About Laura Holyer

A career in marketing was never written in the stars for me and as a shy child I wasn’t sure what I could amount to but lots of things along the way changed all that. 

Spoiler alert - a successful career and happy life was on its way.

Pre uni & beyond

As I mentioned I was a shy child and read - terrified child. Scared of my own shadow. My uncle’s sneezes (true story).

Speaking up in front of people was a particularly scary thing for me. This was the same right up until my first year of uni, then it all changed. 

More specifically it was a volunteering trip to Romania, which I hate the cheesiness of saying this but it was a life changing trip. Through my university; Leeds Metropolitan (now Leeds Beckett), I got the opportunity to go on a trip to Romania to volunteer with some of the poorest kids in Europe. Now, I’ll be completely honest here, it was something that I thought would look great on my CV and help me stand out so it was for little selfish reasons that I did this. What it did give me, was so much more than this; gratitude for life, lifelong friends, confidence and a real sense of belonging. 

That one Romania trip turned into going over for many years after that to help be one of the lead volunteers for an amazing charity. After the trip, my outlook on life changed completely and I thank this for many, many things.

Starting out in marketing

As I said, a career in marketing wasn’t written in the stars for me but I stumbled into it. Whilst on the hunt for a marketing placement for my university course, I was adamant that I wanted to work in an FMCG, massive company in operations or something like that. I must have had about 20 unsuccessful interviews when I saw a job advert for an unpaid marketing internship in Horsforth. It didn’t fully seem like my bag and I was put off by the £200 a month ‘spending money’ but went for the interview and loved the vibe. Smashed it with a presentation I put together.

The internship started out by packing brochures, writing simple blog posts but ended with my managing all the affiliate relationships with Lonely Planet, owning all the Google Ads accounts and being heavily involved in the SEO strategies. 

Loved my time there (particularly living in the ‘intern house’) but I moved onto a Digital Marketing Agency; Fusion Unlimited where I would learn lots more in a fast paced environment on a real mix of different clients and industries.

I started as a Digital Marketing Executive and left 4 years later as a Senior Account Manager managing a small team and not far off a Director role. I gained experience on many great accounts; Halfords, Royal Bank of Scotland / NatWest, Vertu Motors, Edinburgh Airport and many more. 

But I opted to go work for myself to be able to help more small to medium business owners where I could make more of a difference and work directly without the hierarchy of an agency business. 

Setting up a digital marketing consultancy

In 2017 I set up LMc Digital Marketing, now One-Two Digital and things have gone from strength to strength. We work with a range of different clients to set strategies, implement and develop digital marketing to improve business owners' livelihoods, create more jobs in local areas and train others to become more confident with digital. 

Highlights from running the business so far: hiring my first employees, having happy clients for over 5 years, becoming an industry awards judge, consistently generating results I’m really proud of, realising when I’ve made mistakes and when others can do things better (game changer!) and lots more.

What we do at One-Two Digital:

  • Digital Marketing Strategy

  • Digital Marketing Management

  • Digital Marketing Training

  • Digital Marketing Audits

Some of my favourite things in life are:

  • Football - A big Bradford City fan (someone has to be), follow England around the world and have played many years as a left back… tried not to be left back in changing room mostly. Now starting to get into football coaching

  • Travel - On a mission to tick off as many countries as possible. 54 so far, 22% of the world

  • Snowboarding - Love to snowboard badly in different countries; Japan, Canada, Chile, France, Austria, Switzerland, Andorra, Bulgaria