Field Notes
Strategy, tactics, operating principles.
How we grow $2M to $100M businesses with performance marketing partnerships.
Marketing operations
The First 30 Days Of The Engine
What happens in week one, week two, week three, and week four when the operation goes live. Daily output. Every platform. Measured from day one.
Performance marketing
The Organic-To-Paid Flywheel
How content that proves itself organically outperforms purpose-built ads when amplified with paid spend. The mechanic that drove 27x ROAS at VBC.
Performance marketing
The 1,000,000 Views Guarantee, Explained Properly
Why we put a number on the contract, what counts, and the only condition that protects both sides.
Analytics + attribution
Why Your Site Sessions Doubling Is The Wrong Metric To Chase
VBC went from 19K to 43K monthly sessions. That number was a leading indicator, not the goal. Here is why.
Agency operations
The Real Cost Of A Marketing Hire vs A Marketing Partnership
Loaded cost of a senior marketer in Sydney versus a partnership that ships across the full stack. The maths almost always favours the partnership for $2M-$30M businesses.
Content strategy
What 70 Million Views Taught Me About Hooks
The first 3 seconds of any post decides whether the next 60 happen. After 70M+ views, the patterns are unmistakable.
Analytics + attribution
ROAS Is A Lagging Metric. Here Is The Leading One.
ROAS tells you what you sold last week. It does not tell you what is about to break. Save rate is the leading metric that does.
Brand + positioning
The Premium Positioning Test: Would You Pay Your Own Price?
If your founder would not pay your price for your product, the work is not at the standard the price requires. Most premium positioning fails this test.
Content strategy
Why Daily Output Beats Weekly Genius
One brilliant post a week is the wrong cadence for the algorithm and the wrong cadence for the team learning loop. Daily good beats weekly great every time.
Marketing operations
The Brain Site Content Ads Architecture
The four-layer operating system every Ignis partnership ships on. Brain holds the voice. Site converts the demand. Content creates the demand. Ads amplify the winners.
Marketing operations
Why The Brain Is The Marketing Source Of Truth
Everything Ignis ships flows out of one brain document per client. Voice rules, persona, offer language, proof points. The reason the work stays consistent across every contractor, every cycle, every channel.
Conversion + CRO
Your Site Is A Conversion Engine, Not A Brochure
The site's only job is to turn cold attention into a qualified application. Hero, proof, CTA. Three sections decide whether the rest of your marketing was worth running.
Performance marketing
Ad Creative From Organic Winners, Not Briefs
We never write purpose-built ad creative. Every winning ad starts as an organic post that the algorithm and the audience already validated. The mechanic that compounds.
Analytics + attribution
Weekly Reporting Is The Engine, Not The Output
The Friday report is what makes the next cycle sharper than the last. Three numbers, one narrative, one decision. Without it, every cycle is week one.
Performance marketing
Creative Strategy After The End Of Deterministic Attribution
Pixel signal is degraded permanently. The new measurement stack is part platform, part first-party, part lift study. The accounts that adapted are printing. The ones still optimising on a 7-day click attribution window are flying blind.
Performance marketing
How To Split Budget Between Meta And Google For B2B
Meta builds the demand. Google captures it. The split is rarely 50-50, and the right ratio depends on whether you're a known brand or unknown.
Content strategy
The Carousel Architecture That Drives The Highest Save Rates
10 slides, one idea per slide, one sentence per frame. The architecture that consistently outperforms 4-slide quote cards by 5-10x on save rate.
Content strategy
How To Build A Hook Bank That Never Runs Dry
200 reusable hook structures organised by buying intent. The asset that lets the team ship daily without running out of ideas by week three.
SEO + AI search
How To Engineer A Page So ChatGPT Cites It
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini are now sending real referral traffic. The pages they cite are structured a specific way. Here's the recipe that works in 2026.
Brand + positioning
Category Design Vs Category Following
The brands that compound own a category they invented. The brands that fight for share rent the one they joined. How to know which one you're playing.
Brand + positioning
Monopoly Voice: The Brand Voice Pattern That Removes Competitors From The Page
Apple does not mention Samsung. Tesla does not mention Ford. The brands that own a category never name the alternatives. The pattern, applied to your brand.
Founder + leadership
The First Marketing Hire Is Almost Never A CMO
Founders default to hiring a CMO first. Almost always wrong. The right first hire is the operator who can ship daily output, not the strategist who can think about it.
Industry: AEC
Marketing For AEC Firms: Why The Standard Approach Fails
Architecture, engineering, construction. Long sales cycles, niche specifier audiences, photography-driven. The marketing playbook that actually works for the trades.
Industry: Personal brand
Marketing For Personal Brands That Want To Convert, Not Just Entertain
Most personal brands optimise for views and wonder why nobody buys. The 5 funnel layers that turn followers into clients without dropping the entertainment that earned them.
GTM strategy
What Full GTM Actually Means For A $5M-$50M Business
GTM is not a department. It is the single system that turns attention into revenue. Here is what every layer does and why most businesses run only two of them.
GTM strategy
The Three Layers Of A Modern GTM Engine
Distribution, conversion, lifecycle. Most operators try to fix one without touching the other two and wonder why nothing scales.
GTM strategy
Why Organic Always Comes Before Paid
Paid ads are amplification. They make whatever message you put in front of a cold audience louder. If the message hasn't been validated organically, you're amplifying nothing.
Content strategy
Hooks Are 80 Percent Of The Game
The first three seconds of a video, the first six words of a headline, the first frame of a carousel. These decide whether the next 60 seconds happen at all.
Content strategy
How Often To Post: The Cadence Question Answered
Posting once a week is invisible. Posting ten times a day burns out the team and the audience. Here is the cadence that actually works on every platform in 2026.
Content strategy
Long Video, Short Video, Carousel: A Simple Decision Tree
Three formats, three jobs. Pick the wrong format for your message and the message dies even when the hook lands.
Performance marketing
When To Flip Paid Ads On (And When To Wait)
Most operators turn paid on too early, burn budget on unvalidated creative, then conclude that 'ads don't work for our business'. The signal that says you are ready is specific.
Performance marketing
Meta, Google, TikTok: Where Your First $10K Of Ad Spend Goes
Three platforms, three different jobs in the funnel. Spending the same way on all three is a fast way to print disappointing reports.
Conversion strategy
Your Website Has One Job And It Is Not Traffic
Doubling traffic to a website that doesn't convert doubles your loss. The job of the site is to turn visits into next steps. Everything else is secondary.
Lifecycle marketing
Email + SMS: The Lifecycle Layer Most Operators Skip
Acquiring a lead and never following up is the most expensive mistake in the funnel. Email and SMS together convert 3x to 8x more of the leads you already paid for.
SEO
SEO In 2026: What Still Works, What Is Dead
Search behaviour is splitting between Google and AI engines. The SEO playbook that worked in 2022 is half-dead and the new half is what most operators have not built yet.
AI in marketing
Getting Cited By ChatGPT, Gemini, And Perplexity
AI engines decide who to cite using rules that are not Google's. Five things every page needs if you want LLMs to recommend you when a buyer asks for a referral.
Brand
The Brand Voice Test: Would Apple Write This?
Brand voice is not a font choice or a colour palette. It is the test you apply to every line of copy before it ships. Pass the test, and your premium positioning holds.
Conversion strategy
Offer Design: What Your Price Says About You
The offer is the most important thing on the page. Most businesses spend months on the website and seconds on the offer. Reverse the order.
Conversion strategy
Pricing Pages That Actually Convert
Pricing pages are where browsers become buyers or bounce. The mistakes most pages make are easy to spot once you know what to look for.
Tactical playbook
Reviews: How Many You Actually Need And How To Get Them
The number of reviews is not what moves the needle. The recency, the rating average, and the response rate move it. Here is the system that took VBC from 75 reviews to 155.
Reporting
The Weekly Five Numbers, Five Minutes Report
Most weekly marketing reports take an hour to read and make no decisions easier. The five-number version takes five minutes and changes what gets done next week.
GTM strategy
The 90-Day GTM Plan From Zero
If you are starting with no audience, no content, no ads, and no website that converts, here is the order to fix the layers in over the next 90 days.
GTM strategy
Why GTM Is The Better Frame Than 'Marketing'
When you call it 'marketing' you scope the problem too small and the wrong people own the outcome. When you call it GTM you put revenue on the line and the right people show up.
GTM strategy
What Full-Stack GTM Looks Like When It Is Working
When all six layers of the engine are wired together, the business stops feeling like marketing is a guess. Here is what the day-to-day looks like.