Meet Becky Simms, Founder and CEO of Reflect Digital

Becky Simms will take you on a nostalgic journey during her speech at SearchStars. We had the opportunity to ask some questions to Becky – get to know her a little better!

Hi Becky,

We wanted to take the opportunity to get to know a bit more about you, what the SearchStars audience can expect from your speech and some other fun stuff. So here we go!

My first question to you is, could you tell me a bit more about what you do at work? What is the highlight of your working day and what kind of projects excites you the most?

As the Founder and CEO of Reflect Digital, a big part of my job is talking… and the good news is, I love to talk! This could be chatting to and motivating the team, running workshops, talking to client’s about ideas or my favourite activity – speaking at events. I just love to share the awesome work we do at Reflect Digital. We are always trying to innovate, compile research and to push ourselves, from all of this work, we love to then share it with our digital marketing colleagues across the globe.

When and why did you decide to start working in digital marketing?

Like many people of my age, I fell into digital marketing. I left school unsure of what I wanted to do but knowing I wanted to start a business at some point. I job hopped for a while, falling into sales and marketing roles and eventually ended up in a digital agency working in a support role. That was the moment I realised I had found my passion. It was about 2007 and I was hooked on everything I was learning about the internet, how it worked and all the possibilities.

From there, I started to build up experience, learning by attending events, reading books, blogs etc. Working in a client-facing role, I was at the forefront and got exposure to all the different conversations going on ranging from design and build to the digital marketing specialisms. I was soaking it all up until one day I felt I was ready to venture out on my own.

In 2011 Reflect Digital was formed and I have never looked back. We have grown consistently and are now a team of 25. I am so proud of what we have achieved and we have so much more to give – so watch this space.

What do you think is the most important thing for new businesses to start off with when it comes to digital marketing?

I think step one is to understand your audience. So many businesses feel that they need to do everything, so day one will create all the different social profiles, start running ads etc etc. But actually they have missed the key discovery phase to actually understand where their audience can be found and what their motivations are. Getting the foundations right can
sometimes feel time-consuming and often businesses just want to dive in, but I believe this is critical for future success. If you do not truly understand your customer and what motivates them, how can you market to them?

How do you keep up to speed on everything that is happening in digital?

I spend a lot of time at conferences, listening to thought leaders in our industry. It is a great way to learn and to network with the best in the industry. I also really enjoy getting perspectives from not just agency professionals but also in-house marketers.

I read a lot of blogs, my favourites being Econsultancy and Moz, Search Engine Land.

I read books too, I am really interested in understanding Human Behaviour more, so read books like Drive, Hooked and Blink. The more we can understand about intrinsic motivations of humans the better we can get at marketing to them. I also love an audiobook or podcast in the car, a great SEO Podcast is SEO SAS, you can hear me chatting to them here.

October 10 we will see you speaking at SearchStars, what can the audience expect from your talk?

Firstly a great visual presentation – my gamification slides will take the audience on a nostalgic journey! I will be sharing data we have gathered to understand what users think of gamification, looking at why it works well and how to get it right. The talk will address the potential benefits to help the audience understand how they can apply this idea to their strategy.