Exter Media

Your Competitors Are Prepping for 2026. Are You? 2026 is going to be a defining year for businesses. Rising CACs. Smarter competitors. AI-driven buying behaviour. Less margin for mistakes. Our award-nominated AI + Human+ omnichannel system helps businesses stop leaking ad spend, fix broken funnels, and scale profitably with clarity. Trusted by UK & EU brands. Recognised by UK & European Agency Awards 2025. 👉 Book Your Free Strategy Call

Your Competitors Are Prepping for 2026. Are You? 2026 is going to be a defining year for businesses. Rising CACs. Smarter competitors. AI-driven buying behaviour. Less margin for mistakes. Our award-nominated AI + Human+ omnichannel system helps businesses stop leaking ad spend, fix broken funnels, and scale profitably with clarity. Trusted by UK & EU brands. Recognised by UK & European Agency Awards 2025. 👉 Book Your Free Strategy Call

Your Competitors Are Prepping for 2026. Are You? 2026 is going to be a defining year for DTC brands. Rising CACs. Smarter competitors. AI-driven buying behaviour. Less margin for mistakes. Our award-nominated AI + Human+ omnichannel system helps DTC brands stop leaking ad spend, fix broken funnels, and scale profitably with clarity. Trusted by UK & EU brands. Recognised by UK & European Agency Awards 2025. 👉 Book Your Free Strategy Call

I flew to Scotland in October with a gun in my hand and a full inbox in my head. I came back a different person. Pitlochry in autumn is something else. Mist sitting low over the Highlands. The kind of silence that makes you realise how loud your normal life actually is. We were hunting mixed game. Pheasant. Grouse. The occasional surprise. And within the first hour, I made every rookie mistake possible. I moved too fast. I rushed my shot. I was thinking three steps ahead instead of being present in the one moment that actually mattered. I missed. Every. Single. Time. Then our ghillie said something I haven't stopped thinking about since. "The game doesn't come to the impatient. You don't chase it. You position yourself well, you read the conditions, and you wait for the right moment. Then you move with complete conviction." I stood there in the Scottish hills at 8am, mud on my boots, and felt like I'd just been handed a masterclass in business. Because how many times have we rushed a pitch before the client was ready? Launched a campaign before the creative was right? Pushed for the close when the timing was completely off? The best opportunities I've had in business — the best clients, the best results — never came from chasing. They came from positioning well, reading the moment, and moving decisively when the time was right. Patience isn't passive. It's one of the most active, disciplined things you can practise. Pitlochry taught me that. So did missing a lot of pheasants and partridges. What's the best lesson you've taken from somewhere completely outside of work? 👇 #Leadership #BusinessMindset #Entrepreneurship #PersonalGrowth #Marketing #ExterMedia #Scotland #Pitlochry

Back in September at Ecommerce Expo 2025, I listened to Simmy Dhillon speak about building Simmer Eats from scratch without external backing. One thing that stood out immediately was how different the story felt compared to the usual “startup growth” narrative. No huge funding rounds. No pretending the journey was smooth. No fake overnight success story. Just relentless execution over a long period of time. At the time, Simmer Eats was already becoming one of the fastest-growing food brands in the UK. Since then, the company has reportedly grown to over £36m in annual revenue, after scaling from around £1.6m in 2023. And when you actually break down why they grew so fast, it makes a lot of sense. They got a few fundamentals extremely right: • Strong product-market fit • A very clear brand identity • Authentic founder-led content • Community and word of mouth • Consistency over a long period of time • Reinforcing quality instead of chasing shortcuts One part of the talk I found particularly interesting was hearing how long they kept building before things really accelerated. The business was originally started while Simmy was still at university, selling meals to students and teammates. They worked corporate jobs alongside the business for years before going all in. That is the part people usually do not see when they look at fast-growing brands. The years of repetition before the “overnight success”. I also had the chance to speak with Simmy after the stage, which I genuinely enjoyed. Always valuable hearing directly from founders who have actually gone through the realities of scaling a modern consumer brand. A lot of useful insights from that conversation still stick with me now. eCommerce Expo #Ecommerce #BrandBuilding #FounderJourney #PerformanceMarketing #RetailGrowth

The worst advice you can give a struggling ecom brand right now is "spend more on ads." I spent two days at Digital Marketing World Forum last week having brutally honest conversations with business owners. And the same story kept coming up. Rising costs. Tighter margins. More competition. And real fear around where to put the next pound. But here's what I kept seeing underneath all of it. The growth was already there. Hidden in the messaging. The customer journey. The website clarity. The positioning. The trust signals. Not in more ads. Not in another shiny tactic. Most brands don't have a traffic problem. They have a leaking bucket problem. So before you spend another penny on marketing, stop. Drop me a line first. Let me look at what you already have. Because fixing the leaks will always outperform pouring more water in. And a huge shoutout to James Smeeton from DMWF for helping make this happen. Genuinely appreciated!