A Chat with Mark Gledhill, Technical Director at Extreme Marketing

Extreme is a multi award-winning digital marketing agency, based in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. We (myself and fellow Director Antony Prince) founded Extreme in 2002 at the start of the website boom; since then it has grown into a full-service offering with over 20 staff and a huge portfolio of local, regional, national and even international clients.

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
Extreme was born in the earliest days of digital when demand centred on brochure sites and digital marketing was a new concept.

Myself and Antony were made redundant from our jobs and we took the opportunity to capitalise on the rising demand for brochure sites – so we worked from a single room and Extreme was born.
 

 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
Flexibility and adaptability has been key for everyone, we know, but it has been the saviour of sanity and productivity. We actually moved to remote working before the government directive and while we missed our culture in the office, we made sure to bring it to life as much as we could with remote events and extra check-ins.

In terms of how we’ve adapted in the ways we work, we have employed new tools to ease collaboration and help us give clear updates to clients, and importantly, the pandemic gave us time to reflect on how we market ourselves. With that has come a raft of new business opportunities and wins and in fact, we had one of our busiest quarters ever during the last year.
 

What can we hope to see from Extreme in the future?

 
As with everything digital, things move quickly; we think a big theme in  the next year will be about client education in light of the continuing updates  to legislation around privacy online, resulting in changes to ways of reporting and more of a more holistic view of marketing with less of a focus on individual channels – more how they can work together to achieve the client aims and still perform.

The importance of building direct relationships with your customers online is becoming increasingly important as targeting across third party platforms becomes more difficult.
 

What do you think helped you to reach the milestone of 20 years in digital?

 
First and foremost it’s the team members we’ve had through the years. We’ve been fortunate enough to hire some fantastic people, and in any business that’s by far the most important thing.

Beyond that I think knowing when to adapt and change to suit the needs of the industry and clients. We’ve been fortunate to grow into and change with the market, moving from just websites to then adding in relevant services and channels to keep up with client demands and expectations.

Another major point for us is that we’re not distracted by trying to emulate other agencies; we’ve always remained focused on what our take on this industry is and  how best we can contribute to client aims. So, we’re at the forefront, but with the added expertise and boost of two decades of knowledge!