Insights
Notes on websites, search, AI visibility and the systems that connect a business from the first call to the review. Most of it costs us money to publish, which is usually a sign it's worth reading.
What we found in 1,027 Australian trade video adsEvery trade video ad live in Australia on one day, and 42 of the oldest pulled apart frame by frame. There's a six-beat script under nearly all of them.
The job you didn't get asked to quoteYou can measure the jobs you lost. You can't measure the ones you were never asked about, and that's the number your website is actually moving.
What we found auditing 31 Australian trade businessesAbout two hundred findings across 31 businesses, every one checked by hand against the live site, ads and Google profile. The problems sat further down than the industry argues about, including further down than our own material assumes.
The jobs you don't want are the ones you're asking forAlmost every business has work it would rather not do, and almost none of them say so anywhere a customer can see. Your enquiry form is answering a question you'd answer differently on the phone.
The Foundational Marketing BlueprintThe entire system we set up for service businesses, written out in the order it happens, with nothing held back. Use it with us or without us.
If your agency is paid a percentage of your ad spend, read thisThe person advising you how much to spend is paid more when you spend more. That's not a conspiracy, it's the contract, and it quietly decides what advice you get.
A lead-count guarantee is a different product, not a worse one"Fifteen to thirty leads in thirty days or you don't pay" is a real offer and some businesses should take it. Here's what it optimises for, and what that costs you.
Why agencies sell packages, and why you learned to ask for oneA package has to be identical for a retaining wall builder and a dentist, because that's the only way it can be sold repeatedly. That's why it fails, and the reason has nothing to do with your business.
What you own, what you licence, and who decided"You own everything" is a nice line and it isn't true of anybody. Here's the honest map, and the part most people never get asked about.
Teaching Google what a good customer looks likeBy default, Google never finds out which clicks turned into money, because the money happens on a phone call three weeks later. Closing that loop changes what your ads optimise for.
What is your monthly actually for?Every recurring fee gets nicknamed after the cheapest thing in it, and then compared to the price of that one thing. So rather than write about that in the abstract, here's ours, opened up.
You might be advertising for price shoppersAlmost every business that tells me its leads only care about price is, without meaning to, asking for exactly that. Usually in the first six words of the ad.
Nobody buys from a demonstrationA business owner explained why he'd sat on a decision for six months, and it wasn't the price. It changed how we sell, and it's the reason we now do the work before there's a call.
When your best customers are also your competitorsSome businesses can't advertise the thing they're best known for, because the people buying it from them resell it. Nobody writes about this, and it quietly wrecks otherwise sensible marketing plans.
A Messenger conversation isn't a leadThe businesses with the best ad creative in the feed are often collecting the least usable thing from it. What a Messenger thread actually gives you, and what it doesn't.
The lead form settings that decide whether your leads are realYour cost per lead looks brilliant and nobody picks up the phone. That isn't bad luck, it's a default setting, and you can change it today.
About Echo StudiosA small Melbourne studio with a fairly specific opinion about why most small business websites don't work.
Why ads stop working for trade businesses, and it's almost never the adsThree months of ads, some leads, almost no jobs, and a decision that ads don't work. The ads usually did work. Here is what was actually missing.
How to get cited by AIBeing the answer beats being a link. What structure, schema and entity consistency actually do for you.
Template websites vs custom builtA template gets you live. It also decides what your business is allowed to say. Where that cost lands.
Local SEO for tradiesProximity, prominence, relevance. Two of those are yours to move, and most businesses ignore both.
Next.js vs WordPressTwo of every five websites run WordPress. Most of the risk lives in the plugins, not the core.
What a website costs in AustraliaReal numbers by tier, what moves them, and the quotes that should make you walk.
Why your website is slowUsually images, usually plugins, occasionally the host. How to tell which.
How to get more Google reviewsAsk at the right moment, make it one tap, and never pay for one.
Five automations every business needsMissed-call text back, quote follow-up, review request, no-show recovery, reactivation.
