In November last year I passed 10 years of self-employment. After some reflection, I decided 2025 would be the year I rebrand 16by9 to set it up for the next decade.
For those unfamiliar, 16by9 is my primary source of income. It’s my freelance home, where I work with clients across the UK (and sometimes beyond) on a variety of web-related projects.
Why rebrand?
There are a few reasons I want to rebrand:
- I want to move away from being positioned as “the WordPress guy” (more on that shortly)
- The current site doesn’t reflect me or the work I want to be doing
- I want to do a better job of showing the value clients get from working with me
- I want to stand out from other agencies and freelancers
- The site isn’t bringing in the leads it used to
That last one’s the elephant in the room. Leads have been noticeably quieter this year. The exact causes are hard to pin down: economic uncertainty, tighter marketing budgets, the impact of AI, or simply changing demand. I also have a hunch my current site isn’t helping and might even be putting off potential leads.
By repositioning my business and building a site I’m genuinely proud of, I’m hoping to keep attracting the right kind of clients.
New positioning
When I first started freelancing, I was a generalist front-end developer. I worked with all sorts of clients, tech stacks, and CMSs. I quickly realised that positioning was important if I wanted to stand out. Niching down on a specific technology or platform has plenty of benefits. Since most of my clients were asking for WordPress, and I knew it well, I leaned into it.
It worked. I became “the WordPress guy” in my network and picked up plenty of referrals. The more time I spent working with WordPress, the more I learned how to quickly spot and fix the most common problems.
But over the past few years, I’ve grown tired of WordPress. The recent WordPress drama hasn’t helped, nor have my mixed feelings about Gutenberg. It feels like WordPress has focused so heavily on Gutenberg that other fundamental parts of the CMS are starting to feel dated.
I’m not saying WordPress is bad, far from it, and I’ll keep using it when it’s the right fit. But clients rarely want a “WordPress” site. They want a website that works for their organisation, and there are plenty of platforms that can deliver that.
So my new focus isn’t on a specific platform, it’s on a specific audience: charities, non-profits, and purpose-led organisations (or “good causes” as I like to call them). It’s still a broad audience (maybe I’ll niche down further in the future) but it’s a useful lens for shaping the design and content.
What makes me different?
There’s no shortage of agencies working with charities and non-profits. Take away that focus and you’re competing with thousands more. Many of them are good, too.
So how do you stand out? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself constantly during the rebrand, and it’s not an easy one to answer.
One aspect is pricing. Because 16by9 is just me, and I build small bespoke teams around each project, I can keep overheads low. That means I can often stretch a client’s budget further than a traditional agency could. A £20k–50k budget is a reasonable range for 16by9, but that might be on the low side for agencies with higher overheads. The challenge is communicating this without making it sound like I’m simply the ‘cheap’ option.
Another difference is that before starting a website redesign, I start by helping the client get clear on the why: understanding the organisation and its users, shaping a strategy, and running discovery workshops to bring everyone on board. Many clients I’ve worked with hadn’t fully appreciated how valuable this is until they went through the process. That’s the story I want to tell.
Business name vs personal name
As part of the rebrand, I revisited the age-old question: trade under a business name (16by9) or my own name (Marc Jenkins)?
Business names:
- Feel bigger than one person
- May attract bigger clients and projects
- Feel less personal
- Can take longer to build trust
Personal names:
- Build trust quickly
- More personal
- Great for reputation-based work
In my first few years of freelancing, I traded under my own name. I later switched to 16by9. After some thought, I’ve decided to stick with 16by9 because it fits what I’m trying to build. Many of the projects I work on involve small teams of freelance designers, copywriters, and developers, so “we” feels accurate.
That said, I’m mindful of the trust gap that comes with a business name and I’m aiming to bridge it with transparent, well-written content. More on that in future posts.
If you have any questions or comments about the rebrand, drop me a line at marc [at] 16by9 [dot] net. I'll try to answer them in future posts.