Matt Bennett

Marketing Analyst | Analytics Engineer | SQL & BigQuery Pro | Ex-Head of SEO

Lancaster, England, United Kingdom

About

Experienced growth marketer, marketing analyst and analytics engineer. Martech, SQL, Dataform, Looker Studio, GA4, GCP and BigQuery pro. Technical SEO. EU Search Awards winner. Former Head of SEO at WPP agency. Big on Music Tech. Pretty good at chess. Modest.

Experience

  • Senior Marketing Analyst at On the Beach
    Dec 2023 - Present · 2 yrs 8 mos

    Senior Marketing Analyst / Lead Marketing Data Architect & Engineer I look after the marketing data for one of the UK's largest travel companies, working across a Google Cloud stack (BigQuery, Dataform, Airflow). My focus is on the data models and pipelines the marketing stack and wider reporting run on, built in Dataform using dimensional modelling and SCDs. I handled the UA to GA4 migration and the session, user and channel modelling behind it, and I now run the ETL and reverse ETL pipelines connecting GA4, organic, paid and CRM data, plus Bloomreach and AI/LLM workflows. On the search side, I built a model that separates brand from generic search demand, combining Search Console and paid signals to give a cleaner read on true organic performance.

  • Head of Growth & Data Analytics at Utopia Music
    May 2022 - Sep 2023 · 1 yr 5 mos

    Led Marketing Analytics & Growth for Utopia Music. Included a framework for growth and martech strategy, and building a team of six to deliver it across performance media, SEO, CRM, and content. On the technical side, I built the data infrastructure from scratch. Using BigQuery and Adverity, I set up the tracking and integrations for Google, Meta, LinkedIn, and HubSpot.

  • Organic Search Lead at Open.Partners
    Nov 2019 - May 2022 · 2 yrs 7 mos

    First agency partner for SEO, and a key part of the agency's data team. Set up the agency's first Organic Performance team, going from a standing start to a seven-figure income in 18 months. Established the basis for organic search strategy and reporting with data pipelines on GCP, BigQuery, and the Adverity platform. Delivered unique 'big data' projects using organic and paid search datasets. A key highlight was delivering research for Greene King that combined UK.gov data with Google keyword data to show a highly detailed view of UK brand penetration. The agency's specialities that I developed were technical SEO, local SEO, content strategy, brand building, journey mapping, PPC integration, and SEO/Organic reporting.

  • Owner at Brood Media
    Dec 2013 - Jan 2020 · 6 yrs 2 mos

    After nearly 10 years in the agency world, I moved to contract work, operating under Brood Media. I led a team of specialist contractors to deliver full-stack search marketing solutions: from high volume technical SEO audits, keyword research and market trend analysis; to building custom ETL workflows for global SEM reporting. Early Adopter of BigQuery and Looker Studio: Recognised the limitations of Excel/Sheets for SEO data and services early on. I began architecting Google BigQuery data warehouses for clients years before it became the industry standard for marketers. Analytics Architecture: Acting as a specialist partner to digital agencies, I replaced manual reporting processes with automated pipelines using SQL, GTM, and Google Data Studio (Looker).

  • Wavemaker (3 yrs 4 mos)
    • Head of SEO
      Feb 2012 - Dec 2013 · 1 yr 11 mos

      Promoted to lead MEC's (now Wavemaker) London SEO team, co-ran the UK team and represented MEC across various EMEA-wide search marketing initiatives. The UK team consisted of 40+ SEOs. I worked closely with other channels to deliver an integrated approach to enterprise-level SEO. Our client list included; Johnson & Johnson, EE, Lloyds Banking Group, Citibank, Nintendo, Morrisons and Colgate-Palmolive. Highlights include: - I spent a month in Moscow, where I set up WPP's first Russian SEO team and won a pitch to Citibank. - The team won several EU/UK Search Awards during my tenure. With the highlight being winning 3 awards in Barcelona, and having a great night out to celebrate.

    • SEO Account Director
      Sep 2010 - Feb 2012 · 1 yr 6 mos

      After some time freelancing for MEC, I started a team leadership and business development position in SEO. I worked primarily on the Lloyds Banking Group account (Lloyds TSB, Halifax and Bank Of Scotland). I also assisted in the running of the UK team across Manchester and London and fed into WPP's EMEA strategy.