We are proud to announce that our Marketing Manager, Zara Branco, has won the Rising Star Award in the IT Services category at the Derbyshire Business Awards!
The brief she inherited
Marketing a digital agency is one of the harder briefs in the IT and services sector. Your audience is made up of marketers and business owners who know exactly what a good campaign looks like. They read your content with a critical eye. They check your reviews before they call. They will notice if your social presence doesn’t match what you say you can do for theirs.
When Zara joined The Digital Maze in September 2025, that was the brief waiting for her. Four brands. No team. No agency experience. And an audience that knows the difference between marketing that works and marketing that just exists.
About Zara
Zara did not come through a traditional marketing route. She began her career as a CAD technician and building surveyor, then completed a degree at the University of Derby while working full-time. She graduated with First Class Honours and two Pro Vice-Chancellor Dean’s Awards for outstanding academic achievement.
She then moved into marketing at the surveying company, where she built the company’s first marketing department from scratch. When she joined us, she had never worked in an agency. What she brought was the ability to build something from nothing, and a track record of doing exactly that.
What ten months looks like
In her first ten months at The Digital Maze, Zara has delivered the following without a team:
Newsletter: Built from zero to 2,831 subscribers, distributed weekly.
LinkedIn: Grew the agency’s following by 25%, adding 435 followers in under a year.
Google Reviews: Taken us from 13 reviews at a 4.6-star average to 62 reviews at 4.9 stars. Nearly five times the volume, at a higher rating.
Webinars: Quarterly signups grew from 207 per session to over 700, an increase significant enough to require migrating platforms entirely to handle the volume.
Live events: Attendance rate on the Marketing Mastered series climbed from 55% to 77%, requiring a venue upgrade to accommodate demand.
Executive roundtables: Created from scratch. A new format, aimed at senior decision-makers, that did not exist before she joined.
She also manages the websites and social media for every brand in the group: The Digital Maze, Frogspark, BOOM and Evolve.
In Rob’s words
“Zara came into the agency world cold and now runs marketing for four brands single-handedly. Record attendance at our live events and 700 signups per webinar speak for themselves. She has raised the bar for how we market ourselves.”
Rob Sherwood, Growth Director, The Digital Maze
What this award means
Awards like this matter because they reflect something real. A Rising Star is not someone who has had a comfortable first year in familiar territory. It is someone who moves into a new sector, builds a marketing function from near-zero, and delivers measurable results within months.
Every number above is from Zara’s first ten months. That is the standard she has set.
Congratulations, Zara! Thoroughly deserved.
Interested in working with an agency that holds its own marketing to this standard? Get in touch with the team
