Aqueous Digital is an award-winning digital marketing agency based in Cheshire. They specialise in helping companies improve their online presence through internet search, website content strategy, and reputation management.
Kristian Bentham is the Marketing Director at Aqueous Digital. He places staff wellbeing, happiness, and personal development at the forefront of the company’s business strategy. Kristian said: “We embrace the thinking that a happier, more motivated, and skilled team result in happier, more satisfied customers, as well as creating a great place to work."
At the heart of Aqueous is a commitment to the development of every team member. This was shown when their SEO Assistant Katie Marsden, enrolled on the University of Central Lancashire’s Digital Marketing Degree Apprenticeship. Katie joined the team at Aqueous Digital back in the summer of 2021, following an impressive feat of achieving straight As in her A Levels. She made the wise decision to study her degree through an apprenticeship. This allowed her to gain invaluable hands-on experience working within the digital marketing sector while gaining academic knowledge through a traditional university degree.
As a Digital Marketing Assistant for Aqueous Digital, Katie's day-to-day responsibilities involve providing Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) services to a range of customers. Her typical duties involve a hybrid of traditional SEO activities. This includes on-site technical and page improvement and growing website visibility through link building and outreach campaign activity. This is combined with account management duties such as providing monthly reports and liaising with customers, face-to-face, by phone and online.
Katie was recently a finalist in the Young Achiever Category at the Halton Business Awards. She expressed how positive an experience work and study can be. Katie said: “What I enjoy most about working with Aqueous Digital, is being able to use a combination of what I learn on my course and my experience working full-time at Aqueous to develop my understanding of digital marketing.”
Kristian added: “Having Degree Apprentices within our team has increased knowledge sharing as well as fostering a culture of learning, mentoring, and coaching that benefits all the team and enables us to keep at the forefront of digital marketing advancements and skills development. This has brought many positive benefits to our customers and contributed to the overall success of the business.”
"Having Degree Apprentices within our team has increased knowledge sharing as well as fostering a culture of learning, mentoring and coaching."
— Kristian Bentham, Marketing Director at Aqueous Digital
Recently, the company expanded and it became clear that investment in their core team was essential to maintain momentum and capitalise on success. As a nationwide skills shortage in specialist SEO and digital marketers became evident, they struggled to recruit the right people to take the business to the next level. To address this they stepped up internal training and recruited apprentices. This has the advantage that they can train staff to deliver SEO using their tried and tested approach and award-winning gold-standard methods.
Degree Apprenticeships have brought many benefits to Aqueous Digital. They have helped them employ the very best in future digital marketing talent. Aqueous are safe in the knowledge the University of Central Lancashire are teaching their apprentices the latest in digital marketing developments, helping keep them ahead of the curve. At the same time, Aqueous can further train apprentices in-house to deliver the best in Search Engine Optimisation, Content Marketing and Pay Per Click (PPC).
