Beginners Guide to the Downtown Embryo Index

Who are Downtown in Business?

Downtown in Business are the fastest growing business networking group in the UK. With offices in Liverpool, Lancashire, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Cheshire, and London, they offer their members, who are spread across a range of sectors, a variety of events to develop their skills, as well as network. 

Their extensive membership includes over 900 businesses with a quality network across the private and public sectors. Their events are a great way to reach out and interact with your target audience and key decision-makers. 

What is the Downtown Embryo Index?

We decided to pair Downtown in Business’s extensive connections and company data with Embryo’s innovation and creativity to design and build a powerful tool that can help identify the leading brands within different sectors and locations, whilst helping businesses to advance their business profile and brand awareness.

There are over 500 businesses that are evaluated and scored on the index. By using helpful filters such as ‘location’ and ‘sector’, users of the Downtown Embryo Index can see which brands perform best on a local level or against their direct competitors.

“The Downtown Embryo Index is an incredibly useful tool that takes an extremely large set of data, analyses it, and gives it a powerful meaning. Regular updates will enable users to keep track of those businesses with the most influence and the ones to watch.” – James Welch Chief Innovation Officer at Embryo.

How Does the Downtown Embryo Index Work?

The Downtown Embryo Index works by analysing and scoring companies across three different locations (Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester) and 11 different sectors (Consumer, Design, Events & Hospitality, Finance, Legal, Not for Profit, Professional Services, Property, Public Services, Sport & Education, and Technology). 

Each company is scored against a series of metrics that include but are not limited to:

• Whether they are a thought leader within their industry.
• How active they are on social media.
• If the business is a big supporter of charities and other causes in the city they are based. 
• How established the brand is. 

The combination of these scores results in the Downtown Embryo Score enabling the businesses to be ranked. Companies are also awarded trophies that are independent of the Downtown Embryo scores. The fact that the trophies are awarded independently enables businesses of all sizes to have their efforts rewarded despite the resources available to them. 

• Charity Kings

Businesses that are often supporting charitable organisations and causes.

• City Contributor

Businesses that regularly give back to the cities where they are based, through sponsorship, advertisement and donations.

• Gold Networker

Businesses that regularly attend events, and have a large and active network meaning they are well-known within the cities they are based.

• Thought Leaders

Businesses that publish interesting and insightful content and information. 

• Well Established

Businesses that were started before 2000.

• Credit to the City

Businesses that, overall, are contributing to the success of the city where they are based. This is done by them regularly engaging with events, supporting others and sharing their knowledge.

Who are the ones to watch? 

Birmingham City University is leading the way in the top spot with a high score of 120.56. They are big contributors to the city, doing lots of charity work, networking, and sharing educational knowledge. Whilst ANS takes the top spot for the Manchester businesses with an Index score of 110.54, thanks to the well-established brand contributing to Manchester and the technology industry. 

We predict that over the next few months as life post-Covid-19 returns to normal with events and opportunities for businesses to take advantage of, we will see lots of movement on the Index. 

How can you Feature on the Downtown Embryo Index?

The Downtown Embryo Index is regularly updated so if you would like to be included please get in touch.