Meet the MD: From managing Dad's social media to managing digital marketing firm 360 OM

Over the past few years, Tariq Mohammed has gone from looking after his dad’s restaurant’s social media page to heading up his own digital marketing company.

Tariq is the managing director of Newcastle digital marketing agency 360 OM, which has grown to 14 employees and counting.

Bdaily spoke to Tariq about the journey from social media managing to managing a company, and what will be next for 360 OM.

Can you tell the readers about yourself first of all - i.e. your background, where you are from etc?

I grew up in Newcastle and it’s also where I am living now. I fell into digital marketing after looking after the social media page for my dad’s restaurant whilst working there as a waiter.

This was during my time at university where I was also studying a business IT with ecommerce degree, which was followed by a marketing masters degree.

Digital marketing seemed to be a natural progression and after graduating, I looked for agency roles to give me the experience of working across different verticals, whilst learning so much in a shorter time. You could say that I’m motivated by learning and achieving goals.

I’ve always been enthusiastic about learning and super motivated in general and I think some traits that people would associate with me include driven, passionate and hard-working.

What does your role entail?

Naturally as managing director, I work across all areas of the business. A lot of my role is around connecting with potential and existing clients, partners and overseeing the recruitment of talent.

I’m quite involved with new business at the moment, as well as ensuring any new client relationships are integrating smoothly with our client services and onboarding processes.

Recruitment is playing a growing role at the moment. I’m talking to 2-3 potential hires per week at the moment due to the influx of new business wins and potential projects that could land in the next couple of months.

When was 360 OM set up and how has it grown since then?

360 OM was set up in 2017 and since then we’ve grown to a team of 14 across paid search, social and mobile marketing.

We have some great conversations going on at the moment about potential projects and we’re hoping to be a team of 20 by the end of 2020.

What is it about your organisation that motivates and excites you the most?

The close knitted environment we have developed, despite the distance between us, has always been something that excites me. We’ve been a team of remote workers since well before Covid so the transition for us has been smooth.

I’m also really passionate about developing a service and partnership for clients to help them achieve their own goals.

Looking back on the past year, what has been your biggest achievement?

Over the past year we’ve made some investments that have led to terrific ROIs for our clients.

When working with digital marketing not everything is visible from the outside and our team are always working to pick the right resources and make moves at the right times.

Most recently, navigating through Covid has been an achievement in itself. Things were pretty uncertain in March and a lot of clients were feeling the pinch, resulting in cuts to marketing spends. In the end we worked harder and found an extra gear which has led to some great success and growth.

Since lockdown started we’ve celebrated three clients wins and onboarded three new hires, with further clients in the pipeline for the coming months.

What does the future hold for your company? Any exciting projects in the pipeline we should know about?

We have a great pipeline of projects and clients and I’m really excited to see how we will grow towards the end of the year.

As well as client growth, we’ve been developing our mobile performance offering after noticing a need for mobile app marketing.

With the introduction of this new service we’re now bringing solutions to brand-side mobile marketers that help accelerate user acquisition, implementing tools and strategies on platforms such as Google App Campaigns and Apple Search Ads.

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