Arham Khan is the Co-founder & CEO at Pixated (based in London, England), listed on 50Pros as a top 50 firm in Web Design & Development, Conversation Rate Optimization (CRO), Paid Ads, and Social Media Marketing.
In this Q&A, Arham shares his in-depth perspective, unique background, robust experiences, and insightful tips.
My marketing journey began after I studied Business Administration & International Relations at Aston University, when I went on to study for a Master’s in Marketing Management at the university’s Business School. Newly graduated, I went on to hold several marketing roles of increasing seniority. Then my now–business partner and I began contracting for large companies, he a web designer, me a performance marketer, but every time they brought in agencies we’d see them overpromise and underdeliver. We’re both passionate about empowering businesspeople to actualise their visions—and given the fact that web design and performance marketing are two of the most potent ways to make that happen, in 2018 we combined our skill sets under one roof and set up our own agency, Pixated.
When my now–business partner and I were contracting at large companies only to see them disappointed time and again by contractors, often they’d turn to us and say, “Do you know a web designer who actually delivers?” “Do you know a performance marketer who actually follows through on their promises?” Well yes, we did—we knew each other! In 2018 we set up our own agency, and things have moved at a crazy pace ever since!
In the early days as a startup it was tough to get clients on board, but through word of mouth our agency’s reputation grew fast. Our list of clients became longer and ever more prestigious, and quickly included some household names. This was a challenge in itself, because their campaigns were some of the most pressurizing we’d ever worked on!
In the early days as a startup it was tough to get clients on board, but through word of mouth our agency’s reputation grew fast. Our list of clients became longer and ever more prestigious, and quickly included some household names. This was a challenge in itself, because their campaigns were some of the most pressurizing we’d ever worked on!
We are utterly performance-driven: we focus only on the metrics that actually improve our clients’ bottom lines. Our campaigns are geared toward CPA, ROAS and conversions—no vanity metrics here. And more fundamentally, our clients trust us because they see from how we present ourselves that we love what we do, and that we only take on those we truly believe we can help. That approach is embedded in our pricing model itself: we don’t get paid unless we deliver results. It doesn’t get more ‘walking the walk’ than that!
Marketing is moving at such a meteoric pace that it can be hard to identify the areas we need to focus on most to facilitate stronger growth. Primarily I’m looking at the upcoming challenge of generating leads and traffic for our clients. Rapid and sometimes unpredictable shifts in privacy policies and legislation directly affect how we work. Of course these don’t mean no more leads, but they do necessitate quick restrategising from time to time.
Our primary way of staying ahead of the latest tools and trends in our industry is to subscribe to a lot of newsletters! There are so many great thought leaders putting out highly useful and relevant content, and at least once a week I’ll come across something in one of their newsletters which inspires me to try out a new tool, implement a new strategy, contact a new prospect on behalf of a client and begin building bridges. In fact, last year at Pixated we jumped on the bandwagon and started our own weekly newsletter, The 5 in 5. It’s received fabulous feedback, and is now read by over 10,000 subscribers!
Pixated had been going strong for two solid years when the events of 2020 unfurled. Many of our clients come from eCommerce, and the number of stores operating with online stores exploded during Covid. This fundamentally changed the nature of eCommerce marketing, and we had to work like crazy just to keep ahead of the fast-evolving landscape—not least because Covid sent CPMs through the roof on both Meta and Google.
More generally, it was ironic that our move to full-time work-from-home for all staff brought us closer together. We recognised the value of the interpersonal relationships between our employees, so as a collective made a far more concerted effort to connect with one another by way of more meaningful check-ins and big quarterly team events.
As far as I can see, AI will play an overall beneficial role in the future of web design and development. I think it will make our jobs easier rather than replace them outright, and thereby empower us to build better and more effective websites than ever. Naturally designers and developers alike will need to stay ahead of the latest innovations in AI by adapting their tools and staying on top of their game. But as long as they can learn to harness AI and leverage it to refine their roles, their human creative output will remain invaluable for a long time to come.
The biggest challenge I see on the horizon is the sheer level of competition in our clients’ respective industries—and in our own, of course! Sometimes it feels like even when we’re winning on one channel we’re being outperformed on another. Without exception, every search and social platform has become incomparably tougher than even just five years ago—and they’re getting only more saturated.
That being said, we’re ready to go with a whole host of strategies, including intensive analyses of our biggest competitors, courtesy of our in-house data specialists who are truly some of the finest in their field. And our dogged determination is perennially supported by our morale: as an agency we’re proud to be always learning, always teaching one another, and always going the extra mile for clients to ensure they’re happy and in the loop every step of the way.
From day one we ensure our clients have everything they need and that no question goes unanswered, by virtue of our detailed onboarding process.
Our dedicated Account Management team maintains continual communication with clients via Slack, with regular check-ins and project updates, meaning clients can ask questions whenever they want. They also have weekly and monthly meetings with clients to talk through performance in detail.
Then there's our client success managers, who hold quarterly meetings with clients to discuss performance to date, during which they can air any concerns.
Moreover, to every client who comes on board we make a three-pledge guarantee: their site will be delivered on time, it will be delivered on budget—and they’ll be delighted with it. Only when these three criteria have been met are we satisfied.
The effectiveness of our approach is reflected in our client retention rate of 95%.
First I’d say—learn your terminology! There’s a plethora of acronyms and initialisms to get conversant with, especially when it comes to PPC: CPC, CTR, ROAS, CPL, CPA, TOFU (and don’t forget its siblings MOFU and BOFU!)... Even basic PPC literature is impenetrable if you’re having to stop every other sentence to Google a term. Familiarize yourself with the jargon and you'll pick up the basics in no time at all.
Sticking with PPC for a moment, I also see lots of marketers take a ‘set it and forget it’ approach with their campaigns, when in fact successful PPC demands continual refinement. There’s always something that can be done to improve performance: reviewing keywords and search terms, testing new ads, trying out different bid strategies… The possibilities are endless.
And more broadly, I can't emphasize enough the importance of setting goals that are specific. Acquiring ‘more leads’ or ‘more revenue’ are laudable aims, but without quantifying what they will actually look like you can’t know how well your campaigns are performing.
We had a health food client on a mission to empower and educate the UK on gut health—but first they had to overcome their seriously underperforming Facebook ads. They'd tried other agencies to little avail, and their hopes were dwindling.
We enhanced the client's Facebook ads by implementing first-party data tracking, which helped us overcome issues introduced by the iOS14 updates, and by introducing a decentralized account structure, which enabled us to identify best-converting segments and audiences—with minimal spend. In turn this meant we could then scale up with dedicated budgets.
Our approach to the client's Facebook ads proved to be a vital cog in the well-oiled sales machine we helped them build, and it ultimately led to a healthy 44% increase in purchases via Facebook. They said: “Our overall D2C sales have increased by 40%, yet our costs have decreased by 30%. Very impressed with the work Pixated have been doing behind the scenes to help us achieve that!”
We’re seriously excited for the future—it’s been a crazy few years, and it’s unbelievable to think how far we’ve come in just five years. We’ve been doubling our revenue year on year since we launched in 2018, and we’re confident this trend will continue as we reinvest heavily in the business. By 2033 I truly believe we will be one of the world’s leading performance marketing agencies. You heard it here first!
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