Dan Strugnell is now a team leader at Onefeed, a leading performance marketing company based in Bournemouth. Dan started off as an apprentice just four years ago. He is now aged 26.
Onefeed is a specialist award winning Google Shopping Agency that have been operating for twelve years. Revenues have tripled over the last three years and staff numbers have also grown to 20. In fact, the company has now moved into the recently re-furbished Ushers Wiltshire Brewery building to provide future space for growth.
They have helped hundreds of merchants from all over the world get more revenue and better performance from Google Shopping. To put this into context, Google Shopping represents the NUMBER 1 growth opportunity for most online retailers in 2019. As of Q1 2018, Google Shopping ads are driving 82% of retail search ad spend in the UK.
Onefeed have created one of the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence-based management platforms for Google Shopping, marketplaces and shopping channels. They have an inhouse development team that work tirelessly to constantly evolve the platform.
In the last 12 months alone Onefeed listing ads have generated over £90 million of online sales with over 24 million clicks. On average they have increased client revenues by 63% and increased conversion rate 47%.
Dan was born in Poole Hospital and attended Christchurch Infants, Christchurch Juniors and then Twynham Sixth Form College. Dan has always been interested from a very early age in football although when he was growing up, he did think about a career as a vet. But football was always his real passion since his dad took him to see his first game at Bournemouth aged seven.
When Dan was eight, he started playing at The Littledown Centre, and at the age of twelve was scouted by AFC Bournemouth after a successful trial. At sixteen Dan was awarded a two-year scholarship whilst studying at Brockenhurst college doing an NVQ in Sport. Dan was one of three out of eighteen students to make the grade and he was offered a professional contract where he stayed as a pro until he was 21. During this team Dan made his first team league appearance against Rochdale in League one. This was the first time that Dan had his name and number on the back of his shirt, a very proud moment indeed!
Towards the end of his contract Dan went on loan to Havant and Waterlooville and the next season dan signed on where he stayed for the next seven seasons playing part time/ semi pro and gained two promotions. Recently Dan left Havant and signed for Dorchester Town.
So how did Dan’s story start at Onefeed? Well Dan seized the initiative and did an apprenticeship course at Bournemouth College, and then when he passed that, he applied for an Apprenticeship role at Onefeed. Dan met Richard Wyatt the owner for coffee. As the company was much smaller, the meeting was more about a character test; although having a strong ability in Maths meant that Dan was confident in working with numbers and analysing data. Richard recognised Dan’s capabilities and he gave him a chance!
When he was offered a position by Richard Dan was absolutely delighted because he had no real work experience and felt that all his footballing experience could actually work against him. Dan joined the business when it was very small, just 5 members of staff. The company was based in a small office in the centre of town. At that time Onefeed focused on Google Shopping, but now we offer a variety of services including search campaigns, display, Bing Shopping and Facebook. The company have moved office twice in order to provide enough space for the growing team of more than twenty.
Dan finished his year’s apprenticeship and was offered a full-time role as an Account Manager. He benefited from excellent “one – to one” training and was given more and more responsibility. After three years working as a more Senior Account Manager, Dan was offered the role of Team Leader and now manages a team of five.
One of the most significant milestones was when Dan was given responsibility for Matalan who were converting six figures a month. This is a big customer and showed faith in Dan’s ability to manage such a complex and demanding account. Soon after this Dan was chosen to attend the 2017 DEA Awards which Onefeed had won one of the categories.
So what inspires Dan to greater achievements. Well he likes to push himself to be the best that he can be! Dan strives hard to help Client’s smash their targets and to see new territories/ warehouses coming into play. Well has all this success changed him as a person? I guess that is inevitable given the fact that he has risen to the challenge of taking on more and more responsibility.
What Dan really appreciates is being part of a specialist team in a niche market, who work with an amazing technology platform that allows the team to do things that other’s simply can’t. It’s a fairly young team with a great friendly atmosphere and it’s definitely a “no suits environment!” What about the future? Dan is looking to further his knowledge and become an expert in every area of PPC. Watch this space…
To finish with we asked Dan which politician he would like to have a meal with. The answer came back “definitely Boris, get him drunk and find some juicy secrets!” (Editors note, I think more than a few journalists have tried that before)