Six-plus years leading paid media, social, SEO and web for 90+ businesses across the UK and US - built on hospitality and sales, not a marketing textbook. Quoted in Business Insider on AI and digital privacy.
Ben started out behind a bar at 16 and worked his way up to running venues, from trainee manager to general manager of a busy smokehouse and sports bar. Hospitality teaches you quickly that marketing only matters if it fills the room: a full Friday night, a booked-out weekend, regulars who keep coming back.
In 2018 he launched his first agency, helping independent restaurants and bars get seen on social media. A spell in car sales then taught him the other half of it: activity is not the same as sales. A showroom full of browsers doesn't hit a target - a steady flow of qualified buyers does. Since then he has led growth marketing for Frog, a social app that reached #2 on the App Store, and headed up marketing for a Leeds leisure and hospitality group.
He started BlackFire in 2020 with one strong opinion: that small and medium-sized businesses deserve the same calibre of marketing strategy as the brands paying ten times the rate. Today he leads strategy on every engagement - paid media, social media, SEO and web design - with a team of designers, media buyers, content specialists and video editors behind him.
Ben Metcalfe, founder of BlackFire Marketing, was quoted by Business Insider on families sharing AI-generated images of children - and what it means for digital privacy.
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Ben's view on why specialised AI tools, guided by human strategy, are pulling ahead of generic AI in marketing.
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Ben Metcalfe, founder of BlackFire Marketing, was quoted in SEOptimer's roundup of marketing agency tools, published on 2 October 2026.
Read the article →The framework used with clients to separate activity from results.
Read the article →How AI Overviews are changing search, and how to get cited rather than bypassed.
Read the article →Why cheaper leads so often cost more, and what to optimise for instead.
Read the article →Where each platform earns its budget, and how to choose.
Read the article →Book a call. You'll speak to Ben about your numbers, where your budget is going and what he would change first.
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