Matthew Ward

Matthew Ward is the founder and director of Lead Kinetics, a UK network of independent marketing specialists based in Cheadle, Stockport. He has been connecting businesses with digital talent since 2007.

He founded Lead Kinetics in July 2019. Businesses work with it in two ways: Marketing Delivery, a fully managed team that handles the work end to end, or Specialist Freelance Placement, specialists matched to the project who join the business directly.

Before that, Matthew spent twelve years as UK Digital Apprenticeship Director at Knowledge Web, the apprenticeship training provider he ran, getting people with no experience into digital marketing careers. He placed apprentices aged 16 and over into digital roles with businesses across the UK, from single placements to campaigns of more than 50. From 2019 to 2022 he was also a director of Full Focus Recruitment, a digital and creative recruitment agency covering digital marketing, PPC, SEO, creative and legal tech roles.

Much of his skill set is self-taught. His work has covered SaaS businesses, start-ups, SMEs, healthcare, hospitality, and charities and non-profits.

Matthew's view is that AI can take on a lot of the heavy lifting, but it can't understand a business or judge when a strategy needs to change partway through a campaign. That still takes someone experienced who cares about the outcome. Years of training apprentices showed him how much more the right person matters than the right tool.

That belief runs through Lead Kinetics: the right people, on the right project. The network stays selective about who joins, so a business working with anyone in it never has to wonder whether they have found someone capable. Read the Lead Kinetics mission.

It also shapes the Rising Specialists side of the network: recent graduates, apprentices and self-taught marketers early in their careers. Helping marketing graduates into the industry has been part of the business for years, from reviewing CVs and encouraging graduates to build digital portfolios to a graduate scheme set up during the pandemic.

On marketing strategy, his advice is to be pragmatic: start with where your resources really need to go, rather than chasing every channel at once. More on that in Don't Ignore the Marketer When It Comes to Your Marketing Strategy.

Matthew writes on the Lead Kinetics blog about hiring and working with freelance marketers, marketing strategy, AI and search, and building a career in marketing.