Practical guides to the marketing decisions that actually come up — whether to hire in-house or bring in a retainer, how a manufacturer should approach search, what's worth measuring and what isn't. The same thinking we give our own clients, written down.
An SEO retainer is an ongoing arrangement, not a one-off project, and the good ones are easy to tell from the rest once you know what to look for. What is in scope, how long it takes, and the questions worth asking before you sign.
Percentage-of-turnover rules, twelve equal monthly instalments, and a number set to be spent rather than to buy anything — most marketing budgets are theatre. Here is the version that treats marketing spend like any other commercial investment.
Distribution is a search-shaped business: buyers look for parts, brands and problems, not for distributors. A sector guide to turning product search into quote requests, trade accounts and a pipeline you can actually measure.
Most marketing reports measure activity, not commerce. A short chain of numbers — enquiry to quote to order — tells you whether marketing is paying, and it is shorter than most dashboards suggest.
No marketing team, growth from referrals slowing, and no shortage of people offering to sell you things. The right first moves are cheaper and less glamorous than most advice suggests — and the order matters more than the choices.
The visitors who decide your next contract don't arrive cold — they've been referred, pitched or shortlisted, and they're on your site to confirm a decision they've half-made. A guide to building a website that doesn't talk them out of it.
A no-nonsense breakdown of the four ways maintenance is sold, the realistic monthly bands for UK mid-market sites, the costs that never appear in the quote, and a worksheet to size what you actually need.
A website is not a project that finishes — it's a system that runs continuously, and most mid-market sites are quietly neglected the day after launch. What ongoing management really involves, who should own it, and how to tell whether yours is being looked after at all.
What conversion rate optimisation actually involves - the maths, the experiments, and the process - written for the owner of an established firm who wants more from the traffic they already have.
The instinct is to put one person in charge of the website. It is a reasonable instinct — but website management is four different jobs, and one hire rarely covers all four. Here is how to think about it before you write the job spec.
Most businesses treat website management as one fuzzy line on an invoice. It is really four distinct jobs — hosting, maintenance, support and content — and the gaps tend to hide in the spaces between them.
Maintenance quotes for the same site can range from £20 a month to £2,000. The spread is real, and it reflects genuinely different work — here is what drives the number, and how to tell whether yours is fair.
Content is the quiet bottleneck behind most stalled B2B marketing — and the reason your agency's blog reads exactly like everyone else's. Why it happens, and a way to produce content only your firm could.
Most 'our website doesn't work' complaints come down to one of five specific faults. A diagnostic for the established UK business whose site brings in too few enquiries.
Support and maintenance get quoted as one line and treated as one budget. They are two different kinds of work — and a business that runs a website needs both, structured properly.
A clear-eyed comparison of what a marketing retainer and a £55k in-house hire actually deliver for a £5m–£30m UK business — including the costs nobody books in the spreadsheet.
A grounded look at how UK manufacturers — especially £2m–£30m turnover engineering firms — should approach organic search in 2026.
Richard founded Cohaesus in 2008 and has spent the intervening decades running digital programmes for British manufacturers, distributors and professional services firms. He started Nine Stones to give established mid-market businesses the kind of senior marketing partnership the larger agencies reserve for their largest accounts.
Twenty-five years in digital — agency-side, client-side, group-side. Cohaesus Group founder.
Emily joined the Cohaesus Group as a Marketing Executive in 2023 and now leads marketing for Nine Stones. Her work spans marketing strategy, content and brand visibility across the group's specialist agencies — HeadChannel, Moriyama, Coherence, CopyHouse, Molzana, TheBotForge and EveryInteraction. Based in Dorset.
Marketing across the Cohaesus Group since 2023, working on strategy and brand visibility across the group's portfolio of specialist agencies. BA (Hons) Business and Management, University of the West of England.
Pieces written collectively by the Nine Stones team where the work is genuinely group-authored — sector primers, frameworks, and house positions on how things should be done.
Collected work of the Nine Stones partners and senior practitioners.
If something here mirrors a problem you've been chewing on, tell us about it. We'll tell you honestly whether we're the right team for it.
What the thirty minutes covers: what you're trying to grow, what's worked so far and what hasn't, and an honest view on whether we're the right team to own it.
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