Clients join the digital expressway
GOLD Coast firm Get More Traffic is making great strides in the fiercely competitive world of digital advertising, going head-to-head with Australia’s best companies.
GMT was established in 2014 by former SponsoredLinX sales manager Kerry Anderson.
Kerry was managing stores for carpet retailer Carpet Court when he was headhunted by SponsoredLinX founder Ben Bradshaw, who was seeking a sales manager.
Kerry loves the fast pace of the digital marketing industry and enjoyed working at SL, one of Google’s largest Australian partners.
The GMT brand was launched in 2009 as a lead generation tool and, five years later, Kerry proposed it as a company in its own right.
“We were growing so fast at SponsoredLinX that we felt all our eggs were in one basket and we needed to spread the risk,” Kerry said.
“So I proposed starting up GMT as its own agency and we made the decision to do it.”
Kerry said finding office space in Brisbane, fitting it out, and employing staff took just 2½ weeks and the company grew quickly.
By the end of 2015, GMT had 400 clients, most of which were businesses with one to five employees.
GMT started by providing services to clients for Google AdWords, an online advertising service where clients pay to display brief advertising copy to web users.
Kerry said the digital marketing space is data-driven, offering clients the opportunity to see the reception to advertising in real time.
“With other media such as television you find out down the track whether it is a success or not,” he said.
“What we do with the data is go through to see how people interact with adverts in real time and we are always testing and measuring their success.”
In June last year Kerry decided to relocate the company to the Gold Coast, partly to offer his employees a better lifestyle.
“We had many employees travelling from the Gold Coast to Brisbane for work and this way we decrease employee turnover. It is also great for our staff to be around when the Commonwealth Games take place.”
Kerry said the “personal touch” is what sets his company apart.
“Our account managers are not in the traditional mould where one manages the relationship and there is a separate implementation team. We don’t believe in that,” he said.
“Our account managers make the changes to the adverts and do the advertising. The client receives one-onone contact.”
Kerry said a key change is the increasing specialisation and sophistication of Google Adwords.
“We get half-a-dozen major changes every quarter that Google beta-tests,” he said. “It is becoming more complex. “Four years ago companies had a web guy that did AdWords and would dabble in other things. Now we have specialisations within AdWords for our client managers and we train them in each platform, such as Google Shopping, analytics and conversion tracking.”
The future of GMT is in the international arena and the company plans to launch a New Zealand operation in April.
Kerry said he also had plans to move into the Malaysian, Indonesian and North American markets in the next three to five years.