Digital marketing results for Hartlepool and Teesside businesses

Real client data, anonymised, from accounts I run myself. A handful of stories below, with the numbers behind them.

Real numbers, not sales copy

Everything on this page is from real client accounts, not projections or industry averages. Names are anonymised where a client would rather not be named publicly, but the numbers, the before-and-after, the actual changes made, are real.

A lot of what gets published as results in this industry is closer to a sales pitch than a case study.

Results in Hartlepool and Teesside look different from a national campaign for an obvious reason: the market's smaller, the competition's local, and a bad account is easier to spot because there's less noise to hide it in. That cuts both ways. It also means a properly run account, with the wasted spend cut and the targeting right, tends to show up clearly in the numbers, not buried in a vanity metric.

Client names are withheld under NDA in some cases, standard practice at the agencies this work was done through before Gate Digital, see the About page for that background, not because the results aren't real. Where a current client is happy to be named, that'll be reflected here directly rather than anonymised for its own sake.

Results vary a lot by starting point too. An account that's never been touched moves differently to one that's already got a year of conversion data behind it, and a competitive market moves differently to a quiet one. Anyone promising an identical result regardless of your starting point isn't being straight with you. Every number below comes from actual ad platform and analytics data, not a client's own impression of how things are going, tracking gets checked and fixed as a matter of course on every account, because a great-looking number built on broken tracking is worse than no number at all.

The case studies below cover a real spread on purpose, different industries, different markets, different starting points, all handled the same way. More get added as new client work wraps up. If you want a similar look at your own account, whether that's a brand new build or taking over something someone else already set up, how I work covers what that looks like in practice.

Track record, without breaking NDAs

Before Gate Digital, I spent 10+ years working agency-side in the UK and US, running paid media for other agencies' clients under NDA. That means I can't list client names here, but I can show the scale of it. See the About page for the full story.

10+ years

In digital marketing since 2015, self-taught, agency-side in England, Scotland, Florida and Texas.

175+ accounts

Managed across those agencies, for clients in the USA, Canada, Australia, Belgium, Mexico and the UK and Ireland.

US$5m+ ad spend

Managed for US clients alone, plus CA$100,000 for Canadian clients and tens of thousands of AU$ for Australian clients.

Also part of the record: helped grow one agency from 15 clients to over 100 by scaling up their Google Ads service, managed teams of marketers as a marketing manager, and ran a weekly live Google Ads Q&A where an agency's clients brought their problems to a call and got them fixed live. Worked across tradespeople, ecommerce, luxury wedding venues, photographers, procurement, hotels and healthcare (chiropractors, physical therapists, cosmetic surgeons).

Client results

Real accounts, real numbers. Names anonymised where the client would rather not be named. A couple of terms you'll see below: a "conversion" is a sale, enquiry, call or booking, whatever counts as a result for that business. "Conversion rate" is how many of your visitors actually did that. "Click-through rate" is how many people clicked after seeing the ad or search listing.

Google Ads First 30 days

A Hartlepool cleaning company

I took this account over from another agency. These numbers are the first 30 days I ran it, against the 30 days right before that under the old agency. Same business, same market, just different hands on the account.

Conversions941+356%
Conversion rate1.23%3.55%+188%
Cost per conversion£94.42£52.46-44%

Cost per click went up too, from £1.16 to £1.86, and I'm not going to hide that. It's what happens when you fix the targeting properly. But conversion rate nearly tripled, so the actual cost of getting a result still came down.

What I changed

  • Rebuilt the account from scratch, split by area, with each service they offer in that area organised separately, instead of everything lumped into one blend.
  • Blocked off a long list of search terms that had nothing to do with what they do, so budget stopped being wasted on the wrong searches.
  • Changed how Google was told to bid. The old agency had it set to automatically chase as many conversions as possible, but the account didn't have enough history behind it for that to work properly, so it was just guessing.
  • Checked and fixed the tracking in Google Analytics, so conversions were being counted correctly.
  • Checked the tracking code underneath it too, to make sure everything was firing properly.
  • Found the daily budget wasn't being spent in full under the previous agency, because parts of the account weren't configured correctly.
Meta Ads Since launch

A Hartlepool cleaning company

Same client as the Google Ads story above, I run their Meta Ads too. This is one live campaign on Facebook and Instagram, promoting their oven cleaning service, since it launched in July 2026.

Leads18
Cost per lead£43.05
People reached29,797

£774.84 spent so far for 18 leads. Click-through rate's sitting at 3%, solid for Meta. I run this campaign end to end, targeting, creative, budget and reporting.

Google Ads Meta Ads SEO First 60 days

A Hartlepool cleaning and property care company

Same type of business as the Google Ads and Meta stories above, a different client. I took over their marketing from another agency, and there was zero tracking of any kind in place before I started, no Google Analytics events, nothing. First job was installing Google Tag Manager and tagging every important button and form on the site. These numbers compare the second month of proper tracking against the first, not against the old agency, there's nothing from them to compare against.

Website sessions1,5082,801+86%
Website enquiries72145+101%
Enquiry rate4.77%5.18%+8%

Meta went from almost nothing to 837 sessions in month two on its own, since the campaign only properly launched partway through month one. Organic Google traffic dipped slightly, 290 to 263 sessions, and that's expected, SEO's a slower fix and we're mid-rebuild: re-mapping keywords to the right pages and rewriting content alongside their own marketing team. Search Console already shows it moving even if sessions haven't caught up yet: 182 clicks in the last 28 days versus 189 the period before, essentially flat, while impressions rose 18% and average position improved from 33.2 to 30.6.

What I changed

  • Installed Google Tag Manager and tagged every important button and form on the site, since nothing was tracked before this.
  • Rebuilt the Google Ads campaigns.
  • Rebuilt the Meta Ads campaigns.
  • Installed Microsoft Clarity to watch real user behaviour on the site and find what's stopping people from getting in touch.
  • Re-mapped target keywords to the right pages and started rewriting the site's key content alongside their own marketing team.
Google Ads 6 months

A Florida roofing contractor

This account was running on Performance Max, one of Google's fully automated ad types where Google decides where your ads show rather than you choosing, and most of the budget was going on broad exposure that had nothing to do with what the client does. I pulled it off Performance Max completely and rebuilt it as Search ads split by county, so it only shows up for people searching for a roofing contractor in their area. These numbers compare the 6 months after that change against the 6 months before it.

Total leads (conversions + calls)188290+54%
Conversion rate1.26%3.69%+194%
Phone calls139186+34%

Cost per lead went up too, from $92.15 to $160.94 once you count conversions and calls together. That's expected, and it's what we were aiming for. Moving off Performance Max brought in fewer leads but much better ones, and $160.94 is still well under the client's $200 target. He's landed at least 3 roofing jobs worth $200,000 each from these leads so far.

What changed

  • Moved the account off Performance Max and onto Search, so it only shows up for people looking for a roofing contractor, not wherever Google decides to place it.
  • Split the account into separate campaigns for each county the business covers, so budget and messaging could be targeted by area.
  • Set the bidding to automatically aim for the client's agreed $200 target cost per lead.
Google Ads First 12 months

A Florida fencing contractor

Built this account from nothing for a fencing contractor covering seven towns across Florida's east coast. No history, no existing campaigns, nothing to take over, just a brand new account launched in June 2025. These numbers are the first year.

Conversions719
Cost per conversion$83.08
Phone calls422

$59,737 spent over the year for 719 conversions, a 10.53% conversion rate, solid for search ads. I split the account into a separate campaign per town rather than one blended Florida-wide campaign, so each one could be managed and bid on properly.

What I did

  • Built the account from scratch, one campaign per town instead of one blended area.
  • Set up conversion tracking properly from day one, phone calls and lead form submissions both counted correctly.
  • Applied negative keyword lists to block irrelevant, DIY and low-intent searches, so budget wasn't wasted on people who were never going to hire a contractor.
  • Scaled the budget up gradually as each campaign built a track record, instead of spending full budget before Google had the data to bid well.
  • Moved the bidding from chasing clicks to chasing conversions once there was enough data behind each campaign, with a cost-per-lead target set per town.
  • Increased bidding on phone calls specifically, since a call is one of the strongest signs of real intent for a fencing contractor.
Website SEO Google Ads ~1 year

A Hartlepool wedding venue and restaurant

This client had never worked with an agency before me, he'd been doing his own marketing with little to no experience. I moved his website from Squarespace to WordPress, sorted his SEO, built landing pages for his weddings and Sunday dinners, and ran his Google Ads. These numbers are everything together over the past year, not just the ads on their own.

Weddings booked this year40+
Average wedding value£4,000
Google Ads spend, same period£2,856

That's roughly £160,000 in booked wedding revenue against under £3,000 in ad spend for the year, plus 264 phone calls and 128 online enquiries tracked through Google Ads. The ads didn't do that on their own, the website rebuild, SEO and landing pages all played their part.

What I did

  • Rebuilt the website, moving it from Squarespace to WordPress.
  • Handled the SEO.
  • Built dedicated landing pages for the wedding venue and Sunday dinner offers.
  • Ran the Google Ads campaigns.
SEO ~1 year

A Boston and Rhode Island wedding venue group

I've worked with this group of wedding and event venues for about a year. A full SEO audit, cleaning up low quality content, improving the site itself, writing new content, and going through Google's own data on how the site was performing in search, to find and fix what wasn't working. These numbers compare the most recent 6 months against the 6 months before that.

Search terms ranking on page 1764862+13%
Average search position20.9514.037 places higher
Click-through rate2.93%3.76%+28%
Times shown in Google search788,911619,444-21%

Showing up less here is a good thing, not a bad one. It means the site stopped showing up for a load of loosely related searches it was never going to win, and started ranking properly for the ones that actually matter. Clicks held basically flat, 23,145 to 23,260, even with 21% fewer of those, because what's left is ranking higher and getting clicked more.

What I did

  • Ran a full SEO audit of the site.
  • Cleaned up low quality content.
  • Improved the site itself.
  • Wrote new content.
  • Went through Google's search performance data and made changes across the site based on what it showed.

What clients say

5.0 from 8 Google reviews. Read them on Google.

"Approached Liam for some help with ad spend etc as I hadn't a clue. He talked me through what I needed and more importantly what I didn't and the results have been amazing"

Connor Robinson

"Great to work with. Makes anything related to SEO and digital marketing seem easy. After only a few days, we noticed the results and over the last six months a massive upturn in enquiries. Highly recommend."

Paul Richards

"Liam is first rate with anything regarding Search Engine Optimisation and website optimisation. His knowledge and attention to detail is second to none. I would highly recommend Gate Digital's services and will continue working with them moving forward."

Andrew Smith

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