The honest answer is: sometimes. It depends on how much you spend, how much of it is wasted, and whether you will act on what you are told.

Here is how to work it out for your own business, with real numbers.

What a full-time CMO really costs

Start with the alternative. In the UK, the average base salary for a CMO is about £103,000 a year.

But salary is only part of the cost. On top of it you pay:

• Employer National Insurance. This is 15% on earnings above £5,000 a year. On a £103,000 salary, that adds about £14,700.
• A recruitment fee. UK agencies usually charge 15% to 30% of first-year salary for a permanent hire. That is about £15,500 to £31,000.
• Pension, bonus, equipment and time. Senior hires also take three months or more to find, and more time to settle in.

So a full-time CMO costs around £134,000 to £149,000 in year one, before bonus and pension. And you are paying that before you know if the hire will work.

Sources: Payscale UK CMO salary data, 2026. Employer National Insurance rates 2026/27. Nigel Wright recruitment fee guide.

What a fractional CMO costs

A fractional CMO works a set number of days each month for a monthly fee. You pay for senior time without the salary, the National Insurance or the recruitment fee.

Most fractional CMOs cost a fraction of a full-time salary. But cheaper doesn’t mean worth it. The real question is what you get back.

How to work out if it is worth it

Use this simple test. A fractional CMO is worth it if the profit they help you gain or save is clearly more than their fee.

Look in three places.

1. Wasted ad spend

Most businesses that run ads without senior oversight waste some of their budget. The waste hides in campaigns that look busy but don’t make money.

Here is an example. If you spend £15,000 a month on ads and a fifth of it is wasted, that is £3,000 a month. Over a year, that is £36,000. Finding and stopping that waste alone can pay for a fractional CMO.

2. Conversion rate

Your website may be losing people who were ready to buy. Small fixes to landing pages, product pages and checkout can lift sales without spending more on ads.

If you get 10,000 visitors a month and convert 2%, that is 200 sales. Lift that to 2.5% and you get 250 sales from the same traffic. Multiply those 50 extra sales by your profit per sale.

3. Repeat customers

Many small businesses spend almost everything on winning new customers. They spend very little on keeping them. A good fractional CMO will look at email, loyalty and repeat purchases. Each extra repeat sale costs far less than a new customer.

Add up the realistic gains in these three areas. Then compare them with the fee. If the gains are clearly bigger, it is worth it.

When a fractional CMO is not worth it

Being honest about this saves you money. A fractional CMO is probably not worth it if:

• You spend very little on marketing. If there is little spend to fix, there is little to gain. A one-off audit or some coaching may be enough.
• You haven’t proven people want your product. Marketing can’t fix a product that isn’t selling for other reasons.
• You need hands, not strategy. If you already know what works and just need more output, an agency or a freelancer is better value.
• You won’t act on the advice. A plan you don’t carry out is wasted money.

If any of these apply, start smaller. A structured audit or a few coaching sessions will tell you where you stand for far less.

What you should expect in the first 90 days

A good fractional CMO should give you clear progress within 90 days. Expect this:

• First 30 days: an audit of your marketing, your data and your spend. Quick fixes to obvious waste and tracking gaps.
• Days 30 to 60: a plan ranked by commercial impact. Clear targets for new customers, conversion and retention.
• Days 60 to 90: the first changes in place, with numbers you can track.

If after 90 days you can’t see what has changed and why, ask hard questions.

How to measure the return

Don’t judge a fractional CMO on clicks or impressions. Judge them on numbers that touch your profit:

• Customer acquisition cost: what it costs you to win each new customer.
• Contribution margin: what each sale leaves you after product, delivery and ad costs.
• Payback period: how long it takes for a customer to repay what you spent to win them.
• Repeat purchase rate: how many customers come back.

Agree these numbers at the start. Then you can see the return in pounds, not opinions.

How to choose the right one

Ask these questions before you hire:

• Have you worked hands on in the channels you will oversee?
• How will you measure your own impact?
• What will you do in the first 30 days?
• Will you tell me if I don’t need you?

The last question matters most. A good fractional CMO will tell you when you need an agency, a full-time hire or nothing at all. If you are unsure which option fits, read our guide to choosing between a fractional CMO, a growth agency or a full-time hire.

The bottom line

A fractional CMO is worth it when you have real marketing spend, real waste or missed sales, and the will to act. In that case, the return can be many times the fee.

If you are not sure where you stand, take the free marketing score. It is 35 yes/no questions, takes 10 minutes and shows where your marketing is losing money. Or book a discovery call. I will tell you honestly whether a fractional CMO is worth it for your business, even if the answer is no.

Each option suits a different stage. Pick the wrong one and you lose more than the fee. You lose six to twelve months.

I have spent 16 years in marketing, with brands from Harrods and Aviva to small founder-led firms. I now work as a fractional CMO. Here is how I would make the call if it were my money.

The short answer

• Hire a growth agency when you already know what works and need more hands to run it.
• Hire a fractional CMO when you don’t yet know what works, or your agency is busy but your profit isn’t growing.
• Hire full-time when marketing is proven, spend is large, and you need someone in the building every day.

Most founders get the order wrong. They hire an agency first, before anyone has set the strategy. The agency then runs whatever it is best at. That is rarely what the business needs most.

What each option really costs

Here are typical costs. They vary by market and scope, so treat them as a guide, not a quote.

Sources: Payscale UK CMO salary data, 2026. Rework growth salary guide, mid-2026. Stackmatix startup agency pricing guide, 2026.

But the fee is not the real cost. The real cost is what happens to your ad spend and your time while you get it wrong.

How they compare

No option wins on every line. That is the point. You choose based on what is missing right now.

When a growth agency is the right choice

An agency is a good choice when three things are true.

1. You know which channels make you money.
2. You have someone in house who can brief the agency and judge its work.
3. You need more output, not more thinking.

If all three are true, an agency gives you a trained team for less than the cost of hiring one.

The risk comes when one of those is missing. Agencies are paid to run channels. They are rarely paid to tell you a channel isn’t worth it. If no one senior checks their work, you end up judging them on clicks, leads and ROAS. Those numbers can look healthy while your profit shrinks.

When a fractional CMO is the right choice

A fractional CMO fits when you need judgement more than hands. These are the signs:

• You spend on ads but can’t say which campaigns make a profit.
• Your agency reports good numbers, but your bank balance doesn’t agree.
• Your cost to win a customer keeps rising.
• You are about to raise money or scale spend, and you want the basics right first.
• You are making every marketing decision yourself, by gut feel.

A good fractional CMO sets the strategy, picks the channels, holds agencies to account and builds the reporting. They also help you decide who to hire, and when. Wondering if it pays back? Read is a fractional CMO worth it for a small business.

The trade-off is time. A fractional CMO is not in every meeting. If you need someone to manage a team of ten every day, fractional won’t be enough.

When to hire full-time

Hire a full-time head of marketing when:

• You know your best channels and your numbers.
• You spend enough on marketing that daily oversight pays for itself.
• You need someone to build and lead a team in house.

The biggest risk is hiring too early. A full-time leader hired before the strategy is clear often spends their first six months working out what to do. You pay a full salary for that learning.

There is a second risk. Hiring a strong marketing leader is hard if no one in the business can judge one. Founders often hire the best interviewee, not the best operator.

The order that works

For most founders in this range, this order works best:

1. Get a fractional CMO or an independent audit first. Find out what works, what doesn’t and where money leaks.
2. Use agencies for the channels that work. Brief them with clear commercial targets, not just clicks.
3. Hire full-time once the model is proven. Your fractional CMO can help write the role and judge the candidates.

This order cuts your risk at each step. You don’t pay a full salary to work out the strategy. And you don’t pay an agency to scale a channel that loses money.

What about a growth pod?

A growth pod is a small team of specialists, often a strategist, a media buyer and a designer, sold as one package. It sits between an agency and a fractional CMO.

Pods can work well if you already know your strategy and need fast testing. But check who sets the strategy and who answers for profit. If the answer is no one, you have an agency with a new name.

Questions to ask before you choose

Ask these questions of any option you consider:

• Will this person or team answer for profit, or just for channel numbers?
• Have they worked hands on in the channels they will oversee?
• Have they seen your problem in other businesses and sectors?
• Will they tell you when a channel isn’t worth the money?
• What happens in the first 30 days?

If the answers are vague, keep looking.

The bottom line

Don’t ask which option is best. Ask what is missing right now.

If you are missing strategy, hire senior judgement first. If you are missing hands, hire an agency. If you are missing daily leadership for a proven model, hire full-time.

Not sure which one you need? Take the free marketing score. It is 35 yes/no questions, takes 10 minutes and shows where your marketing is losing money. Or book a discovery call and I will tell you honestly which option fits your stage, even if it isn’t me.

Most Google Ads audits for DTC ecommerce brands only look at half the picture because they focus on pre-click Google ads audit alone. They check the Google ad account: targeting, bids, keywords and ads. PPC agencies and consultants sell Google ads audit as a full audit, but it focuses on Google ads platforms and stops the moment a shopper clicks on shopping ads, what happen afterwards is ignored.

This article covers the other half. A post-click Google audit looks at what happens after someone taps your Google shopping ads, and why so many ad clicks to ecommerce website never converts to sales and profit growth.

Founders often show me Google Ads dashboards with strong return on ad spend (ROAS) and a healthy cost per acquisition (CPA). Then they tell me the numbers do not show up in the bank account. Revenue and profit are not growing. In most cases, nobody has audited what happens after the click.

What is a post-click Google Ads audit?

A post-click Google Ads audit reviews every step a shopper takes after clicking your ad. It covers six areas:

• The landing page and the first impression it gives.
• Your offer and value proposition.
• The trust signals that encourage or put off a buyer.
• The basket, and anything that makes people drop off there.
• The checkout flow, and what makes people leave.
• Your conversion tracking, and whether you can trust the numbers.

The goal is for the clicks you pay Google for to turn into profit, not just traffic.

Why post click fixes can halve your cost per order

Here is a simple example with the same budget and the same traffic.

Double the conversion rate and you halve the cost of each order. You have not spent a penny more on ads. That saving goes straight to your profit margin.

This is why the post click audit should be its own piece of work. Most Google Ads agencies do not have deep CRO skills. Most CRO agencies do not run Google Ads. You need someone who understands both sides of the click.

How Google rewards a good landing page

Google gives every keyword a Quality Score. It has three parts: expected click through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. A page that matches the search and loads fast earns a better score. A better score can mean a better ad position for a lower cost per click. A poor page does the opposite and makes every click more expensive.

The 7 part post click Google Ads audit

I break the audit into seven parts:

• Page type.
• Intent match.
• Speed and mobile.
• Above the fold.
• Offer and price.
• Trust and objections.
• Page flow and measurement.

1. Page type: send each search to the right page

Different searches need different pages.

People who search your brand name are often past customers or people who already know you. Send them to the homepage, and make sure your best sellers sit at the top. If they want something specific, they will search for it.

Someone searching a category, such as reed diffuser, wants to compare options. Send them to a category page with your best seller near the top.

Someone searching a product by name is ready to buy. Shopping campaigns are built for this, because they take the shopper straight to the product page. I often see ecommerce stores rely on search campaign setups designed for lead generation. Search campaigns can work for ecommerce, but Shopping should be your default for product searches.

Some searchers still need education before they buy. They behave more like Meta traffic. Send them to an advertorial, a listicle or a quiz. I cover these pages in my post click Meta ads audit.

2. Intent match: make the page answer the search

Say someone searches “reed diffuser gift set”. They expect an ad that says reed diffuser gift set. They expect the page to say it too, in the headline, with gift sets on show.

If your ad also promises free UK delivery, the page should repeat it. When shoppers see a free delivery threshold, many add more to their basket to reach it. That lifts your average order value (AOV).

The problem comes when that shopper lands on your homepage instead. They have to hunt for gift sets. Many will not bother. You paid for the click and lost the sale, which pushes up your CAC.

Do this today:

• Open the search terms report in Google Ads and export it.
• Sort by spend and find the search terms that cost you the most.
• Check the conversions and sales each one brings in.
• Open the landing page each one leads to. Does the headline match the search?
• Check that the offer from the ad is visible on the page.
• Check that the product they searched for is the product they see.
• Check that reviews, price and a clear call to action all show without scrolling.

Look at this by channel, not as a blended site average. CRO teams often report one conversion rate for the whole site, mixing SEO, email and paid traffic. That hides how your Google Ads traffic performs. Google Ads is often your most expensive channel, because you pay for every visit, so it deserves its own numbers.

3. Speed and mobile: win the first three seconds

Speed decides whether the shopper sees your page at all. Two well known studies show the cost of a slow page:

• Google found that 53% of mobile visits are abandoned when a page takes longer than three seconds to load.
• Deloitte’s “Milliseconds Make Millions” study found that a 0.1 second faster mobile site lifted retail conversion rates by 8.4%.

Ignore page speed and you can lose half your Google Ads traffic before it sees a product.

Most Google Ads traffic is now mobile. Yet most web developers, agencies and in house teams build and review pages on a desktop. Judge every page on a phone instead.

• Can shoppers see your main button without scrolling?
• Is the button full width on mobile? On desktop it sits to one side. On a phone it should stretch across the screen.
• When shoppers scroll halfway down the page, can they still see a button? If not, add a sticky button that stays on screen.
• How fast does the page load on a weak signal? Shoppers buy from cars, shops and cafés, not just home WiFi. Test with a throttled connection in Chrome DevTools or Google PageSpeed Insights.

4. Above the fold: what shoppers see first

Above the fold means what shoppers see before they scroll. Check these seven things.

The announcement bar. This is the thin bar at the top of every page. Use it to build trust, with messages such as free delivery, easy returns or your review score. Keep it on every page, not just the homepage. Do not fill it with “50% off” banners. That trains shoppers to expect discounts and wait for them, so full price products start to look overpriced.

The headline. Do not just use the product name. Add the value. “Reed diffuser” says little. “Reed diffuser that lasts 12 weeks” tells the shopper what they get.

Reviews. Show your star rating and review count before the shopper scrolls, on every key page.

Benefits, not features. Founders love to list features. I do it too with my own store. Shoppers buy outcomes. Lead with what the product does for them.

A high contrast button. There is always a tension between staying on brand and converting. Your call to action button should stand out from everything else on the page. You do not need to test button colours. It just needs to be the most obvious thing to tap.

Honest urgency. “Order before 5pm for next day delivery” is real urgency. It helps the shopper. “Only 2 left” or “almost sold out” when it is not true can backfire. In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority has taken action against fake countdown timers and pressure selling.

Real images. AI can create striking images fast. But your main product images should start with real photography. Use AI to edit and extend them, not to invent them. Use five to seven images per product. The first two or three get the most views, so make them your best. Add short text to images too, because many shoppers look at pictures and skip the words.

Here is how I apply benefits over features to my own home fragrance brand:

These details look small. Together they nudge shoppers towards buying.

Write in plain English too. Aim for copy a 12 year old could read easily. Fancy words only speak to part of your market, and the person who buys is not always the person who uses the product. Formal language may suit a B2B website. For ecommerce, keep it conversational.

5. Offer and price: aim for profit, not conversion rate

Conversion rate is not the goal of your store. Profit is. This is why I warn founders about hiring a CRO agency for this work. Many focus on conversion rate and lose sight of revenue and margin.

Here is an A/B test example:

Page A converts better. Page B makes 25% more money from every visitor. Page B wins.

You can push any store’s conversion rate up with huge discounts. You will also wreck your margin. So judge every change on average order value, revenue per visitor and profit margin.

Use price anchoring to lift average order value:

• Offer two or three price options, not five or six.
• Make the option you want people to choose the most prominent, with a larger font and a distinct style.
• Place reviews next to it. Price is a friction point, and social proof reduces it.

6. Trust and objections: answer every doubt

Trust is more than a padlock icon or payment logos on your Shopify or WooCommerce store. Trust also comes from:

• How many customers have bought from you.
• Where and how you make your product.
• Answers to the questions shoppers actually ask.

Every unanswered question chips away at trust. Build your FAQs from real customer questions, not the ones you wish they asked. Think about what a first time buyer worries about, and what a customer with doubts thinks before buying again.

Delivery and returns come up every time. Amazon has raised everyone’s expectations. Shoppers want fast delivery and free, easy returns. Show a short summary on every product page, every category page and the homepage. Do not make them hunt for it.

Tell shoppers how your product is made, too. You do not need to be political. Just show the steps you take to reduce your environmental impact.

Reviews. Not every brand needs them. Some luxury brands leave reviews off on purpose. Rolex does not need reviews on its website, because its brand does the job. If you are a growing DTC brand without that reputation yet, reviews are a must.

• Use real photos of the product in use. Customers do not need to show their faces.
• Show a first name and an initial, not a full name. More customers will agree to leave a review.
• Pick reviews that describe the outcome, not just “great product”.
• Aim for a genuine score in the mid to high 4s. Northwestern University’s Spiegel Research Center studied this with PowerReviews. Purchase likelihood peaked for products rated 4.2 to 4.5 stars. A perfect 5.0 can look too good to be true. If your score sits well below 4, fix the product or the experience first.

User generated content works best when it is real. Shoppers can spot a paid review. You can offer a discount on a future order in return for an honest review, but never pay for praise. In the UK, fake reviews are now illegal under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.

Add a comparison table. Show how your product compares with “other brands” without naming them. Name a competitor and you hand shoppers a brand to go and look up, and they may not come back. Keep every claim true. The table saves shoppers from leaving to compare products themselves.

Add your FAQs to every key commercial page, along with any offer you are running.

7. Page flow and measurement: give each channel its own path

Ask whether organic, Google Ads, Meta and TikTok traffic each get the journey they need. Or does every visitor go through one generic flow?

You can test this. When you run A/B tests, split the results by traffic source. Test the flow for organic visitors separately from paid visitors. That is funnel testing, and it shows what works for each channel.

Ask your customers what stopped them

The best post click insight comes from your customers.

• Add an exit survey that asks visitors who are about to leave: what stopped you buying today?
• Ask new customers after purchase: what made you choose us over other brands? Leave it open ended.
• Ask what was hard to find and whether the product page was clear.
• Ask what they did not like.

Only around 10 in every 100 or 200 visitors may answer. That is enough. Patterns appear quickly, and they give you your next A/B tests.

Do not copy other stores blindly. I have seen DTC brands copy the design of a fast growing competitor without knowing why it worked. One well known brand grew for two years on venture capital funding and acquired customers at a loss. Copy them and you copy their losses too. Your own customers will tell you what to fix.

Post click Google Ads audit checklist

Answer yes or no to each question:

• Do you have separate landing pages for brand searches, category searches and product searches?
• Do you measure Google Ads conversions separately from email, SEO and direct traffic?
• Does each ad match the headline and offer on its landing page?
• Do Google Ads, SEO and Meta ads send traffic to different pages built for their intent?
• Does Google Shopping traffic land on the exact product the shopper clicked?
• Does your store load fast on mobile, even on a weak signal?
• Is your price framed with a clear anchor and a strong offer?
• Is your value proposition clear in the headline?
• Do you answer payment, delivery and returns questions on every key page?
• Do you test journeys separately by traffic source?

If you answered no to several of these, your Google Ads budget is leaking after the click.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a pre click and a post click Google Ads audit?

A pre click audit reviews the ad account: targeting, keywords, bids and ads. A post click audit reviews what happens after the click: landing page, offer, trust, basket, checkout and tracking. You need both to know whether your ads make a profit.

Why does my Google Ads ROAS look good when profit is not growing?

There are three common causes. Tracking may over count sales. Discounts may drive sales that hurt margin. Or blended reports may hide how each channel performs. A post click audit checks all three.

Where should Google Ads send ecommerce shoppers?

Send brand searches to the homepage and category searches to a category page. Send product searches to the product page through Shopping ads. Early research searches suit an advertorial, listicle or quiz page.

How does page speed affect Google Ads?

Google found that 53% of mobile visits are abandoned if a page takes longer than three seconds to load. Slow pages also hurt landing page experience, one of the three parts of Quality Score.

Should I optimise for conversion rate or revenue per visitor?

Revenue per visitor and profit. A page with a lower conversion rate can still make more money if it lifts average order value.

Book a post click Google Ads audit

I am Femi Olajiga, a growth marketing consultant with more than 16 years in performance marketing for brands such as Harrods, Avis and New Look. I am also building my own DTC home fragrance brand, so I test these ideas on my own money too. I help DTC founders lower customer acquisition cost and grow profit from the traffic they already pay for.

Book a free 30 minute consultation through cxconversion.com. I will review your post click journey, and I can add a pre click review of your account so you get a full Google Ads audit. My recommendations are aimed at raising profit by at least 20%.

Most Meta ads audits stop at the ad account level and ignores the post-click landing page and checkout funnel. Meta ads agencies focus only on check targeting, creative and bids, and very few look at what happens after someone click or taps your Facebook and Instagram paid ad. That gap between pre-click and post-click meta ads audit results in wasted Meta ads budgets and costs DTC founders in potential website conversions and sales.

In 2017, Facebook said that as many as 40% of website visitors leave a site after three seconds of delay. So if your landing page is slow, or it breaks the story your Meta ad started, a big share of the Meta ads clicks you pay for never converts to ecommerce sales.

If you spend £100,000 a year on your Meta ads, you may not have a Meta ads problem but a post-click Meta ads problem.

What is a post click Meta ads audit?

A post click Meta ads audit checks everything a potential customers sees after they click or tap your Facebook or Instagram ad. It covers page speed, ad to landing page match, page intent type, mobile layout, trust signals and the checkout. The goal is simple. Turn more of the clicks you already pay for into profitable orders, without raising your ad budget.

Why Meta traffic needs a different landing page to Google traffic

Picture a potential customer on Instagram. They are scrolling, watching funny videos and then your ad stops them. They are curious, so they click or tap, Meta opens your page in its in app browser, and they land on your product page.

That person was not looking for you but you interrupted them. Their first thought is: why should I care about this product?

Google ads is different. Someone searching on Google shopping is already asking: is this product right for me? Many of them have a very high purchase intent and have their credit card details ready.

Most DTC ecommerce founders send Meta ads traffic, Google ads traffic and organic search traffic to the same product landing page. That is three different intent levels and customer mindsets landing on a single landing page. It rarely works and causes a lot of ecommerce sales issues.

Meta ads reaches shoppers earlier in the buying journey

Eugene Schwartz, a famous copywriter, split buyers into five stages of awareness in his book Breakthrough Advertising:

• Unaware: they do not know they have the problem.
• Problem aware: they know the problem but not the fix.
• Solution aware: they know fixes exist but not your product.
• Product aware: they know your product but are not sure yet.
• Most aware: they know your product and just need a reason to buy now.

Meta ads mostly reach the first three groups. Google Ads mostly catch the last two. Google shoppers need you to sell quickly. Meta shoppers need you to warm them up first. They need to understand the problem your product solves and see how it works, fast. Send a cold Meta ad visitor straight to a product page and you waste the click and lose ecommerce website sales.

How much a slow landing page costs you

Here is an example. Say your Meta ads drive 6,250 link clicks.

The arrival rates come from my own client work and the 2% conversion rate is for illustration. The point is the maths. Same budget, same ads, same conversion rate. The fast page wins about 20 more orders and cuts cost per order by about a fifth, purely because more people reached it.

Fewer people arriving means fewer orders and a higher customer acquisition cost (CAC). So the first question in any post click audit is this. Of the people who click, how many actually land on the ecommerce landing page?

The 6 step post click Meta ads audit

I break the audit into six steps:

• Meta ad click to page drop off.
• Things that make visitors leave.
• Ad to page match.
• The right page for each audience.
• Mobile experience.
• Trust and checkout friction.

Step 1. Measure your click to page drop off

Imagine 100 people click your Meta ad. Here is a typical journey I see in DTC audits:

You lose 28 people before the page even loads. That is why so many ecommerce stores sit below a 2% conversion rate. To check your own numbers, compare link clicks with landing page views in Meta Ads Manager. A big gap points to a slow or broken page.

This is mostly a technical problem, and it often falls between two skills. Meta ads specialists rarely have a technical web background. Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) specialists rarely handle site speed either. That usually sits with SEO. Some agencies say they cover it, then quietly outsource it. You need someone who understands paid media, landing pages and technical ecommerce website speed, that person is Femi Olajiga (Growth Marketing Consultant).

Most of the waste in ecommerce sits between the product page, the basket and the checkout. That is true whether the traffic comes from Meta, Google or organic search. Fix those steps and every channel gets cheaper.

Step 2. Remove the things that make visitors leave

Meta ads rewards fast, relevant pages. It also judges your page by what people do when they land. Check for these common leaks:

• Slow load times. Test your Meta landing pages on a phone, not a desktop.
• Discount pop ups shown to strangers. A 10% off pop up for someone who has never heard of you looks desperate. Most people close it, and some leave. You started the visit by annoying them.
• Thin product pages. A page with one photo and three lines of text cannot convince a cold visitor.
• Broken promises. The ad offers a discount or a bundle, and the page does not show it.
• Out of stock products. You paid Meta for the click. The shopper finds nothing to buy.
• The wrong page. A buy one get one free ad that lands on a general category page.

Pop ups are not always wrong. But ask whether a cold Meta ads visitor, who was not thinking about your product five seconds ago, needs to see a pop-up before they even know anything about the product you are trying to sell to them?

Step 3. Make the landing page match the ad

Say your Meta ad shows a “hallway that smells of dog“. The users that sees your Meta ads owns a dog. They worry about the smell when guests arrive. They click or tap on your ads and they expect your website landing page to continue that creative messaging they say in your Meta ad. They want to see a dog, a fresh hallway and the product that fixes the smell, plus the offer from your Meta ad. If they land on a category page with 20 products instead, the story breaks and they leave.

For every Meta ad, check that the landing page repeats the same problem, the same visual and the same offer. If a shopper has to work out why they are on the page, you have lost them despite the fact that you paid for the click that got them to your landing page from Meta ads.

Step 4. Send each audience to the right type of page

Meta audiences come in three temperatures. Each one needs a different page.

Cold visitors need a pre sell page. An advertorial reads like an editorial article with a strong headline. It explains the problem and how your product solves it. A listicle is a short, scannable list of reasons to choose your product. A quiz asks a few questions and recommends the right product for the shopper’s problem, so they do not have to browse.

Warm visitors already know the category. Some may have had a bad experience with a competitor, or even with you. They do not need the full education. A sales page or a founder story page that answers their doubts works better.

Hot visitors have bought before. Send them straight to a product page. A bundle or a repeat order offer can give them an extra reason to buy again.

Most DTC stores only have product pages, and send Meta, Google and organic traffic to all of them. Building advertorials, listicles and quizzes takes CRO skills that most Meta ads managers do not have. Most CRO specialists, in turn, do not run Meta ads. That gap is why so many brands never test these pages.

Step 5. Fix the mobile experience

Almost all Meta traffic is mobile, so judge every page on a phone. Check these points:

• No pop ups that cover the screen on mobile.
• Buttons placed where a thumb can reach them easily.
• One clear call to action, not three or four buttons crowded together.
• Express checkout for returning customers, so they can buy in one tap.

Step 6. Build trust and remove checkout surprises

Cold and warm visitors do not know you. They cannot touch your product. Your page has to do the job a shop assistant would do.

Build trust with:

• A short video of the product in use, or an unboxing video.
• Customer reviews placed next to your main buttons, not buried at the bottom.
• Third party reviews that shoppers can check for themselves.
• Clear payment security signals.

Then remove surprises at checkout. Baymard Institute asked shoppers why they abandoned a checkout. 39% said extra costs, such as delivery and taxes. Another 19% left because the site forced them to create an account.

• Show exact delivery dates. Say “order before 4pm for delivery tomorrow”, not “3 to 5 working days”.
• Offer express payment options such as Apple Pay and PayPal.
• Offer guest checkout. Get the sale first. Invite people to create an account in the follow up email.
• Show whether prices include VAT on the product page, so the total never changes at checkout.

Build an A/B testing roadmap

Once the audit is done, test what you are unsure about. Test page types for each audience. Try advertorials, listicles and quizzes for cold traffic. Use sales pages for warm traffic and product pages for hot traffic.

I recently ran this process with a client. We tested different landing pages with different offers, and the results varied a lot between them. Within a few rounds we found the angle and the page that converted Meta traffic best. You will not know which page wins for your brand until you test it.

Judge each test on revenue per visitor and profit, not just conversion rate. A big discount can lift conversion rate while it quietly wipes out your margin.

What to do this week

• List every landing page your Meta ads send traffic to, and label each one cold, warm or hot.
• Open the Meta Ad Library and study competitors in your category. Note their hooks, images, offers and the pages they send people to.
• Compare link clicks with landing page views for your top campaigns.
• Add a post purchase survey if you do not have one. Ask new customers what nearly stopped them buying.

Frequently asked questions

What is a post click Meta ads audit?

It is a review of everything that happens after someone taps your Facebook or Instagram ad. It checks page speed, ad to page match, page type, mobile layout, trust signals and checkout friction. The aim is to turn more paid clicks into profitable orders.

Why are my Meta ads getting clicks but no sales?

The most common causes are a slow page, a page that does not match the ad, and sending cold traffic to a product page. Shoppers from Meta often need more explanation and proof than shoppers from Google before they buy.

Should Meta ads go straight to a product page?

Only for warm or hot audiences, such as past customers or recent visitors. Cold audiences usually convert better on a pre sell page such as an advertorial, a listicle or a quiz.

What is the best landing page for cold Meta traffic?

An advertorial, a listicle or a quiz. Each one explains the problem and the product before asking for the sale. Test all three, because the winner varies by brand and offer.

How fast should a Meta ads landing page load?

Aim for under three seconds on a mobile connection. Facebook’s own figure is that up to 40% of visitors leave a site after three seconds of delay.

Book a post click Meta ads audit

I am Femi Olajiga, a growth marketing consultant. I have spent more than 16 years in performance marketing for brands such as Harrods, Bacardi and Timberland. I am also building my own DTC home fragrance brand. I help DTC founders cut wasted Meta ad spend by fixing what happens after the click.

Book a free 30 minute consultation through cxconversion.com. I will review your post click journey and give you clear recommendations aimed at raising profit by at least 20%. You can put them in place yourself, or we can work together. I usually work with clients for three to four months. I set your account and pages up for success, and you can book coaching sessions with me after that.

I’ll cover what I did on my first day, then what I did from day two to day five. Then I’ll cover the growth marketing audit and how we put it into action. Finally, I’ll share the lessons I learned.

On my first day, I focused on one thing: getting access. I sat in a room with the key stakeholders in this DTC ecommerce business. I made sure I got access to everything. Slow access to tools and marketing platforms delays results more than almost anything else. With larger clients, I have waited two or three weeks to get into Google Analytics and other key tools.

So if you’re a DTC founder bringing in an agency or a consultant, set up all their access from day one. In this case, I got access to Google Ads, Meta Ads, Google Analytics and all the external reporting platforms. I also got access to Search Console, and to both Google and Bing Merchant Center.

If you run an ecommerce store, make sure this access does not sit with your agency alone. I’ve seen many DTC founders who don’t have access to most of the tools I’ve listed. So ask yourself this. Do you have access to your Google Ads, your Meta Ads and your Google Analytics? Most importantly, do you have access to your Search Console?

Some founders don’t even know what Search Console is. We focus so much on performance marketing that we ignore it. Google Search Console tells you about the health of your website from Google’s point of view. Plenty of SEO tools will show you how your website performs. None of them gives you the truth the way Search Console does. As a DTC founder, you need to check it often.

If you run an ecommerce store, you also need to look at Google Merchant Center. It takes your product information and shows it to Google. If you run Google Shopping ads, your Merchant Center feed is what powers them. The same goes for Bing Merchant Center. Many businesses keep a close eye on Google Merchant Center, but they pay far less attention to Bing.

The next thing I got access to on day one was the heat map and session replay tool. This is a big part of how I helped add £250,000 per month in profit. I needed to understand how people behaved on the website.

Google Analytics tells you what happened. It shows which page people landed on and which channel sent them there. It doesn’t tell you why. A session replay tool records how customers move through your website. Many DTC stores have one, but they hardly ever look at it.

I used this tool to study visitor behaviour. I wanted to know how people came into the website and who they were. So I grouped the visitors I studied. I looked at first-time buyers. I looked at return buyers. I filtered for people on mobile and for people who came from organic search. It shows you how your customers move through your website.

I spent many days on this from the start. I looked at the problems on the website, what happened when people reached the cart and what they clicked on. This gives you rich detail on why an ecommerce store is not converting.

This tool is like a car. Everyone can drive a car, but some people are Formula One drivers. They are experts. The tool is good, but you still need someone who knows how to use it. The way I use a heat map and session replay tool will differ from how you use it as a founder. It will also differ from how your in-house marketing team uses it.

I also got access to the A/B testing tool on day one. There are many A/B testing platforms. Some are cheap and some are expensive. Some have AI features and some don’t. I spoke with the platform vendors too. When you use an A/B testing tool, talk to the vendor about the new features on the way. That keeps you on top of new ideas in the market. Finally, I got access to the email and SMS platforms.

So by the end of day one, I had access to everything I needed. Nothing was blocking me.

Day two was about understanding the customer. Many DTC founders make the same mistake. They want someone to come in and hand them solutions. Say you hire a consultant or an agency. If they offer solutions without asking about your customers, you have a problem. That person has an answer before they understand the problem.

Every business I’ve worked with is different. Every customer is different. Even on the same website, customers for each product behave differently. That’s why you need to understand your customer.

On my second day, I sat down and read the website end to end. This was one of the things that helped add £250,000 a month in profit. If you’re a DTC founder, ask yourself this. When did anyone in your team last read your website cover to cover? Has anyone ever done it?

As a founder, take the time to read your whole homepage and your product pages. You’ll be amazed at the problems you find. On many websites, I see product pages showing a 2.1 star review. You control your own website. You can remove that review. If someone lands on that page from a paid ad and sees a 2.1 star review, nothing else you say will make them buy. I see this a lot. So read your whole website as often as you can. It’s what makes you money. Why wouldn’t you read it?

Next, I spoke with the internal stakeholders and the back office team to find the best sellers. Many businesses spend heavily on products that bring in few sales. Each product on your website has its own cost per acquisition. The problem is that we group everything together. So from day two to day five, I found the best selling products and the products with very low sales.

Then I met with the fulfilment team and the customer service team. I wanted to learn about the problems with the products and how things had changed over the years. Working with DTC ecommerce brands over many years has taught me something. Not all the information you need is on the website. Not all of it sits with the CEO or the founder. And no one person in the business has it all. So I needed to talk to people across the business to find the hidden pockets of knowledge. I learned a lot from the fulfilment and customer service teams.

Then I studied the competitors. There were different types of competitor. I made sure I understood their prices, their positioning and their products. I looked at how their products appealed to customers. I compared them with my client’s products.

I also used AI to gather a large number of reviews. AI is useful when you want to understand customer behaviour outside your client’s website. But AI only shows you the patterns. It can’t always pick up the emotion. So you need to take the time to read those third-party reviews yourself. We know some people fake reviews. Some competitors even post negative reviews about you on third-party review sites. But there is still a treasure trove of insight into how customers feel.

All this work showed me three things. It showed me which best sellers I needed to convert better. It showed me which weak sellers I needed to understand. And it showed me how customers behaved. I learned what people complained about on review sites and read between the lines. I saw what the competitors did really well and what customers disliked about them. So I didn’t just analyse my client’s reviews. I analysed reviews for every company in the category.

The next step was the audit. An audit is about finding quick wins. First, I used Google Analytics to find every high-traffic landing page on the website. The homepage was one of the busiest pages. The sales page was another. Some product listing pages also had very high traffic. I added every page that received campaign traffic in the last 12 months.

I wanted to understand what the conversion rates of those pages were really telling us. I quickly saw that some pages had conversion rates of up to 15%. The conversion rate also changed with the seasons. When I dug deeper, I found other pages converting at less than 1%. So some pages converted at 12%, 13% or 15%. Others converted at 0.5%.

That showed me that not every page on the website is built equally. Not every page gets the same quality of traffic. Some pages got more paid traffic. Others got more organic traffic. These conversion rates showed me where the money was leaking.

I also analysed the revenue from each landing page over the last three, six and 12 months. That gave me a clear picture of which pages to fix for the biggest revenue gain. I also looked at the average order value for each landing page.

I went further with the conversion analysis. I looked at how people behaved on these pages on each day of the week. I tracked how conversion rates changed across the week. These pages bring traffic into the website. So I then looked at how each page fed into the rest of the funnel.

I see the same pattern everywhere. In ecommerce, the biggest drop-off is almost always the product page. Next comes the cart page, then sometimes the checkout. This helped me narrow down where I could find quick wins and grow profit.

On those pages, I also checked the share of new visitors and returning customers. I checked the average order value for each group. Then I broke down the conversion rate of each high-traffic page by channel. I did this in Google Analytics.

I can use Google Analytics this way not because I’m special. It’s because I used to be a Google Analytics certified expert. That training helps you understand what is working and what isn’t.

The session replays also showed me that the mobile navigation and site structure were weak. I found quick wins there too, and we used them to improve the website as a whole.

The audit also showed problems with the branding. I’ve seen many websites in my career, and I see the same problem every time. Brand marketing and performance marketing don’t work together. Brand marketing has drifted so far from performance marketing that few people value both. So with every client, I see the same thing. Founders often ignore brand because they don’t know how to link it to their ads. That was another finding from the audit.

I also found technical problems on the website. And the website was getting very little visibility in AI search. The audit revealed all of this.

The next step was putting it into action. First, I presented my findings to every team I worked with. That meant the stakeholders, the email team, the web team and the acquisition team. I showed them the problems on the homepage, the product pages, the cart page and the category pages. I showed them the big gap between the brand strategy and the performance marketing. I showed them the problems in Meta Ads, Google Ads and the organic channels. The aim was to explain the problems and the quick wins we could act on straight away. The email journey was also disconnected. The business had no dedicated email landing page.

This was in late 2025. The client is a big brand, and it has made real waves in the last 12 months.

I start the same way with every client. I work on the paid channels first and cut all the waste. This is where we got the most value. I’ve worked with clients where waste was burning 40% to 50% of their profit. That’s why I always start here. Google Ads, Meta Ads and even TikTok audits are where I always get the best results.

I completely rebuilt the Google Ads account. I added negative keywords to cut out the searches that wasted money, and I fixed the targeting. Some people clicking the ads were not ready to buy yet. I filtered every one of them out. More than 50% of the money we saved from paid waste went straight to profit.

Then I put strategies on the website that trigger the emotions that make people buy, and buy again.

I work hands-on with paid search. In agencies and in-house teams alike, paid search often gets handed to junior staff. They don’t always understand the psychology of online sales. They don’t know how to use words to trigger buying emotions. So I rolled up my sleeves and focused on improving the paid channel.

I also worked on the landing pages. The website was going through a redesign. It had new navigation and new categories, and there was a new product launch. We had no time to A/B test these changes, so we built them into the new website as it went live. I worked closely with the web team to get every new landing page right. I also worked closely with the UX team.

This was a global business. I focused on the UK market, so I worked with teams in other regions. I took lessons from the German market and others and used them to improve the UX of the website. That work played a big part in the profit growth.

After that, I A/B tested many high-value landing pages. Some saw conversion uplifts of up to 7%. Together, this work added £250,000 in extra profit per month for this client.

If you’re a DTC founder and you want me to walk you through this process for your business, this isn’t me just saying what I can do. If you’ve listened to this episode, you’ve seen that there is a process and a system. There are parts I didn’t cover today, and I can help you put them in place.

My name is Femi Olajiga. I help DTC ecommerce founders cut customer acquisition cost by 25% while growing profit by 20%. I do it by cutting waste, then scaling the paid ads that make money and bring in high-converting customers.

Book a 30-minute session with me https://calendly.com/femi-olajiga/new-meeting. I’ll walk you through the full growth marketing audit process I used to help this client add £250,000 a month in profit.

DTC founders are bringing growth marketing in-house to cut customer acquisition cost (CAC) and protect profit margins. Bringing your growth marketing team in-house is the fastest route to reducing CAC and increasing your profit margin. By default, agency fees increase with your paid ads spend. Having your own in-house growth marketing team with a fractional growth marketing consultant training and developing in-house skills and capability is the best route to reducing CAC long-term.

I have spent 16 years in growth marketing, with luxury ecommerce and in-store brands, as well as small DTC ecommerce brands. I also run my own Shopify ecommerce store. The patterns I experience is the same across 600k-page ecommerce websites and a 40-page DTC ecommerce founder led website. Founders can easily get blindsided by the increase in revenue, but behind the scenes, customer acquisition often eats heavily into profit margins. This then results in an increase in revenue which does not have any correlation with an increase in profit margins. There are a few factors to consider when trying to reduce your CAC and increase profit margins.

If you want one plan that ties every channel to profit, see how I build a DTC growth marketing strategy.

Agencies focus on marketing metrics like CPA and ROAS

In my experience most agencies report on less important metrics like return on ad spend (ROAS), reach, cost per click, cost per lead and cost per acquisition. Whilst these are important metrics to track campaign effectiveness, i.e. they show that the ads are working. They do not immediately connect to important commercial metrics, meaning they do not show that the business is making money from these campaigns or how much.

As a founder, you need to focus on two key commercial metrics:

1. Customer acquisition cost (CAC): what you pay to win any customer, and
2. New customer acquisition cost (nCAC): what you pay to win a new customer who has never bought from you before.

The gap between how much you spend on existing customers and new customers directly impacts your cost and profit margins. If your paid ads keep paying for existing customers who should normally come to you via organic traffic and email automation, that increases your overall cost. As a founder, I recommend structuring your growth marketing strategy on increasing the number of new customers acquired and redirecting spend on existing customers towards new customers to reduce waste and lower your overall CAC. As a founder, I want you to ask yourself one question: are your marketing analytics dashboards tracking nCAC and CAC?

Why is your CAC and nCAC always increasing?

Some things will be out of your control, while other things you are able to influence within the next one week. Paid ad platforms, like Google and Meta, are publicly traded companies that need to increase shareholder value in the form of dividend payments: one of the ways they do this is by increasing ads cost. WordStream studied 16,446 US search campaigns from April 2024 to March 2025 and discovered that the average cost per click rose by 12.88% in this period, with 87% of industries paying more. In my experience of reducing CAC for my clients, the following reasons sit behind every increase in the cost of customer acquisition:

1. Broad campaign targeting. Agencies assign less experienced executives to manage Ggoogle Ads accounts. Due to a general lack of experience and understanding of important commercial metrics, these individuals chase after traffic volume as opposed to quality acquisition. Volume looks good in a report, but if the traffic converts at a very low rate this will invariably increase your cost.
2. Paying for customers you already have. I recently audited a Google Ads campaign that was structured to acquire existing customer. These customers were funneled through branded Google Ads campaigns, which meant they clicked on Google Ads when they searched for my client’s website rather than clicking on the organic ads. I restructured the entire ad campaign and eliminated the wasted spend which created a £3,000 increase in daily profit for the DTC client. I also identified that the previous agency set up Bing ads pointing traffic to the homepage for product specific campaigns and this account was bleeding £400 per day. This wastage was ongoing for many months because nobody remembered to check and actively monitor the campaign. I switched off this leak, and this added extra £400 per day to the profit margin. Small step – big win.
3. Another reason why your CAC is increasing is due to agency obsession with putting inexperienced, junior account executives in charge of large accounts. Agencies pitch to clients with senior staff, whilst junior staff often run the account operationally. The worst case I have seen was a graduate with less than a year of work experience running several accounts, one of which spent about £120,000 a month. Don’t get me wrong – everybody needs to start somewhere, and there is nothing inherently wrong with junior agency staff learning on the job. The problem is that senior oversight of this work is often lacking rigour and consistency – this is something you should be looking out for as a client, to ensure your financial investment in this work is appropriately safeguarded.
4. Targeting cheap customers via inexpensive ad platforms. Some teams buy the cheapest clicks they can find and hope some convert. Cheap customers rarely stay, so you keep having to pay to replace them with new customers. At some point (at least theoretically) the well will run dry.
5. Some competitors have bigger budgets, and they can easily bid on your brand terms to steal your existing customers – the ones that type your brand terms into their search. This invariably increases your customer acquisition cost compared to competitors.

A profit led paid ads audit finds this waste in a DTC account.

Agency fees and retainers are variable costs

Most agencies charge retainers plus a percentage of your paid ad spend, which means your agency fees will inevitably increase as you scale paid ads and spend more. The same applies to your CRO, Email, TikTok and Meta ads agency fees.

The opposite happens with in-house growth marketing teams with fixed cost salaries. Your fixed cost salaries only increase with bonuses you approve, and these are usually linked to revenue and profit increases of your business. To get a bonus, each one of your team have to ensure they are hitting their targets. A fractional growth marketing consultant also works on a fixed fee. This is why so many founders are moving their growth marketing in-house with the support of fractional growth marking consultants like Femi Olajiga.

Accepting that paid ads are a rented channel

Most founders focus on performance marketing and heavily tilt towards Google and Meta ads, whilst at the same time neglecting organic channels and brand marketing. This inevitably increases customer acquisition costs in the long run.

As a founder, I recommend working with your team to understand your CAC and nCAC by marketing channel. Once you fully understand these costs you can structure your budget and marketing activities to focus on the most effective and efficient marketing channels from a profitability and LTV perspective. In my experience, organic channels are the best customer acquisition channels from a repeat purchase and overall profitability standpoint. Some paid channels are notorious with acquiring price sensitive and impulsive shoppers who often shop once and never return to purchase from you again. These customers never reach the lifetime value (LTV) or lifetime gross profit (LTGP) you need to make your marketing profitable.

Post-click impacts on your CAC and nCAC

Founders often ignore the post click experience that happens on websites, or they feel A/B testing is the best way to optimise post click journeys. I have seen CRO agencies who operate without a complete understanding of how platforms like Google, Bing and Meta ads work. This creates a misalignment between acquisition channels and landing page experiences.  As a founder, I recommend checking the conversion and exits rates of the following:

1. Your paid ads landing pages.
2. Your homepage.
3. Your product pages.
4. Your sales pages, listicles and advertorials.
5. Your blog.

Compare them. The weakest pages with the most paid traffic are where you need to test first.

Next, check your product images, your reviews and your trust signals. Then look at your value proposition and offers. I trained with MECLABS in 2012 on value proposition. This lesson has held up ever since: the strength of your offer has a direct effect on both CAC and nCAC.

Then check that each ad matches the page it sends people to. If your Meta ads, Google ads and organic traffic all land on the same page, this makes it impossible to align the landing page with acquisition channel intent. Also, check your abandoned cart and abandoned checkout emails. Many brands I have audited had none. When a shopper leaves your checkout, they often search again and buy from a rival. You paid for that visit. Your rival did not. Their CAC falls as yours rises.

Customer retention is the cheapest way to cut CAC and increase profit margins

The best way to lower CAC is to keep the customers you win. Aim for each new customer to buy from you three to four times in the next 12 months. Here is where to start:

1. Teach new buyers how to use what they bought: most post-purchase emails stop at thank you.
2. Use those emails to suggest the next right product, an upgrade or a subscription.
3. Set up your ads and email so part of the plan serves existing customers, but do not overspend on people who will return anyway.
4. Run win back campaigns for customers who have lapsed.
5. Reward referrals and test loyalty schemes and subscriptions. Referrals give you a cheaper route to new customers.

What bringing growth marketing in house looks like

Here is how I normally work with founders:

I join on a fixed fee for three to six months; I audit the accounts, find the quick wins and put them live.

I set up the campaigns and the tracking, then I train your team to run them.

If you want a longer retainer, it still costs less than an agency.

For one DTC brand, this cut CAC by 50%. It added as much as £3,000 a day in profit on top of what the company was already making.

The work covers more than paid ads. It links your marketing numbers to your commercial goals: CAC, nCAC, LTV and LTGP. Agencies often report on marketing metrics alone, and that gap is where profit leaks, never to be seen again.

Five questions to ask your agency this month

1. What is our CAC and our nCAC, by channel?
2. How much of our spend goes on customers who already buy from us?
3. Who runs our account each day, and how many years of experience do they have?
4. What is the conversion rate of each landing page that gets paid traffic?
5. What happens by email after someone abandons a cart, and after someone buys?

If your agency cannot answer these, you have a margin problem, not an ads problem.

The next step

Rising ad prices are out of your control. Waste, weak pages and poor retention are not. Bringing growth marketing in-house puts those levers back in your hands. It also turns a variable cost into a fixed one. I work with founders in the UK, the US, Canada and Australia. Book a 30-minute call with me and we will go through your data to identify where your CAC is leaking. You can then take the plan and run with it yourself, or we can work together over the medium to long term to make sure every pound or dollar you spend on your marketing is generating the absolute maximum return in your profit margin. The choice is yours. Book a 30-minutes Growth Marketing call with me: https://calendly.com/femi-olajiga/new-meeting

Do you have a written marketing plan? Many businesses don’t. And the ones that do often find it out of date within months. Search engines, social platforms and marketing tools change too fast for a plan written once a year.

SOSTAC is one of the best-known planning models in marketing. PR Smith created it in the 1990s. I studied it during my master’s in marketing and used it in my early consulting work. In 2018, I got in touch with PR Smith to share some concerns about the model. After we spoke, he sent me a signed copy of his book.

Here is my honest view. SOSTAC is a good base for a marketing plan. But it is academic. It was built for 1990s marketing, and it doesn’t match how marketing teams plan and work today. It is not Agile.

So in this guide, I walk you through SOSTAC step by step. Then I add the practical changes I use with clients to make it work in the real world.

What SOSTAC stands for

SOSTAC has six stages:

1. Situation analysis: where are we now?
2. Objectives: where do we want to be?
3. Strategy: how will we get there?
4. Tactics: which channels and tools will we use?
5. Action: who does what, and when?
6. Control: how will we know it is working?

How to set up your SOSTAC template

Keep it simple. Open a spreadsheet and create one tab for each stage.

This keeps your thinking in order. Each tab feeds the next.

Stage 1: Situation analysis

Situation analysis is what most teams now call an audit. Everything starts here.

The problem is how most businesses audit. A marketing leader asks for an SEO audit, a Google Ads audit, a content audit and an analytics audit. Each one is done on its own, by a different person or agency. The result is a broken plan, where no one sees how the channels affect each other.

Start with one full marketing audit instead. Every channel audit sits inside it, side by side. Then you can see how the channels depend on each other and where they help each other.

Your audit should answer these questions:

• How does each channel map to your customer journey?
• Where are you strong?
• Where are you weak?
• What opportunities are you missing?
• What threats could hurt you?

That is a SWOT analysis: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It should also tell you why new customers buy from you, and why some never buy again.

You need someone who understands SEO, Google Ads, content, conversion, analytics and customer experience to run it. Your channel teams may already do their own audits. But a marketing plan needs one joined-up view, not a stack of separate reports.

A real example

I spoke to a business that lost most of its customers during COVID. Lockdown changed how people lived, and the need for its product fell. Nearly five years later, it still hasn’t recovered. It went into administration and was bought by a venture capital firm.

I asked them two questions. Who is your ideal customer? How do you position yourself to them? They said they relied on their data to tell them.

That surprised me. The answer was all over the internet. Former customers had written in public about why they stopped buying. But the business never stepped back to do a proper SWOT. It kept doing the same things it did before COVID, and it is still struggling.

If you plan without a SWOT, you end up reacting to whatever your tools and tactics report. A SWOT shows you what makes you better than your rivals, and where customers struggle to buy from you.

Weaknesses

Your weaknesses link to the problems customers have when buying from you. Look at your messages, your offer, your website and the channels you use to reach people. If any of these make buying harder, that is a weakness.

Opportunities

Many businesses only track the first sale. That is a vanity view. A first purchase should be the start of the relationship, not the end. Ask what your customers will need next. If you ignore that, you miss your biggest opportunities.

Threats

Threats are not only competitors. A threat is anything that pulls customers away from buying from you.

Changes in technology are a good example. Search is changing fast. Google is moving from a search engine to an answer engine, and people now find answers in AI tools too. Many ecommerce businesses depend on paid ads to reach people ready to buy. If the way people search changes, that model is at risk.

This can be a good problem or a bad one. If you adapt early, it is an opportunity. If you don’t, it hurts you.

How to make your audit Agile

The fix is simple: audit more often.

Many teams don’t audit even once a year. Others do it every 12 months, just before budget talks. That is too slow.

Run your full marketing audit at least once a quarter. Things change all the time. New competitors arrive. Close substitutes try to take your market share.

Also, stop treating “audit” as a scary word. An audit is not a hunt for someone to blame. It simply asks four questions. What are we good at? Where are we weak? What are we missing? What are we exposed to?

Keep every channel audit in one shared document, even when things are going well. Then everyone involved can see how their channel affects the others.

Stage 2: Objectives

You have heard of SMART objectives. It is a cliché, but it matters. Every objective must link to your business vision, your profit, your revenue growth and your retention.

I have seen many businesses chase vanity metrics. These are numbers that feel good but don’t link to business goals. Set objectives in four areas instead.

Brand awareness

People don’t buy in a straight line. First, they don’t know they have a problem. Then they know the problem and look for solutions. Then they compare products and brands.

So ask yourself: what number shows that your brand makes the shortlist when people are ready to choose? How do you measure it? Put that in your plan.

New customers

I spoke to a business that priced well below its rivals. Its thinking was that it made most of its money after the first sale, so it didn’t need to match competitor prices. When I asked a few questions, I found it had no target for new customers at all.

So set a clear target for new customers each week, month, quarter and year. Allow for seasonal peaks and dips.

A new customer target is not the same as the number of sales. Some buyers will return the product or never come back. Plan for that.

Engagement and conversion

Set clear targets for how many people engage with you and how many go on to buy.

Your awareness and new customer targets should be split across all your channels. Some channels are better at building awareness than winning customers. That is why you need a joined-up plan.

Retention

This is the target most businesses forget. What share of your customers do you plan to keep?

If you put all your effort and budget into winning new customers, you end up on a hamster wheel. You keep running, but you never get ahead. Set a retention target and give it a budget.

Stage 3: Strategy

For me, strategy is about your offer. How are you building a value proposition that your best customers can’t ignore?

I asked a potential client a simple question. What is the split of people who buy from you? Men or women? What age? They said they had never looked.

So I asked more. Do you know what motivates your customers? Which offer works best for them? Who are your most valuable customers? They didn’t know.

These are the questions to answer:

• Who are your highest value customers?
• What are your one-time buyers worth?
• Which customers are driven by price?
• Which customers buy because they share your values and brand?

Most businesses get the bulk of their revenue from a small group of customers. If you don’t know who they are, you will spend your budget on customers who don’t help your profit.

In a previous role, we held sessions to define our customer groups. We knew which customers brought in most of the revenue and profit. Then we shaped everything around them: channels, messages and even the website.

You don’t target everyone. You target the groups that bring in most of your revenue and profit. People call this the 80/20 rule. Your split may be different, such as three groups of 30%, 30% and 40%. Once you know your groups, give each one the right offer.

Stage 4: Tactics

Most marketing plans are really just tactical plans. Often, the whole plan is paid ads. Paid search brings fast results, so everything else gets ignored.

SOSTAC makes you look at every tactic and channel. That includes:

• Paid search and paid social
• SEO, and now answer engines (often called generative engine optimisation, or GEO)
• Email marketing
• Social media
• Video on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram
• Events, direct mail and radio

Answer engines matter more each month. Many people want an answer, not a list of links. Once they get it, they leave. You may see your brand terms get lots of impressions but few clicks. That is a warning sign.

When you look at every channel, you start to ask better questions. How can email help customers before, during and after a purchase? What does social media do at each stage? You may realise all your effort is going into paid ads alone. Paid ads are good, but relying on one channel is risky.

Stage 5: Action

This is where most marketing plans fall apart.

PR Smith’s model treats this stage as change management. In practice, it fails because marketing works in silos. Each channel has its own expert, who rarely understands the other channels or how they link up.

Large businesses often have one agency for paid search, another for social media, another for SEO and another for digital PR. Each reports to a different head of department. The only time they connect is at the top.

You need two things to fix this.

First, a T-shaped marketing lead. That means someone with deep skill in one area and working knowledge of search, paid ads, direct marketing, email, analytics, UX and customer experience. They also need to be good at project management. That mix is rare.

Second, a shared system. I have worked in businesses where one tool showed every team’s work for the quarter. Each task linked to the company’s main goals. Everyone could see what was being done, why, and when.

Shared visibility shows which work is seasonal, what is finished and how it all links to revenue and profit.

Stage 6: Control

Control means tracking your KPIs, such as customer acquisition cost and customer lifetime value.

This is where SOSTAC shows its age. It puts control at the end. In real life, control starts on day one. It begins with your audit and runs all the way through. You check your numbers every month and change course as you go.

Where to start: one marketing audit

If you take one thing from this guide, make it this. Ask your team, agency or consultant for one marketing audit, not five separate ones.

Stop asking for an SEO audit, then a PPC audit, then a content audit. Ask for one audit that holds every channel in one document. It should show how much revenue each channel brings in.

Then set your baseline. Where are you now? From there, set your growth target for the next quarter and year, for example 5% a year.

That growth won’t happen by itself. You have to win customers from somewhere.

• In a growing market, create demand among people who don’t yet know they have the problem. Then teach them, convert them and keep them.
• In a crowded market, you grow by winning customers from your competitors. The way to do that is a better customer experience.

Get help with your marketing plan

I’m Femi Olajiga, a growth marketing consultant. If you want a marketing plan built for your business, start with a full marketing audit. Not an SEO audit or a PPC audit, but one audit that covers every channel. It links to your targets for revenue, new customers, conversion, retention and brand.

Not ready for that yet? Take the free marketing score first. It is 35 yes/no questions and takes 10 minutes.

Did you know that 84 % of them of customers, rely heavily on online review websites as well as recommendations from friends and family before they make an online purchase decision? They use this as a way to protect themselves from making the wrong decision. And in recent times, we’ve seen a trade war between China and America where we’ve seen on TikTok. Where Chinese Original Equipment Manufacturer have come out to highlight that more than 80 % of the luxury bags are actually produced in China and not in the Western countries like Italy, UK and USA, they claim luxury leather bags are manufactured in China and then exported or shipped to the Westerns countries  for them then to slap a Made in ITALY labels on it and that then charge very high prices. There is assumption that some bags that are sold for $34,000 are actually produced for $1,400.

I’m not going to mention any brand, but I’m just going to highlight that these has been relentless attack on the credibility of luxury brands which highlights the importance of online reputation management and how its impacts on e-commerce growth and website conversion. The agenda of this blog is broken down into four sections.

Reviews are one lever in a wider ecommerce growth strategy.

• What is online reputation management?
• The importance of online reputation management.
• How to protect your brand with online reputation management.
• The impact of online reputation management on your e-commerce conversions.

What is online reputation management.

Online reputation management is the process of you understanding the narrative around your brand. A lot of businesses do not online reputation management strategy in place so the first thing you need to do is monitor your online reputation across all platforms. Its extremely important that you know positive and negative narratives and conversations is happening about your brand in real time. Some organisations do not even know what review positive or negative that is being posted about their brand online on review websites like Trust-pilot. Some organisations are not even aware of video content that is being produced by disgruntled customers or ex employees or someone looking to negatively damage your brand reputation.

The best e-commerce strategy is to have systems in place to understand how search engine and social media platforms are interpreting your brand personality and image. This is not about SEO. This is about you understanding the narrative about your brand on search engines, the narrative about your brand on social media, the narrative about your brand on review websites and the narrative about your brand from customer feedback, word of mouth, which is difficult to measure and monitor. So online reputation is monitoring all this narrative. There are different tools that you can use to monitor that in real time. And I would encourage you if you don’t have that set up and you need help with setting up online reputation management, reach out to me and I’ll be happy to help you.

The next thing when it comes to online reputation management is how do you actually influence the online narrative? You have a way to monitor what is being said about you and you have a way to then create a counter argument, a counter narrative to clarify what is being said about your brand online. When I’m talking about online reputation management, it’s not really isolated to businesses alone.

There’s personal brand online reputation management and a different sector online reputation management. There’s online reputation management for financial services, for the government, for pharmaceuticals and different types of organization. This is really important because it would affect your business growth. It will affect your bottom line. I’m going to talk about that later on in this podcast. So now let’s look at, OK, you now look at influencing your brand narrative. I’m going to talk about how you’re going to do that later on as well. Online reputation management also means managing your brand mentions. I’ve talked about this in three phases, monitoring the narrative, influencing your brand narrative, and then managing those online reputation management. There two ways for you to manage your online reputation management.

There is one way where you have you are proactive about managing your online reputation management. And the other way is when you’re reactive. Let’s take the example of the luxury industry. They’ve been attacked severely on TikTok by Chinese artisan that claimed that 80 % of luxury products are produced in China. There is the reactive approach where luxury brands would then create content to counter and to clarify that narrative about the Chinese comments about luxury brands. But what are they doing at the time of this recording? Luxury brands are only denying that that is actually true. I have some products which you could class as luxury products, and I know for a fact that this product are produced in the UK.

How do I know this? Because I go to the factory shop to make the purchase for this product. I’m talking about shoes in particular. I’m not going to mention name of these brands, but I can confidently say that there are a few luxury brands here. I live in Northampton in the UK. Northampton is the shoe capital of the world. There a lot of shoe factories here in Northampton. So I know for a fact that top brands that are luxury brands are actually manufactured here in the UK. But the problem with this luxury brands that know that their products are not manufactured in China, but in the UK, they don’t have any strategy, any online reputation management strategy to protect themselves because the attack or I’m calling an attack because It’s not 100 % true that most of the luxury brands are produced in China.

So it’s like a general attack on the luxury industry and any e-commerce store that is classified at luxury in the West will be affected. So what I’m trying to say here is your online reputation management strategy, the reactive management strategy needs to respond if your luxury brand or even if in your e-commerce or your regular e-commerce store. When you have a narrative brewing online about your business, about your product, about your service, you can react to change and clarify that narrative. But if you do not have an online reputation management strategy or a consultant like myself to help you create that reactive strategy, that becomes a problem for you.

The next approach to online reputation management is what I call the proactive approach. I’ve worked with organizations in the past where they’re exclusively online reputation management agencies. And back then we had private clientele, high net worth individuals. I’m talking about billionaires here, not millionaires, where we create a strategy around protecting the personal brand.

as well as protecting clients in financial services. So these online reputation management proactive strategy is something that you create to make sure that your brand narrative, you are the one telling your brand story as opposed to someone selling that story. I’ll talk more about how you can do this in the next chapter, in the next section. So

Importance of online reputation management.

The attack by Chinese manufacturers on western luxury industry will impact on the trust and credibility of the major ecommerce brands as well as other premium brands that are not necessarily luxury products. The ripple effect will linger for a very long time because existing and aspirational luxury consumers now have that trust problem with those products, because whenever they’re trying to buy a product, they’re like, actually, is this product worth the price? So the importance of your online reputation management is you need to have a strategy in place to build to repair damaged trust for your product and your service.

Then another important thing from online reputation management perspective is its impact on trust and credibility. Online reputation management is important because a negative reputation would affect the trust of your customers towards your product, service and overall brand credibility. Online reputation management is also important because it will helps reduce the friction in the purchase decision making process. Every customer that comes to your ecommerce website or to your physical store location will need to go through a decision making process influenced by their perception of your brand based on online narratives. If in their purchase consideration stage, they find negative narratives about your brand, there’s damage to your credibility, which makes the purchase decision making process longer and a higher reluctance to buy from your store. But if they didn’t see those issues crop up, from online, then it will reduce the decision making process. Another thing you also need to look at is online reputation management is important because I’ve seen brands highlight the negative credibility of their competitors. Why are they doing this? It’s not really ethical, but I’ve seen brands do it where they accentuate those scandals of the competitor because that then increases your customer coming to you. So what I’m trying to say is when you ramp up or you highlight the negative narrative of your competitor and you can even mention it as part of your website content and even you ad creatives. Highlight what makes you different to your competitor by subtly highlighting the negative narrative about your competitors. So when your customer is making that decision, they’re able to see reasons to choose you over your competitors. It’s able to deter potential customers from buying from your competitor.

Then another importance of online reputation management is the importance for crisis management. I mentioned earlier on about the scandal where Chinese manufacturers were claiming that 80 % of the products, the luxury products are produced in China. If the luxury market, the luxury e-commerce store have had a crisis reputation management strategy in place to be proactive and prepare for any potential attack on their reputation, then they would have that strategy in place and that asset in place to roll it out. How do you plan for possible attack on your reputation and how do you know what and when such crisis will happy? It’s the same question you would ask when it comes to the real world. How does a country know that it’s going to be attacked by its enemies? They don’t, but that does not stop them from putting in place missile defence system and all type of defence counter terrorism, counter attack defence mechanism to protect the country. The same principle applies to e-commerce store. The same principle applies to businesses. You need to have a proactive defence mechanism for your online reputation. You need to anticipate what kind of reputation attack or damage are you prone to from a brand perspective. What skeletons do you have that might be discovers?

How do you plan to protect your brand? One issue that has happened over the years consistently as consumers have always questioned the sourcing of materials for products, consumers have been wary of the impact of products on the environment and slave labour being used in less developed countries to manufacture goods. People want ethical sourced product. So an e-commerce store that is proactive with the online reputation management knows that there is a potential and a possibility that their sustainability and their acquisition or product procurement process is open to online reputation attacks. These is why you need to consider creating an online reputation management strategy to protect yourself.

If luxury brands were proactive to the possibilities of reputation attacks by Chinese OEM, they would have been prepared with an online reputation strategy to counteract the negative narrative from Chinese OEM.  When you’re looking at crisis management, you need to map out potential areas where you anticipate attacks to your brand, where you’re prone to attack from a reputation perspective.

Then another thing you need to look at when it comes to online reputation management is you need to have a brand presence that is evergreen. Irrespective of reputation attacks, its important to build a strong brand equity overtime which makes your brand less prone to sudden reputation attacks. The strength of your brand will protect you from that attack. Lets look at the Chinese manufacturers attacking luxury brands reputation again. Luxury brands have by default always highlighted the existence of fake, counterfeit, duplicates and dupe replicas of their brand being produced in China. This narrative has been consistent across the board but no strategy was ready to counter the narrative from China at the time. People have always felt that, there’s always a fake of a luxury item. The luxury industry could easily ramp up that narrative to show that whatever the Chinese are saying about them producing 80 % of the product, there’s a truth to it because the 80 % that is produced is actually the problem that they’ve been talking about in the industry. It’s actually the duplicate, the counterfeit that is being produced. Then you then create a different narrative where people are like, hang on a minute, maybe there’s some doubt in this assertion narrative coming out of China about Luxury leather bags. Maybe those 80 % that is allegedly produced in China are duplicates and replicas of the original. Again, I don’t have enough information, but I’m just trying to help you understand that when it comes to online reputation management, you need to have a plan to protect your brand. How do you protect your brand?

How to protect your brand with online reputation management

The first thing you need to do is to set up online reputation tracking. You need to be able to track every good, bad and ugly mention of your brand online. You need to be able to track in real time every positive and negative review, every social media post, every news, every video upload, everything across all search engines about your brand. There’s some tools that would claim to be online reputation management tool, but what they’re actually doing is managing your Google My Business pages. That is not online reputation management. Online reputation management goes beyond managing your Google My Business page and your store location pages review monitoring and updating. You need to monitor all these brand narrative related activities online.

The number two things you need to do to protect your brand online is to bury negative assets and narratives. Bury negative review as quick as possible before they gather momentum to hurt or damage your brand perception from the perspective of new and existing customers. The negative review about your brand will be posted online and will potentially be picked up by search engine and it will rank on page one for your brand term across search engines. What you need to do as a business leader or owner is to make sure that you create enough cross platform assets online to dominate your online brand narrative. On review websites, you need to have someone in place to respond to those reviews, to respond to those negative feedbacks on review websites. You need to be authentic about how you do this.

You’re not just going to go about denying or deleting comments and things like that. You need to be able to answer those questions in a way where it shows that you are doing the best for your customers. What I’m trying to say is people do not expect you to have five star review across the board. If I go online to buy something and I see a brand or website that has just only five star review for me, that’s a red flag. What I want to see What most customers wants to see is your top three or five five-star reviews and then your top three worst reviews. Those worst reviews is to understand the negatives instances about your product or services and how  you responded to it. What I’m what I’m trying to look for and what the customer is trying to look for here is, is this toxic or dramatic customer? I mean, the customer that has too much drama that is difficult to satisfy, is it actually an authentic negative review? People can actually read between the lines and some brands make the mistake of posting and “manufacturing” positive reviews about themselves. That is counterproductive and I would encourage against that approach.

You also need to prepare a proactive crisis management plan, as I mentioned earlier on. So how does online reputation management impact your website conversion? First, a positive online reputation management, a positive online equity will attract new customer. We all hear about the best way to get new customers and the cheapest way to get new customers is through positive word of mouth. Positive word of mouth will attract new customers. It will also give you grand exposure and some of this positive review will come from even a third party voice. Other people that have heard good things about your product will be tempted to even create content that is then reaffirming what your customers have said. That’s where you have user generated content even on third party websites and another thing you need to understand with online reputation management is it influences the purchase decision from your branded keyword perspective. When you’re doing search engine optimisation and digital marketing, Google ads and even social media, there two types of keywords. There two types of phrases. There is the generic non branded keywords and then there’s the branded keyword. Your online reputation would positively increase the conversion of your branded keyword. If you have a bad reputation, it will then reduce the conversion of your branded keyword and even the traffic search for your branded keyword. Because when there is no word of mouth attracting people to your brand, then the search for your branded keyword will be lower.

Then another thing you need to understand, the impact of online reputation management goes beyond just keyword. It also affects your customer acquisition costs. The cost at which you are able to get a customer would drastically increase if you have a bad reputation. It will reduce if you have a very positive reputation. You also need to understand that your online reputation, your brand reputation based on how effective your online reputation management strategy is will impact customer loyalty. Loyalty is born out of your brand. When people have bought something from you after they’ve bought something for you, it’s pop. When people have bought something from you. after they’ve bought something from you, there’s a high chance that they might not have seen negative review or negative comments about you. That chances of them buying again from you reduces if they stumble across a negative review or negative feedback about your product or service after they’ve purchased. That repeat purchase will not happen. That repeat purchase will increasingly happen if what they hear about your brand after they’ve made that first purchase is all positive and positive and positive reaffirmation about your brand.

My name is Femi Olajiga. I’m a Growth Marketing Consultant. I have worked on online reputation management for high net worth individuals and I’ve worked on online reputation management for financial services, e-commerce brand and other types of organization. This ties in into a growth marketing strategy. So if you’re looking for someone to help you increase the conversion of your website, your e-commerce through online reputation management, reach out to me. One thing I always try to highlight across the board is conversion happens in the mind of your customer. Conversion does not happen on the website. The website is just a place for them to complete a purchase. Your physical store location is just a place for them to complete the purchase. If they’ve had negative reviews, negative impression about your brand, they will come to your website through Google ads, through paid advertising, and they will not buy. Why did they not buy? Because your online reputation management is not what it should be. So for luxury brands out there that have suffered from the news from Chinese claiming to have create a. So. So for luxury brands out there that have been affected by the Chinese manufacturers claiming to have been responsible for 80 % of the products, you need to have a good online reputation management strategy. You need someone that understands customer psychology, understand how that impacts brand. Reach out to me and I’ll be happy to help you. Thank you. Bye.

Did you know that most small businesses waste 40% of their SEO budgets on ineffective strategies? In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore how to intelligently allocate your SEO budget for both immediate impact and long-term success.

Understanding One-Time vs. Ongoing SEO Investments

Initial Situation Analysis

Before diving into SEO investments, it’s crucial to assess:

• Your organisation’s current position in the market
• Growth aspirations and business objectives
• Existing skill gaps and training requirements
• Domain authority compared to competitors

The Case for Long-Term SEO Investment

While paid advertising offers immediate results, it’s a “pay-to-play” model. SEO, on the other hand, is an investment that continues to deliver returns even when you’re not actively spending. Here’s why balancing both is crucial:

• Paid ads stop performing when you stop paying
• SEO provides consistent, steady traffic long-term
• An aggressive growth plan needs strong SEO backing

Smart SEO Budget Allocation Framework

Essential SEO Tools Investment

A fundamental part of your SEO budget should go toward essential tools for:

• Keyword research and tracking
• Content optimisation
• Technical SEO analysis
• Digital PR and link building
• Local SEO management
• Video and YouTube SEO

Training and Skill Development

Invest in:

• Leadership team SEO training
• Content team upskilling
• Technical website development team SEO education
• Generative Engine optimisation training

Making Your SEO Budget Agile

Performance Monitoring and Budget Adjustment

Key areas to track include:

• Technical SEO implementation results
• Keyword ranking progress
• Backlink quality and quantity
• Brand vs. non-brand term performance

Strategic Budget Allocation Tips

For optimal results:

• Focus on less competitive long-tail keywords initially
• Invest in high-intent informational queries
• Allocate resources to both SEO and GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation)
• Regularly review and adjust budget based on performance metrics

The Role of Agencies vs. In-House SEO

Choosing the Right SEO Partner

Consider these factors when selecting between agencies:

• Specialist SEO agencies often provide more focused expertise
• Smaller, dedicated agencies may offer more personalised service
• Ensure you maintain ownership of SEO tools and data
• Look for transparency in reporting and strategy

Emerging Trends: SEO + GEO

The future of SEO includes optimising for generative AI engines. Key considerations:

• Implement proper schema markup
• Focus on high-intent, long-tail keywords
• Create content that answers specific user queries
• Optimize for AI content discovery

Remember: SEO is a long-term investment that typically takes 6-12 months to show significant results. Plan your budget accordingly and stay committed to your strategy while remaining flexible enough to adapt to performance data.

Introduction: The Shifting Search Landscape

The search engine landscape is evolving rapidly, with traditional SEO facing new challenges from generative AI platforms. As organic traffic from conventional search engines declines, businesses need to adapt their strategies to embrace Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO).

Why Google’s Dominance is Being Challenged

• Multi-page clicking requirement for comprehensive information
• Difficulties in finding direct answers to specific queries
• Varying quality of organic search results
• Greater focus on paid advertising quality over organic results

The Rise of Generative Engine Optimisation AI Search Tools

Tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity are revolutionising how people search for information by offering:

• More direct and comprehensive answers
• Faster access to information
• Better quality results for specific queries
• Conversational interface for natural interactions

The New Approach to Keyword Strategy

Traditional SEO keyword strategies need to evolve for the Generative Engine Optimisation era. Here’s how:

The Four Pillars of Keyword Categories

• Informational keywords
• Navigational keywords
• Transactional keywords
• Commercial keywords

Long-tail Keywords: The Generative Engine Optimisation Advantage

Focus on high-intent, specific long-tail keywords that match the conversational nature of AI platforms. This approach offers:

• More targeted traffic
• Lower competition
• Better conversion potential
• Natural alignment with AI search patterns

The Importance of Authority in Generative Engine Optimisation

Authority in GEO differs from traditional SEO metrics:

New Authority Indicators

• Fresh, unique content perspective
• Clear, concise information delivery
• Quality over quantity in backlinks
• Presence on professional platforms (e.g., LinkedIn)

Content Quality Requirements

For effective GEO, content should be:

• Scannable and well-structured
• Direct and fluff-free
• Unique and innovative
• Regularly updated and refreshed

Brand Impact and Visibility

Your brand presence in the GEO landscape requires:

Technical Implementation

• Proper schema markup implementation
• Clear brand positioning in content
• Optimised homepage for direct traffic
• Strong navigation structure

Brand Optimisation Strategies

Focus on:

• Brand name clarity and recall
• Consistent brand messaging
• Quality brand mentions across platforms
• Strategic digital PR efforts

The Future of Search Marketing

As the search landscape continues to evolve, businesses must:

• Maintain strong foundational SEO practices
• Adapt to emerging AI search platforms
• Focus on content quality and uniqueness
• Optimise for both traditional and AI-driven search

Conclusion

The emergence of generative AI search tools marks a significant shift in search marketing. Success in this new era requires a balanced approach that combines traditional SEO fundamentals with innovative Generative Engine Optimisation strategies. Businesses that adapt quickly to this changing landscape will be better positioned to capture and convert traffic from both traditional search engines and AI-powered platforms.

Want to implement an effective SEO strategy that embraces both traditional and generative optimisation? Book a consultation to receive a comprehensive template and personalised guidance for your specific business needs.