Digital marketingthat stopscosting you money.
Most of what gets sold as digital marketing is advertising with a monthly fee on top. We start with the parts you own outright, and we are straight with you about when it is worth renting attention instead.
For most Stourbridge businesses, digital marketing means five things: a website that converts, search visibility you own, a Google Business Profile that works, reviews arriving steadily, and advertising used deliberately rather than permanently. We lead with the first four because you keep them. Advertising is available and we know it well, but our usual advice is to spend less on it than you are.
Owned, earned,
rented.
It is worth being clear about what you are actually buying, because the phrase 'digital marketing' hides the difference. Some channels you own: your website, your content, your email list. Some you earn: rankings, reviews, recommendations, mentions. And some you rent: advertising, which works brilliantly while you are paying and stops the day you stop.
There is nothing wrong with renting. There is something wrong with renting for five years and owning nothing at the end of it, which is the position a great many local businesses find themselves in. The right mix depends on how urgently you need work and how long you intend to be trading.
- 01 /
Owned — your website
The one asset nobody can switch off or reprice. If it is slow or unclear, everything else you spend is leaking through it.
- 02 /
Earned — search and reviews
Slower to build, but it compounds and keeps working. This is where most of our effort goes, because it is where the long-term value is.
- 03 /
Rented — advertising
Fast, controllable, and gone the moment the card is declined. Right for urgency, wrong as a permanent substitute for visibility.
- 04 /
The honest mix
New business with no rankings: advertise while the search work builds. Established business with a full diary: usually spend less than you are.
We know advertising
well enough to say stop.
This is not squeamishness about ads. Our founder spent ten years as a co-founder of a national home services business, creating and managing campaigns accounting for more than £10 million of spend between 2015 and 2025 across Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising. He runs paid search and social advertising for studio clients today, including Facebook and Instagram campaigns for Your Local Mechanic and Frankie & Paws.
Ten years of that mostly teaches you where the waste is: broad match quietly buying searches nobody would choose, conversions counted that were never enquiries, automated bidding optimising confidently towards a number that is not real, and a landing page that loses the click you just paid for. It also teaches you when the honest answer is that the account should be smaller, or switched off entirely.
- 01 /
Advertising as a bridge
Enquiries this month while the search work builds underneath. A plan with an end date, not a standing order.
- 02 /
Tracking that is true
Calls and forms tracked properly, junk and duplicate conversions stripped out. Most accounts we look at are optimising towards fiction.
- 03 /
Social where it fits
Facebook and Instagram work for visual, considered and impulse purchases. They are usually a poor substitute for someone searching with a problem right now.
- 04 /
A reason to stop
We moved a client off Google Ads entirely once organic search could carry the enquiries. That is the outcome we aim for.
What switching off
looked like.
Your Local Mechanic, a mobile mechanic in Dudley, was buying most of its enquiries through Google Ads at £1.86 a click. Rather than optimise the account, we rebuilt the website around the jobs and districts people search for, gave each area a genuine page, aligned the Google Business Profile and set up a review routine.
Google Ads were switched off entirely on 30 April 2026. By August the business was getting 366 visits a month from Google for nothing, which would have cost roughly £680 at the old click rate. That is the argument for leading with the owned and earned channels, made with figures rather than principle.
| Measure | Before | August 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Visits from Google | 73 a month | 366 a month |
| Calls direct from the Google listing | Baseline | Up 137% |
| Google rating | 3.6 | 4.4 |
| Advertising spend | £1.86 a click | £0 — switched off 30 April 2026 |
| Equivalent monthly ad value | — | About £680 of traffic, free |
What we do,
and what we don't.
A full-service agency will sell you everything. We would rather tell you what we are good at and what we are not, so you can fill the gaps properly instead of paying us to be mediocre at something.
- 01 /
We do: websites
Design and hand-built development. The owned asset everything else depends on.
- 02 /
We do: SEO and local SEO
Technical work, content, Google Business Profile, reviews and the local visibility measurement behind them.
- 03 /
We do: advertising, deliberately
Google Ads, Microsoft Ads and Meta, run with honest tracking and a view on when to stop. Not sold as a permanent retainer.
- 04 /
We don't: organic social management
Daily posting and community management is a real job and it is not ours. We will happily point you at someone.
- 05 /
We don't: email marketing programmes
We will build the capture and the integration. Running the campaigns is better done by a specialist.
- 06 /
We don't: brand campaigns
Billboards, radio and awareness work. If that is what you need, you need an agency, not a studio.
Local
questions.
Are you a digital marketing agency?
Not in the full-service sense. We are a small studio that does websites, SEO and local search, and runs advertising where it genuinely helps. If you want one supplier handling social posting, email campaigns and brand work as well, you want an agency and we will say so rather than pretend.
Should I be spending on Google Ads?
If you need enquiries this quarter and have no search visibility, yes, as a bridge while the owned work builds. If you have been advertising for years and would stop getting enquiries tomorrow if you paused, you have rented for a long time and owned nothing, and the priority is fixing that. We will look at your account and tell you which you are.
Do you actually know how to run ads, or just criticise them?
Ten years as a co-founder of a national home services business, with more than £10 million of managed spend across Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising between 2015 and 2025, plus paid search and Meta campaigns for studio clients today including Your Local Mechanic and Frankie & Paws. The advice to spend less comes from having spent a great deal.
What does digital marketing cost for a Stourbridge business?
It depends which parts you need. A website is £3,000 to £10,000. Ongoing SEO and local search is £500 to £1,500 a month. Advertising management is a separate fixed monthly fee on top of your ad spend, and we do not charge a percentage of spend because that pays us to spend more of your money.
Do you charge a percentage of ad spend?
No. It is the standard model and it is a conflict of interest: it rewards the agency for increasing your budget and punishes it for telling you to cut waste. We quote a fixed management fee against the complexity of the account.
Can you just audit what I am already spending?
Yes, and it is often the most useful first piece of work. A search terms and conversion tracking audit regularly finds money being spent on searches nobody would have chosen, and tracking that is counting things that were never enquiries.
Renting attention
you could own?
Or just email
hello@stourbridgewebstudio.co.uk