I'm Rob. In-house first, then agency owner. I built a search consultancy over eight years and sold it in 2021. Since then, freelance for US companies, managing over $150,000 a week in ad spend. At that scale you learn to measure closely and correct fast.
The waste is rarely where people expect, and it's rarely just the ad account. Search terms that never convert. Tracking that was never set up properly. A landing page quietly losing half the customers you've already paid to attract.
Ads, landing pages, testing and reporting are one system. A sharp campaign pointed at a weak page still loses money, and neither problem shows up if the tracking is wrong. Nineteen years in the industry, running ad budgets of up to $150,000 a week, teaches you to look at all four at once, consistently. At that spend a small mistake isn't small.
Automated bidding and auto-applied recommendations quietly erode profitability. A hands-on approach, with someone watching it daily, still beats leaving it to the platform.
Layout and copy aren't separate jobs. The design earns attention, the words earn the enquiry, and I've spent years doing both across e-commerce, finance and B2B.
Continual testing is what keeps you competitive in a market that keeps moving. It works when it's structured and there's enough volume to trust the result. No testing, no progress.
Campaigns optimising against inaccurate or irrelevant data is common. Accurate end-to-end tracking closes the gap and shows your real cost per customer.
Four parts, equal weight, and rarely one person watching all of them. What breaks between them goes unseen and unowned. Work with me and the accountability sits with just one senior marketer.
Four years managing paid search for US finance and fintech businesses in consumer credit: heavily regulated, fiercely competitive, clicks priced accordingly. At peak the accounts were spending over $150,000 a week, with conversion tracking at every funnel step and daily measurement driving what changed and when.
Built Found, a specialist search consultancy focused on lowering cost of acquisition for businesses that live or die by search. Grew it to a team of five serving more than twenty clients, several of whom went on to win awards with Deloitte and Westpac. Sold the business in 2021 in a full exit.
Hired as full-time SEO specialist for a New Zealand online retailer and exporter Nature Shop, responsible for global search strategy and its technical implementation. Sales grew more than 700% in twelve months, and the business was named the country's fastest-growing retailer in the Deloitte Fast 50.
A selection from across nineteen years, in the words of the people who signed the invoices.
“Robert has been instrumental in helping us gain a huge increase in targeted search engine traffic… this has seen our sales growth exceed 700% in the last year. I have absolutely no hesitation in highly recommending him.”
“Since coming on board then developing and implementing our SEO strategy, we have seen a significant lift in our search position — from the depths of page 6 to rank at the top, #1 to 3, for key terms in a very competitive market. Organic search is now a significant lead generator for us.”
“Over the two years of working together we have seen a 1,000% increase in search traffic and new visitors to our website. This has helped increase direct sales, and also helped initiate several key strategic partnerships.”
Client names are withheld. The markets these businesses compete in are tight, and what worked for them is theirs, not mine to advertise. I'm happy to talk specifics in a conversation.
I grew up here and have lived in Tauranga most of my life. I enjoy a good hike, which is where most of the thinking happens, the useful ideas rarely turn up at the desk. Otherwise I'm usually building something in the digital world, which is the same instinct pointed elsewhere.
Home is here, with my wife and two dogs. Projects have come and gone over nineteen years, plenty of them on the other side of the world. Working from here has never been the limitation people assume it is.
I'm not running a pitch. But if you have a search problem worth solving, I'd like to hear about it. I take on a small number of engagements at a time, and I reply to everything within a day.