Updated: 03/23/2026
| How many total employees does your agency currently have? How has this changed over the last 2 years? | |
|---|---|
| Brett Janes Managing Director | Currently, 24 full-time employees/directors. Plus 2 NEDs. This is down from approx 30 full-time employees/directors two years ago as we shifted to fewer, more experienced staff. |
| What are the total revenues for the agency (substitute & indicate billings if this is the only available number): | |
| Brett Janes Managing Director | £ 2,785,000 |
| List your clients for the past 2 years (please group by industry category and indicate past/current clients). Cut and paste from another document if this helps. | |
| Brett Janes Managing Director | Client Name Status Healthspan Active Specialist Chauffeur Services Active Independent Pharmacy Active Nerdwallet Active Royal Bathrooms Active Salience Active The Chain Hut Active The Entertainer Active Urbanest Active Vapour Core Active Riviera Travel Active Mirafit Active Rabbies Active Drink Supermarket Active Fox & Fable Active Floors to Walls Active Flux Funding Active Funktion Events Active Hancocks Active Lee Longlands Active Floor Giants Active Fixings Store Active Dreams Active Clever Clogs Active Brown's Family Jewellers Active Bra For Me Active Love Sofas Active Pack & Send Active Bed Kingdom & Cuckooland Active After Athena Active Housing Units Active Pebble Grey Active Napthens LLP Active Mainline Products Active MBE Active All Pond Solutions Active Redline Specialist Cars Active Lindt Active Bathroom City Active Mainline Active Pevonia Churned Bargain Max Churned Brita Churned Lavastar Churned Awesome Books Churned Forest Tree Surgery & Grounds Maintenance Churned Fledglings Churned TEKLED Churned Industville Churned Furniture Story Churned EZ License Churned The Stay Club Churned Ickle Bubba Churned PIB Churned Woods Furniture Churned Justmylook Churned Flooring King Churned The Tile Experience Churned BIO ID Churned Josh Wood Colour Churned Goddiva Churned Bert & May Churned Bradshaw Taylor Churned European Heritage Churned Maurten Churned Prickle Plants Churned LiveScore Bet Churned SBC Skincare Churned Ramsdens Churned Holy Grail Nail Churned Chemist Click Churned Fabb Furniture Churned Ultrasun Churned Gifts Online 4 U Churned CarpetRight Churned Flooring Supplies Churned Hard to find Whiskey Churned Wickhams Churned Roam Churned |
| For your client-side decision-makers, what are their roles/titles? | |
| Brett Janes Managing Director | CMO, Head of Marketing, Marketing Manager, Managing Director/Owner |
| Bullet point the services you offer your clients: | |
| Brett Janes Managing Director | SEO PPC Paid Social Digital PR CRO/CX Analytics/Data Insights |
| List the agencies/consultancies/marketing services/PR firms that you compete against most often for share of your clients' budgets or for new business. | |
| Brett Janes Managing Director | Conective 3 Impression Digital Embryo Journey Further Honcho Novos |
| What percent of new revenue comes from the following sources: | |
| Brett Janes Managing Director | 31-40% |
| Expanding on your answer above, how has most agency revenue growth come in? | |
| Brett Janes Managing Director | Not totally sure on the difference between b and c there, but if it's outbound vs inbound, I'd say heavily inbound as we run our sector reports (content marketing) alongside organic and paid LinkedIn and email. Arguably, there are some outbound aspects to that whole process, but 99% new business tends to 'bite' and ask for a convo. |
| How do you see these sources of revenue growth changing over the year ahead, if applicable? | |
| Brett Janes Managing Director | As explained on calls, our renewals have improved recently, just over 60% in a logo sense last year, but I'm targeting more like 75%. Additionally, we're terrible at increasing retainer fees for the clients we do renew. We often go for 'same again', which doesn't work because of inflation. I also think it gives a cynical client the impression that we want their money more than their growth. |
| What strategic resources are available to your teams? For example, do you have any proprietary strategy, research, data, tools, or any services you subscribe to? | |
| Brett Janes Managing Director | We have fantastic multi channel reports in Looker studio for our clients. Our blended visibility (organic visibility that factors in SERP features like shopping, AIOs, etc) Currently working on a client portal in ClickUp which will be a massive upgrade to efficiency on the relationship and implementation side of things, but not live yet! Otherwise, we have the expected tech stack of a top tier search marketing agency. Ahrefs, Lumar, ResponseSource, Optmyzr, etc. |
| Are your client-facing team leaders held accountable for executing and monitoring the initiatives and activities for client Organic Revenue Growth plans? Please explain. | |
| Brett Janes Managing Director | The client services team runs: Monday Morning screamers - making all agency aware of big and bad events Daily standups - 10 min next steps on proposals, growth reviews, blockers Friday CSSC reviews - 1h to go through client risk and potential. Part of our new Head of Client Services' role is to set up NRR and ACGR which we don't currently track. We do currently track churn vs renewals through Asana. Let me know if you need a copy of that sheet. |
| How would you rate your client-facing teams’ effectiveness at driving Organic Revenue Growth — based on having documented plans, a methodical approach, and being assertive? Please explain. | |
| Brett Janes Managing Director | 4/10 - They now realise how important it is for the growth and survival of the agency, but it's early days. We are currently working to get them on the front foot with contract renewals and suggesting more work. Often, renewals have looked like 'same again?' mentioned in the last few weeks of the contract term. I've been pushing them to move growth reviews to 90 days before the contract end and to ensure we're always bringing a proactive 'what's next?' with the vast majority being either more hours or services. When we do suggest work, we struggle to ground it in growth terms. We tend to lean more toward explaining how effective what we're currently doing is, then listing what we're not doing, and then leaving it there. Going back to your Narrative PowerPoint training, we don't 'visualise' the growth, put timings against it, or anything similar. |
| When you consider Organic Revenue Growth, specifically, where does the team most need to improve? Where is the greatest opportunity for the team? | |
| Brett Janes Managing Director | Using the growth reviews to proactively bring growth projects to the table. Doing the necessary pre-work so that those sessions aren't surprise reveals of proposed work, but where we show how we can address a known need. Getting less bogged down in the weeds of the technical work and focusing more on marketing levers and revenue, based on the idea that our decision makers don't really care about the details, but care very much about money! |
| Is there a particular practice area or capability within the agency that you think is exceptionally strong or a competitive advantage? Alternatively, is there a practice area or capability you think is weak or needs improvement? | |
| Brett Janes Managing Director | Not sure if this fits, but we talk about being a human-first agency, and really prioritise the relationship side of things. Generally, our clients love working with us. We have a big agency tech stack, but a boutique agency feel, which I think means clients believe that we care about them. They have access to anyone in the agency at any time, and we generally bend over backwards for our clients, regardless of retainer size. For better or worse :D We have extensive experience in home furnishings (beds, sofas) and home fittings (DIY floors, lighting, etc.). Our paid social is weak, relatively. I've brought in a more experienced fractional social manager to bridge the gap and we're now getting somewhere. In terms of what our ICP needs, we're missing Affiliate, Email and influencer as channels they all use. That's a goal for later in the year. |
| What AI tools are being used and by whom? Which have been institutionalized vs. those being tested by individuals or departments? | |
| Brett Janes Managing Director | We use ChatGPT business for daily general use. Claude for skill based copywriting acceleration Optmyzr/Data Feed Watch for PPC (old school AI!) We're building AI agents within our new AgencyOS for tracking implementation rates, client sticking points, delivery workflow-based things |
| Has any AI training been provided to agency employees (whether internal or external training)? If so, what type of training and for which roles/departments? | |
| Brett Janes Managing Director | We ran an intro AI course last year for all the heads of, generally covering all the new tools at our disposal. Otherwise, it's been people trying stuff out to gain efficiency, mainly. |
| Is there a specific Organic Growth template that you use agency-wide? | |
| Brett Janes Managing Director | Very new, but our (very long) Growth Review template is the first of its kind! Before that, everyone used to make them onm the fly for quarterly QBRs, which was a massive time drain for the CS team. |