What did that £10k actually get us?

"Lots of people saw it" isn't a result

For years, a lot of agencies got away with a simple loop. The post got plenty of views, so make more posts. The ad got loads of clicks, so spend more on ads. When the economy was booming and budgets were loose, nobody looked too closely.

That's changed. Costs are up, budgets are tight, and plenty of what affects your business is out of your hands. Clicks and reach still matter, but only as the first step. What you need to know is whether the right people turned up, what they did next, and whether any of it turned into work.

We've never worked that way

awesome. has always started with a plan, reported against it, and been straight with clients about what is and isn't working.

Because we're not an ad agency, or any other single-discipline agency, we're not tied to one answer. Brand, content, video, web, software and marketing all sit under one roof. If a campaign isn't paying back as quickly as you need it to, we'll say so and try a different approach, rather than suggest you spend more on the same thing.

And when a client asks for something we haven't done before, we tell them. Then we either learn it properly or bring in a partner who already knows it. No bluffing.

So we built the reporting into tools

Being transparent is easy to claim. We wanted to make it something you can check for yourself, any time, without waiting for a monthly report.

awesome. insights follows a campaign from someone's first interaction through to a closed deal. It scores the quality of each visit, so you can see whether a campaign reached the right people and whether the page you sent them to did its job. Not just how many turned up.

awesome. TIME tracks our work live, so retainer clients see exactly what we've worked on and how long it took, as it happens. Put that next to insights and you've got the full picture: what went in, and what came out.

awesome. ID is one login for all of it. Clients sign in once and get every tool they're entitled to, with no separate accounts to manage.

Built by the people who use them

I led the build, but the tools are shaped by the specialists who do the work every day. Hannah, our Lead Marketer, made sure insights measures what a marketer actually needs to know. Nadia, who coordinates our client services, made sure TIME reflects how retainers really run day to day.

That's why they report on the things that matter to clients, not on whatever happens to be easy to count.

How to get them

They aren't for sale on their own. Every awesome. retainer includes them, so you can see what we're doing and what it's returning from the first month.

If you'd like to see them working on your own marketing, talk to us or have a look at our flexible retainers.

Now that the bulk of the build is done, I'll be writing more about what we're making and how. There's plenty going on.