Top Digital Advertising Agencies in the UK

Digital marketing, also known as digital advertising or online advertising, is crucial to any businesses success, whether you're a recruitment agency, pastry shop owner, plumber or cosmetic business. This is because there is a huge opportunity to reach a vast audience and therefore grow your brand visibility online, with approximately 5.19 billion internet users worldwide (that’s 65% of the global population!). 

Interestingly, 63% of businesses have increased their digital marketing budgets just this past year. And as digital marketing continues to play a pivotal role in the marketing strategies of businesses across various industries, this figure is only going to rise.

But when it comes to hiring an agency for digital marketing, it can be tricky knowing who to trust. The digital marketing industry is highly competitive and agencies will promise every result in the book to try and win over your business. And while it can be easy to do so, it’s important not to fall for these vacant promises. You deserve a true digital marketing expert who can guarantee passion, expertise and real results. 

This is why we’ve rounded up our top 5 digital advertising agencies in the UK, all with exceptional results and services that won’t break the bank, to help you make the best decision for your business. But first, let’s understand exactly what a digital marketing/advertising agency is. 

What Is a Digital Advertising Agency?

To put it simply, a digital advertising agency is a specialised firm that focuses exclusively on creating and managing advertising campaigns for businesses in the digital space. This includes planning, creating and launching ad campaigns across various online platforms to promote products, services, or messages to a targeted audience. 

The primary objective of a digital advertising agency is to help their clients successfully achieve their marketing goals in the digital realm, whether it be to drive traffic, increase app downloads, boost conversions or increase brand awareness.

Many companies looking to create scroll-stopping ads across social platforms use creative digital advertising agencies like Aura Ads, as it allows them to outsource the work they may not have a specialised in-house team for, or simply haven’t the time, expertise or experience in order to produce the ad to a high standard. Learn more about what we do and how we do it.

The Top 5 Creative Agencies in the UK

The top creative agencies in the UK include, but are not limited to:

1. The Social Sheppard
2. Atomic 
3. Aura Ads 
4. Cheshire Cat Marketing
5. The Good Marketer

1. The Social Sheppard 

Based in Bath, The Social Sheppard specifically serves B2C, eCommerce, travel & hospitality brands across the UK, giving them a push through digital marketing so they can achieve their business goals.

Their main line of services include paid media, social media management & influencer marketing, and have won numerous awards due to their outstanding results, such as Best Paid Social Campaign of the Year, Best Integrated Paid Media Campaign & Best Use of Facebook/Instagram Ads, just to name a few! 

But services and awards are nothing without results, so here’s a recent case study that shows just what they’ve been able to achieve.

Nu-In Fashion Case Study

The Social Shepherd helped sustainable clothing brand, Nu-In Fashion, boost its monthly revenue by 427% through paid social (Solely Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat). They also saw an increase in ROAS by 30% and in monthly ad spend by 243%. Pretty impressive, right?

2. Atomic

Atomic is a leading full-services digital advertising agency that focuses on working with startups and SMBs to assist them with their SEO, branding, PPC and web design & development.

They have successfully elevated some of the UK’s and global leading companies such as Brideplan, Brandspeak and Bioeffect and have won a number of prestigious awards such as Top 1000 Companies & Top B2B Companies. They were also voted Top Digital Marketing Company of 2023 by Clutch. Talk about multi-award winning!

Here are some promising stats if you weren’t already impressed: 2.4 Billion Impressions since starting 5 Years ago, 1,200,000 conversions across SEO, PPC & social and hold an average of 6.7 ROAS across their 100+ Global Clients on SEO, PPC & Social.

3. Aura Ads 

Of course we couldn’t round up the top digital agencies without mentioning our award winning ecommerce video ad agency - Aura Ads. 

Based in the heart of Cardiff, Aura Ads are a leading full-service performance creative agency, meaning we take care of our client’s whole campaign, from start to finish. We leverage our in-house studio and resources to plan, shoot & edit creatives to the highest standard, allowing us to produce beautifully vibrant scroll-stopping branded video and static ads that have a proven track record of converting. 

But don’t just take our word for it, check out the results from some of our past client work:

Huel Case Study

Huel is one of the fastest growing DTC brands in the world, and in order to keep up with their aggressive growth, they needed a creative solution that delivered consistent results and volume across key markets, which is where we came in! 

We worked with Huel over a two year period where we were able to produce hundreds of assets in 8 different languages. Our high quality ad creative was a key component of Huel's growth strategy and all in all they saw a 10:1 return on investment over the duration of the relationship. Over 100 million views later, Huel has been one of our most successful relationships to date.

Wild Case Study

As a disrupter in the natural cosmetics market, acquisition has been the primary focus for Wild. And in order to unlock growth, Wild needed a creative solution that could capture attention, drive results and meet the volume needs of their rapidly growing ad account. 

Our approach has been a success for Wild over the past three years. We've been able to support a 4.6x increase in Wild's profitable ad spend, and our creative consistently drove a 20% lower CPA when compared to assets produced internally, and converted 10% higher too. Over 100 million views later, we helped Wild become a household name, with recognisable creative across a number of channels. 

Like the sound of what we do? Schedule a call at a time that suits you to find out more about how one of our content plans can help your business grow.

4. Cheshire Cat Marketing

Cheshire Cat Marketing is another digital marketing agency, helping small business and startup entrepreneurs in Crewe, Liverpool, Warrington, Chester, Manchester and Stoke-on-Trent grow their brand online. Whether it be through SEO, PPC, social media or 1-1/group marketing training sessions, this marketing agency can support businesses in all areas of digital marketing, without emptying their pockets.

The Cheshire Cat Marketing team is highly skilled in everything that they do, and know the true value of properly executed marketing, taking the stress and hassle of trying to manage marketing campaigns off their client’s shoulders. 

The woman-led team has been gaining copious amounts of positive reviews online about their amazing work. Check them out here! 

5. The Good Marketer

Lastly, The Good Marketer is a leading digital marketing agency based in London that caters to SMBs. Using a proactive approach and effective marketing solution, they help brands form connections and ultimately gain more sales. They have affordable packages that start at just £750 a month and other offerings that suit the budget of small businesses.

From fashion to beauty, The Good Marketer works with a wide variety of small businesses across the UK, and has a track record of producing fantastic results for their clients. Take a look: 

Jump DP Case Study 

JUMP DP specialise in Print and Direct Mail B2B campaigns through sustainable methods. They approached The Good Marketer initially to launch a Paid Search campaign, with the goal of generating more enquiries. The results? An overall CPA average of £36.32 from PPC advertising, alongside an improved conversion rate by 69% to 3.45% over a two month period. They also generated a CPA of £22 for Corporate Print, attracting huge businesses like Tiffany Jewellery US and a national stadium cricket brand.

Why Hire One of the Best Digital Advertising Agencies in the UK

With up to 70% of campaign performance rooted in ad creative, we believe in the power of a creative-led growth strategy for your digital channels.

So, if you’re looking to take your ecommerce business to the next level in the digital world, our creative strategists are here to help! From planning, to talent management to editing and launching, we will work with you to create the best possible creative for your goal. We’ll also take care of post-campaign results, by tracking & analysing the performance of our creative in your ad account and benchmarking against key AIDA metrics in order to drive results.

We are Aura Ads, a unique performance creative agency designed for D2C eCommerce brands. We help clients sell more online and grow at scale with our bespoke video and static creative delivered on a monthly basis.

For more top tips from our experts, check out our social media marketing blog. And for a friendly chat about how we can help your business, schedule a call with one of our team here. 

Written by Kate, for Aura Ads.