Insights
Written from inside live accounts. Each piece opens with the conclusion, because you should be able to take the useful part and leave without reading the rest.
- Lead Generation
Cost per lead is a vanity metric
The cheapest leads in your account are usually the ones destroying it. What to optimise instead when the sale closes on a phone call six weeks later.
Adam Palmer8 min read
- AI Search
The citation economy: how AI assistants decide which brands to name
Answer engines return paragraphs naming two or three brands, not ten blue links. Here is the mechanism behind that selection, and what actually changes it.
Adam Palmer9 min read
- Paid Media
Marginal ROAS: the only paid media number that tells you what to do next
Average ROAS describes history and flatters any account with branded search inside it. Marginal ROAS answers the question you were actually asking.
Adam Palmer7 min read
- Retention
Your retention programme is a discount programme wearing a disguise
If your email revenue disappears the moment you remove the offer code, you did not build retention. You built a rebate on demand you already had.
Adam Palmer6 min read
- Conversion
Objection mapping: why your CRO tests never reach significance
Nine months of button tests produce nothing because they optimise the wrong layer. Start with the three reasons people actually leave.
Adam Palmer8 min read
- Measurement
Stop fixing attribution. Start triangulating.
There is no attribution tool that resolves post-ATT measurement. There is a three-tier arrangement that gets you close enough to decide.
Adam Palmer7 min read
- AI Search
Which schema actually gets used
Most service businesses mark up too much and state too little. A short list of what is worth emitting and what to put in it.
Adam Palmer7 min read
- Conversion
The quote is the product
Buyers leave your page to find a number you would not give them. Publishing a range converts better than protecting it.
Adam Palmer6 min read
- Measurement
Budget pacing when the sale lands nine weeks later
Monthly budgets and lagging revenue make a bad pair. How to read an account whose results arrive after the month has closed.
Adam Palmer6 min read
- AI Search
Your reviews are now feeding two different systems
Search engines read review signals. Retrieval systems read the review text. Those are different jobs and most review programmes only do the first.
Adam Palmer6 min read
- AI Search
How assistants answer "who should I hire near me"
Local service recommendations from AI assistants draw on a different evidence set than the map pack. Here is what that set contains.
Adam Palmer7 min read
- Conversion
Every form field is a tax you are charging the buyer
Qualification fields feel free to the person who adds them. They are paid for by the people who leave.
Adam Palmer5 min read
- Paid Media
Selling in a six-week window
Seasonal businesses spend eleven months preparing for one. Most of the mistakes are made in the quiet months, not the busy one.
Adam Palmer6 min read
- Measurement
Call tracking without wrecking your attribution
In most high-ticket categories a large share of conversions never touch a form. If calls are not tracked, your best channel looks like your worst.
Adam Palmer7 min read
- Lead Generation
The aged lead file is the cheapest revenue in the building
You already paid to acquire the leads your sales team marked dead. In long consideration categories, a good share of them still buy.
Adam Palmer6 min read
- Paid Media
You are probably paying to win customers you already had
Branded search reports beautiful returns because it intercepts demand you created elsewhere. A blackout test tells you how much of it was real.
Adam Palmer7 min read
- Lead Generation
Work out what a lead is worth before you decide it is expensive
Most businesses judge cost per lead against a number they heard somewhere. Here is how to calculate the only benchmark that applies to you.
Adam Palmer6 min read
- Lead Generation
Speed to lead: the cheapest conversion rate you will ever buy
Contacting a lead in five minutes instead of the next morning changes the close rate more than most creative tests. It costs nothing in media.
Adam Palmer6 min read
We write these because we argue about them internally first.
If one of them contradicts what you have been told, that is worth a conversation. Bring the disagreement. It usually makes for a better first call than a capabilities deck.
Engagements from $12,000 / month · 90 days, then month-to-month