- Name: Matt Daley
- Profession: Marketing
- Role: Digital Director & Co-Founder
- Company Name: Circulate Digital
How did your business idea start?
My brother and I started Circulate Digital from our kitchen in Brighton, UK. We started trading on the 1st of January 2015 with just one monthly client retainer of £500 and £2,000 each in the bank for savings which would last us two months before having to move back in with our parents… Not so fun!
You can see us in our first ever “kitchen office”, “not quite Aticco”. We always say we’ve been cooking up digital marketing strategies ever since day one… It’s a bit of a rubbish joke, but very true!
We decided to start Circulate because we both felt that the companies we were working for lacked transparency with customers and we wanted to create a Digital Marketing service that offered true transparency and HUGE marketing growth.
Now… when we told friends about our plans of setting up a business, we received a lot of negative comments. “Why are you taking unnecessary risks?”, “Aren’t you too young to be setting up a business?”,“Why don’t you just get a new job somewhere else?” All this did was fuel us to put in the work and make it happen.
We were genuinely working 15 hour days because at this point we had so much to win and we knew that we needed to prove ourselves in the market in order to survive. It didn’t take too long before we started to make clients successful though. In our first big success we managed to achieve a return on investment of 40:1 making a client of ours over 10 million pounds a month in revenue from an Adwords campaign that turned into a lead generation machine that propelled their company right to the top.
We got invited to speak at conferences which helped us to win more and more clients as well as getting featured in local newspapers to strengthen our brand.
Which kind of services does Circulate offer?
We offer a wide range of services but our core services are as follows:
- SEO
- PPC
- Paid Social
- Online Reputation Management
- Marketing and Business Strategy
Which moment/phase was the most difficult for you?
We’ve had some really tough times along the way. In September 2016 we had a close call with one of our biggest clients taking marketing in house which kicked us back a little. We had to change up our strategy, but funnily enough we actually grew a lot after this happened.
One of the learnings from this was, don’t let one big client hold you back and take up all of your time. You need time to innovate so make sure you give yourself enough time to do this. We are also going through a big growth phase right now. This often sounds great but it’s also one of the biggest challenges we’ve faced as a business as you have to build more processes and this all takes time! We’ve grown from 2 people to 9 people in the space of 11 months and I’ve a feeling we could replicate this success in 2018/2019.
Why did you choose to base your company in a coworking space?
We actually have 3 offices across Europe. Two of those are in England and of course in Spain we have Aticco.
For me, coming to Aticco was a no brainer! The space was designed for growing companies and that’s great because it gives you the flexibility to scale and have everything managed for you without any headaches, which does make life so much easier.
What do you expect from Aticco and how does Aticco help you on a professional and personal level?
One of the biggest reasons that I love Aticco is because of the people. Everyone is so nice and it has a family vibe. We spend time together during the day, but most importantly my main group of friends has been formed from coming to work at Aticco. Aticco has become a great base for meeting people and building business connections. I’ve even managed to secure one High Value Client from here which is fantastic.
How do you see your business in the future? What’s your next step?
In the next year we want to grow the Circulate team in Barcelona in addition to our UK market. We will be expanding our office in Aticco to take on new staff members and grow our clientele here in Spain.
What do you like the most about Aticco?
I really love the roof terrace and enjoying evening drinks. You can often catch me up on the rooftop chilling and networking with other Aticco members :)[:]
