CASE STUDIES · FATHER OF 4 · LOUGHBOROUGH THREE · ON PURPOSE
RECEIPTS · NUMBERS · NAMES

Real clients. Real numbers.

Anyone can claim they’re brilliant at marketing. We’d rather show you what we’ve actually done. Real clients. Real challenges. Real strategies. And most importantly, the real numbers showing what happened as a result. No vague claims about “increased visibility”. Just revenue, traffic, cost-per-lead. The stuff that matters when you’re running a business.

20+ YEARS IN MARKETING
Right here. CDA. Nylacast. Appliance City. Now FO4. The stories we’ve picked are the ones where the numbers make sense and the people let us write about them.
WHY ONLY THREE?
We lost a pitch once for showing too many case studies. “Overwhelming.” So, three. Detailed. On purpose. Scroll to the bottom for the honest list of everyone else.
01 / 03 Midshires Catering Equipment CONSULTANCY · WEB · CRM · ECOMMERCE
B2B CATERING EQUIPMENT · LOUGHBOROUGH

From GoDaddy
to a website
that delivers orders and leads.

Midshires had built a successful catering-equipment business doing great turnover — but they’d hit a wall. A GoDaddy website with blue backgrounds and broken mobile renders. And every decision, every process, every customer interaction was running through Ian’s head. They knew they needed to modernise. They didn’t know where to start.

Midshires team in a workshop session
WORKSHOPS · 2025
CHAPTER 01 · THE CHALLENGE

GoDaddy blue and attribution.

Their website was on GoDaddy. Blue backgrounds, no accessibility, mobile renders weren’t working. Let’s face it — which business doesn’t start on Excel and a free site? But to scale, they needed sophistication.

Worse than the website: there was no understanding of where leads came from. Just a spreadsheet of engineer bookings. What worked? What didn't?

CHAPTER 02 · THE WORKSHOP

Business ethos. Mood. Audiences. Journey.

We took them through our full workshop process: business ethos, mood-boards, audience mapping, customer-journey analysis. The big realisation didn’t come from the website — it came from the customer journey.

Four audiences: managers, chefs, pubs/bars and owners. Each with their own buying process. The website needed to speak to all three differently. Each had different demands, especially in their customer journey.

CHAPTER 03 · WHAT WE DID

Workshop into website design into digital marketing

New website — modern, professional, audience-segmented — with complex coding for “apply for a price” and rental enquiries inside the ecommerce environment.

CRM implemented. Attributionn plugin installed, so we knew where leads were coming from. Ecommerce launched (consumables first — cleaning products, spare parts) already generating sales without active marketing. Monthly strategic consultancy ongoing.

TRAFFIC UPLIFT RESULT 01
300%
In the first few months of the new site going live. From a low base — but proof the model works.
REVENUE · MONTHS 1–2 RESULT 02
£20k
Direct ecommerce revenue in the first two months of launch. A first for the business.
CONSUMABLE ORDERS PER MONTH RESULT 03
£0 £1500
On top of the leads the eCommerce is dropping in orders!
★ WHERE THEY ARE NOW

We’re Midshires’ strategic marketing partner. Fortnightly meetings to guide implementation, troubleshoot issues, and keep the digital transformation moving. We’re currently focused on CRM adoption and expanding the ecommerce offering. Next: pushing traffic harder once the systems are bedded in. They’ve broken through a significant turnover threshold for the first time, with the operations to scale further.

WHAT THEY SAID

“It's been an invaluable tool in our kit.”

● BE THE NEXT SUCCESS STORY Read the consultancy service
02 / 03 Doulton Water Filters SEO · ALONGSIDE THEIR INTERNAL TEAM
B2C · WATER FILTRATION · 200 YEARS OLD

When the client
already has
a marketing team.

Doulton have a full internal marketing team. PPC manager, marketing manager, copywriter, project manager — the lot. We don’t need to own everything. We just need to make sure the SEO gets done properly, whether we’re doing it or their team is. That’s another business model we’re happy to work in.

Spike at a Doulton SEO workshop
SEO ALONGSIDE · 2025
CHAPTER 01 · THE CHALLENGE

Algorithm updates, the launch of a new site. The intro of AI.

Google rolled out major updates through 2024. Rankings shifted everywhere. Then Doulton launched a new website — with technical issues we’d rather not dwell on — and lost traffic the day it went live.

On top of that, AI Overviews started taking clicks from everyone in 2025. We needed to keep Doulton growing despite three big macro headwinds at once.

CHAPTER 02 · WHAT WE DO

Audit. Guide. Recover. Optimise for both.

We audit regularly. We check for issues. We guide the internal content strategy. When Google rolls out updates we help them navigate without losing rankings. When their new site had technical issues, we recovered the traffic loss.

Critically: we’ve optimised for both traditional search and AI visibility. Schema, structured answers, entity linking. So even as AI Overviews eat clicks elsewhere, Doulton’s traffic is still growing.

CHAPTER 03 · HOW WE WORK

Their team owns it. We make sure it gets done.

We’re not above their team. We’re alongside. The internal PPC manager runs paid, the copywriter writes. The project manager keeps the calendar and we bring the SEO discipline, the audit rigour and the early-warning system.

When you have a great internal team, we step into the gaps. Honesty over hours.

ORGANIC CLICK GROWTH RESULT 01
30%
Year-on-year click growth from organic search across the period of recovery and new-site stabilisation.
TRAFFIC · DESPITE AI RESULT 02
GROWING
Where AI Overviews are taking clicks from everyone else, Doulton’s traffic is still up — because we optimised for both.
RANKING LOSSES · 2024 UPDATES RESULT 03
ZERO
Audit-led readiness ahead of the major 2024 Google updates. They came through the year untouched.
★ WHERE THEY ARE NOW

We work with Doulton on SEO every week, Tuesday 10:30am to be precise. Their internal team handles the rest of marketing, the setup proves a point we make on the SEO service page: we don’t need to own the whole stack to be useful. We can be the senior SEO brain sitting alongside your existing team, the early-warning system, the auditor, the strategic guide. Bring us in for the bit that’s easiest to get wrong.

WHAT THEY SAID

“I took over with Father of 4 in place, after a full debrief it was clear they needed to stay our partner. ”

, Mark Manton · Head of Marketing · Doulton
● BE THE NEXT SUCCESS STORY Book your SEO audit
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03 / 03 Macaw Washrooms STARTUP · WEB · SEO · PPC
COMMERCIAL WASHROOM INSTALLATION · STARTUP · 18 MONTHS

From small jobs
to £1.2m of leads
in 6 months.

Heads up, we don't work with Macaw anymore, no issue, all amicable. we started with Macaw when they were a startup. They knew a few people in the industry, had some contacts, could get small jobs — but no pipeline, no brand presence, nothing that would let them scale beyond word-of-mouth. They needed to go from “small jobs when we can get them” to “consistent pipeline of commercial washroom projects.” Fast.

Workshop whiteboard with audience map
TWO FULL WORKSHOPS
CHAPTER 01 · THE CHALLENGE

A startup with contacts. Not a pipeline.

Word-of-mouth doesn’t scale. Especially in commercial washroom installation, where a buyer goes through procurement, compliance, and three quotes before signing.

They needed a brand presence, a quality website, and a paid + organic engine that would generate consistent enquiries from the audiences who had budget — not random retail browsers (or people needing a domestic plumber!)

CHAPTER 02 · THE WORKSHOPS

Two full cycles. Not one. Because it mattered.

The big realisation: their on-site guys needed to be brilliant, not just competent. The grumpy ones letting standards slip had to go. Even as a startup, one bad install would kill their reputation before they’d built one.

And the audience wasn’t “businesses that need washrooms.” It was schools, offices, retail, and healthcare — each with different needs, different decision-makers, different purchasing processes. The site had to speak to all four.

CHAPTER 03 · WHAT WE DID

Site. Keywords. Ads. Lead tracking.

Conversion-focused website with separate landing pages per sector (schools, offices, retail, healthcare). Each page addressing that sector’s compliance and decision-making process.

Keyword strategy mapped to how each audience actually searches. Google Ads campaigns — tight targeting on commercial projects, scaled as ROI proved out. Every enquiry tracked to source, every quote logged, CPL monitored obsessively.

LEADS · 6 MONTHS RESULT 01
£1.2m+
Total pipeline value generated from combined PPC + SEO in the first 6 months of campaigns going live.
QUALITY LEADS RESULT 02
15/mo
Up to fifteen quality commercial enquiries per month depending on seasonality. A pipeline most installers would kill for.
ORGANIC TRAFFIC RESULT 03
+10% / mo
Month-on-month organic traffic growth as SEO builds momentum alongside the paid engine.
★ WHERE THEY ARE NOW

Macaw have fled the Father of 4 ship, we agreed. Sometimes you need to know when to let accounts go to the next level. We are proud to have got them off the ground and moving.

WHAT THEY SAID

“Thank you for everything you've done, we'll grab you a pint next time we see you”

● BE THE NEXT SUCCESS STORY See the PPC service
04 / 04 Only three case studies? A SHORT, HONEST EXPLANATION

We lost a pitch for showing too many.

Apparently it was “overwhelming” and made the decision “too complicated.” Fair enough, so here are three. Detailed. On purpose. But if you’re thinking “only three clients?”, you should know we’ve also helped these:

HONORABLE MENTION 01

People Puzzles HR Consultancy

Rebuilt their SEO strategy from scratch after their previous agency left a mess. Fixed technical issues, rewrote content, built proper local visibility. Now ranks for every HR consultancy search term that matters locally in key areas.

HONORABLE MENTION 02

Zero Six Brew Co

We design all their beer labels and product packaging. Everything from serious craft beer branding to tongue-in-cheek illustrations like the Boris Johnson Covid beer. They brew brilliant beer. We make it look good on the shelf and online.

HONORABLE MENTION 03

Ecommerce + tradespeople + manufacturers

Ecommerce businesses fixing technical SEO disasters. Local tradespeople who needed websites that actually generate leads. Manufacturers who’d been burned by agencies promising the world and delivering nothing.

Three detailed case studies apparently hit the sweet spot between “we’ve done nothing” and “this is overwhelming.” So read these three. If you want to hear about the others, ask, we’ll happily bore you with stories about space bars in Excel spreadsheets and the time we had to explain a CRM to a 60-year-old engineer.

Ask about another