Manchester-based intermediary consultancy business, GO! is celebrating turning four with its best trading year to date, remaining on track to become the fastest-growing marketing intermediary in the UK.
GO! now represent over 130 agencies across Manchester, Leeds, London, Liverpool and the rest of the UK, having secured high-profile brand-agency partnerships with companies such as AO, Atlanta Group, VELCRO Companies, Continental Tires, Morris Homes and Slumberdown.
Expansion in their services and ever-impressive roster of brands utilising The GO! Network has also demonstrated a growth in interest for the use of cost-free intermediary services.
Russell Oakley, Co-Founder of GO! commented: “The demand for our business is certainly highly prevalent in the industry, even more so than it was four years ago when we began. There are so many wide-spread marketing agencies out there with their own unique offering, that appointing one with exactly the right skillset, experience and approach for a business can be really challenging.
“Our match-making service overcomes that issue, and we are now working on growing this service into supporting other and more expansive business areas.”
Growing revenues by an incredible 53 per cent this year compared to the same period last year (20/21) – the Northern marketing intermediary firm have bolstered their operations of late, adding seven new hires over the past 12-months, allowing for three promotions, and facilitating more than 200 partnerships between in-house marketing leaders and agency support in the previous year alone.
The family-run business – spearheaded by brothers Gareth and Russell Oakley – has formed more than 552 client-agency partnerships worth a combined value in excess of £73m during its lifespan. Now, having tackled the pandemic, the business enters its fifth year of operations in an optimistic position for the future direction of the organisation.
Russell added: “Without doubt, like several other businesses, we’ve had to be exceptionally dynamic, agile, and resilient during these past couple of years, but that hard work has prevailed, and we’ve emerged even stronger. Our head count has increased 25 per cent, we’ve seen an uplift in brief volumes of 51 per cent and our average brief values rose by 72 per cent in the last 12-months.
“We’ve already upscaled our Marketing, Brand Partnerships and GO! Network Teams, as well as having built a stronger structure and diversity of thought with the creation of a new Leadership Team. We’re therefore poised perfectly for further growth as we look ahead to 2023 and are excited to bring some new services to market soon.”
In the four years since GO! launched, the company has also moved into larger premises in central Manchester, with space to allow the current team to more than double in size in line with their growing objectives.