Exceeding expectations through performance marketing

Digital marketing can offer an enormous range of services, but when it comes to Pay Per Click (PPC) it can be an enormous advantage using the services of a dedicated PPC agency. We met with Zak Mulla from Leeds-based ‘Exceed’ to chat about his business journey, creating an award-winning PPC agency renowned across Yorkshire and the North.

Zak – please tell us how you started your business?
“After graduating with my degree in business around 12 years ago, I worked in a few different jobs, but quickly settled into PPC as a role and skillset I felt passionate about. A couple of years with MediaCom served to guide me on the path of working as a PPC executive. When I first settled into the role, I was surprised by the sheer size of the agency and its high-profile clients – The Co-op, Machine Mart, Goodyear Tyres, and working with some of the top professionals at the Manchester agency was the real start for me learning everything I could about PPC.

“After MediaCom I spent time with other agencies, and also client-side too. One of the businesses I helped develop was selling car-park spaces all over the world at airports. It was incredibly interesting – working in so many different languages. However, PPC is PPC wherever in the world you are, and the brand became massively successful, finally being sold to Manchester Airport Group (MAG) for millions. That is where Exceed was born. MAG had their own PPC team, and the writing was on the wall – I finally felt the time was right to set up on my own. My family had always owned their own business, and I was comfortable following that path too.”

You launched in 2019 – how was the business affected by Covid just over a year later?
“I guess as we were so new, having only just found our feet with a number of smaller clients, we felt as if there was only growth ahead. With our nature of business we met new customers online, took care of business online, we were fairly insulated. We didn’t suffer from any large existing clients cutting back on spend due to the pandemic, perhaps the opposite was true – there was a shift in spending over to PPC.”

What kind of clients are you working with?
“We don’t specialise in any specific sectors, but I love the idea of seeing a brand take shape and grow. We’ve seen businesses coming on board at start-up, with one in particular growing specifically through PPC marketing, to the point where they have now spent over £100,000 during Black Friday month. We won a Northern Digital Award for the work with this particular business. It’s so important to work closely with your clients. Some we control the pricing for their products, ensuring direct profitability from the expenditure on PPC, and it’s that level of trust that produces the best results.

“One of the key things I am proud about is our long-lasting relationships. We are after businesses that are serious about growth, and PPC is still one of the best marketing tools that can be used to accelerate a businesses potential. We need a certain amount of investment to quickly measure a campaign and to craft it into a successful method of achieving a measurable return on investment. At the moment, this can really only be achieved on a decent monthly spend of a minimum of £5,000 for an effective paid search campaign, any less, you would need to wait a significant amount of time to see any necessary trends in the data to guide changes to your campaign.

“Interpreting the data is a skilled job and the ability to do it well will significantly increase the success of your campaign, but you need data, and need it quickly, to guide the campaign and see a strong return. The same goes for different types of campaigns – online shopping, paid socials, etc, but the budgeting is different according to your needs.

“Going back to the point about encouraging long-lasting relationships – the owners of the business that I helped grow to the point where it was bought by MAG have now come back to me as clients with their new start-ups. Personal relationships and respect are super important for any business to succeed, and turning a relationship with my previous bosses into a relationship as clients sums up how precious good business relationships are to us.”

Tell us about your team?
“We’re growing the business at a comfortable rate. We’ve got two new staff coming on board shortly, a new PPC Manager at the beginning of December, and a PPC Executive will join us at the beginning of January. This will give us a highly effective team going into 2025 with a half dozen of us sharing a multitude of skills all of course specific to PPC. When you compare to an average sized full service agency, most will only have a couple or so PPC experts sharing work from multiple clients. Going to a specialist PPC agency like ourselves will ensure the level and consistency of support is guaranteed.

“Our team have decades of experience between them working from start-ups to the biggest brands. The level of expertise is exceptional too. For example we have colleagues who have spent years at Google in high calibre roles understanding every nuance of the platform’s functionality. We’re actually a Google Premier Partner which I’m incredibly proud about.”

What are your plans for growth?
“I’d be very happy growing our team more. One of the reasons we’re located in Leeds (outside of the city centre, but well connected by major roads), is as well as being able to visit more clients, we can attract more colleagues due to our position so close to a major city.

“Our trajectory of attracting bigger clients with larger budgets is also very important. It’s an objective that we’re very mindful of.

“Finally, and this is more long term, I’d like to look at expanding into more performance marketing channels – like Amazon PPC, affiliate marketing, for example. These are all performance-based, similar to what we’re already doing. We’d like to retain the feel of a niche agency, a team of paid-for specialists with a targeted range of skillsets offering highly effective bespoke campaigns.”