Web marketing veteran says focus on ‘hyper-local’ will help firms put their customers first

● Tie-up with DAC has given internet agency Ambergreen a global footprint

Having been involved with web companies since before Google was founded, Tino Nombro has witnessed at first hand how the internet has transformed consumers’ interactions with business.

But the chief executive and co-founder of digital marketing agency Ambergreen, which was acquired last year by North American group DAC in a multi-million-pound deal, believes the biggest upheaval is yet to come – and it all boils down to putting the customer first.

“We all remember the dotcom boom and bust, signified by that share price drop for Lastminute.com, and people were thinking this internet thing was a passing fad,” says Nombro, who founded the Edinburgh firm in 2001 with product and development director Grant Whiteside.

“But when we set up Ambergreen we knew there was something there, and one thing that was making a big change was search.”

Nombro, who studied marketing at the University of Strathclyde after initially pursuing a career in graphic are often prompted by what they see in the real world.

“One of our reasons for joining up with DAC was their expertise in the ‘hyper-local’ market. If you do a search on a mobile phone, it normally works out where you are and gives you what it thinks are the most relevant results. That can include directions and a photograph, but for companies that have more than 20 or 30 different locations, they still don’t really have a way of managing that. So with DAC we have a way to help manage their local presence.”

This “hyper-local” focus is one of the big trends emerging in the e-commerce world, and Nombro says it is vital to know as much as possible about customers to get the best results for clients, “but if you want to put the customer first, what really matters is getting the right data”.

He adds: “We’ve started building pictures of customer types to see how they use the various channels to find websites or brands, and we’ve been doing some clever things with data to get that view.”

Ambergreen has clients including upmarket chocolatier Hotel Chocolat, accounting giant PWC and luxury tourism brands Ultimate Travel Company and Turquoise, but it also works with charities such as Musselburgh-based Teapot Trust, which uses art therapy to help children coping with chronic illness.

As the web marketing sector consolidates and bigger agencies flex their muscles, Nombro says the deal with DAC has given Ambergreen the scale to take on the big boys, while maintaining its independent status. The firm has 20 staff in Edinburgh, with the wider DAC group employing about 400 people, and is planning to increase its headcount over the coming year after focusing on integrating its systems with those of its new owner.

Nombro is also keen to use the internet, and the global presence offered by DAC, to help Scotland’s budding entrepreneurs make their mark on the world stage.

He says: “If you go back 20 or 30 years, it was all about trying to bring big business to Scotland, such as Motorola or Chunghwa Picture Tubes, but that was based around massive financial incentives, and as soon as they go the business goes. We should be investing to support our own businesses that can export our exciting technology. In the short term that will be hard but in the long term it will work.”