Sheffield small businesses don't need more ads.They need content that works for them while they sleep.
I'm Matt. I've spent 15 years recording sound on TV shoots and built two of my own businesses to six figures. Drop Forge is where I bring that experience to Sheffield cafés, trades, and small businesses who'd rather spend their day on the tools than on a phone call with another marketing agency.
15 years on TV sets · Sound recording for BBC, ITV & Channel 4 · Founder of La Romi & Medicus Caps · Based at Wholehearted Studios, Sheffield
Most content goes stale in a week. Mine is built to pay you back for months.
Here's what I'd rather you didn't know: most marketing agencies sell you reach. They show you graphs of impressions and engagement and tell you the algorithm loves you. None of those numbers pay your rent.
I do it differently. One half-day in my Sheffield studio (or at your café, your workshop, your shop floor) and I'll walk out with enough material to fill your social channels for a month — and the kind of long-form content your customers will still find on Google in 2027.
No retainers you can't get out of. No “we'll boost your post” upsells. No agency-speak. Just content that earns its keep.
Want to see what that looks like? I'm offering free pilot shoots to a handful of Sheffield businesses while I build my portfolio. DM me on Instagram — first three to mention “TASTER” get the next slots.
Three ways I work with Sheffield businesses.
Video podcasts, direct-to-camera content, and customer stories — all shot, edited, and delivered out of one studio in Sheffield.
What it normally costs
What London wants you to spend.
Before you ask me what I charge, it's worth knowing what the rest of the industry is asking for. These are the published 2026 averages for a small business in the UK. London agencies run 30–40% higher again. I'm not going to pretend I'm the cheapest — but I'm not any of these, either.
One video shoot day
£1,500–£8,000
per filming day, London
A full crew (DoP, camera op, sound, producer) for a single day's corporate shoot. Two days with a proper crew lands between £5,500 and £7,500 before edit.
Marketing agency retainer
£1,250–£3,500
per month, UK average
The standard mid-market digital retainer. Small businesses often land at £500–£1,500; London agencies typically charge 30–40% more than regional ones for the same work.
Meta ads spend
£300–£3,000
per month, UK SME
What most UK small businesses pour into Facebook and Instagram ads every month. Costs typically £3–£25 per lead — and the second you turn it off, it stops.
Drop Forge is Sheffield, not London. No agency overheads, no retainer lock-in (unless you actually want one — some businesses do, because consistent content is how you consistently grow, and we'd build that together), no ad budget disappearing into Meta every Monday morning. Tell me what you've got to spend and I'll tell you honestly what I can do with it — and whether it's worth doing at all.
Sources: Expert Market, A&I Media, UKAgencies, Airframe Media, Westream, Wise (UK) — all 2026 published figures.
Recent work.
I'm in the middle of filming my first three Drop Forge pilot sessions right now — one charity, one Sheffield café, and one local trade. Final edits will land here in the next few weeks. If you'd like to be number four, send me a DM and I'll keep one of the remaining free pilot slots open for you.
Why I started Drop Forge.
I've been a sound recordist for 15 years. Most weeks of my career I've been on someone else's set, holding a boom for someone else's project, watching someone else's brand get the kind of content I knew small businesses could never afford.
In the meantime I built two businesses of my own — La Romi and Medicus Caps — both to six figures. And I learned the hard way what most agencies won't tell you: content beats ads, every time, if you're patient enough to let it work. The reels I made for La Romi in 2024 are still bringing in customers in 2026. I can't say that about a single penny I ever spent on Meta ads.
Drop Forge is where I bring all of that into one studio in Sheffield, for the kind of small businesses I used to be. No agency overheads. No vanity metrics. No selling you something I wouldn't pay for myself.
If that sounds like the kind of person you'd want to work with — let's talk.
I reply to every message myself, usually within an hour.
The game has changed
Social media is so 2023. Interest media is 2026 and beyond.
Social media as we knew it is over. The platforms still carry the name, but they no longer work as social networks. They are interest-based discovery engines powered by AI. TikTok built it first and every major platform followed. Only 7% of content on Instagram now comes from friends. Over 50% of everything users see is AI-recommended from accounts they don't follow. The old playbook (build a following, post to your audience, pay to boost) is dead.
Gary Vaynerchuk put it plainly: “We are now in an era where what you are interested in is coming to you from the algorithm.” Even with 50 million followers, he admits the individual piece of content now gets the reach, not the account. Instagram's own head confirmed their top ranking factors are watch time, likes per reach, and shares. Not follower count. Not posting history. Not account size.
That means a business with 200 followers can outperform one with 20,000 if the content is better. Accounts under 100K followers achieve a 7.5% engagement rate on TikTok compared to just 2.88% for accounts with over 10 million. The algorithm rewards quality, not clout. And the brands winning right now are the ones producing volume, testing what resonates, and showing up consistently.
7%
of Instagram content now comes from friends. The rest is served by the algorithm based on what you are interested in.
70%+
of brand views on TikTok come from non-followers. Reach is driven by content quality, not audience size.
5.5×
the growth rate for accounts posting 10+ times per week. More content means more chances to land on the feed.
Content first, ads second
Find your voice. Then turn on the gas.
Most businesses skip straight to ads and wonder why nothing sticks. You end up chasing vanity metrics (impressions, clicks, reach) that vanish the moment you stop paying. No message dialled in, no idea what actually resonates, just money out the door and nothing to show for it.
The smarter play? Start with content. Show up consistently, test different angles, and pay attention to what your audience actually responds to. Find the topics that spark conversations. The formats that get saved and shared. The stories that make people say “this is exactly what I needed.” That's how you find your voice, and once you've found it, you know exactly what to amplify.
Then you turn on ads. But now you're not guessing. You're putting budget behind content that's already proven to work. And unlike ads that disappear the second the campaign ends, every piece of content you've built stays in the library. A blog post keeps ranking for years. A video keeps getting recommended. Your content compounds while your ad spend amplifies. That's the model: invest in content that keeps paying you back, again and again.
2 yrs
half-life of a blog post. A Facebook ad's half-life? 30 minutes. Content keeps working while you sleep.
80%
drop in lead costs after 5 months of consistent content. Every piece you publish makes the next one cheaper.
3×
more leads from content marketing vs outbound, at 62% less cost. Then ads amplify what's already working.
This is why you need a content partner. Not a one-off video, but a system that helps you find what works, build a library, and then scale it.
Ready to see what a day of content looks like?
Book a session or DM me on Instagram. I reply to every message myself.
Book a Session