When I started my agency in Belfast, we focused exclusively on hospitality. Hotels, restaurants, bars. Not because we had some grand positioning strategy. Because that is where I had contacts and at that time the hotel and restaurant scene was booming. We became the agency that hospitality businesses called first.
That early focus gave us a foundation to grow from. We expanded later, but the lesson stuck: being known for one thing is worth more than being available for everything.
Aedin O’Neill has taken that lesson further than I ever did. And she has no intention of stopping.
The case for staying small and focused
Grow Web is a boutique PPC and paid media agency in Belfast. Aedin describes the split simply: 80% performance, 20% brand. No full-service. No generalist drift.
That might sound like a limitation. It is the opposite. When I asked Aedin what the future of Grow Web looks like, her answer was: “Still boutique, a bigger team, but with very controlled growth and more focus. More specialism built in. Possibly more specialism in sectors.”
Not wider. Deeper.
This is a pattern I see in the strongest agencies I work with. The ones that survive market shifts, compete against larger firms, and build genuine client loyalty are not the ones offering everything. They are the ones who do one thing better than anyone else in the room.
Why clients stay
When I asked Aedin why clients stick with Grow Web, her answer had nothing to do with range of services:
“Transparency. We’re really honest. We’re no bullshit. We don’t hide behind any metrics. If it’s not making you money, we’ll be the first to say turn it off.”
That directness is a product of specialism. When your entire business is performance marketing, you live and die by the numbers. There is nowhere to hide. The campaigns either generate returns or they do not.
A generalist agency can bury underperformance in one service behind strong results in another. A specialist cannot. That forces a level of honesty and accountability that clients trust.
It also creates something buyers look for: repeatable delivery. When you do the same type of work across every client, you build systems, checklists, and processes that improve with every engagement. Your quality becomes predictable. And predictable quality is what makes an agency both easier to run and more attractive if you ever want to sell.
The daily fight for control
Specialism does not mean the work is simple. Aedin described running a PPC agency in 2026 as a daily fight against the platforms themselves.
Meta changes its interface constantly. New default settings roll out without warning. Background music gets added to client ads automatically. Budgets get pushed to increase without approval.
Google pushes optimisation scores that penalise agencies for maintaining manual control. If you do not accept their automated recommendations, your score drops and your ads may get served less.
Aedin’s response: build internal processes that catch these changes before they affect clients.
“We have processes internally where there’s videos and how-tos. Even with setting up campaigns, what default settings you shouldn’t accept, which ones you should, all those checks.”
This is the unsexy work that separates a professional agency from someone running ads from a laptop. Checklists. Default reviews. Quality gates. The kind of operational discipline that only develops when you do the same thing hundreds of times.
A full-service agency spreading attention across web, brand, social, SEO, and paid cannot maintain this level of platform-specific rigour. A specialist can.
Get your hands dirty first
Aedin’s advice to anyone starting a PPC agency is direct:
“Don’t go broad. Go very niche. Get your hands dirty in the accounts. Get the experience from the spend and the results with the clients. Don’t try to build the brand first. Get the clients, get the successes, experience the credibility and trust, and grow it from there.”
This is the opposite of what the marketing world tells you to do. The typical playbook says: build the brand, create content, attract leads, then do the work. Aedin’s approach: do the work, prove you can deliver, then let the results build the brand.
Grow Web did exactly that. “The first couple of years, we never raised our head. We were in the accounts working hard, getting results. And then it all grew from that.”
There is a lesson here for any agency, regardless of specialism. Credibility comes from demonstrated results, not from positioning statements. The brand follows the work, not the other way around.
Running a business with a sibling
Aedin runs Grow Web with her sister Sinead. Sinead came from a data and finance background. Aedin brought the marketing expertise. Between them, they cover the analytical and commercial sides of the business without either being stretched into roles that do not fit.
This kind of complementary leadership is something I see in the strongest agencies. Cathal O’Reilly at Rooftop Twenty Two talked about the challenge of being a solo founder, carrying every decision alone. Having a partner, sibling or otherwise, who covers your blind spots changes everything.
The key, as Aedin noted, is boundaries. No work talk at weekends. Clear ownership of different areas. Respect for different working styles. That structure turns a family relationship into a business asset rather than a source of tension.
AI in a specialist agency
Aedin sees AI primarily as an operational efficiency tool: streamlining account setup, speeding up research, freeing time to spend on client strategy rather than manual tasks.
But she flagged a critical point about process:
“You can have this culture where we’re saying we need to be trying this, we need to be using AI, but you also need to factor in time to actually experiment. When you’ve got deadlines and you’ve got work to get out and clients, you need to be factoring the time in.”
And a harder point about verification. Aedin observed younger team members going to ChatGPT for keyword research instead of Google Keyword Planner. The AI gives lists that look great on screen. But when you check actual search volume, many of those keywords have zero demand. Without the experience to know the difference, you build campaigns on fiction.
AI augments expertise. It does not replace it. The agency owner who has spent 15 years in accounts knows when the machine is wrong. The junior who learned from ChatGPT does not.
That is another argument for specialism. Deep expertise in one discipline gives you the judgement to use AI well. Shallow knowledge across many disciplines gives you no filter at all.
What to take from this
If you are running a generalist agency and wondering whether to niche down, ask yourself three questions:
- What do you get asked to do most often? That is probably where your reputation already lives.
- What generates the highest margin? Specialism lets you charge for expertise, not hours.
- What could you build documented processes around? The service where you can create a playbook is the one that grows.
Go niche. Get your hands dirty. Let the results build the brand.
This article is based on a conversation with Aedin O’Neill on the Exit Ready podcast. Listen to the full episode for Aedin’s insights on running a business with a sibling, the competitive mindset from GAA, and the Google Ads optimisation score workaround.
Go deeper: Agency SOPs: How to Write Standard Operating Procedures That Actually Get Used | How to Structure a Creative Agency