OG About – Oliver Gwynne

Data-DRIVEN GROWTH

Hello

i'm

Oliver Gwynne

Forged In Sheffield Steel

I was born and raised in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. The city is famous for the manufacture of steel, being the greenest city in Europe and Henderson’s Relish. Yorkshire folk are friendly but plain-talking and I would say this describes me pretty well. From a young age I had an active imagination and was a keen writer so it’s not surprising that I ended up in a creative industry. (Oh and in case you’re curious I’m a blade, not an owl.)

Tempered In A Tempest.

I was fresh out of university when my mum got sick. It would take nearly two years to discover she had a thinning of the blood vessels in her brain which was causing memory loss and fits. Before this diagnosis we completely fell through the welfare system and so I started a business, Make My Media in order to pay the bills. Starting with little more than a laptop, I built up a business over six years. I worked alongside a diverse range of clients in planning, producing and executing their marketing strategies including creation of sales materials, video production, web development and more.

Chiselled Into Shape.

Selling my business seemed like a left turn to everyone, but life was passing me by and working 13 hours days, 7 days a week would have led to burnout. Working with such a diverse range of clients meant that I had a strong background of hands-on knowledge as to what actions brought real results and I was keen to come up with a methodology that could apply to businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Never Fully Formed.

Most of my career decisions are based around what I feel I can learn. In the last 5 years i’ve specifically wanted to work with organisations who focus on process improvement and data as I felt these were the areas which could have the biggest impact on my marketing knowledge going forward. I’m always eager to learn! My ambition is to transform and scale the organisations I work for.

My Philosophy

Less Fuzzy, More Focused.

Focus On Impact

Marketing has to have a direct impact on sales. Marketing needs to support sales with great material, greater market awareness and of course qualified leads. Too often time and resources are spent on activity which doesn’t accomplish these goals.

Never Stop Learning

I’m always looking to improve my knowledge and skills. Continuous learning is important to stay on top of the latest trends, technology and techniques.

This approach has served me well when adapting to new and niche industries. I’m not naïve enough to think I’ll master your industry in weeks. I’m about doing the simple things well and building. I test and tweak before expanding and work from real data not hearsay.

Expand Based On Success

Marketing isn’t an exact science. Sometimes you just have to take a risk, try something out and see what happens. I always start small, evaluate and then if that small test is successful it gives us license to expand our efforts. This has proven to be a great way of trying out ideas for a larger marketing campaign, new elements to the marketing mix or even new brand elements.

Sustainable Business Practices

I focus on creating sales funnels and systems, which can reach and convert your targets in a consistent and repeatable way. Over time I will build processes and systems that become more intelligent, more effective and better value for money. This is NOT growth at any cost, this is not shortcuts or hacking, I build for the long-term.

my cv

173tech – Ap 22 – Today

173tech is an analytics agency who provide outsourced data engineering services for scale-ups. My role is both marketing and sales focused from cold outreach to contract signed.

Key Achievements:

Increased opportunities by 128% in year one. (68-155)
Increased pitches by 417% in year one. (12-62)
Increased new clients by 129% in year one. (7-16)
Strengthened key partnerships with VCs and tool partners, leading to 4 events created and 5 new clients.
Brand overhaul and new wordpress website created led to 368% rise in direct enquiries.
Created linkedin newsletter – grew to 1000+ subscribers.
Grew email subscription from 30 to 400 subscribers.
Significantly raised the co-founder’s profile with a number of talking events and podcasts, bringing in a variety of opportunities.
Hosted well attended webinars and physical events as part of brand building activity.
Took new business from initial cold outreach to conversion to client and upsell, attracting many longer term and bigger clients.

Tools Used: Hubspot, WordPress, Canva, Mailchimp, Metabase, SQL, Linkedin Sales Navigator.

STRAT7 – Jan 21- Apr 22

STRAT7 is a group of market research and analytics companies that can help to find answers to your business problems.

Key Achievements:

Increased opportunities by 111% in year one. (Researchbods & Bonamy Finch, 60-127)
Increased pitches by 76% in year one. (Researchbods & Bonamy Finch, 42-74)
Increased new clients by 77% in year one. (Researchbods & Bonamy Finch, 26-46)
Oversaw the STRAT7 rebrand and new messaging and personally created the new WordPress website which saw the first direct enquiries come through the site.
Achieved a noticeable uplift on new projects from existing clients after implementing an ABM framework for Researchbods, working closely with the customer success team.
Created ongoing lead nurturing content for Researchbods as part of a major rebranding initiative. Generated £2.24m enquiries with a £12m conversion.
For Bonamy Finch, I created a 12 month sales and marketing campaign on segmentation. This included four webinars, two white papers, an ongoing series of blogs and associated sales material. Generated £1.35m enquiries with a £775k conversion to sales. This has included a few major new clients that are likely to grow over time.

Tools Used: Hubspot, WordPress, Adobe Suite, Microsoft Suite, Final Cut Pro.

Reason For Leaving: Role changed significantly from the growth aspect of marketing.

Proservartner – Nov 19 – Dec 20

Proservartner is an international consulting firm, adding desktop automation into their service mix and hiring a new sales and marketing department to create business for this.

Key Achievements:

Increased opportunities by 268% in year one. (128-471)
Increased pitches by 85% in year one. (98-181)
Increased new clients by 115% in year one. (26-46)
As the first hire in a new 5 person sales and marketing team, I came up with an aggressive strategy to try and grow as quickly as possible.
Working closely with the sales team we were able to generated a £1.64m sales conversion, and noticeably more of our leads converted post-pandemic.
Organisation of 20 plus events including physical trade shows, webinars and roundtables leading to a number of qualified leads.

Tools Used: Salesforce, WordPress, Canva, Mailchimp, Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Final Cut Pro

Reason For Leaving: Disruption during the pandemic.

Manufacturing Group – Aug 17 – Nov 19

After successfully selling my business, I went to work for a group of sub-contract manufacturers. (Bronte Precision, B&B Precision, Silchrome Plating and Bossman Racing) Working closely with the MD’s I oversaw sales, marketing and PR. I implemented and streamlined processes and automation on job onboarding and quotation.

Key Achievements:

Increased opportunities by 34% over two and a half years. (550-739)
Increased RFQs by 59% over two and a half (£5.7m-£9.1m)
Increased annual net by 42.6% over two and a half years (£2m-£11.7m)
Turning Bronte from a £1m a year company to £2.2m a year and replacing a number of key clients.
Implementing a Fit4Nuclear scheme as a vehicle to modernise operations.
Helped to launch the HVOF service with an ongoing campaign that combined PPC, physical mailers as well as a newsletter. Generated over £450,000 of enquiries within 8 months.
Saw the overall yearly profit of B&B Precision rise from £2m to £3.4m.

Tools Used: WordPress, Adobe Suite, Microsoft Suite.

Reason For Leaving: Love. Moved down south to be with my future wife.

Make My Media – Sep 11 – Aug 17

Over 6 years I built up this digital focused media agency from nothing to having a healthy client base and portfolio. Originally it was started as I needed a way to look after my sick mother and pay the bills, and from there we grew. I worked alongside a diverse range of clients in planning, producing and executing their marketing strategies including creation of sales materials, video production, web development and more.

Key Achievements:

Colostomy UK – 20% rise in donations and a 200% increase in sign ups for annual event.
The Consulting Consortium – Setting up salesforce pardot and introducing breakfast briefings as a successful model for leads.
The Civil Service – Filming heads of department for civil service and putting together a conference against a tight timeframe.
Yogurt and Chocolate House – Creation of campaign aimed at obtaining new franchisees, achieved an initial £300k of signups.
Ford, BMW, Jaguar,Honda, Mazda – TV Adverts for local and international campaigns.

Tools Used: HTML, Google ads, Final Cut Pro, Maya, Blender, WordPress.

Reason For Leaving: Life was passing me by and was worried about burn out, sold my business

Full Portfolio