Fuel Communications’ Clients Thrive In Spite Of COVID

Full-service marketing agency, Fuel Communications, has been named in a list of organisations “knocking it out of the park” according to Plymouth Live.

Business Editor, William Telford, selected Fuel alongside 9 other leading Plymouth organisations “who have not just survived but actually thrived during the worst period for business in years”. This list includes companies in a diverse range of sectors who “have done well and continue to do so, whether by earning more, taking on staff, winning awards, or expanding into new premises”.

As a B2B and B2C marketing agency, Fuel only does well when its clients do well, which makes the growth seen all the more encouraging. Since March, a number of clients have experienced record-breaking months in terms of online sales, revenue and enquiries, placing them in a better position to respond to any economic challenges that may arise in the coming months.

Focusing on the wellbeing of clients hasn’t prevented Fuel from taking steps to shore itself up, however. For instance, the onset of COVID-19 coupled with the subsequent lockdown encouraged Fuel Communications to move forward its plans to roll out a shared-risk e-Commerce offering. With in-house expertise specialising in e-commerce web design, web development, and digital marketing, this new offering is designed to help businesses recover from the impact of COVID and continue growing despite these challenging times.

While this offering is still in its infancy, there have already been signs of success. A fantastic example of this can be seen in a commission-based Ecommerce client that specialises in the manufacture and sale of handmade leather bags. With work on the site commencing in May, online revenue increased by over 115% from June to August, and is projected to grow by an additional 50% in September.

Commenting on Fuel’s progress in tough market conditions, Managing Director, Martyn King, said: “As a full service marketing agency, we’ve seen some of our clients in the construction and hospitality industries face huge challenges given they were unable to trade or work at reduced capacity. We helped them with those challenges by putting their contracts on hold or reducing our fees whilst still offering our support.

At the same time, our Ecommerce clients saw a surge in demand so we’ve been working flat out to support their growth whilst significantly investing in campaigns to attract new clients in that space. We developed a unique offer for affiliate marketing that involves no upfront fees for clients which has been really popular. It has seen us sign over 20 new clients across the UK and kick off new campaigns in Europe and North America.

As a result, income from e-commerce and affiliate marketing is up 61% year-on-year with overall income up 24%.”
The listing follows recent strategic growth for Fuel which has seen the marketing agency acquire virtual reality, augmented reality and 360 creative company, One Polygon, in November 2019 to create Fuel Immersive. In January 2020, Fuel merged with digital agency, Ruckus Marketing, which led to the opening of a new Birmingham office in March at Millennium Point’s STEAMhouse, Birmingham City University’s new £22.2m enterprise and collaboration facility.