The UK Agency Awards 2023 – Winners!

As the days start to get colder and the evenings a bit darker, the Simul Digital Team took a trip down to London for the UK Agency Awards. Our campaigns, results and culture were recognised by an expert panel of judges as a finalist in no less than 3 categories.

Taking place at the Sheraton Grand, London Park Lane, nestled in the heart of London, the hotel oozed grandeur and sophistication, just like the sites that we design and build for our clients!

The night was hosted by the esteemed Jonny Meah, part of the Heart FM family and regular reporter for the BBC on shows including Inside Out, Sunday Morning Live, The One Show and more. With charisma, charm and brilliant timing, his hosting made the night seamless and thoroughly enjoyable for all – taking regular breaks for laughs between rounds.

The Ceremony

Hosted by awards specialists Don’t Panic Events, the night kicked off in style. With a red carpet entrance, bustling drinks reception and a packed out bar, everyone was looking their best with glamorous black ties and ball gowns on show amongst the buzzing finalists.

Once we’d sampled a tipple and caught up with industry friends, everyone took their seats for a delightful 3 course meal. 5 star quality was served up by an impeccable team, starting with Truffle golden cross goat cheese tart followed up with West Country Lamb Rump, and rounded out with a beautiful Madagascan Vanilla Panna Cotta.

We were very pleased to see Poached Yorkshire Rhubarb included with the dessert, no doubt grown in our own backyard directly from the Rhubarb Triangle which is close to our hearts…and our office. Absolutely Delicious!

The Finalists & Winners

The UK Agency Awards is one of the largest and most prestigious ceremonies in the agency awards calendar, and tonight proved it so! There were 39 awards categories in total, and we were nominated finalists in three.

Being such a young agency, all our finalist nominations were for the Small Agency categories, for agencies up to 20 people – we were proud to be recognised and nominated for all three: 

  • Best PPC Campaign
  • eCommerce Agency of the Year
  • SEO Agency of the Year

We were over the moon with our nominations, for such a fresh, small team on a rocket path to growth, this would only be our second award ceremony and we were raring to go!


Best PPC Campaign

First came the Best PPC Campaign of the year, and we were up against some tough competition, including previous winners Spike Digital with their campaign for Mighty, alongside Circus PPC, with a strong campaign delivering growth for leading brand Miele.

We saw off all of the competition and scooped a Win in this category, and were absolutely bowled over with the success and recognition for our team! Well done to Nathan and our PPC Team for your hard work, effort and amazing results..a well deserved award for both us and our client.

eCommerce Agency of the Year

Second up, we were finalists in the eCommerce Agency of the Year, reflecting the work done by the team over the past 12 months to bring new client brands to life, while growing our existing ecommerce sites with enhanced functionality, loyalty programs, improved selling strategies combined with responsive and lean ordering processes.

Competition in this group came from the likes of Quickfire Digital, Heur, GPMD and Brave the Skies, agencies that have been well established in the industry for many years. 

We were thrilled to find out we were winners in this category too, taking the win for eCommerce Agency of the Year! This is a great recognition of the work of the entire agency, keeping order and revenue growth as a key objective for all our digital activity and client website. 


SEO Agency of the Year

Finally, we moved on to the SEO Agency of the Year. This was the first time we had ever been nominated for an SEO award, having been heavily involved in SEO for the last 18 months, and servicing many clients 

There were no nominated finalists for this category, and it was a totally open category so the awards could have gone to any of the 34 agencies nominated on the night.

We won our third award, with a clear win in SEO agency of the Year too and were absolutely ecstatic with our win in this category! For an SEO team that has only been established for a little over 12 months, the results Adam and his team have achieved for our clients in this time has truly been record-breaking and it’s brilliant to get recognition for this, for such a small, fresh agency based in Wakefield.  

We beat off competition for many well established agencies in this area, those based in London, Manchester and wider all across the UK – an amazing win for our agency!


A Night to Remember

You can find a summary of all the winners and judges remarks over at the UK Agency Awards for more info from the night, along with official photos – I’m sure you can spot us!

We had an excellent night, it was lovely to meet old contacts and catch-up on all things industry, let our hair down and enjoy the fruits of our labour. 

We’ll keep pushing our agency forward, driving sustainable growth for our clients, and will be up for more awards soon – we’re currently a finalist for ‘New Business of the Year’ at the Wakefield Business Awards in November, so fingers crossed our winning streak continues!

If you would like to know more about our awards wins, our approach, strategy and results that we can drive for your business, or if you’re interested in joining our award winning digital agency and working with some of the best in Yorkshire, get in touch today.

We took home Silver at the Northern Digital Awards!

We kicked off 2023 in great fashion as our hardworking PPC efforts from last year were shown some appreciation. On the 26th of January, our office attended the Northern Digital Awards in Leeds City Centre, hosted at the Royal Armouries by the wonderful Jenny Powell!

This event was all about the glitz and glamour, as some of the top agencies from the North of England were shortlisted. Suited and booted was an understatement, as the suits, ties and tails were pulled out the wardrobe and dusted off. 

Read on to find out more on the event, those who attended and which one of our campaigns reigned supreme!

The Ceremony

Executed very well, the ceremony was action packed from start to finish. Upon arrival, we were welcomed to complimentary drinks. The initial meeting area was a hustle and bustle with lots of networking and catch-ups, featuring an interactive selfie station that we ofc made use of!  Alongside the bar, a beautifully carved block of ice that doubled as a tequila dispenser was in full flow, serving ice cold, smooth shots to get the evening started.

We were escorted into the main area, where the decor and table dressing was beautifully lavish, with a fully stocked table and range of drinks provided, ready for the meal. 

Three courses were served, perfectly presented and very artfully decorated if we do say so! During the meal we were also treated to a live acoustic performance which set the mood comfortably.

Hosted by nostalgic T.V personality, Jenny Powell, the award ceremony was a barrel of laughs from start to finish, and executed with perfect timing and finesse, very impressive considering there were 27 award categories. 

Overall  we all had a delightful night, which won’t be our last awards ceremony this year and beyond.

The Finalists & Award Winners

There were a total of 27 award categories spread out across different aspects of digital marketing. 

We were shortlisted for the best Pay Per Click Campaign with our long time client, My Hair and Beauty. We scooped a Silver award for second place out of ten finalists, just beaten by Spike and Mighty with their campaign for ‘Mighty Drinks Brand Awareness Campaign’. A well deserved victory!

The judges remarked:

“We loved the expertise for this campaign that went beyond PPC and led the client to reprioritise their strategy and resources. They had great use of automation to drive the strategy and fantastic results, especially for the small budget.”

Some of the other awards given on the night included: 

  • BEST SEO CAMPAIGN – Distrelec
  • BEST LOW BUDGET CAMPAIGN – The SEO Works
  • BEST B2B DIGITAL MARKETING CAMPAIGN – Republic of Media and CMI
  • BEST USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA – Mosquito Digital & Vileda

To check out the rest of the winners be sure to check out the winner’s page on the official Northern Digital Awards website!

Congratulations to all the winners and those who were shortlisted! 2022 was an amazing year for all aspects of digital marketing, as we expect 2023 to be just as good!

Our Silver Winning PPC Campaign

Our PPC campaign for My Hair and Beauty was one of our stand out projects from 2022. We have worked with the online beauty retailer for many years now, so it’s great to see how our relationship and campaign activity with them has blossomed over the years. 

Our Pay Per Click team worked closely with the My Hair and Beauty sales experts to bring this campaign to life.

My Hair and Beauty have remained with us during 2022 and into 2023 where we have launched their very own loyalty programme. 

There we have our recap on this year’s Northern Digital Awards. Congratulations to those in attendance who made the night so special. To keep up to date with Simul follow us on LinkedIn. 

If you’d like to know more about our award winning approach to PPC, details about our Silver campaign or how we can deliver growth for your business, no matter the digital channel, then do get in touch, we’d love to meet for a coffee.

If you have a project in mind, fill out our contact form to get the conversation started and one of our digital specialists will get back to you. 

Simul’s guide to building brand awareness

Enhance your business with the ultimate guide to building brand awareness

If you’ve ever heard someone refer to searching the internet as ‘Googling’, regardless of what search engine they’re actually using, or ask for a ‘Coke’, when they want a cola, then you’ve come across a business with strong brand awareness.

Building brand awareness is harder than ever, with the online bid for attention becoming more crowded and more competitive. However, this guide will provide you with the tips and guidance needed to stand out from the rest, and build your brand awareness to its biggest potential. Maybe, you’ll even end up as the new ‘Coke’ or ‘Google’…

Brand Guidelines

First things first, it is important to layout your brand guidelines. This means you have to put rules in place as to how you want your brand to be represented to the target audience. This helps you display a consistent and concise brand image, even when multiple people within a company are managing the social media accounts and website assets.

The types of things to include in these guidelines are logo designs, colour schemes, graphic elements, fonts and type of language and tone of voice to utilize. This will allow your brand image to be consistent across all your marketing platforms and social media pages.

Importance of Social Media Branding

It is important that you understand why social media branding is essential. Social media is currently one of the biggest platforms to reach audiences.

When it comes to social media branding, a keyword to remember is consistency. You must make sure that, across all social media platforms, your branding is consistent. This allows your audience to start to associate certain things within your marketing efforts to your brand, such as colours and logos. It also means that people can see that your social media pages are associated and part of the same brand. This can help to create strong statements.

It is also vital that you are posting consistently and frequently to your social media pages, as a strong social media presence creates a sense of trust and relatability to a brand from an audience. It also means that your posts are more likely to be favoured by the social media algorithms, creating a larger audience and developing your brand awareness.

Guest Posting

One of the first strategies we’re going to look at is guest posting. Creating a blog (much like this one) is one of the best ways to increase brand awareness, and create a return audience who want to read each blog post that is published. But first, you need an audience to target.

How? That’s where guest posting comes in. If you can find a publication in your industry, figure out what their guidelines are for creating a blog post, or get in contact with them and pitch them your idea.

This will allow you access to a whole new audience who may have never found your blog otherwise. Not only this, but audiences will also see your blog as receiving an almost kind of ‘seal-of-approval’ from the publisher, who clearly consider your blog valuable enough to post.

Just ensure that the topic of your blog post is unique, and also that you’ve included your brand when it comes to credit for the post, and you’ve created an opportunity for increased viewership on your blog and increased brand awareness.

Shareable Content

Another strategy is to create shareable content for your social media. What does ‘shareable content’ entail?

This can be a number of things. As an example, it could be an infographic. This type of content is much more engaging than an article and is a better fit for the social media landscape.

This is especially helpful for algorithms like Facebook’s that value likes and shares from friends and family over posts from brands. Creating the type of content that people want to share with friends and family is key to getting your posts seen and favoured by the social media algorithm.

Referral Systems

To help grow brand awareness, another thing you should do is set up a ‘refer-a-friend’ system. Referral systems work, without a doubt. They have been around for as long as you or I can remember, and that is because 83% more likely to purchase a product when it is recommended by a loved one.

With this in mind, it is a great idea to encourage people to recommend your services to their network. This could be through a reward system for both parties (the person recommending and the friend receiving the recommendation).

No matter which way you decide to tackle this idea, getting your brand into peoples’ networks and spreading through recommendations is a vital step to building brand awareness, and this is a great way to do exactly that.

Creative Marketing Campaigns

So many marketing campaigns over the years have become a part of pop culture. From the Budweiser ‘Wazzup’ campaign to the Skittles ‘Taste The Rainbow, Feel The Rainbow’ advert, these creative marketing campaigns have created so much more brand awareness for their respective companies.

Obviously, ‘creative marketing campaign’ is a broad and subjective term, but it can be unspeakably beneficial to building brand awareness. But how do you go about understanding creative marketing campaigns?

Firstly, look at the most successful brands in your industry and see what they’re doing for their marketing campaigns. Take notes, take inspiration and brainstorm ideas. Ask your target audience, figure out what they like and what they want to see. Once you have this information, begin to formulate some outlines for what you want to put out as a marketing campaign.

Business Branding Ideas

Although we have given plenty of ways to increase brand awareness in this blog, you may still be looking for branding ideas. This is where we will help you figure out how you want to present your brand to the world.

Firstly, it is useful to choose an archetype. This isn’t to say ‘be generic’, but rather figure out a basic concept or idea that you can sum up your branding with. For example, a company like Apple presents itself as ‘the innovator’. No matter how you want to present your brand, figure out an initial idea to mould your branding around.

Another thing to do is to find a logo you can use to represent your brand. People respond to images a lot more than text, so attaching your logo to each post allows your audience to start associating an image with your brand, which will in turn raise your brand awareness.

And when trying to figure out which way to tackle your branding or what ideas you want to implement, it is always a good idea to ask your target audience. Utilise surveys, analyze competitors’ analytics if they’re available to you – figure out what it is your target audience wants to see from you and incorporate it. This can help inspire you and guide your branding in a direction that is going to be beneficial to growth.

Digital Marketing Agency

Finally, something important to note is that it always helps to have a digital marketing agency to help you create an effective marketing campaign. Ultimately, if you’re inexperienced, unconfident, or uncertain, it helps to have a team of experienced professionals help you out.

They can help you to build your brand awareness through a number of ways, including the ones that are included in this article, plus many more. Hiring a digital marketing agency is a worthwhile investment to ensure that your marketing campaign is both effective and to a professional standard.

If you are interested in hiring a digital marketing agency, Simul Digital is here to offer our services and aid with website development, creative design, search engine optimisation and lots more…

To get in contact, email us at: hello@simuldigital.co.uk, call us at 01924 450 888, or visit our website for more information.