3 September 2026
Read time: 1 min
Written by:
GEL Studios.
The truth is, when you want to create real, impactful marketing with a great Return On Investment - it takes more than just a strategy.
In the newest episode of 'What Makes It GEL', Soph and Lewis break down our Goal Setting Workshop, the kind of services that GEL Studio can offer across Social Media, SEO, Paid Media, and more... Plus, the kind of budget your organisation needs to get started.
Watch the latest episode below.
Sophie Harflett
Hello and welcome back. I'm Sophie from the GEL Studios team, and you're watching What Makes It GEL.
Sophie Harflett
Joining me today, I have Lewis, who is our Digital Marketing Manager. He is sort of the mind behind a lot of the strategy and work that goes into creating impact for not only our clients, but also the studio itself. Lewis, thank you for joining me today.
Lewis Moran
Likewise.
Sophie Harflett
So, when it comes to marketing a business, a lot of companies tend to focus on strategy, strategy, strategy. But actually, there is a lot more that goes into it. Before they can start with a strategy, they need to start with goals.
Lewis Moran
Exactly, yes. A lot of new clients who come to us will say, "I know I need to do social media. I know I need to do email marketing."
What we do is take a step back and ask them, "What is it you really want to achieve?"
You might want to publish social media posts or send regular newsletters, but how is that actually going to help your business?
Lewis Moran
How is that going to help you reach that end goal?
So what we do is take people through a goal-setting workshop, and effectively it's a collaborative session where we bring all of the key stakeholders into a room and really try to understand what it is they actually want to achieve. Then we talk about how we're going to get there.
Sophie Harflett
Yeah. I assume that a lot of those goals are built around frustrations or things that are missing within the business itself.
Lewis Moran
Yeah, that's true.
There's so much marketing advice out there, and if you're just starting out, you're wondering, "Where do I look? What's the best advice that I should follow?"
There are so many platforms that people are trying to manage all at once, and when we have that workshop, it's really about bringing all of those ideas together...
Lewis Moran
...and creating a really targeted and focused plan that will help them achieve their overall business objective.
Sophie Harflett
So it's about looking beyond those vanity metrics and focusing on more meaningful SMART objectives that are realistically achievable, and which will actually generate an ROI while helping them achieve their business goals.
Lewis Moran
Yeah, it really is about understanding where the business wants to get to.
Looking at historical data, has the business grown? Has it stayed the same? Why has that happened?
Then, if the goal is growth, we look at historical data and work out how many leads were generated last year and how that contributed towards achieving a financial goal.
Lewis Moran
If we need to grow by, let's say, 10% or 20%, then we need to generate 10% or 20% more leads. Then we can work out how we're going to achieve that.
Sophie Harflett
And that's where the strategy piece comes in.
Lewis Moran
Exactly.
A lot of businesses come to us and say either they don't have the time to focus on strategy, or they have an internal marketing team but are lacking specific skills.
That's where we can come in and really help guide them towards achieving those goals.
Lewis Moran
That's really the premise of our goal-setting workshop: making sure everyone is aligned on where the business is going and coming away with a strategy that will help achieve that overall goal.
Sophie Harflett
Which honestly makes a lot of sense because you need to build the foundations before you move any further.
In terms of the strategies that we build for our clients at GEL Studios, what would a typical strategy look like?
Let's say it was a client in the events industry. How would you go about building a strategy for a company that does events?
Lewis Moran
First of all, it's all about understanding who their target audience is.
A lot of businesses will come to us and say, "We appeal to a very wide variety of customers."
Part of that workshop is really understanding who that key customer is, and not only working out which companies you want to target, but also the job roles within those companies, so that your marketing is aligned to those specific personas.
Lewis Moran
Then, as I said, we walk through how the business wants to grow over time.
What are the key frustrations that those companies are currently facing that your solution can help solve?
What are the barriers? Once they get in contact with you, why might they not go on to commission you for the work?
We make sure our messaging helps answer those questions before they even get in touch, so those concerns have already been addressed.
Lewis Moran
So that, as soon as they see you, they've already got the answers to those niggling questions.
Sophie Harflett
I want to pick up on something you said there, which was messaging.
When people think about marketing, they think, "Okay, it's social media, it's running ads," but it's more than just those customer-facing activities that people see.
It goes right down to the core of the brand. It's about building messaging and speaking to people in a way that ensures the decision-makers and target audiences you're trying to reach genuinely resonate with the company.
Sophie Harflett
So, in terms of what we provide at GEL Studios, we say, "Okay, we do marketing," but what does that actually include?
Lewis Moran
It's a wide variety of things.
It includes SEO, helping your content get found through organic search.
Alongside that, with the rise of AI, it's about making sure your content appears within AI Overviews and other AI-powered search experiences, which is a really important place to be visible right now.
We're seeing some great results with clients where we're helping them with SEO, while also improving their visibility in AI-driven platforms. A lot of businesses are focused on making sure they appear in those AI results, whether that's ChatGPT, AI Overviews, or similar tools.
Lewis Moran
Although people often think of AI as a separate service or product, it really supports SEO and sits within the wider content strategy.
Sophie Harflett
It's very much becoming one and the same.
The content you put onto your website and social media channels can now be pulled into those AI tools and Google's AI Overviews.
So if you don't have the right content across all of your channels, it can really start to affect your visibility.
Lewis Moran
Definitely.
Then, on the paid side, we support with Google Ads, Meta Ads, Microsoft Ads and more.
We've obviously had the recent acquisition of Infinity Nation, and that's brought in a lot of additional paid media expertise, particularly from an e-commerce perspective.
It's also enabled us to upskill other members of the team because, historically, we've primarily been a B2B agency.
Lewis Moran
A lot of the knowledge from the e-commerce world is also highly relevant to B2B advertising.
So, yeah, we're sharing more knowledge around PPC and where advertising is heading in the future.
We also support clients with social media management, whether that's writing posts, creating graphics, producing video content, or managing organic campaigns.
Lewis Moran
We can also support with the paid side of social media and email marketing.
Whether that's helping re-engage existing customers, building newsletters, or developing email automation sequences, it's all about encouraging people to either get in touch with you again or purchase from you again.
Sophie Harflett
So it's really quite a full-service offering.
Lewis Moran
It really is a full-service offering.
Sophie Harflett
And I think what's also really impressive is that with all of our clients, we always try to work within the budget they have available.
Obviously, we work with a huge variety of clients, from multi-million-pound companies right through to much smaller businesses.
Sophie Harflett
And I think it's incredible that we always try to work within whatever budget they have in order to provide a solution that is still tailored to their needs.
Lewis Moran
Absolutely.
For smaller companies, we often become their marketing team. We work really closely with them to make sure that, whenever they need support or are looking for results, we're there to provide that service.
Quite often, they're at a stage where they know they need marketing, but they're not in a position where they need, or can justify, a full-time in-house marketing person.
For larger businesses, it's usually a little different. They often already have skills in-house and a team that delivers various marketing activities, but there may be gaps in specific areas.
Lewis Moran
For example, they may not have anyone who specialises in SEO.
That's where we come in and support them.
We also break activity down into three key sections.
First, the essentials. These are the things that, if you don't do them, you're unlikely to achieve the goals you've set. They need to be prioritised within the budget.
Lewis Moran
Second, the important activities. These are things that you know you should be doing, but which aren't absolutely essential to achieving that primary goal.
Then there are the nice-to-haves. These are the additional activities or campaigns that you'd like to run if budget allows.
If you break your marketing budget down into those three categories, it gives you a good indication of where your investment should be allocated.
Lewis Moran
Equally, what we often tell clients is that they should be looking to reinvest somewhere between 5% and 10% of their turnover into marketing.
Now, that's not a hard-and-fast rule, but it's generally a good place to start when determining a marketing budget.
Sophie Harflett
Is that where businesses tend to see the best results, investing that sort of percentage back into their marketing?
Lewis Moran
Generally speaking, investing between 5% and 10% of turnover into marketing can produce good results.
Of course, there are no guarantees, and every business is different, but as a starting point, it's often enough to drive meaningful growth.
That said, some clients come to us with a defined budget already in place, and we can certainly work within those constraints too.
Lewis Moran
But once you've broken things down into your essentials, important activities, and nice-to-haves, you should have a much clearer idea of how much budget should be assigned to marketing.
Sophie Harflett
And then, once you've got that budget in place, you've really got everything from A to Z.
You've got your plan, your strategy, and your budget.
Lewis Moran
And then it comes down to implementation.
That's where we take that plan and run with it.
We'll hold regular monthly meetings, provide access to live dashboards, and make sure clients always have the information they need.
Equally, if we've put a strategy together and started delivering it, but we find that some channels aren't performing as well as expected, we can adapt the strategy and focus more heavily on the channels that are delivering the best results.
Lewis Moran
We can then adapt that strategy and lean further into the channels that are performing best.
A good example of that would be Festive Colours, who have seen great success. They've gone through the full goal-setting and implementation process. We identified that some channels were performing better than others, so we focused more heavily on one particular channel.
As a result, they achieved their annual goal much sooner than we had originally anticipated.
Sophie Harflett
I've been watching the progress of Festive Colours through my colleagues and seeing how they've taken off, and it's just incredible.
It's been amazing to see something built from the ground up that's now really gaining momentum and growing so successfully.
Lewis Moran
I can't take all the credit for that because I worked on the strategy, but the team are the ones who delivered it.
They've done such a fantastic job.
Sophie Harflett
But you're part of the team.
Lewis Moran
That's true.
Sophie Harflett
That's true, and that really is what it's all about.
The team creates the impact, and I think that's what makes the marketing work we do so special.
On that note, I think that's a great place to end our conversation today.
I've really enjoyed chatting with you and learning more about the early stages of the process before it reaches my side of the team, where I become involved in delivering the work.
Sophie Harflett
So thank you so much for joining me today.
Lewis Moran
Thank you.
Sophie Harflett
And thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed the video.
If you'd like to see more of What Makes It GEL, don't forget to subscribe.
Thank you for watching! Learn more about the impact our team creates by visiting our portfolio page.
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