Next step in journey to making city digital capital

Robin Skidmore, who co-founded search marketing firm Epiphany, which was sold to Jaywing plc in 2014 for around £18m, has launched a new digital marketing agency called Journey Further.

“The best way of summing Journey Further up is it’s the next stage in my career in digital marketing,” he told The Yorkshire Post.

The agency is looking for new office space and plans to launch an academy that will train people in search marketing. In order to realise these ambitions Journey Further has applied for a grant.

Mr Skidmore said: “There’s a Government grant, the Leeds Tech Hub, which we’ve applied for. If we get that that will give us the ability to buy office space of around 10,000 sq ft which will facilitate the growth of the agency and also the start of the academy.”

The academy will provide on the job training and allow Journey Further to scale up at less of a cost.

Mr Skidmore said: “The biggest barrier to our growth will be attracting talent. The way in which we are looking to combat this challenge is that there will be a number of senior appointments.

“There’s plenty of talent in the region because there’s lots of agencies that do what we do albeit slightly differently. But there’s only so many senior people that you can have and scale at the same time because of the costs associated with salaries.”

Journey Further is looking for an environment where it can invite other businesses to come and deliver talks and events.

Mr Skidmore said: “We’re looking for a space that gives us the ability to host events.

“We’ve got relationships with the likes of Google, Facebook, YouTube who will be more than happy to come into Leeds and to run workshops, events to help educate our academy and also to help drive conversation around digital marketing around Leeds.

“It’s all about how we can position Leeds as a digital centre of excellence, which is what this grant is trying to achieve.”

Journey Further was launched at the beginning of the year and currently has six staff. The business is looking to grow this number to 30 by the end of the year. It is also targeting a turnover of £1m in 2017.

The company is currently looking to recruit experienced talent.

“We’re looking for people that have been managing large scale campaigns for the world’s leading brands,” Mr Skidmore said. “The more complex the better for us really. We’re all about data and analytics and we like campaigns that other agencies might shy away from.”

Over the last five years, Mr Skidmore has been living in London but in order to get Journey Further off the ground he has relocated back to Leeds.

“I believe I’ll have more success in Leeds creating Journey Further than I would have done in London,” he said.

Programmatic ads the new thing

Robin skidmore’s latest venture will focus on pay-per-click (PPC) and programmatic advertising.

Pay-per-click is the adverts that are displayed on search engines such as Google.

“The new shiny thing in this sector is programmatic advertising,” said Mr Skidmore. “It’s display advertising.

“It’s the banners that are chasing you around on the web.”

The entrepreneur says Journey Further will differentiate itself from other agencies by offering to work with clients on a performance basis. “We’re confident of getting results to the point where they don’t pay us until we reach certain levels of performance,” he said.