GYDA Initiative Talks - Kosta Petrou - Ascend Digital

In this GYDA Talks, Robert talks to Kostas Petrou. He is the founder of the creative agency, Ascend Digital. He fell involve with digital marketing 8 years ago and studied through the CIM (Chartered Institute Of Marketing) at Loughborough College. He then worked in- house for a few years learning and perfecting the art of marketing but very quickly realised that his skillset and passion was in digital marketing.He then deep dived into disciplines such as SEO and Digital PR and quickly discovered that the way SEO agencies were doing things did not quite make sense to him.Kostas found that many agencies were focusing purely on satisfying an algorithm instead of focusing on actual human beings and so immersed himself in what he calls Creative SEO. The art of combining SEO, Digital PR, Creative Content, data and a sprinkle of social media, to create the perfect search cocktail. The Ascend slogan is – Creativity In Search.So, he decided to launch Ascend Digital in March (Yep, just when lockdown happened) with the understanding that businesses will very quickly need to adopt a digital approach to how they do business because during lockdown, that will be the only way to do business! One of Ascend’s first clients was an electrical contracting business in Nottingham and after just a 3 month period of working with them, they went from page 3 on google to ranking in the top 3 on page 1 and 10x their traffic! As a result doubling their revenue.Since then Ascend have been working with businesses in Finance, Retail, Pharmaceuticals and more.A refreshing interview with a start-up agency, full of enthusiasm and passion to make a difference.Here’s what they discussed:What are you known for?What are you doing right now?What was the spark that made you want to run an agency?Where did you go for advice to start-up the agency?What would you do differently?How do you put together your business plan?What do you measure in terms of KPIs?How did you deal with COVID-19?What does success look like?What would more experienced agency owners say to you right now?What would a ‘fit’ agency look like in 12 months?Kostas’s recommendations/pearls of wisdom, golden nuggets. This is a bitesize version of the hour-long video. Want to watch the rest? Head on over to www.GYDAmemberhub.com