Phillip Maddick
Co-founder, Otter Labs | SEO, GEO & AI Visibility Strategist
Phill Maddick is the co-founder of Otter Labs, a UK digital marketing agency that helps ambitious businesses grow through SEO, Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), and AI visibility strategy. He works with established brands and growing businesses to make sure they are found, cited, and trusted across Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and AI Overviews.
Background
Phill’s route into marketing was not conventional. He studied Computer Animation and Special Effects at the University of Bradford, driven by a genuine passion for film, visual storytelling, and the worlds of graphic novels and fantasy cinema. That creative foundation shaped how he approaches marketing today: narrative first, audience focused, and built around how people actually engage with content.
After university, he moved into digital strategy and performance marketing, building experience across regulated industries, B2B, ecommerce, leisure, and professional services. Notable roles include Digital Strategy Manager at Michelmores, one of the UK’s leading law firms, where he delivered digital marketing across a complex, compliance driven environment, and Head of Performance Marketing at UVA Collective, where he led paid and organic strategy for a full service agency.
He holds a CIM Level 4 Diploma in Digital Marketing (Chartered Institute of Marketing) and is certified in advanced video editing through Descript.
Otter Labs and GEO
In 2023, Phill co-founded Otter Labs alongside Allen Betchley. The agency was built around a simple belief: the way people search is changing, and brands that fail to adapt will become invisible.
Otter Labs specialises in SEO, GEO, local SEO, content strategy, and paid media. As a Google Partner, the agency combines traditional search expertise with a forward looking approach to generative AI, helping clients appear not just in search results but inside AI generated answers.
GEO, or Generative Engine Optimisation, is at the core of Otter Labs’ positioning. Phill has developed proprietary audit frameworks and AI visibility tools that assess how brands perform across large language models and generative search interfaces. His work focuses on making businesses citable, structured, and trustworthy in the eyes of both humans and machines.
Education and Community
Beyond client work, Phill is committed to making digital marketing accessible. He created Back to Basics, a free 22 video educational series designed for small business owners with no marketing background. The series covers SEO fundamentals, content strategy, local search, GEO, and paid media, and is available on YouTube.
He regularly shares insights on LinkedIn and contributes to conversations around the future of search, AI visibility, and practical marketing strategy for growing businesses.
Beyond the Screen
When he is not working on client strategy or building AI tools, Phill can usually be found outdoors on the Devon coast with his two dogs, Meryl the Border Collie and Zara the Wire-haired Dachshund. He is a rugby fan, a committed Marvel rewatcher, and a lifelong enthusiast of science fiction and fantasy. He still carries the same passion for storytelling that led him into computer animation in the first place.