Ian Rhodes – Paid Search Consultant
With 15 years online marketing experience under my belt.. I have the horrible distinction of being termed an ‘Internet Veteran‘. Needless to say, I have the battle scars of many an online campaign, and have many a battle to fight yet!
I’ve been ‘online‘ longer than Google. Since my first foray into the world of Internet Marketing in 1996 my career has been dedicated to developing high-reward online marketing campaigns for a wide variety of businesses.
During the past 15 years my online marketing experience has been refined and developed through a diverse range of roles including;
- developing the online marketing strategy for one of the UK’s first online retailers successfully launched pre-dot com boom in 1997 prior to Paid Search advertising through a highly optimised SEO strategy
- managing a multi-million pound online marketing budget as the European Marketing Director for the world’s largest online travel agency
- starting my own online retail business from a £zero budget, turning over £2million in the first three years in a highly competitive market – purely through a mixture of SEO and Pay-Per-Click advertising.
- working as a consultant to a wide range of UK and International businesses to develop high-impact online marketing strategy from startup – multinational brand corporations.
Chronology of My Work:
1995 – Produced university dissertation entitled “Marketing on the Internet” focusing on the potential for online partnership and email marketing
1996 – pre-Google search optimisation (SE) for variety of client projects on Altavista, Goto.com and what can only be termed now as “retro” search engines
1997 – Initiated the launch of one of the UK’s first retail affiliate marketing programmes using inhouse software (this was back before the launch of Commission Junction, DGM, Affiliate Window etc… we had to build our own !)
1998 – Recruited over 1000 affiliates providing 50% of total traffic generation and 80% of sales revenue
1999 – Launched large scale partnerships with Freeserve, AOL, Vodafone, Royal Mail, LastMinute and other leading online platforms
2000 – Keynote speaker at Affiliate Marketing 2000 conference delivering on the topic “Finding and Attracting the Right Affiliates”
2001 – Work highlighted alongside IBM, ESPN, Amazon and WalMart in Jakob Nielsens’ ‘Homepage Usability’ bible
2002 – Joined Priceline.com, the world’s 2nd largest online travel company as European Marketing Director
2003 – Launched multi-channel online campaigns with Holiday Autos, Cheapflights.co.uk and OnlineTravel to increase awareness of the Name Your Own Price booking service
2004 – Launched my own retail startup with the traditional beermat business plan and spare bedroom office selling musical equipment and related merchandise
2005 – £250k turnover from a monthly marketing budget of £500 in the first year – strict focus upon SEO strategy building #1 positioning on a wide range of key-term phrases and words
2006 – Opened 4.5k sq ft warehouse facility increasing employee count
2007 – Doubled turnover to +£750,000 retaining core online marketing practice through careful management of SEO and PPC structures
2008 – Completed successful sale of online retail business to pursue a new career in consultancy
2009/10/11 – Working with a variety of clients within a range of business sectors driving online revenue and lead generation through carefully crafted Paid Search campaigns. Current clients include businesses within the Travel, Retail, Distribution, HealthCare, B2B, Financial and Startup industries
