Having sat through plenty of Google product announcements over the years, most of them repackaging, a sales pitch, or a nudge toward more spend (‘have you thought about [YouTube/Demand Gen/PMAX]?’), Google Marketing Live 2026 is the most strategically significant version I can recall. The reason is that if Google achieves its aims, then advertisers are about to lose meaningful control over three things at once: how they bid, how they measure, and where the purchase actually h

One of the most common marketing channels for our clients at Coppett Hill is Google Ads. Whether B2B or B2C, paid search is often one of the top three sources of new business pipeline, and frequently the largest single line of marketing spend. It is also one of the channels where we see the widest range in terms of operational maturity and the level of specialist knowledge of the in-house team and agency partners. Some of our clients are running highly sophisticated accounts,

We’ve reached the final article of our 3-part LLM marketing series. So far, we have talked about the impact of AI on search behaviour and GEO strategies. And now, we are going to outline the best practice for applying these strategies. How should you go about applying GEO strategies? First things first, you must track your AI visibility baseline. We recommend focusing your tracking efforts on ChatGPT as it accounts for roughly 77% of monthly LLM users, and what applies to Cha

In the previous article, we covered the impact of AI and LLMs on search behaviour and briefly touched on the ways in which advertisers appear within LLM responses. Following on from this, in this article, we are going to dive more specifically into the practical steps that can be taken to improve AIO and LLM visibility.

With 50% of consumers using AI-powered search today, AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) have become the central topic of many conversations within marketing teams. If you are a business owner, a marketing leader, or even an investor, you have no doubt been wrestling with the topics for the last year. This post intends to serve as a single, comprehensive guide to understanding both the “why” and the “how” of LLM marketing. Why should I care about the impact of AI on digital m

The cat’s out of the bag; on January 16th, OpenAI officially announced that ads are coming to ChatGPT. However, don't get too excited because it is still in early stages of development and there is a lot that is still left unknown. Here’s everything that we know about ChatGPT ads so far. Where will users see ads? Ad testing has begun for logged-in adults in the U.S. on the free and Go tiers (low-cost subscription). ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise subscription

You might be bracing for a dystopian tale of Large Language Models (LLMs) overthrowing the mighty Google and its dominant position in...

The Coppett Hill team has recently had the opportunity to work pro-bono with four fantastic non-profit organisations as part of the...

The question of “how much to spend on marketing” is one that every business should ask itself. The answer is often “what we spent last...

Perhaps your business has just received private equity investment, or you’ve recently joined a private equity backed business as the Chief Marketing Officer. Your first board meeting is approaching, and you’ve been asked to create a marketing update to include in the board pack. You want to make a good impression but have no idea what is expected. Based on my experience of both creating and reading many board packs, I’ve created this simple ten-point guide that might just sav

Have you ever read the marketing section of your board pack month after month, read a long description of activities, but been unimpressed by the lack of any meaningful change in lead generation? You may be observing ‘Spray and Pray Marketing’ - a phrase that I find myself using to describe an approach to marketing that I think is generally to be avoided. As tends to be the case with English idiom, we rarely stop and think about the deeper meaning of such phrases and sitting

What’s the most effective, cheapest, and in every case where I’ve measured it, the biggest marketing channel that will never feature in your ROI reports or marketing section of the board pack? The answer is customer advocacy. In an age where consumers are constantly bombarded with advertisements, the trust in a recommendation from a peer stands apart. I’d like to unpack why this aspect of marketing is so significant. Customer advocacy as a marketing channel I’ve asked the ‘wh

I’ve recently revisited Sam Savage’s "The Flaw of Averages: Why We Underestimate Risk in the Face of Uncertainty", a book he published in 2009 building on his original article from 2000. Savage’s concept is that decisions made based on average assumptions are often flawed due to overlooking the variability in data. Savage illustrates how this statistical pitfall can lead to disastrous outcomes across various fields, from finance and business to healthcare and climate change,

Of course, this could be £100, £10,000 or £1 million depending on the size of your marketing budget today - but this one question has proven to be the most illuminating thing that you can ask a marketing leader (your Chief Marketing Officer, Marketing Director, Head of Marketing or equivalent). This is also an excellent question for marketing leaders to ask themselves. It helps you/them to understand both the strategy they’re pursuing and their understanding of what is workin

How many times have you seen a set of customer ‘pen portraits’? The format is ubiquitous, normally a series of densely written pages of text accompanied with a stock image of someone smiling into the camera and a generic name, where we are told many specific, qualitative traits that our young professional or retired couple customer possesses – where they shop, their attitudes to politics, whether they have sugar in their coffee. The problem with this approach to customer segm

Around two thirds of trackable web traffic comes from search engines, whether from paid listings (paid search or PPC) or organic/free listings (organic search or search engine optimisation - SEO). The chances are that search represents a very meaningful source of online traffic, leads and customers for your business – even if it is at the start of a long B2B purchase journey. It follows that when you are setting your digital marketing strategy, you should be seeking to unders

‘Is the marketing function in your organisation a cost centre or a profit centre?’ This is a question I’ve asked many times, both as a consultant and an investor. It is shorthand for ‘do you understand the role of your marketing function in driving growth?’ and ‘how mature is your marketing function?’ Often, the answer to this question will be ‘a cost centre’. This is normally the case for SMEs and especially those selling to other businesses (B2B). I’m going to explain why y

What is Marketing Attribution? Marketing attribution is the process of determining how different marketing activities contribute to customer acquisition and retention. It plays a critical role in measuring the effectiveness of marketing efforts and helps businesses to optimise their budgets and strategies for maximum return on investment (ROI) and minimum waste. Purchase journeys starting today are more likely than not to start online, whether they are B2C or B2B (the stats a