Case studies
A Yorkshire housebuilder selling over 1,000 homes a year had a website, some AdWords and no reliable measurement when I arrived in 2012. From then until 2021 I was its client-side digital lead: setting strategy, owning budgets, rebuilding the website twice and hiring and holding to account the agencies doing the channel work. Site sessions grew 75% in the year after the 2014 rebuild, and by 2015 the attribution framework could show the board £16.6m of revenue and 110 home sales attributed to digital channels in ten months.
When I arrived in 2012, digital was a website and some AdWords. There was no reliable measurement, no view of what a lead cost or what a channel returned, and marketing decisions were made largely on instinct.
What the business had was ambition, a strong product and a leadership team willing to be told the truth about the numbers.
The relationship began the way these things should: with analysis, not promises. A review of the paid and organic position, then in 2014 a full digital audit that laid out, in red, amber and green, exactly where the estate stood. That audit became the mandate for everything that followed.
The spine of the work was performance ownership. Weekly reports, monthly reviews and quarterly board sessions, every one built on the same discipline: real numbers, honestly stated, with the uncomfortable ones left in. When leads got expensive we said so. When an agency's "added value" claims did not survive contact with the data, that went in the report too.
Around that spine, the big projects. I led the 2014 website rebuild end to end, from competitor analysis and content matrices through to the 301 migration plan. I built the measurement framework that connected website goals to Salesforce, so that for the first time the business could see revenue by channel rather than just visits. I designed the lead nurture programme, from personas and lead scoring through to the automated buyer journeys, across three successive email platforms. I ran the company's GDPR programme, delivering some 45 policies, procedures and privacy notices between autumn 2018 and summer 2019. And I conceived and delivered the online home configurator, taking it from an idea through a formal vendor RFP to a live product, a build programme of around £200,000 that went on to win a UK National Business Award for Digital Initiatives.
Then there were the agencies. Over nine years I appointed, managed and where necessary replaced four of them: an SEO specialist whose proposed fee I negotiated down before signature, a media agency, then a full-service network agency whose pitch and handover I ran, then a leaner replacement. Each worked to contracted deliverables, quarterly scorecards and targets they had agreed to, and each knew the client could read their numbers as well as they could. I also asked the question housebuilders rarely ask out loud: what is the portal spend actually worth? The Rightmove analysis I ran became a recurring feature of the budget conversation.
By 2015 the attribution framework could show the board £16.6m of revenue and 110 home sales attributed to digital channels in ten months, measured against the offline equivalent, with cost per lead tracked monthly against target.
| Metric | Before | After | Period | |---|---|---|---| | Site sessions | baseline | +75% | year after the 2014 rebuild | | Revenue attributed to digital | not measurable | £16.6m | ten months to 2015 | | Home sales attributed to digital | not measurable | 110 | ten months to 2015 | | Agencies under contracted deliverables | 0 | 4 over the period | 2012 to 2021 |
Core goals and conversion rates stepped up in the same way within twelve months of launch. That framework, not any single campaign, is what changed how the business made marketing decisions.
The relationship itself is the other result. Nine years, through two websites, four agencies, a GDPR programme, an award-winning configurator and a closing strategic review in 2020.
A housebuilder's digital problem is rarely a shortage of agencies. It is that nobody on the client's side owns the numbers, so budgets drift, portal invoices go unquestioned and every agency marks its own homework. Put someone inside the business who builds honest measurement and holds every supplier to it, and the same spend starts buying more.
That role is fractional digital leadership. The sector view is on the housebuilders page. The twelve-month version of the same job is in the St Modwen Homes digital reset.
Own the numbers. An agency reports on its own work; somebody inside the business has to hold the measurement, the budget and the agency contracts together and be able to read an agency's figures as well as the agency can. That is the job, and it is why the same spend starts buying more.
Because it changes what the business argues about. Once the board could see revenue by channel rather than visits, marketing decisions stopped being a matter of opinion. The framework, not any one campaign, is what changed how decisions were made.
Reporting that left the uncomfortable numbers in. Weekly reports, monthly reviews and quarterly board sessions, all on real figures honestly stated, including when leads got expensive or an agency's added-value claims did not survive the data. Housebuilders do not keep consultants that long out of politeness.
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