Blue Thirst

Director | Blue Thirst

Redweb

In my current role i have built a very successful online marketing department in a well established web build agency.

I have also been involved in mentoring a project with a local school that has won 2 BIMA awards and a Times Educational Supplement nomination.

Specialties
Online Marketing working in the following Large Ecommerce,Retail, Travel, Finance, Storage, Software,and Public Sector.

Manager of the Search Marketing Department.

- Creating traffic for clients sites through, SEO, PPC, Re-marketing, PR distribution, Social Media Marketing, Email marketing and other online channels.

- provide insight into best practice for new sites being developed by Redweb design a build team.

- Managing the Search Department at Redweb.

Search Manager | Redweb

Virgin Media ntl:Telewest Business

Online Marketing Manager | Virgin Media Business

Inwards ltd

- Brand development using online media, including email marketing, ppc seo, rss etc
- Statistical analytics
- Project management of design of bespoke CMS/CRM system
- Database management and segmentation
- New online media development - utilizing new forms of online media for marketing purposes.

Online Sales | Inwards Marine

Whitecap Leisure

Ahh the good old days when a board meeting meant time on the water.  My hair was long and board shorts were my work clothes.  Windsurfing, Sailing, Canoeing Instructor.

Also ran/managed corporate team building events

Windsurfing Instructor

A CMO & CEO. Dedicated to driving growth and promoting innovative marketing for businesses with bold goals

With over 20 years of experience in digital marketing, I excel at crafting high-impact strategies that drive growth and success for well-known brands. My unique blend of technical expertise, extensive management experience, and real-world business acumen make me an invaluable asset to any project.

Having served as the CEO of Blue Thirst, I led my team to achieve prestigious industry certifications, and I've masterminded innovative marketing strategies for renowned brands.

🔸 Proven success in delivering multi-million-pound revenue streams
🔸 Extensive experience in managing and developing high-performing teams
🔸 Demonstrated ability to drive growth and innovation in various sectors

Lessons from running campaigns for large PPC accounts

Managing a large PPC account is very different from managing a small one. The principles are the same, but the scale exposes weaknesses fast.

Here are three lessons I’ve learned working with big accounts across national brands and organisations:

Structure is everything
A messy campaign setup is easy to hide in a small account. In a large one, it makes optimisation almost impossible. Clean campaign structure, naming conventions and clear separation of audiences are non-negotiable.

Data beats instinct
In big accounts, the volume of data gives you the answers if you know where to look. Guessing, or optimising on gut feeling, is more dangerous at scale because mistakes compound quickly.

Small percentages mean big money
A 1% drop in conversion rate or a 5% increase in CPC might look minor. In a large budget account, that can equal thousands in lost revenue every week.

Large accounts reward discipline. The fundamentals of PPC do not change, but the margin for error disappears.

Question: What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned from managing PPC at scale?

#ppc #digitalmarketing #ecommerce

Martin McAndrew

The most expensive campaign is the one you don’t measure

Marketers often focus on budget as the main cost of advertising. But the real expense comes from campaigns that run without proper measurement.

If you cannot see what is working and what is wasted, you are not optimising - you are guessing.

The risks of unmeasured campaigns

Ad spend goes to audiences or keywords that never convert.

Creative gets judged on “feel” rather than performance.

Leadership loses trust in marketing as a growth driver.

What you should measure

Channel-level efficiency (CAC, ROAS, conversion rate).

Funnel progression (click to add-to-cart, add-to-cart to checkout, checkout to purchase).

Incremental impact, are you reaching new customers, or just paying for ones who would have bought anyway?

The discipline of measurement is what turns marketing from a cost into an investment. Without it, every campaign is expensive.

Question: What’s the one metric you won’t run a campaign without tracking?

#digitalmarketing #ppc #ecommerce

Run a Core Web Vitals check — site speed = silent revenue leakage

Every extra second your site takes to load is costing you sales. Customers don’t wait. They click back, they bounce, they buy elsewhere.

Google’s Core Web Vitals give you a simple way to measure site speed and usability. The three key metrics:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — how fast the main content loads.

First Input Delay (FID) — how quickly the page responds to user actions.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — how stable the page layout is as it loads.

Why this matters for eCommerce:

Faster sites convert more. Even a 0.5 second improvement can lift revenue.

Google uses Core Web Vitals as a ranking signal, so speed directly impacts SEO.

Poor mobile performance means wasted ad spend, as users drop off before they even see the offer.

A quick check you can run today:

Plug your site into Google PageSpeed Insights.

Review your Core Web Vitals scores.

Prioritise fixes for your top revenue-driving pages.

Site speed is silent revenue leakage. Fix it, and you unlock growth.

Question: Have you checked your Core Web Vitals in the last 3 months?

#SEO #ecommerce #digitalmarketing

Why agencies oversell “AI-powered campaigns” (and what clients should know)

“AI-powered campaigns” have become the latest sales pitch. Every agency seems to be claiming they have secret AI capabilities that will outperform the competition.

The reality is more nuanced.

What agencies often mean by “AI-powered”

They are using Google’s or Meta’s built-in automation (Smart Bidding, Performance Max, Advantage+).

They might use AI copywriting tools to generate ad variations faster.

They run dashboards with machine learning baked in.

All of this is useful, but none of it is proprietary. Every advertiser has access to the same tools.

What clients need to know

The value is not in the AI itself. It is in how an agency sets the right strategy, feeds the right data, and interprets the results.

AI will not fix poor creative, bad site UX or broken tracking.

Transparency matters. If an agency cannot explain what “AI-powered” means in practical terms, it is just marketing spin.

The best agencies are not selling AI. They are using it to remove grunt work so they can focus more on strategy and growth.

Question: Have you seen “AI-powered” used as a genuine value-add, or mostly as a buzzword?

#AI #ppc #digitalmarketing

How to Break into the US Market with Structured PPC Testing

The US is the biggest opportunity for eCommerce growth - but also the most competitive. Launching without a clear PPC structure can quickly turn into wasted budget.

Here are three principles that make the difference when breaking into the US market:

Start small, scale smart
Focus your spend on specific regions or product lines first. This keeps tests manageable and reduces wasted ad spend.

Isolate campaigns
Separate branded from non-branded, prospecting from remarketing. Clean campaign structures show you exactly where incremental growth is coming from.

Test, learn, repeat
Run structured tests on keywords, creatives and audiences. Keep what wins, cut what doesn’t, and scale step by step.

This approach helped our clients expand into the US profitably. By resisting the temptation to “go big” too soon, they built a strong foundation for sustainable growth.

The lesson is clear: you do not scale by gambling. You scale by structuring.


#ppc #ecommerce #digitalmarketing

Review your negative keyword list, bet it’s outdated

Negative keywords are one of the simplest tools in PPC. Yet in most accounts I audit, the list is years out of date.

Why this matters:

Search behavior evolves. New irrelevant queries creep in all the time.

Competitors launch products with similar names. Without negatives, you pay for clicks that will never convert.

AI-driven match types have made keyword matching broader, so irrelevant terms slip through faster than ever.

A quick check you can do today:

Go into Google Ads and pull a Search Terms report.

Sort by spend and look for queries that are irrelevant or too generic.

Add them to your negative keyword list at the right level (campaign or ad group).

Revisit this every month.

The difference between a profitable and an inefficient account is often not the keywords you add, but the ones you block.

Question: When was the last time you reviewed your negative keywords?

#ppc #digitalmarketing #ecommerce

Why CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) Should Be Every CMO’s True North

Every CMO juggles dozens of metrics: ROAS, CTR, conversion rate, lifetime value, engagement. All useful. But there is one number that consistently tells the truth about growth: CAC.

Why CAC matters most

It shows exactly how much you are paying to acquire a new customer.

It forces you to balance efficiency with scale.

It connects marketing performance directly to profitability.

The danger of ignoring it

You can celebrate a high ROAS, while acquisition costs quietly erode margins.

You can scale top-line revenue, but at a loss.

You can optimise for clicks or conversions that don’t translate into real growth.

How to use CAC as your north star

Calculate CAC by dividing total marketing spend by new customers acquired.

Compare it to your customer lifetime value (LTV).

Align every campaign, channel and test to improve the CAC:LTV ratio.

When CAC is your true north, you stop chasing vanity metrics and start leading marketing as a profit center.

Question: Do you currently measure CAC monthly, or only look at it during big strategy reviews?

#ecommerce #digitalmarketing #CMO

Managing clients on commission vs equity vs fee - what I’ve learned

Agencies usually default to a flat fee model. It’s predictable, simple, and easy to manage. But it isn’t the only way to structure a client relationship.

Over time I’ve worked with clients on three models:

1. Fee-based

Reliable and stable.

Best for clients who want predictable costs and consistent service.

Downside: sometimes misaligned with performance outcomes.

2. Commission-based

Ties income to results (for example, a percentage of ad spend or revenue).

Great for fast-scaling eCommerce where growth is measurable.

Downside: risk shifts to the agency if client-side issues (like stock or site speed) undermine performance.

3. Equity + commission

Creates true partnership, skin in the game on both sides.

Works best when both agency and client are committed long-term.

Downside: complex, and not right for every business stage.

What I’ve learned
The model matters less than alignment. If incentives are clear and both sides are committed to growth, the relationship works. If not, no contract structure will save it.

Question: Which model do you think creates the healthiest client–agency partnerships?

#digitalmarketing #ecommerce #agencylife

The most overlooked metric: impression share loss due to rank

Most marketers obsess over click-through rate, cost per click and ROAS. But there is one PPC metric that quietly reveals where growth is being left on the table: Impression Share Loss (Rank).

What it means:

It shows the percentage of auctions where your ad was eligible to appear, but did not, because your ad rank was too low.

In other words, demand existed, but your ad was not competitive enough to show.

Why it matters:

High impression share loss tells you your budget is not the main problem. Your ad strength, bid strategy or quality score is.

Reducing impression share loss often unlocks incremental traffic without increasing spend.

For eCommerce brands, this can be the difference between scaling profitably and plateauing.

Quick check today:

Go to Google Ads.

Add “Search Impression Share” and “Search Lost IS (Rank)” columns.

Review your top campaigns.

If impression share loss is high, you do not need a bigger budget, you need better ads!

Question: Do you track impression share as closely as clicks and conversions?

#ppc #ecommerce #digitalmarketing

SEO is like fitness. Results come from compounding, not quick fixes.

Every brand wants to rank at the top of Google. The problem is many expect results in weeks, not months.

SEO does not work that way. Like fitness, the gains come from consistent effort over time:

Publishing content that answers customer questions.

Building authority through relevant links.

Optimising site structure and speed.

Monitoring technical health and fixing small issues before they grow.

One workout does not make you fit. One blog post does not make you rank. But compound the effort over months, and the results build on each other.

The brands that treat SEO as an ongoing discipline outperform those that treat it as a one-off project.

Question: Are you approaching SEO like a quick sprint, or a long-term training plan?

#SEO #digitalmarketing #ecommerce

How TikTok is winning eCommerce ad spend from Meta

For years, Meta dominated social ad budgets. But TikTok has been quietly (and quickly) shifting that balance, especially for eCommerce brands.

Why TikTok is winning

Discovery over intent: TikTok thrives on impulse and product discovery, turning unknown brands into viral hits.

Creative-first ads: Success is driven by authentic, short-form video, not polished carousels or static images.

Lower costs (for now): CPMs and CPCs are often cheaper than Meta, giving brands more efficient reach.

Commerce integrations: TikTok Shop is closing the gap between discovery and purchase inside the app.

What this means for eCommerce marketers

TikTok is not just for awareness. Done right, it can be a performance channel.

Creative testing is non-negotiable. One winning video can outperform dozens of average ads.

Brands that adapt to the platform’s culture - raw, entertaining, native content - will see results faster.

Meta is still powerful, but TikTok is becoming the growth channel for brands who are willing to test, learn and scale.

Question: Are you shifting part of your paid social budget into TikTok yet, or still relying mainly on Meta?

#ecommerce #ppc #digitalmarketing

Your customer’s attention is rented, not owned. Build the email list.

Marketers love chasing reach. TikTok views, Meta impressions, Google clicks. But all of it is rented.

The platforms own the audience. You are just leasing access at today’s price. And the rent keeps going up.

If you want stability, you need an owned channel. Email remains the most powerful:

It is not subject to sudden algorithm changes.

You can segment, personalise and automate at low cost.

It builds long-term customer relationships outside of paid media.

Social and PPC are fantastic for discovery and growth. But if you are not turning that attention into owned data — email, SMS, loyalty programs — you are building on borrowed ground.

Every brand needs to ask: how much of my audience do I truly own?

Question: What’s the most effective tactic you’ve used to grow your email list?

#ecommerce #digitalmarketing #emailmarketing

Check if Google Ads and Meta attribution match (spoiler: they won’t)

One of the most common frustrations for eCommerce marketers is trying to reconcile results between platforms. Google Ads says one thing. Meta says another. Which one is right?

The answer is neither — and both.

Why they never match

Each platform uses its own attribution model.

Google leans on last-click. Meta leans on view-through and multi-touch.

Both are incentivised to over-report their impact.

What this means for you

Comparing Google and Meta reports side by side is misleading.

The only “truth” is in your backend data — revenue and orders from your eCommerce platform.

Platforms are best used as directional signals, not as a single source of truth.

A quick check you can do today

Compare Google Ads conversions with Meta Ads conversions over the same period.

Cross-check against Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce or your CRM.

Expect gaps — but look for trends, not exact matches.

The smartest marketers don’t argue over whose numbers are right. They focus on whether the overall blended cost of acquisition is profitable.

Question: Do you track platform performance separately, or blend results into one view of acquisition?

#ppc #digitalmarketing #ecommerce

One-question audit: Would you buy from your own landing page?

Marketers often get lost in metrics. CTR, CPC, ROAS, conversion rate. All useful- but sometimes the simplest question cuts through the noise:

Would you buy from your own landing page?

Open your top-performing page right now and ask yourself:

Is the headline clear about the value?

Do the images actually show the product or just look pretty?

Is the call-to-action obvious and easy to find?

Does the page load quickly on mobile?

Are trust signals (reviews, returns policy, guarantees) visible without scrolling?

If the answer is no, you cannot expect a stranger with less patience to say yes.

Data and optimisation matter. But human judgment is often the fastest way to spot a blocker to conversion.

Question: When was the last time you looked at your own landing page with a customer’s eyes?

#ecommerce #digitalmarketing #CRO

AI Writing Ads - Are Humans Still Needed? (Short answer: yes)

AI can already generate headlines, descriptions and ad variations faster than any human copywriter. For many brands, it feels like a game-changer.

But speed is not the same as strategy.

Where AI adds value

Generating multiple ad variations quickly.

Providing fresh angles for A/B testing.

Helping scale creative production when budgets are tight.

Where humans remain essential

Understanding customer emotion and cultural nuance.

Translating brand positioning into persuasive language.

Knowing when to break the rules to stand out.

Aligning ad copy with the wider funnel and business goals.

AI is a tool. It accelerates the process, but it cannot replace the judgment, empathy and creativity of a skilled marketer.

The best results come when humans and AI work together - not when AI is left to run the show.

Question: Have you tested AI-generated ad copy in your campaigns yet?

#AI #ppc #digitalmarketing

Check if your XML sitemap includes all revenue-driving pages

An XML sitemap is one of the simplest technical SEO elements, yet many eCommerce sites overlook it.

Why it matters:

It tells Google which pages you want indexed.

It helps search engines discover new or updated pages faster.

If your sitemap is missing key product or category URLs, you may be invisible in search for high-value queries.

A quick check you can do today:

Visit yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.

Review the list of URLs.

Are your top product and category pages included?

Check for errors, redirects or duplicate URLs.

Submit the sitemap in Google Search Console to confirm it is being crawled.

Without the right pages in your sitemap, your SEO is leaking revenue potential.

Strong category and product pages should be front and center in Google’s index.

Question: Have you reviewed your XML sitemap in the last six months?

#SEO #ecommerce #digitalmarketing

Google’s Search Generative Experience , early signals for SEO

Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) is still in testing, but the signals for SEO are already becoming clear.

SGE inserts AI-generated summaries at the top of search results, often pushing traditional organic listings further down the page. For eCommerce and content sites, this changes the landscape in three important ways:

Visibility is compressed
The “blue links” are moving further down. Even strong rankings may see lower click-through rates if the AI summary answers the query.

Content quality and depth matter more
SGE tends to pull from sites with clear, authoritative answers. Shallow or duplicate content is less likely to appear.

Brand presence is critical
When fewer links are visible, brand recognition becomes a deciding factor in whether a user scrolls or clicks.

What you can do now:

Invest in content that directly answers customer questions with depth and clarity.

Make sure your site signals authority with strong technical SEO and backlinks.

Build brand trust outside of search (social, PR, email) to reduce dependency on organic clicks alone.

SEO is not disappearing, but it is evolving. The early movers will be the ones who benefit as AI changes how customers interact with search.

Question: Do you think SGE will improve the search experience, or make it harder for brands to be discovered?

#SEO #AI #digitalmarketing

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