Spotlight On...Richard Gregory, Co-founder of AgencyNXD and NED.

Richard Gregory is Co-founder of AgencyNXD, Chairman of Ruler Analytics, as well as non-exec director of Brandon, Don't Panic Events, Fluid Digital and Advisor to Adzooma, Circleoop and PERX Rewards. We caught up with Richard this week discussing everything from pivoting in a pandemic, to the importance of data, technology and innovation as well as celebrating the North West digital community. 

Tell us about the business and its core products/services.

AgencyNXD is a smart platform that matches agency founders with Non-Executive Directors who’ve already been through the agency journey and sold their business. We support this matchmaking with an online scorecard and a variety of online learning modules and templates essential for growing a successful agency.

What does being based in the NW mean for creativity & innovation?

Having run an organisation called Tech North in the past, I’m obviously biased, but the abundance of marketing agencies, in particular digital ones, combined with a great sense of community makes network and knowledge sharing extremely strong in the region.

What has been the biggest challenge your business / businesses you work with have faced this year?

AgencyNXD only launched in January 2020 after a few months of BETA testing. While our first two months saw a good volume of sign-ups, the uncertainty that the Pandemic delivered that March saw us plateau for the next 6 months. A core component of our marketing plan had been physical events which came to an abrupt stop, so we had to explore other routes to market and be mindful of priorities of our target audience - e.g. cash preservation.

How has your business changed or pivoted thanks to 2020? / How important is it to get expert advice?

Since the product delivers Non-Exec advice over video calls, we were accidentally prepared for the remote working environment. Therefore, we didn’t need to adapt the product in any way, but we did need to find new ways of raising awareness. We achieved that in late summer by a simple but effective promotion allowing agency founders to take the scorecard for free. This allowed them to assess the state of their business as they began to emerge from the pandemic and set priorities for their recovery. It also helped us build a database of warm leads.

While the platform hasn’t pivoted, we have seen our clients do that. A number of agencies have used the “reset” of the pandemic to adapt the delivery of their services and in some cases start to progress more of a product than a service offering.

Why is Innovation even more important now than ever?

Remote working has limited the number of marketing channels we can use to reach our audience. In the B2B space, we can’t call their office landlines, we can’t send office mailers, while in B2C there are fewer eyeballs on outdoor billboards and cinema ads.
With more time online, it takes more creative campaigns to attract attention away from those coronavirus headlines.

Can you share some examples of innovation that have or will make a difference? / What’s the future for Marketing / Tech?

Speed and automation are two trends that I’m particularly interested in. We’ve seen the pandemic disrupt many sectors but the ability to adapt quickly has also created opportunities. Look at how restaurants have adapted to the delivery market and brands like Just Eat were able to crank up their advertising in response.

On the automation side, we’re seeing more software to facilitate rules-based marketing. From Pdi platforms like Adzooma to the evolution of CRM into Marketing automation platforms that sequence a variety of communications in response to different actions from marketing prospects. I think the whole “if this then that” approach focuses marketers to be more strategic in their execution.

How have you marketed your innovation (product/ service) to build awareness and create demand?

Pre-pandemic, we generated most of our leads from events, both our own and participated in other people’s. Since we have a very specific audience, agency owners, we created events that spoke specifically to their needs and challenges at the time. Providing good insight, these events gave us permission to continue the dialogue with our audience when they left the venue.

When the pandemic hit, however, we took these events online and leveraged LinkedIn as the perfect channel for engaging with our audience.

As mentioned earlier, we provided free access to our agency scorecard to let agency owners see how they compared to their peers...who doesn’t want to know how their business stacks up?!?

We had realised that our panel of experienced NXDs had become a real USP,  so our focus then moved to showcase the breadth of experience we had on our panel for agency owners to tap into.

Has the pandemic changed your attitude towards the importance of brand / creativity / tech?

Promoting a product or service during a pandemic has meant focussing mostly on digital channels when attention spans are limited. This has led to an increase in visuals and imagery and the need to be concise in our product proposition.

The majority of leads for AgencyNXD still come from referral so it’s important that those recommending us are able to sum up our proposition easily.

What would be your advice to graduates and early stage career professionals looking to get into marketing in your sector?

Dive in, be proactive and work hard. I’m not suggesting you pursue burn-out but the more you learn early in your career the more clarity you’ll get around which direction you want your career to progress.

My first role after graduating (a long time ago) was as an account executive in a London-based Sales promotion agency. I was fortunate to work on well known brands like Cadbury’s and Tetley Tea, but more importantly I get involved in everything from direct mail to advertising while keeping an eye on this thing.

What would be your advice to your 21-year-old self?

That’s really difficult since I don’t have any regrets about what I did at that age. I was heading into my final year of University, working hard on my marketing module, and I just met the lady who is now my wife!

What is the role of data in tech?

I think the definition of “data” has become too broad these days, so it’s worth looking at specific instances. One hand it can mean the information you hold on customers and prospects, or it can be analytical data about a campaign or process.

Given my background in digital marketing, I’m fascinated about analytics data and how to optimise activity with the insights it can provide.

What podcast / book are you reading / listening too right now / What would you recommend?

It’s not really marketing but I’ve been a long time fan of the Freakonomics books and I’m an avid listener of the podcast. I believe marketing has a lot of overlap with behavioural economics so it’s always good to hear about nudges and other studies of our frequently irrational behaviour. 

Richard Gregory was interviewed by Rachel Emson, Vice Chair of Communications for the CIM's North West Board and Owner at Vivid Manchester.