ILC ARTICLE

Industry interview: Daniel Chesney, OnyxPDA

14th March 2023

In a sector as diverse as ours, partnerships are essential to ensure continued growth in terms of innovation, support and service. No one company can expect to have all the skills and knowledge necessary to make the most of all the opportunities available.

Here, we speak to OnyxPDA Owner and Director Daniel Chesney to find out more about his company, and how it is helping clients in the automotive claims industry to fulfil their potential.

For those unfamiliar with the OnyxPDA brand, can you tell us a little about the services you provide to clients in the automotive sector?

We are a full-service design and marketing agency. We provide a vast range of marketing and branding services including, website creation, brand management, email marketing, social media management, PR and so much more, the list goes on and on.

But honestly, we are so much more than just your typical marketing agency; we work with our clients to enable diversification, innovation and growth.

We’ve helped clients gain investments, launch products into the market, provided sales strategies and worked with them to ensure their operational delivery is simplified to their proposition value. So, in a nutshell, we are a marketing agency that offers much more value and insight.

In what ways are you different to your competitors?

I’ve been working within the automotive/claims market for about 20 years, so I’ve built many years of unique industry knowledge from working with companies such as a Medico-legal agency to an accident management and repair services company.

I can confidently say no other agency has the same unique set of skills, knowledge, and experience with businesses in this industry.

Since our inception in 2020, we’ve built a client base that covers every aspect of this complex industry, and with that comes an unparalleled view of the whole market.

Part of the reason my wife and I created OnyxPDA, was because we saw an opportunity to support businesses, within this sector, to achieve their goals. It’s a very complex industry we operate in, and unfortunately there aren’t any other marketing agencies, that we have worked with in the past, that can provide the level of understanding needed to truly add value to the market.

In a saturated marketplace, how does Onyx help clients stand out from the crowd?

As we’ve worked with businesses across the whole industry, we’ve gained an insight into what makes businesses attractive to others. Every business has its own identity, provision and culture, we help them uniquely position themselves to enable them to tell their story in an authentic way.

We really get to know our clients and their products, inside and out – this is something we pride ourselves on – and this guarantees we can combine our team’s marketing talents with the gained knowledge of the business to create effective communication strategies. We focus on those differentiators; every busines has one, even if they’re not yet aware of it, we’ll help source and exploit this for their benefit within the commoditised market.

How is technology enabling you to deliver tangible results?

Since the outset we have always aligned ourselves to the goals of our clients. We focus on achieving these ambitions in line with their brand, identity and capabilities. In order to do this, we’ve had to put things in place that allow us to demonstrate and analyse data to show improvement. We present monthly reports to our clients to establish improvements and added value. These reports in addition to regular face-to-face client catch ups, are vital for allowing us to share data from website analytics, social media, PR and so much more.

We can see the positive impact technology is having on the automotive and claims industry, and we have many clients who are championing the progression to more technologically supported operations within the industry. From our point of view technology is enabling us to present tangible and accurate results to our clients, to help them see the benefits marketing can bring to a business.

Profit warnings in the UK have reached 2008 levels; but sustainability is about more than just the economy. What do you think is key to a sustainable future?

You can have the best product in the world, but if you don’t tell your story in the right way, to the right people, no one will hear about it, and no one will care about what you have to offer.

Its not enough anymore to provide a great product or service; businesses (particularly within this market) need to be able to blend internal operational efficiencies with the best commercial agreements and the strongest market proposition.

Everyone has their own story; they just need to know how to tell it.

What do you perceive as the key threats facing the sector now?

Well of course, there’s the difficulties that come with the cost-of-living crisis and the skills crisis that the repair industry is facing. However, as an entire market there’s too much commoditisation.

There’s also a lack of innovation within the sector. Businesses need a clear and balanced work stream, and to be able to provide proposition across various opportunities to support their own grown and diversification.

How does Onyx help clients overcome these and deliver long-term resilience?

Ultimately our role is to ensure our clients tell their story in the best way and have a strong brand with a unique proposition.

We created our name and our identity around ensuring this happens for all those we work with, whether on a brief project-based relationship or a permanent retained basis. The PDA in our name stands for Proposition, Definition and Articulation. These three pillars guarantee we define key aspects of our clients right from the outset – who they are, what they do and what they say.

Getting to know our customers, understanding who they are, the strong parts of their provision and knowing what they can really bring to the market is key to ensuring not only our relationship with them grows but that their position within the market improves and is sustainable.

How can you help clients gain a competitive advantage?

We provide our customers the right platform and the right opportunities to achieve their goals. Onyx doesn’t provide customers with a ‘one size fits all’ approach; all the activity we provide is carefully considered and suitable to the business, their proposition, and their audience.

Each customer has their own goals, some aim to gain investment into the business, others aim to increase their brand awareness or some simply want to grow their customer base. Each goal requires a different approach, and our industry knowledge can really ensure we provide this.

What is next for Onyx?

There are exciting things in the pipeline for OnyxPDA. We have a brilliant team and some amazing customers, but so far we have grown solely on word of mouth. It’s time we really push OnyxPDA to the forefront and begin proactively selling ourselves to make our services and our achievements visible within the market.

As we grow, we will be looking to recruit new talent whilst investing in upskilling our current team to ensure we can keep up with the ever-changing marketing landscape.

We’re so proud of how far we’ve come in such a short space of time, and we want to continue this sustainable grown, to ensure we improve our service to our existing customers first and foremost while expanding into new and exciting areas.