I grow digital businesses.

The brief

Working closely with co-founders Eleanor Bodger and Esther Perriam, lead engineer Matt Currie and, more recently, CEO Penn Trevella, to grow Eldernet through search, data and engagement.

What was done

• Holistic search marketing strategy, touching most of the digital side of the business
• Product and content opportunities driven by data insights: Google Trends, SEMrush, Ahrefs and custom tooling
• SEM strategy, development and management
• Reporting across a variety of digital product metrics
• Display marketing
• EDM and engagement strategy

The relationship

Ongoing

A long-running engagement that has carried on from the co-founders through to the current CEO.

The role

Mentor to the start-ups and early-stage enterprises that come through Ministry of Awesome, helping founders with strategy across the full stack of marketing.

Where founders get help

• Strategy across the full stack of marketing
• Go-to-market strategy and market analysis
• Digital and product marketing
• Branding and pricing
• B2B, B2C and B2G business models
• Experience across New Zealand, Australia, the UK and the US

So far

12+

start-ups and early-stage enterprises mentored since March 2024.

See the mentor profile

The role

hipages Group acquired Builderscrack in 2021 and the contract continued. Today the work spans the entire group, with responsibility for the paid-digital and organic search channels at Builderscrack NZ, working alongside the group's digital marketing specialists on a variety of broader initiatives.

What is done

• Bringing AI into how the group markets
• SEM across Google and Bing and, more recently, OpenAI ads
• Meta ads and lead acquisition
• Conversion rate optimisation
• SEO and AI search: AIO and GEO
• Building digital marketing systems at the cutting edge

The relationship

2021 to today

hipages Group is the largest trade marketplace in Australasia: ASX-listed, with a market capitalisation of $118 million and more than 220 staff.

The brief

Write for the magazine on behalf of builderscrack.co.nz, speaking to repair, renovation and property trends across New Zealand, from 2020 onwards.

What was done

• Conceiving each article idea
• Deep market research
• Data analysis behind every piece
• Writing the full 1,500 to 2,000 words
• Delivering to the editor ready for publishing
• Five feature articles among them

What was delivered

20+

articles authored, five of them features, each taken from idea to a publish-ready piece.

The brief

Several initiatives with one aim: have UK energy consumers switch their supplier to British Gas. The requirement was a complete energy-switching conversion pipeline, from audience reach through to handover to the customer support team.

What was done

• Strategic design of the whole acquisition channel
• The full build, from audience reach to handover
• Google Ads as the primary acquisition channel
• Handover of each switcher to the British Gas customer support team
• Ongoing execution and optimisation

The engagement

2014 to 2016

Responsible for the entire channel: strategy, build, execution and optimisation. It ran until the return to New Zealand, when it was handed back to British Gas.

The brief

Is every investment delivering the returns that were intended, beyond the financial? The answers sit in long, varied documents. The team needed them read consistently and turned into reporting they could govern by.

What was done

• Ground-up design and build of the reporting software
• AI that ingests documents and quantifies qualitative data
• Criteria aligned to iwi pou, the values that guide the iwi's decisions
• Scoring inside a structured rubric, with every reading traceable to its source
• Human review kept central: the AI supports judgement, it does not replace it
• Documents converted into a view of blended return performance

What was delivered

Always-on reporting

A live view of each investment against its own purpose. It is the core of Mindstake's always-on impact reporting.

See Mindstake

The brief

In the early 2010s, responsible for SEO strategy for one of the UK's biggest comparison marketplaces, with work spanning both SEO and SEM.

What was done

• Early SEO strategy, the main focus of the work
• Delivered on contract through a UK agency
• SEM alongside the organic work
• Marketplace search at national scale

Where it led

Early 2010s

The strategy contributed to MoneySuperMarket's dominance of UK search results. The same marketplace thinking runs through the Builderscrack and hipages work that followed.