Notes

What we actually think, in writing.

Method, and figures from brands we own outright. We sell SEO and GEO, so it would be a strange thing to sell from a site with nothing on it worth reading.

  • Written by the people who run the accounts.
  • No client account and no client number on any page.
  • Published when there is something worth saying, not every week.
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No client numbers. Every figure is from a brand we owned outright, or it is method with none attached.
All 28 notes

In the order we would read them.

The first six are for choosing an agency. The method pieces are for after you have chosen, when the question is about your own account.

  1. 01How to choose an ecommerce agency: five questions, answered in writing.Every agency sounds the same in a first call, because that is what a first call is for. These are the five questions where the answers genuinely differ, and asking for them in writing is most of the work.Working with an agency6 min
  2. 02What does a marketing agency cost? Ask which model before you ask the price.Nobody publishes a rate, and every range you find quoted is somebody's average of jobs that were not your job. The number is decided by the pricing model far more than by the rate, and the model is the part you can judge before a single figure is named.Working with an agency7 min
  3. 03Agency, freelancer or in house: which one your brand actually needs.The three options buy the same work and break in completely different places. Which one is right has almost nothing to do with your revenue and almost everything to do with how many channels you run and how quickly the answers go out of date.Working with an agency7 min
  4. 04Signs your agency is not working, and how to switch without losing the account.Most brands know months before they act, and wait because they cannot tell whether the agency is failing or the market got harder. Those two look identical in a report and are told apart by four specific checks.Working with an agency8 min
  5. 05How to choose a Google Ads agency, and the six questions that separate them.Every agency will show you a return figure. Almost none of them will tell you what it is measured against. These are the questions whose answers cannot be faked in a pitch, and what a real answer sounds like.Working with an agency7 min
  6. 06How to choose a Meta ads agency without buying a screenshot.Meta reports the conversions it believes it caused, and every agency in your shortlist will show you that number. The questions below are the ones that find out whether anything behind it is real.Working with an agency7 min
  7. 07What a generative engine optimization agency does, and how to tell if you need one.GEO is the work of getting your brand quoted inside AI answers rather than listed under them. It is a real discipline with a short honest description, and most of what is being sold under the name right now is ordinary SEO with a new invoice.SEO and GEO8 min
  8. 08How to get your brand cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews.Being quoted inside an AI answer is not a ranking you can buy or a schema tag you can add. It is a consequence of writing pages an assistant can lift a complete answer out of, and of existing on the third party pages it already trusts.SEO and GEO7 min
  9. 09GEO for an online store, when the assistant does not link to product pages.AI answers rarely send somebody straight to a product. They decide which brands get considered. That changes what a store should publish, and most GEO advice written for software companies does not transfer.SEO and GEO7 min
  10. 10What llms.txt is, and whether it is worth the ten minutes.It is a plain text file at the root of your site that tells a language model which pages matter. No assistant has committed to reading it. We still put one on every site we run, and the reason is not the one usually given.SEO and GEO5 min
  11. 11How long SEO takes, and what should have moved by when.Six to twelve months is the honest answer for a competitive term on a new site. But there are checkpoints long before that, and if the early ones do not move, the late ones will not either.SEO and GEO7 min
  12. 12What is a good ROAS? It is the one above your break even.Every benchmark you have ever been quoted came out of somebody else's margin. Yours is a division you can do in a minute, and it is the only number that decides whether a campaign is making you money or costing you money quietly.Measurement6 min
  13. 13How to improve ROAS without making the business smaller.The quickest way to lift a return on ad spend is to spend less, and it works every single time. Everything here is the other kind of improvement: more revenue at the same money, or at more of it.Method7 min
  14. 14Meta claimed a quarter of the revenue. We went and found the rest.We owned the brand, so for once we had both numbers: what the ad account said it earned, and what the store actually banked. They were not close, and the gap is the most useful thing either number can tell you.Measurement6 min
  15. 15Approved is not the same as visible.A Shopping feed can pass every check Google gives you and still put nothing in front of anybody. Nothing turns red, so the audit that only reads the status column finds nothing.Google Shopping5 min
  16. 16Measure email against the store, not against Klaviyo.Every platform grades its own homework, on its own window, using its own rules. Add the grades together and you will comfortably beat your own revenue.Email and Klaviyo5 min
  17. 17What is a good Shopify conversion rate? The one Shopify already worked out for you.Every average you have been quoted was measured across a population your store is not in. Shopify computes the comparison that does apply, from stores your size in your category, and it is sitting in your admin for nothing.Measurement7 min
  18. 18Your store gets traffic and no sales. The order to check things in.Four things cause almost all of it, and the expensive one is last. Working through them in this order takes about an hour and usually ends before you reach the bottom.Method6 min
  19. 19Meta ads not spending the budget. It is usually the system holding back, not a fault.An ad set that will not spend is almost never broken. It is being throttled by the delivery system for a reason Meta will name for you, and the fix is nearly always upstream of the budget field.Method6 min
  20. 20Meta ads suddenly stopped converting. Three questions before you change anything.The instinct is to rebuild the campaign. Do the checks first, because one of the three common causes means nothing is wrong with the advertising at all.Method6 min
  21. 21Merchant Center suspended for misrepresentation: what Google is actually checking.The word sounds like an accusation of lying and it usually is not. Google's misrepresentation policy is mostly about information that is missing from your site rather than information that is false.Method6 min
  22. 22What is a good LTV to CAC ratio? The 3 to 1 rule is not about your shop.Everybody quotes three to one. Every source that quotes it is describing subscription software, where the customer pays every month and the cost of serving them is close to nothing. A store selling a physical object is neither of those things.Measurement6 min
  23. 23What Performance Max actually is, and when it is the wrong campaign.One campaign that spends across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps from a single budget and a single goal. It works when the feed and the tracking are right. It hides the problem when they are not.Google Shopping7 min
  24. 24Google Ads is not getting impressions. The eight reasons, in the order to check them.Zero impressions is almost never a bidding problem, and the cause is usually visible in the account inside ten minutes. Work down this list in order and stop at the first thing that is true.Google Shopping6 min
  25. 25Your Meta CPM is high. That is usually a symptom, not the problem.CPM is the price of attention, and it rises for reasons you control and reasons you do not. Before optimising it, find out which kind you have, because chasing a cheaper CPM is the fastest way to buy worse traffic.Method6 min
  26. 26Klaviyo flows versus campaigns: which one is actually making the money.Campaigns are the emails you send. Flows are the ones that send themselves. On our own brand flows produced 72.7% of email revenue, and that ratio is the fastest diagnostic there is on an email programme.Email and Klaviyo6 min
  27. 27The product page, section by section, in the order a buyer reads it.A product page has one job: answer every question that stops a first order, in the order they arrive. Most pages answer them in the order the theme happened to stack them.CRO and website7 min
  28. 28Your Shopify apps are slowing the store down, and most of them are replaceable.Every app adds script, subscription and a place for things to break. Most of what stores pay for monthly can be built into the theme once. Here is how to find out which of yours can.CRO and website6 min
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