The rise of the professional YouTuber and the story behind the personal stylist website Thread.com will be among the subjects at a new bi-annual digital marketing conference.

The event, Digital iQ, is being organised by growing Norwich agency Ad-Rank Media and is scheduled for Friday, March 3 at the Assembly House.

Norwich YouTube star Stuart Ashen – who has more than 1.2m subscribers to his comic reviews of tech products – will speak about the secrets of his success, while other areas of discussion will include effective content production and e-commerce. The afternoon event will conclude with a Q&A session and networking.

Managing director Chad Harwood-Jones said: 'There are many great online marketing conferences around the UK, yet Norwich has a large catchment of online marketers that might struggle to get to other parts of the country.

'With this in mind, I decided to start something here in Norwich and support the development of the online marketing industry across the city and beyond. We are hoping to attract people from Ipswich, Cambridge and Peterborough, and even London.

'We have a great panel of speakers who have unique stories to tell, encompassing entrepreneurship and digital marketing.

'We hope their insights and stories will inspire people to go away and think about doing things differently. In the end, we want to inspire entrepreneurship as much as we want to offer attendees some great tips for advancing their digital marketing.'

Ad-Rank moved to Norwich from London as the cost of establishing a skilled workforce in the capital became prohibitive.

It pinpointed Norwich as a good location given the talent pool of graduates from the University of East Anglia, in particular from the Creative Writing MA course, and Norwich University of the Arts.

'After a number of visits it became clear that Norwich would make an ideal home for Ad-Rank's production team,' said Mr Harwood-Jones.

'As a result, we have grown the workforce from nothing up to 16 people in the first 12 months.'

Digital iQ will run between 1pm and 6pm on Friday, March 3. See www.digitaliq.net for details.