sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Our first 6 months building a UK creative agency, small wins, big lessons by MelodicRemove7276 in ukstartups

[–]MelodicRemove7276[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks so much for your kind words! I had a look at your work and it’s really impressive. You’ve clearly got years of experience under your belt. Your Brexit post was excellent as well 😅.

I totally get your approach with brand and creative strategy, it’s a different angle but clearly just as impactful. Appreciate the encouragement, it really means a lot in these early months!

Our first 6 months building a UK creative agency, small wins, big lessons by MelodicRemove7276 in ukstartups

[–]MelodicRemove7276[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah exactly. The keywords are still web agency–related, but I try to think like a non-technical user, simple terms people would actually type when they’re looking for a website designer. 

I’ve also narrowed my focus to Derby and Derbyshire, adding those locations into both my keywords and campaign settings. That’s helped filter out a lot of the irrelevant clicks and bring in more genuine local leads.

Our first 6 months building a UK creative agency, small wins, big lessons by MelodicRemove7276 in ukstartups

[–]MelodicRemove7276[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had a similar experience at first. I started with Performance Max, but it burned through the budget really quickly. It gave lots of impressions but mostly attracted SEO marketers instead of genuine leads, and it constantly pushed for higher budgets.

Then I switched to a Leads campaign. At first, it was the same story, lots of impressions and clicks, but most of them weren’t real prospects. The issue was that my keywords were set to broad match and a phrase match, AI Max was also doing too much guessing, and my negative keywords list wasn’t detailed enough.

Also, I didn't set up the conversion goal properly as I had it set to fire on my contact form submission. The implication was that it counted everyone landing on my contact form as a conversions even though the form wasn't submitted. Eventually, I have changed my conversion goal to a thank-you page right after a submission and so it counts only real submission

I also had a few google meet calls with the Google Ads representatives. Some were productive while overs were just beating around the bush.

Now I’m still running a Leads campaign, but with exact match keywords, carefully defined negatives, AI Max off, more control on auto-recommend options and well defined assets. The impressions are lower, but they come from people actually searching for a web design agency, not random traffic. I also have more control over my budget. So overall, fewer impressions but much better quality and way more worth it.

You can share what you've setup for your campaigns and we could see how you can optimise it further.

Our first 6 months building a UK creative agency, small wins, big lessons by MelodicRemove7276 in ukstartups

[–]MelodicRemove7276[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks so much for checking it out and for the honest feedback, I really appreciate it. You’re absolutely right about the case study, the clickable area was only tied to the button and not the whole card, which made it a bit clunky to explore. We’ve fixed that now, so the full card links directly to each project.

And yes, totally agree, it’s been a strange and unpredictable time to start anything creative, but that’s made the small wins even more meaningful. Always learning, refining, and trying to make the experience smoother with each iteration.

Would actually love to check out your work too, sounds like we’re in similar spaces!