James Church

Most agencies say they “also do LinkedIn Ads.” But every week, I audit accounts that look like a Meta specialist built them. This week I looked at one being run by a relatively big UK agency… And the audience size was 2 million. At first, I get excited thinking I’m about to help the marketing person on the call when I deliver this news. Then I realise, I’m actually delivering news that might get them fired. Because in some cases, there’s hundreds of thousands in wasted spend. LinkedIn Audience Network is another one. I audit accounts literally every week where this thing is switched on. It’s just one little checkbox. But it totally f$cks the account. Keep it off. Like 99% of the time. LinkedIn is not Meta. In many ways, it’s the opposite. Meta has super good machine learning and has a scary amount of info about us, which gives it intent signals on if we are in the market for a product. LinkedIn not so much. On LinkedIn, you need tight targeting. Spend your budget only on your ICP (not large audiences). Never trust LinkedIn's suggested bids or suggested anything for that matter. LinkedIn is built for sales-led businesses. + Long buying journeys. + High-ticket deals. + Complex funnels. To win here, you need: ✔ A real funnel strategy ✔ Middle-of-funnel nurture ✔ Ads that build trust, not just grab clicks ✔ A mix of thought leader, lead gen, and demand gen content If you’re an agency wanting to offer LinkedIn Ads to your clients, but you’re not 100% confident, we can run it for you. We’ve just opened our white label LinkedIn Ads service. We run the account under your brand. You stay the hero. We’re the engine behind the scenes. Send me a DM and I’ll show you how it works.

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Everyone thinks they can do marketing... But they don’t see the real work behind it. They see a featured snippet or the #1 link on Google and think, “Job done.” But that’s just the output... it's the tiny visible tip of a much larger, more complex multi-channel strategy. If you’re leading marketing, you already know where the real value lives: → The Strategy — Tied to commercial goals, not vanity metrics → The Data — Intent, competition, gaps, technical fixes → The Content — Created to inform, convert, and scale visibility → The Cross-team Comms — Brand, sales, product all speaking the same language This is the graft that builds sustainable performance, not just short-term wins. Because getting to the top of Google is one thing. But staying there, and turning that into brand equity, inbound demand, and business growth takes more. It’s SEO. It’s PR. It’s organic social. It's paid search. It’s technical, creative, and collaborative. All working together, and all pointing in the same direction. And the only thing most people see? A single blue link. That’s fine. Because the right people see what it really means: - A strategy working. - A brand showing up. - Momentum building. Not a quick win, but a compound one.

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How to use AI to improve agency performance! Episode 2 of the Prompted podcast has just wrapped up - this one all about how agencies can use AI to improve performance. (And some painful examples of when they really shouldn’t). This month, me and Nick Handley were joined by the ever insightful and inspirational Stephen Kenwright. Stephen was the first person we wanted to get on to talk, having such a rich history in agency leadership, the nuggets in this episode were non stop. We discussed: - The right (and wrong) ways agencies are using AI - Ways to bring your team along on the AI journey without killing creativity - Practical use cases that can make a real difference to client results And what you can do about it. Sharing actionable insights you can use to help you out day to day. Big thanks to COLONY for hosting us 🙏 Look out for the episode when it drops in a couple of weeks once our editing skills have improved somewhat 😂 As we map out the next few episodes, I’d love to know, who would you like to see us bring on next??

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Why Your “Perfect” Legal Article Still Lives on Page 2 (and exactly how to fix it) Great prose isn’t enough. To rank and sign clients, you need: ✅ Verified search demand ✅ Content that matches user intent ✅ Real authority backlinks & E-E-A-T proof ✅ Tight on-page SEO + Core Web Vitals ✅ Fresh updates every quarter ➜ Swipe through the seven hidden blockers and steal the quick fixes. 📬 Liked this post and want to go deeper Follow Matthew Khorsandi for more tips.

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