Secrets of Success: Guido Ampollini, founder and CEO GA Agency

Have you considered international languages to boost SEO for clients?

In 2010 Guido worked in the search marketing department for Expedia in London, covering the EMEA market. What he learnt there was the importance to have a different strategy for each country via specialists who are native speakers. So, over the past few years at GA Agency, he has invested in building a multilingual team, recognising London to make it easier to facilitate that.

Not many agencies can offer multilingual in-house teams, especially not ones that cover ten languages. It’s common to use external translation services to plug this gap and the results are incomparable versus having local specialists. Guido takes some time out from his day to share his journey with Business Matters.

What problem does your company solve?

We lend resource and our expertise in digital to our client partners – helping them to become more competitive in the digital space. Of course, most of the time the ultimate goal is to increase online revenue. As part of our work, we also want to educate our clients, and we try to explain every time why we are doing this or that.

What products or services do you provide?

We are a 360-degree digital agency, a one-stop shop for customer acquisition.

We became a 360-degree digital agency in response to the fact that these days customer acquisition happens on different channels. When I started the agency more than ten years ago, we specialised in search engine marketing (SEO and SEM) as that was the main channel to acquire customers in the digital space. Now it is a different game. Customer acquisition happens through multiple touch points and having just one agency partner to manage all those has been proven to bring considerable benefits.

We offer our clients digital strategy, data analysis and reporting, and from that we activate different marketing channels such as SEO, SEM, Social Commerce, Programmatic, Amazon marketing, Influencer marketing and so on. Also, content, a lot of high-quality content, text or visual, as that is essential for a successful digital strategy.

What type of businesses do you work with?

We have built our expertise with well-established international brands. More than 50% of our clients are companies with an annual revenue above £100 million, however we also work with upcoming brands and cool start-ups. We look for long-lasting partnerships with our clients, so we’re a bit selective about the companies we work with. It’s important to believe in the project.

What is your USP?

The market for digital agencies is more competitive than ever and it is important to differentiate ourselves. The most important USP for us is that we are a multilingual team. Our in-house team covers ten different languages, enabling us to have projects active in 18 countries.

Our specialists treat each of our customer’s locations as if it were their own project. It’s a significant value add. Of course, this approach doesn’t work for every business, it is suitable for medium-big size brands with a presence in more than one country.

What are your company values? Have you ever had them challenged, and if so, how have you dealt with it?

Probably the most crucial is honesty. If we don’t see an opportunity to do well in a project, we don’t take it. We are here for the long run, and reputation is essential for our business. We also never lock clients into contracts. We always keep open the opportunity to interrupt a contract without any reason with 30 days’ notice. There’s no reason to keep a client on if they’re not happy.

Another value is transparency. For most of our services, clients are billed on hours worked per month. Each specialist on the GA Agency team logs their hours at the end of each day and against the projects they have worked on. Then, on a monthly or quarterly basis, we send the report to our clients to show how they fit in-line with the agreed scope of work.

How do you ensure that you recruit a team that reflects your company values?

We are getting better and better in this. I started this business three years ago and at the beginning didn’t have much HR or hiring experience, so mistakes were made. With practice, reading and experience this is no longer a problem. We also hired a HR manager this year. We have a good process in place, and I’m pleased with my team. They all reflect the company values, are intelligent, kind and always willing to help each other. I’m still involved in recruitment; I interview every candidate at the last stage to understand if they match our values.

Are you happy to offer a hybrid working model of home/office?

Yes, 100%. I think it is the best solution. After I left Expedia, I worked for five years as a consultant and managed everything remotely, and I loved it. Now with GA Agency we have an office in central London (Soho), and some people come to the office, some permanently, some are keen on the hybrid approach and some want to work from home, I’m OK with that as I have been doing it for many years. I think nowadays if you have the tools to control productivity, there shouldn’t be many problems in working from home. I’m aware also that some people want to go to the office, especially after the extensive Covid lockdowns, so we offer this option.

Do you have any tips for managing suppliers and customers effectively?

While employed at Google and Expedia, I managed supplier agencies like us. The advice I have is to give agencies time. Somewhere from 3 to 6 months is a good period for them to properly understand a business’ dynamics, products, consumers etc. If an agency has promise a little bit of time will yield results, but over time their impact will get better and better. So, it is essential to wait a few months before evaluating an agency.

As for managing clients, I have probably worked with more than 100 clients between my consulting and agency business and its generally all been positive. What I tell my team is, first, be kind/polite. You are providing a service. In the meantime, try to build a relationship and have a good sense of humour. It is boring to talk with someone weekly and have an icy relationship.

Secondly, always have an answer! If you don’t have it now, do your research and come back on it. They have hired you for your expertise, be sure to demonstrate it at every opportunity.

Thirdly, respond swiftly. My rule is that each email should be replied to in less than one working day. If it requires a long answer, respond quickly to acknowledge it and come back with an answer after doing your research.

Lastly, go the extra mile. It is a good way to show clients that you care about their project.

Any finance or cash-flow tips for new businesses starting?

My business started with very little capital. I quit Expedia and started as a consultant but before pulling the plug on my employment, I made sure I had enough savings to keep me going for at least one year of no income.

I was scared a bit, of course, as I had an excellent full time job with a good salary for my age. However, as soon as I started my own business the freedom and time available to me gave me motivation to build a website, put together a valid service offering and find clients (the most complex and important part). In the meantime, it is important to keep costs to a minimum; I was working from cafés, not offices.

Following that, it is important to offer services with a retention model that permits you to plan. Working on too many one-off projects is painful as obviously every time they end you have to search for new clients again. Best avoided.

Another piece of advice is to understand which clients are safe in terms of payments and which can be trouble; with the safe ones, usually well-established businesses, don’t stress them if they are a little late. With troublesome clients, send a reminder as soon as they are late, and if they ignore the reminder, stop providing the service.

If you could ask one thing of the government to change for businesses, what would it be?

In the past few years the hot topics of Brexit and Covid meant a lot of people left the UK. This has added a layer complexity when hiring digital talent, so potentially what I would ask is for an easier way to get Visas for foreign workers coming into the UK.

What is your attitude towards your competitors?

I get inspired by them and want to learn. When I see agencies in our field doing better than us, I’m not jealous. I want to understand why they are better than us and what we can do to become more competitive.

I spend time looking at their website, history, service and I start to follow their company page on LinkedIn. All of this is done with the aim of learning to improve ourselves.

Any thoughts on the future of your company and your dreams?

We have some ambitious goals for this year. We want to keep growing. To do that, we aim to hire a few more senior people to bring more experience to our team; we are looking for people with an agency background to contribute new ideas.

We also want to modernise our services with a mind to the future. Digital evolves quickly, so it is essential to stay up to date with the services offered, otherwise you can become obsolete quickly. Two years ago, we launched Amazon marketing services, last year we started to work with TikTok. This year, we have something new ready to launch (secret…), and we are always actively looking at and testing emerging technologies for future use.

Lastly, we want to acquire more expertise in more markets, by adding more international people to our team.