About Engage Web

So how did we start? Our founder, Lianne Wilkinson, has worked in marketing almost all her life – and this was before the internet was a big thing, in fact, they’d only just got email. She worked in offline marketing agencies, managing call centre campaigns, datacapture teams, warehousing and logistics and ultimately, moved into operations management roles. As direct mail and other methods were seeing a decline, Lianne made the move into online marketing, working in areas such as PPC, SEO, and content development across a number of agencies. In what was still early days for agencies and Google in search engine optimisation as an industry, Lianne noted many agencies were employing tactics that required clients’ budgets to increase year-on-year. They also suffered a high staff churn, meaning clients were dissatisfied with account management and continuity. After much soul-searching, Lianne found herself on garden leave having left what she previously would have termed her ‘dream job’.

With Lianne’s experience, and a wide network of contacts, Lianne originally set up the company as a copywriting agency. It was 2009, the height of the recession, and Lianne knew all these SEO agencies were going to need content. It was what Google wanted to see, and at this time, few were offering it. Within a week, the agency had its first contract with a top London SEO company. Within months, clients were asking ‘could you make a few changes to my website as well?’ ‘could you look at my PPC campaign?’ and Lianne needed to expand. Darren joined the company just a month later as Lianne’s business partner and the rest, as they say, is history.

Within six months, we had employed our first full-time editor and picked up our first national UK contract.