From the Industrial North to Tomorrow’s Search Engines
Harton Works is a future facing consultancy built on two decades of hard earned digital experience, founded by Martin Jeffrey, a strategic marketing lead and SEO since 1998. We specialise in Retrieval First™ Marketing, our unique approach to optimising for the ways AI search and intelligent agents retrieve and present information. Our goal is to help brands show up where it truly matters in an age of shifting discovery patterns.
Our name, Harton Works, goes beyond just a brand; it’s a deep nod to the past that shaped us. It takes its name from the industrial communities where my ancestors worked—shipbuilders, welders and steel workers—the kind of people who built things to last. That legacy of hard work, precision and unwavering pride runs through everything we do today: clear thinking, sharp strategy and straight-talking advice.
We Build Engines for a New Era of Visibility
With a healthy dose of Northern Grit, we do not chase volume or trends. Instead, we partner with businesses ready to rethink how they grow and what sustainable growth truly means in a world of fragmented search, AI interfaces and attention scarcity.
Our Work Includes:
Leadership
The people who shape strategy, deliver insight, and keep Harton Works accountable.
Martin Jeffrey, Founder & Strategic Lead
Martin Jeffrey has been working in SEO and digital strategy since 1998, spanning nearly three decades of search evolution from meta tags to machine learning. He has held senior executive roles across both private and publicly listed companies, leading digital strategy for major brands including Reebok, Chelsea FC, Burberry and Diageo before founding Harton Works.
He created the Retrieval-First™ methodology to address a gap he kept seeing in practice: brands holding strong Google rankings while remaining completely invisible in AI search. His work has been published in Search Engine Land and covered by Newsweek, The Observer and Computerworld.
Louise Brocklehurst, Audience & Insights Strategist
Louise specialises in understanding how people behave across AI-powered search, social platforms and digital ecosystems. Having worked with brands including Legoland, Merlin Entertainments and National Trust, she combines audience behaviour, performance data and early AI adoption signals to help brands make smarter, evidence-based decisions, ensuring strategy is grounded in how real people actually discover and engage with content, not just how algorithms index it.
Flynn Jeffrey, Developer & Product Lead
Flynn is a University-educated programmer with over ten years of development experience. His Forge Autoclicker has been downloaded more than 600,000 times, a product that demonstrated early his ability to build tools that scale through genuine utility rather than marketing. Since then he has worked with numerous development studios before joining Harton Works, where he leads development of the Content Engineering Studio and builds the in-house AI tools that power Harton Works' retrieval optimisation work.
Freelances
He held several senior-level executive management positions in both private and publicly traded companies.
We Are Harton Works
We’ve reset growth for companies stuck in expensive activity cycles. The difference: we diagnose first, then strategise.
While other consultants start with solutions, we start with understanding. What’s really stopping your growth? Where are the biggest leaks? What would happen if you focused 80% of your effort on the 20% that actually matters?
Our clients walk away with direction on what to do next, confidence in their priorities, and momentum that builds on itself. No more guessing what’s working.
Let’s Build Your Engine
Start with a conversation — no pressure, no push. Just clarity on where you stand, where systems can drive growth, and how AI can fit into your day-to-day operations.