About Small Business Podcast — Dave Head

So yeah, I'm Dave Head. I run Northern Design and Digital Marketing, based up in the North East. Sunderland lad, born and bred. And basically what we do is we help businesses grow through design, digital marketing, branding, the whole lot really.

How did it all start? Well, I'll be completely honest with you. I was about 15 years old, knocked on the door of a print shop when I definitely shouldn't have been out, and said can I have a job please? And they gave us one. So I started off in print, learning about paper stocks, feeling different weights and textures. And to this day I can pick up a piece of paper and tell you the GSM just by touch. It's a weird skill but it's dead useful when you're doing print design.

From there I just fell in love with the whole creative side of things. Went to college, did my thing, and then ended up moving to Amsterdam. Worked for Citizen M Hotels, which was an unbelievable experience. That's where I learned about brand being so much more than just a logo. It's about every sense. The smell, the sound, the feel, how a space makes you feel when you walk into it. They had a guy whose entire job was designing scents for the hotel. His business card literally said "The Nose" on it. Mad.

But anyway, I came back to the North East because this is home. And I started Northern because I wanted to do things differently. I was tired of seeing businesses get taken for a ride by agencies that didn't really care. You know the type, they'll charge you a fortune for a fancy presentation and then outsource the actual work to someone who's never even visited the North East, never mind understood the business.

What I wanted to do was work with people on a personal level. Get to know them properly. Understand what they actually need, not just what I could sell them. Because sometimes a client comes to me and says I need Google Ads, and actually what they need is better photography. Or they need their website sorting out first before they start spending money driving traffic to it. It's about being honest and finding the right solution, not just the most expensive one.

The way I see it, there's no such thing as B2B. It's all human to human. Whether you're talking to a CEO or a waiter, everyone's a person. Just have a bit of crack on with them. Be genuine. Be yourself. That's how you build proper relationships, and that's how you build a proper brand.

And the results speak for themselves, like. We've helped local businesses increase their organic traffic by 145%. We've taken conversion rates from virtually nothing to over 1%. We've reduced bounce rates by 23% through smart website redesigns. But the thing I'm most proud of isn't the numbers. It's when a client says they're genuinely proud of what we've built together. That's what gets me going in the morning.

I'm a bit of a data nerd as well, which probably surprises people when they meet me. I love AB testing. Love proving which design works and which one doesn't. Because at the end of the day, design isn't just about making things look pretty. It's about making things work. It's about conversions. It's about getting results for real people running real businesses.

So yeah, Northern. We colour in for the North East. We build brands, we run marketing campaigns, we design websites, we do photography, we do the lot. And we do it with a bit of banter, a lot of honesty, and a proper genuine care for the businesses we work with. That's the Northern way.