I'm a freelance digital marketing consultant based in Suffolk, helping businesses of all sizes grow their sales and leads through digital channels. I specialise in search marketing, covering both SEO and PPC, and I've been working in digital marketing since 2017 and specialising in SEO since 2019.
Before going freelance I spent my whole career in small, fast-paced agencies, and that's where I picked up a broad skill set, from customer support and delivering training to developing and executing international SEO and PPC campaigns. These days I work for myself through my own company, Chay Kelly Marketing Ltd.
Why I Love Digital
Looking back at my younger years I can see where my interest in digital marketing came from. Getting hands-on with building my own PCs and servers and playing around with Raspberry Pis taught me problem-solving and finding creative solutions. Overclocking my CPUs taught me about making small changes and measuring the improvements. Collecting large amounts of data, such as the ECU logs from my car, and then sifting through it to find something interesting and useful is pretty much my job now, just with Google Analytics and Search Console instead of a car. Ever since doing geography at GCSE and A-Level, I've always enjoyed reading around a subject and then putting it into practice, which is something I get to do every day as I learn about your business and your industry.
All these small, unrelated things came together to make me realise that digital marketing was something I would enjoy doing, and so far it has been!
How I Started
My start in the world of marketing came in January 2017 at a local social media marketing and growth hacking startup. This was my first full-time role and I was in charge of running the Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn automation for our own accounts as well as for our clients. This quickly progressed into the marketing side of things, where I learnt how to plan a campaign, define target audiences, execute a strategy and then analyse the results to feed back into the next one.
Unfortunately, things didn't last and after a quiet period I was made redundant, so it was on to my second marketing role at a B2B agency in Colchester. There I learnt a lot more about marketing as a whole and started to pick up some basic HTML, CSS and JavaScript, which led me into the world of SEO. I carried on learning, making improvements to client sites and reporting on their progress, which made me confident in presenting reports and strategies to clients.
From there I moved into other agency roles where SEO was the focus, and I've been an SEO specialist since November 2019. Along the way I kept developing my HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP skills so I could implement technical SEO fixes myself rather than waiting on development time. My useful code snippets page has some of the more common ones I've used across sites.
Going Freelance
After years of working in agencies I took the plunge into freelance, and it's given me the chance to work much more closely with the businesses I help. Most of my work now is SEO, Google Ads and GA4 and tracking, and I'm Google Ads certified.
Some clients have their own in-house marketing team and bring me in to help manage it. On bigger projects I'll bring in and brief other freelancers, such as designers and developers, so you're not left trying to coordinate everyone yourself. I also still work with agencies who need a specialist for a project or to cover a gap in their team.
If you want to see what that looks like in practice, I've written up a couple of results, such as the product page copy test that lifted sales by 49% and the landing page work that cut the average CPC by 21%.
How I Like To Work
Generally speaking, all of my projects start with a free discovery chat to see what you're looking to achieve, your budgets and your timeframes. This gives both of us a chance to get to know each other and for me to learn your objectives.
If it's a good match then it's time for me to dive into your business's marketing to see how everything is currently performing. Once we know where things stand, what you're wanting to achieve and your budgets, I'll put together a strategy for reaching your goals, which typically means driving more leads and sales.
For some clients this is enough, as they're happy to implement the plan themselves. Most of the time, though, once the plan has been agreed it's time for me to get to work on it. Along the way you'll get a custom Looker Studio report and a monthly meeting to go through progress and results. There are no long-term contracts, and if you run Google Ads with me you keep full ownership of your ad account and data.
I like to keep plans as flexible as possible so that we can adapt if things change, such as a core update, seasonality or an unexpected event that affects your site or business.
Outside of Work
When I'm not working you'll usually find me cooking, out on long walks with my two Labradors or on my bike. I'm also a keen photographer and some of my photos are free to download on Unsplash.
Work With Me
If you're looking to grow your business through digital marketing then drop me a message on my contact form. We can set up a chat to see what you're looking to achieve and how I can help. This could be a one-off piece of work or an ongoing retainer to keep your digital presence growing.
I also support agencies who have one-off requirements that need a specialist involved, such as planning a site migration, auditing a client's site or writing an SEO strategy for them to implement. You can also find me on LinkedIn.