Catalyst Marketing

28/08/2026

"How do I choose a marketing agency" gets searched a few hundred times a month in the UK. Nearly every answer on page one was written by an agency, including this one. So point it straight back at us.

→ What will you stop doing if it isn't working, and when will you tell me?
→ Who actually does the work, and can I meet them?
→ Tell me about a client you lost and why.
→ What does your monthly report show me that a screenshot of Google Analytics doesn't?
→ What would you do first if I had half the budget?

That third one does most of the work. Everybody's lost a client. The ones who can talk about it plainly are usually running an honest shop.

Any agency worth paying will answer all five without flinching. If you get a deck instead of an answer, you've learned something.

If you've asked these before, which one got the wobbliest answer?

26/08/2026

Everyone in marketing is telling you to rebuild around Google's AI answers.

Here's the bit nobody's mentioning.

We pulled the UK search data this week. Around 2,700 people a month are looking for how to switch AI Overviews off. ""How to remove AI from Google search."" ""How to get rid of AI overview.""

Your customers aren't all delighted by this either. A decent chunk of them are quietly trying to get back to a list of blue links.

That doesn't mean AI search is a fad. It does mean you shouldn't tear up what's working on the strength of a panic. The unglamorous stuff still carries most of the weight: a profile that's current, reviews that say something, a site that loads on a phone.

Most agencies are selling you one end or the other. Be somewhere in the middle.

Honest question: are you reading the AI answers, or scrolling past them?

17/08/2026

I keep meeting owners who’ve no idea Google is about to change their ads account for them.

From 1 September, broad match and auto-created assets get moved onto AI Max. You can stop it, but only if you act before the 1st.

Google says that’s 14% more conversions. An independent look at 250+ campaigns found revenue up 13% and cost per lead up 16%.

More revenue, worse maths. Not the same thing.

Screenshot your cost per lead and search terms before the 1st.

17/07/2026

The questions we get asked most by local business owners, all in one place.

A few quick takeaways:

SEO takes time, but an established local business should see proper movement within 90 days. If nothing’s shifting by then, something’s wrong.

On Google Ads, the quick wins are the boring bits. Add negative keywords, stop bidding on your own brand name, and get conversion tracking set up properly so the platform knows what a good customer looks like.

Worried about AI chatbots? Don’t be. Google is still where the searches happen. To show up in AI answers, focus on digital PR and getting mentioned across trusted sources.

Traffic but no enquiries? It’s usually either a poor site experience or people landing who want something you don’t offer.

And how do you know your agency is any good? Revenue. Anyone can show you backlinks and impressions. A good agency shows you the line from traffic to leads to money in the bank.

Questions? Drop them below.

09/07/2026

Big shift in Google that most local businesses haven’t paid much attention to.

AI Overviews now hit nearly half of all searches. On local searches? Only 7 percent.
That gap is the biggest local SEO opportunity of the year.

Google is testing local AI Overviews right now. When they land, the businesses AI cites will be the ones with a properly active profile sitting behind them.
You’ve got six to twelve months, so use them.

Photos on your GBP this week.
Reply to every review over a fortnight old.
Post one Google Post per location.

Don’t let this opportunity slip away from you.

02/07/2026

Your next Instagram carousel is a 20-page search result, not one post anymore.

Since 18 June, every slide can carry its own caption (up to 20 slides). Each one indexes separately for Instagram search.

The catch is that almost nobody’s using it properly yet.

If you are one of these categories, swipe through to see how it can benefit you.



If you own a kitchen showroom, more people now search “open-plan kitchen [town]” on Instagram than on Google.

Here’s how to actually show up for it:

Post one carousel a month with 10 of your best installs. One per slide.

Caption each one:

Town. Style. Size. The bit that makes it different.

Like: “Hove. Open-plan. 24m². Handleless island in matte grey.”

Each caption becomes its own indexed page. One post gives you 10 chances to show up when someone in your area searches.

If you do this every month, by the time you are 6 months in, you’ll rank for every town in your patch.



Your last 10 sites are the strongest marketing you’ve got, and most scaffolding companies are not even using them.

Every scaffolding account on Instagram shows the same hero shot from one job and hopes for the best. The posts usually have under-caption, no context, and zero search value.

Try this instead:

Once a month, post a carousel of the 10 sites you had scaffolding up on last month. One per slide.

Caption each one:

Site type (residential, commercial, heritage), town, job size (metres or storeys), duration, scaffold system used, any specialist requirement (chimney, cantilever, live traffic).

Like: “Detached Victorian in Hove. 3-storey rear elevation. Up for 6 weeks. Traditional tube-and-fitting. Chimney access for the roofer.”

Search “scaffolding Hove” or “chimney scaffolding Brighton” on Instagram and your captioned work turns up.

Six months of this and you’re the scaffolding company that shows up on Instagram for every town you cover.



Your customers search for their symptoms, not the treatments.

They do it on Instagram now, before they even touch Google.

Which means your carousel needs to lead with pro

30/06/2026

Multi-channel marketing is more effective than ever, and the problem is it’s nearly impossible to prove how one channel is influencing another.

Brand awareness and omnipresence across the web matter more right now than they ever have. More research is happening in places you simply can’t track. ChatGPT, Reddit, YouTube comments, Instagram comments. If your brand is showing up consistently in those spaces throughout someone’s buying journey, by the time they land on your website they will convert at a much higher rate.

A few years ago a user might visit your site five, six, seven times before they even thought about getting in touch. That behaviour is changing. People are doing more of their consideration elsewhere, and when they do come to you, they’re ready.

Be present everywhere. It pays off in ways your analytics dashboard will never fully show you.

29/06/2026

25/06/2026

Two years from now, we want Catalyst to look quite different.

Not completely different. We’ll still be doing what we do well. But we’re moving into CRM, communications, and sales integration so the whole picture is connected, not just the ad spend. And we’re building something bespoke for multi-location businesses because I keep seeing the same problem. Clients with multiple sites who genuinely have no idea which locations are pulling their weight or what their marketing is actually doing. That clarity is everything.

The working relationship side matters to us as much as the results. Clients should be texting us ideas, not avoiding our calls. We’re a pretty open, straight-talking bunch and I think that makes a difference.