Wednesday, 21 December 2016

A Norwich-based digital marketing agency is flying the flag for UK plc, after beating thousands of businesses from around Europe, the Middle East and Africa to win the Google Premier Partner Award for Best Search Performance. Fountain Partnership founded eight years ago, has developed a unique, numbers-based methodology which takes the risk out of digital marketing for its clients. The Fountain team was presented with its award at a ceremony in Dublin, Ireland on 5 December 2016.

Google set out to find the most innovative, client-focused marketing agencies and received thousands of entries for just eight prestigious awards. The Search Performance Award was the most highly contested across the entire competition, with 90 agencies shortlisted. Only a small handful of UK businesses made it to the shortlist and Fountain took home the trophy.

“We wanted to disrupt the digital marketing world. The UK has always had a world leading marketing sector - and this has been the perfect environment to set up and grow a now internationally recognised agency” explains Marcus Hemsley, creative director and co-founder of Fountain Partnership. “We’ve proven over the past eight years that the most successful marketing campaigns begin by crunching numbers and forecasting risk to work out which digital marketing channels are viable for a customer’s business. It’s wonderful to have this approach awarded by Google on a global stage - especially with such fierce competition from all over Europe and beyond.”

“I’m happy to admit that I was a ‘remainer’, with concerns about the UK’s decision to leave the EU,” continues Hemsley. “However on June 24th, as a business, we decided that regardless of any economic fallout, all we can do is keep focusing on getting results for our clients, and continue to compete on an international stage. We’re working with clients across the UK and Europe and have now began exporting our services to America where we are paid in dollars. This award will allow us to grow our international client base dramatically. We have already started a big recruitment drive.”


Fountain Partnership won the global Search Performance Award based on its work with a start-up estate agency franchise. In two years Fountain helped grow EweMove from five branches to over 90. Due to its rapid growth and success EweMove has been purchased by Martin & Co for £15million with digital marketing effectiveness being a key factor in the sale. Fountain is continuing to work with EweMove and is now working with Martin & Co to deliver the same success for its 287-strong franchisee network.

On Monday 12 December, as a result of its Google Premier Partner status, Fountain Partnership was ‘taken over’ for the day by a group of world class ‘search specialists’. The team of Google Pinnacle Support Professionals introduced Fountain to the very latest Google technology for 2017: one of the first marketing agencies in the UK to have access to it.

“Having this direct line to Google HQ, and early access to Google’s latest Beta products, is a massive coup for us,” says Rebecca Lewis Smith, managing director of Fountain Partnership. “It means that we can bring innovative new techniques and products to our clients to ensure that they stay ahead in their markets and see a clear return on their digital marketing investment. And that helps us to continue to grow and fly the flag for UK plc.”

For more information on Fountain Partnership visit www.fountainpartnership.co.uk or call 01603 340 335.

-ENDS-

Media contact:
Pippa Lain-Smith at Plain Speaking PR Agency
01603 487291 pippa@plainspeakingagency.co.uk

Notes to editors:

The Shortlist: https://events.withgoogle.com/google-partners-accelerate/the...
The Award Application: http://marketing.fountainpartnership.co.uk/gpaccelerate/

Fountain Partnership growth and turnover figures are available on request.

Here are Marcus’ top tips for evaluating which digital marketing channels are viable for your business:

1. Focus on outcomes, not activities. Begin with your end-goal in mind and decide how many new customers you want.
2. Ask yourself 'how much am I willing to pay to acquire a new customer?' This will give you a 'cost-per acquisition' (CPA)
3. Look at how much it will cost to get your target audience to your website, this should be measured as a 'cost-per-click' (CPC). Google, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. will give you a CPC when you use their advertising platforms.
4. Once you have these numbers you can then work out what percentage of visitors need to become a customer in order to fit within your cost-per-acquisition. This is known as your conversion rate. If this is higher than 10%, your strategy is high risk and should not be pursued. If it's below 2% it is low risk. Anything in between is medium risk.