalAMS

Made By Factory Visit Google!

On this gloomy Manchester morning, Danny, Jess and I – lovingly nicknamed #JamFam – boarded the Pendolino from Manchester to Euston; we were on our way to visit Google. A change from Media City. Whilst on the train we met Helen Knowles, who was writing her masters thesis in fine art & focussing on film. I missed the first half of the conversation, because I left my seat; however, when I returned they were chatting about algorithms.

Her artistic vision was to put an algorithm on trial for stealing private information. Danny told her he had recently built an application for a recruitment agency that scraped the LinkedIn API, & suddenly the ice was broken. It has to be the strangest on a train ice breaker I have encountered… We swapped details and, as far as I can tell, Danny may be a star in the film; watch this space for a further update on that. Joining Google’s Partner Programme was a natural progression after completing Squared Online in April.

Finally at Google

When we arrived in London, we scoped out Google’s colourful HQ over on Tottenham Court Rd & waited eagerly in reception to meet our contact. The problem was they couldn’t find him. You can probably sense an irony in my tone. We had gone to the wrong HQ. This is what happens when you Google ‘Google’ and use Google maps to get there. It wasn’t a huge problem, we cracked the maps out again and wandered over to Buckingham palace Rd HQ instead.

We met with our contact, albeit a little late, and he took us through some facts and figures; he showcased their products and also explained that we were one of a small number of agencies they had recently flagged up with potential for growth. Hence, we qualified for their full support!

This is great for business moving forward, as I have recently completed their digital marketing certificate & to get myself back up to scratch, having the backing of the Google team & their account strategists means we can guarantee any clients best practice with their advert accounts. Anyway enough selling on my personal blog 😉

We left feeling quite special, and congratulated ourselves on the laid back nature of our trip arranging; we got an extra few hours in the big smoke to get some grub and a few pre-Christmas drinks! After wandering through Covent Garden, we went with Danny’s recommendation to eat at Wahaca; it is pretty decent if you like quesadillas & guacamole, which I do.

We love a good real ale!

With an hour to kill we tube hopped to Camden & stumbled into the Worlds End pub for a couple of drinks before wishing we had longer and heading back to Euston. If you haven’t been to this pub, you need to go, it’s all I’m saying. It’s like a surreal cross between a Victorian street and a pirate ship. Throw in a Tardis.

On the train home we met a top bloke called Alex, it may as well have just been the pub, because we finished off another couple of drinks & I dozed off on the hapless chap. It’s all good because in this world of professionals on a train, I had still managed to connect on LinkedIn first, and apologise in advance.

I believe Danny had to prop me back up a few times, but when we arrived back in Manchester my homing beacon went off & I found the nearest tram and quickly boarded it. Turns out it was going somewhere else. I’m here to tell this tale so needless to say I rectified my mistake and before long I was blissfully asleep in my own bed.

It was a pretty good day today.

Since our Google visit day, we have come on a long way. We are now co run, by Ex Googler Ben Tennant & we are badged Google Partners. We have been selected as one of Google’s top 30 agencies in 2017 to receive their prestigious Elevator coaching programme. We have ran workshops, live streams, training days and of course continue to take the mystique out of Google Ads.

Almunia is Something Cosmic

When The Trip Festival Founder Paula McMahon came to me and asked me to produce a poster for one of their Balearic disco gigs, Almunia, I asked for some idea of what she wanted. ‘Make it COSMIC Andi’ she said. So that’s exactly what I did. Typical Paula!

Creating The Almunia Poster.

This is one of my favourite prints. It started with a lens flare. Much like that song by Hot Chocolate that started with a kiss. I overlaid lots of stock images of stars. Next I played with layer blend modes. I make it sound so quick, but I spent hours doing this. I used a similar type effect here as the Superman Print. Finally, I added the diagonal lines that made it so cosmic man!

Browse my creative section for more of my work.

When I’m not doodling, I work as a creative designer & web developer at Made By Factory. You can get in touch with me at hi@andiwilkinson.co.uk.

We are Made By Factory. An award winning digital Agency in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, ran by design expert Andi Wilkinson & Ex Googler Ben Tennant. We advise business on all things digital including Google Ads & have ran workshops with The Business Growth Hub, Google & Enterprise Nation. It’s our mission to help business ‘grow online‘.

We were selected in 2017 as one of UK 30 Google Partner agencies to attend Google’s elite coaching programme ‘Elevator‘ and one of a select cohort of agencies with high growth potential to take part in the Business Growth Hub’s Greater Connected programme.

For some top notch quality marketing, without all the mystery, talk to us today!

Purple Radio Poster | The Trip Festival Founder.

So my mate Paula is has a special birthday this weekend. What better way to celebrate than with a Purple Radio Party? I was asked to create a poster for the event, with the theme ‘peace and love’ This is what I came up with. Happy Birthday Paula! Paula is the founder of The Trip Festival. See that artwork here

Purple Radio Poster

I created two versions of this poster. One to advertise the party and one for Paula. This is the former. Firstly I created the background with a 500 point star. This is one of my favourite tricks! Next, I added the inked artwork and shading. Finally, I added type. I chose art Nouveau as the style, and made good use of negative space to position the heart.

So, Have a great party, Purple Radio!

When I’m not doodling, I work as a creative designer & web developer at Made By Factory. See Also Nicky Siano Poster & Almunia