What we have learned running ads, search, sites and automation for real businesses. No throat-clearing.
Latest · AI & Automation · 7 min
You do not need a platform with a six-month implementation. You need four or five jobs handled automatically, in the right order, starting with the one that is currently costing you leads.
Read the post31 posts
Ads on Google, Meta, LinkedIn and TikTok: what to spend, what to set up, and when not to.
Paid Advertising · 7 min
Most e-commerce ad accounts are not held back by bidding strategy. They are held back by a messy product feed, a structure nobody can explain, and a target ROAS that has never been checked against margin.
Paid Advertising · 7 min
Dental clicks are expensive and dental patients are valuable, which makes the maths unusually forgiving. It also makes the mistakes unusually costly.
Paid Advertising · 7 min
Search ads suit trades because the intent is obvious: someone needs a job done today. The work is making sure your budget reaches those people and not the other ninety percent.
Paid Advertising · 7 min
PMax is worth it when your tracking, conversion volume, creative and feed are ready. When they are not, it is a fast way to spend money and learn very little.
Paid Advertising · 6 min
PMax buys across seven Google surfaces at once. You get a handful of real controls over where it lands, and one report that only half tells you what happened.
Paid Advertising · 7 min
Audience signals are hints that tell Google where to start looking, not targeting that fences your ads in. Feed them well and the learning period gets a lot shorter.
Paid Advertising · 6 min
You cannot bid on keywords in PMax. You can still block them, exclude brands, and hint at demand. Three controls, three different places in the account.
Paid Advertising · 7 min
Ten causes cover almost every case. Work through them in this order and you will usually find yours in the first three.
Paid Advertising · 7 min
There is no keyword list. Google reads your product data, decides which searches you are an answer to, then runs an auction. Here is the whole mechanism, step by step.
Paid Advertising · 7 min
Bids get all the attention. Titles, images and identifiers decide which searches you show up for, which is the part that moves revenue.
Paid Advertising · 7 min
Most PPC budgets get picked because the number sounds sensible. Here is the arithmetic that sets one properly, and the point where spending more stops helping.
Paid Advertising · 7 min
Thought Leader ads promote a person’s post instead of your company page’s. They usually work better, and they only work if somebody at your company will actually post.
Paid Advertising · 7 min
LinkedIn sells some of the most expensive clicks in advertising and, occasionally, the cheapest customers. The difference is what you sell and how you measure it.
Paid Advertising · 9 min
LinkedIn is the most expensive mainstream ad platform per click. That is the product, not a fault. Whether it is expensive for you comes down to one number.
Paid Advertising · 7 min
Meta ads are a multiplier, not a rescue. They amplify a good offer and a working follow-up process, and they amplify a broken one just as efficiently.
Paid Advertising · 7 min
A short, practical answer for Australian advertisers: when Meta adds 10%, what the ABN field actually changes, and how to stop GST quietly distorting your cost per lead.
Paid Advertising · 7 min
You are not buying an ad, you are buying an auction outcome. Here is what sets the price, and the minimum budget worth putting behind a proper test.
Paid Advertising · 6 min
AI Max is Google’s AI upgrade for Search campaigns, broader matching, machine-written ad text and expanded landing pages, behind one toggle. Here is what that means in practice.
Paid Advertising · 7 min
PMax is Google’s everything-everywhere campaign. It can be excellent. It can also spend confidently in the wrong direction. The difference is your inputs.
Paid Advertising · 7 min
Meta’s machine does most of the targeting now. Your job is structure, creative and clean signals. Here is what that looks like in practice.
Paid Advertising · 7 min
Most Google Ads advice is either obvious or dangerous. These are the working habits that separate accounts that compound from accounts that just spend.
Paid Advertising · 6 min
Not "managing the account". Here is the real work behind Facebook and Instagram advertising, what your fee should be buying, and how to tell when it is buying nothing much.
Paid Advertising · 6 min
The platforms automated the bidding. So what is left for a PPC management agency to do, and how do you tell whether anyone is actually doing it?
Paid Advertising · 6 min
TikTok is not a cheaper Facebook. It is a creative treadmill with an ad account attached. Here is what an agency has to do to keep up, and who should not bother.
Paid Advertising · 6 min
Mostly, no. Here is the honest answer on whether proximity helps, the two situations where it genuinely does, and what to judge an agency on instead.
Paid Advertising · 6 min
Melbourne has no shortage of B2B agencies. Here is how to judge one on pipeline rather than lead count, and how to work out whether LinkedIn is even your channel.
Paid Advertising · 7 min
What a Google Ads agency in Melbourne actually does for the money, what it costs, the five questions that separate the good ones from the confident ones, and the situations where hiring anyone is the wrong move.
Paid Advertising · 7 min
Every PPC agency will show you growth. Here is how to work out whether they grew the business or just the numbers, and when the honest answer is not to run PPC at all.
Paid Advertising · 7 min
Every agency shows you the winning ad. Almost none show you the twelve that lost. Here is how to judge a Facebook ads agency on the things that actually predict results.
Paid Advertising · 6 min
LinkedIn is the priciest click in B2B, and sometimes the cheapest customer. Here is how to tell which one you are buying before you commit a budget to it.
Paid Advertising · 6 min
The channel is cheap attention if you can make content, and an expensive lesson if you cannot. Here is how to tell which side of that line your business sits on.
16 posts
Ranking on Google and getting named in AI answers.
Search & AI Visibility · 7 min
The hard part is not ranking. It is ranking for searches made by business owners rather than by people looking for a $99 tax return in July.
Search & AI Visibility · 7 min
It is a small markdown file that hands AI models a curated map of your site. The idea is sensible. Whether anything important reads it yet is a different question, and worth answering before you budget for it.
Search & AI Visibility · 7 min
Shopify handles part of SEO for you and quietly gets in the way on the rest. Here is what should be on the work list, in what order, and how to check an agency knows the platform.
Search & AI Visibility · 7 min
Most Australian SEO retainers land between $1,000 and $5,000 a month. Here is what sits behind those numbers, what pushes a quote up, and when the honest answer is not to buy any.
Search & AI Visibility · 7 min
Most tradie SEO comes down to three things: a finished Google Business Profile, a page for every service you want to be called about, and reviews. Here is the order to do them in.
Search & AI Visibility · 7 min
A technical audit is a check of the plumbing, not the copy. Here is what belongs in one, what a useful deliverable looks like, and when the money is better spent elsewhere.
Search & AI Visibility · 7 min
It costs nothing, it sits above the organic results, and most profiles are half-finished. Here is the order to fix yours in, and the parts you can safely ignore.
Search & AI Visibility · 7 min
Service area businesses can hide the address and list the suburbs they cover instead. Here is how to set it up properly, and the shortcuts that get profiles suspended.
Search & AI Visibility · 7 min
AI Overviews mostly cite pages that already rank. Here is how to become one of the few sources they quote, and why being quoted is not the same as being visited.
Search & AI Visibility · 10 min
AEO is the work of getting your business named in the answers AI tools give people. Here is what it actually involves, how it differs from SEO, and who should leave it alone for now and fix something else first.
Search & AI Visibility · 7 min
When a buyer asks an AI who to hire, somebody gets named. These are the practical steps that make it you.
Search & AI Visibility · 8 min
SEO is not a dark art. It is a set of repeatable jobs done in a sensible order. This is the order, in plain English.
Search & AI Visibility · 6 min
Google tells you exactly what local ranking depends on. Most local businesses have not done the free parts yet. Here is what to fix before you pay anyone.
Search & AI Visibility · 7 min
Technical, content, links, local. Here is what each part of an SEO proposal really does for you, which bits earn their keep, and which are padding.
Search & AI Visibility · 6 min
Answer engine optimization is being sold hard right now. Here is what a real AEO scope contains, what it can and cannot promise, and who should wait.
Search & AI Visibility · 7 min
SEO is the easiest service in marketing to fake, because results are slow and the excuses are plausible. Here is how to judge an agency before the twelve months are gone.
15 posts
Websites, stores, landing pages and apps that convert.
Websites & Apps · 6 min
Most tradies overpay for the wrong site and underpay for the parts that bring work in. Here is what the job really costs, and what it should include.
Websites & Apps · 7 min
Price bands in AUD, what pushes a quote up, and the running costs that never make it onto the invoice. Plus the cases where the right spend is nothing.
Websites & Apps · 8 min
Selling overseas doubles your market and your ways to lose money. This checklist covers both, including the honest test for whether you should expand at all yet.
Websites & Apps · 7 min
Landing pages fail in predictable ways, which is good news: it means they succeed in predictable ways too. Here are the seven components that do the converting.
Websites & Apps · 6 min
Every app, from a banking giant to a booking tool, is the same three parts talking to each other. Understand the parts and app quotes stop being mysterious.
Websites & Apps · 7 min
Where your pages get built (ahead of time, or on demand) quietly shapes how fast your site loads, how well it ranks and what it costs to run.
Websites & Apps · 7 min
One is a CMS your team can edit, the other is a framework developers build with. Comparing them properly means comparing the jobs, not the logos.
Websites & Apps · 6 min
WordPress has been declared dead roughly annually since 2010. It still runs a huge slice of the web. Both facts matter to your decision.
Websites & Apps · 7 min
Conversion rate optimization is not button-color roulette. It is a research process with a testing habit. Here are the fundamentals, in the order they matter.
Websites & Apps · 6 min
A good CRO consultant pays for themselves out of traffic you have already bought. A bad one runs button tests forever. Here is how to tell the difference early.
Websites & Apps · 6 min
WordPress runs a huge share of the web for good reasons. It also creates problems people only discover in year two. Here is how to choose it deliberately.
Websites & Apps · 6 min
Custom software is the most expensive answer to most internal problems. Here is how to work out whether you are in the small group of businesses that genuinely needs it.
Websites & Apps · 7 min
A beautiful site that does not convert is an expensive brochure. Here is what actually decides whether a website earns enquiries, and when a rebuild is the wrong call.
Websites & Apps · 6 min
CRO is getting more from the traffic you already have. Here is how it really works, what it can honestly deliver, and the traffic level below which testing is a waste of time.
Websites & Apps · 7 min
Most app projects do not fail at the coding. They fail at the scoping. Here is how the money really gets spent, and how to avoid buying software you did not need.
14 posts
Tracking, email and the automation that does the repeatable work.
AI & Automation · 7 min
You do not need a platform with a six-month implementation. You need four or five jobs handled automatically, in the right order, starting with the one that is currently costing you leads.
AI & Automation · 7 min
Five flows do most of the work in most stores. Here is the build order, the trigger settings people get wrong, and the point where adding another flow stops helping.
AI & Automation · 7 min
Three good tools, three different bets: Zapier bets on simplicity, Make on power per dollar, n8n on control. The right one depends on who is doing the automating.
AI & Automation · 7 min
The tools are cheap and the concept is simple: when this happens, do that. The craft is choosing the right processes and mapping them honestly before you automate.
AI & Automation · 7 min
Ecommerce gets all the email marketing attention. Meanwhile service businesses leave the easiest money on the table: enquiries unanswered, quotes unchased, past clients forgotten. Five flows fix that.
AI & Automation · 7 min
Campaigns are the emails you remember to send. Flows are the ones that send themselves, at exactly the moment a shopper is deciding. Build these seven first.
AI & Automation · 7 min
A CRM is not software you buy; it is a follow-up habit you install. Here is the small-business version, minimal admin, maximum revenue remembered.
AI & Automation · 7 min
Every week brings another AI announcement. Most of them will not change your marketing. A handful genuinely will. Here is the short list, minus the breathless commentary.
AI & Automation · 5 min
Book a session, get a lecture on GA4 features, leave none the wiser. Here is how to make an analytics consultation earn its fee: the questions to bring and the checks to demand.
AI & Automation · 6 min
Automation multiplies whatever you point it at. Point it at a good sequence and it prints money quietly. Point it at a bad one and it annoys people at scale.
AI & Automation · 5 min
Do not start with a company-wide AI strategy. Start with the one process everybody in the office complains about. Here is how to pick it, and what it should cost.
AI & Automation · 6 min
Most Klaviyo money comes from a handful of flows you set up once. Here is what a good agency builds in month one, and how to tell if you even need one.
AI & Automation · 6 min
Half this industry is selling chatbots nobody asked for. The other half is quietly deleting hours of clerical work every week. Here is how to tell which one you are talking to.
AI & Automation · 6 min
Most GA4 setups are quietly wrong, and everyone makes decisions on them anyway. Here is what good analytics consulting fixes, and why it comes before everything else.
4 posts
Choosing an agency, and learning to run it yourself.
Agencies & Training · 7 min
There is no best agency. There is only the right one for the problem you actually have, which is often not the problem you think you have. Here is how to work out both.
Agencies & Training · 6 min
Melbourne has hundreds of agencies and most of them are fine. The difference is whether they solve the problem you actually have. Here is how to work out what that is first.
Agencies & Training · 5 min
A day of training only pays off if someone opens your actual account. Here is what to demand from a Perth workshop, and how to tell training from a sales pitch.
Agencies & Training · 5 min
Most marketing training is a sales pitch with a lunch break. Here is what a workshop should actually leave you with, and when you should hire instead of learn.
No pitch deck and no lock-in contract. Just a straight answer on what to fix first.