Why Great Marketers Test Everything (Even What They Know Works)

Why Great Marketers Test Everything (Even What They Know Works)

In this episode, Harry and Daniel discuss why challenging your own thinking is one of the biggest competitive advantages in performance marketing. Harry shares a recent Google Ads experiment where a bidding strategy he was convinced would outperform actually lost, proving once again that every account, audience and business behaves differently. The conversation explores why marketers should stop relying on playbooks, how to build a culture of experimentation, and why curiosity consistently outperforms certainty when scaling paid media. Harry and Daniel also discuss why Meta continues to be overlooked by many businesses, when it makes sense to expand beyond LinkedIn and Google, how they approach testing across channels, and why creative strategy should always be tailored to the platform rather than copied between them. Whether you’re growing a B2B business or a B2C lead generation brand, this episode breaks down the testing mindset, frameworks and practical lessons that help businesses scale more efficiently through performance marketing. IN THIS EPISODE: * Why you should always test your assumptions * A Google Ads experiment that challenged our own playbook * When “best practice” becomes bad practice * Why broad targeting continues to outperform in Meta * When to invest in Google, LinkedIn and Meta * Why channel hopping slows growth * The role of creative testing in paid media * Building a testing culture that delivers long-term results I f you’re looking for a performance marketing podcast, business growth podcast, podcast for marketing teams, marketing podcast for entrepreneurs, creative business podcast, or business leadership podcast, you’ll find practical insights covering Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads, paid media, performance marketing, lead generation, B2B marketing, B2C marketing, growth marketing, digital marketing, conversion optimisation, and marketing strategy. ---------------------------------------- HOSTS Daniel Hughes https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-h-771904141/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-h-771904141/] Harry Hughes https://www.linkedin.com/in/harry-hughes-6409b163/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/harry-hughes-6409b163/] Mayfair Media Group https://www.mayfair-mediagroup.com/ [https://www.mayfair-mediagroup.com/]

How One CTA Change Doubled Conversions and Halved CPAs

In this episode of Unqualified Leads, Harry runs solo through a live case study from one of our healthcare clients, where a series of small, logical fixes to the user journey has just delivered a record-breaking week. It's a short-format episode designed to show what happens when you stop optimising ads in isolation and start optimising the entire flow your leads move through. Most businesses pour budget into paid media but lose huge volumes of potential customers in the gaps between lead capture, sales follow-up, consultation, and invoice. The data is usually sitting there, but nobody's taken the time to map it end-to-end. When you do, the opportunities to move the needle quickly become obvious, and often it's the smallest changes that produce the biggest results. This episode is designed as a practical podcast for founders, marketing teams, and operators who want to understand how to audit a full customer journey and prioritise the fixes that will actually drive growth. We walk through how we ran a two-week deep-dive audit, mapped every user route into the business on a Miro board, analysed every email, SMS, and automation, and worked with the sales team to identify exactly where leads were dropping off. In this episode, we cover: * Why optimising paid media alone has a ceiling, and where the bigger gains actually live * How to run a two-week audit that maps every user flow, comms touchpoint, and drop-off * Why bringing fresh eyes into a business uncovers gaps internal teams have stopped seeing * How to identify which fixes will move the needle most and avoid overwhelming the team * The single book-now CTA change that broke a weekly consultation record by Wednesday * Why striking while the lead is hot is the highest-leverage moment in any funnel * How to spot the silent drop-off points between invoice and payment, and how to fix them * Why simple, lean workflows beat complex edge-case automations every time * Why consistent creative refreshes are non-negotiable for high-spending paid accounts This is a b2b marketing podcast episode focused on the operational reality of growth: how paid media, CRM, and user experience all have to work together for every dollar of ad spend to pull its weight. We share the real numbers behind the changes, including a 120% increase in Meta-driven consultations, a 150% increase from TikTok, and CPA reductions of over 50% across both channels. It's particularly relevant for founders, growth teams, and marketing leaders who feel like they've squeezed everything they can from their ad accounts and are wondering where the next leg of growth comes from. If you're scaling paid acquisition, managing a high-volume lead funnel, or trying to figure out why your conversion rates aren't matching your traffic, this business growth podcast episode will give you a framework to follow. Hosts: Harry Hughes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harry-hughes-6409b163/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/harry-hughes-6409b163/] https://www.mayfair-mediagroup.com/ [https://www.mayfair-mediagroup.com/]

How to Set Up UTM Attribution Properly in Your CRM

In this episode of Unqualified Leads, we walk through how to properly set up UTM attribution inside your CRM. It's one of the most overlooked pieces of marketing infrastructure, and one of the first things we audit when we start working with a new business. Most companies rely on the default attribution that GA4 and their CRM provide out of the box. It's not necessarily wrong, but it's rarely set up in a way you can fully trust when it's time to make real decisions. Channels get mis-assigned, direct traffic balloons, last-touch dominates the story, and the data ends up patchy enough that nobody quite believes the dashboards they're reporting on. This episode is designed as a practical podcast for marketing teams, founders, and operators who want attribution data that holds up under scrutiny. We walk through the exact UTM framework we build for clients, from capturing parameters at the form level, to segmenting them into first, last, and conversion touch buckets inside the CRM, to layering in self-reported attribution to bridge the gaps machine tracking can't close on its own. In this episode, we cover: * Why default GA4 and HubSpot attribution isn't enough on its own * How to build a UTM framework with a single source of truth across your team * The hidden form field setup that captures UTMs against every CRM contact * Why your tracking code needs an expiry timer, and what goes wrong if it doesn't * How to segment UTMs into first touch, last touch, and conversion touch buckets * Why first-touch UTMs should be locked and never overwritten * How to use self-reported attribution as a free-text layer to enrich your data * Why direct traffic is often misleading and what's really happening underneath it * How to backfill historical CRM data so your dashboards aren't patchy * Why UTMs should be set at the account level, never the ad level, with dynamic campaign tags This is a b2b marketing podcast episode focused on the operational reality of attribution: how to set it up properly, where most teams get it wrong, and how to turn UTM data into a dashboard that tells a richer story of how customers actually find and convert with you. It's particularly relevant for b2b marketing leadership, growth teams, RevOps, and anyone responsible for reporting on marketing performance. If you're scaling paid media, running multi-channel campaigns, or trying to prove marketing's contribution to revenue, this business growth podcast episode will help you build attribution infrastructure you can genuinely trust. Whether you're a marketing podcast for entrepreneurs listener building your first stack, a creative business podcast follower refining your reporting, or a business leadership podcast regular focused on scaling efficiently, this is one of the b2b marketing podcasts worth coming back to whenever attribution gets messy. Hosts: Daniel Hughes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-h-771904141/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-h-771904141/] Harry Hughes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harry-hughes-6409b163/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/harry-hughes-6409b163/] https://www.mayfair-mediagroup.com/ [https://www.mayfair-mediagroup.com/] ----------------------------------------

How to Analyse Paid Media Performance Beyond In-Platform Data in B2B & B2C Marketing

In this episode of Unqualified Leads, we break down a real-world paid media experiment that challenges one of the most common assumptions in marketing: spend more equals more growth. After increasing Meta ad spend by 25%, revenue only grew marginally - and media efficiency dropped. On the surface, platform performance looked strong. But once we analysed the data across CRM, GA4, and attribution layers, it became clear that the issue wasn’t acquisition - it was something much deeper. This episode is designed as a practical podcast for marketing teams, founders, and operators looking to scale paid media without losing efficiency. We walk through how to properly analyse performance across channels and why relying on in-platform metrics alone can lead to the wrong conclusions. In this episode, we cover: * Why increasing ad spend doesn’t scale revenue linearly * How to use media efficiency ratio (MER) to evaluate true performance * The impact of retention, repeat purchase rate, and lifetime value on growth * Why revenue lag can distort performance in longer sales cycles * What incrementality data reveals about wasted spend * How to diagnose performance across Meta, Google, GA4, and CRM data * Why marketers must take a top-down approach to analysis, not just channel-level reporting This is a b2b marketing podcast episode focused on real data, real testing, and real decision-making. It’s particularly relevant for b2b marketing leadership, growth teams, and anyone responsible for scaling paid media budgets. If you’re running paid media, managing marketing budgets, or trying to improve business performance, this is a business growth podcast episode that will help you think more strategically about where your growth is actually coming from. ---------------------------------------- Hosts: Daniel Hughes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-h-771904141/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-h-771904141/] Harry Hughes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harry-hughes-6409b163/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/harry-hughes-6409b163/] https://www.mayfair-mediagroup.com/ [https://www.mayfair-mediagroup.com/]

Google Ads For B2B: Frameworks, Structures & Setups

In this episode of Unqualified Leads, Harry Hughes and Dan Hughes break down their core approach to Google Ads for B2B lead generation. From auditing a new account to structuring campaigns for scale, this episode covers the practical frameworks they use to build, manage and optimise Google Ads accounts that are focused on generating qualified pipeline, not just cheap clicks. They start with the foundation of every strong Google Ads account: conversion tracking. Harry explains why the first place he checks in any account is the conversion setup, how to think about primary vs secondary conversion actions, and why so many businesses damage performance by optimising for the wrong event. The conversation also covers enhanced conversions, consent mode v2, and why offline conversion imports from HubSpot or your CRM are essential if you want Google to optimise towards SQLs, opportunities and closed revenue rather than shallow lead volume. From there, they move into Google Ads account structure and explain how to think about campaigns by geo, service, product, and intent. They unpack why campaign design is not one-size-fits-all, but why clean structure, thematic ad groups, and clear separation between brand and non-brand search are non-negotiable. Harry also explains why your brand campaign should always sit separately from your generic campaigns, and why allowing brand traffic to leak into non-brand campaigns distorts performance and wastes budget. The episode also covers bidding strategies in Google Ads, including when to use Max Conversions, where tCPA and tROAS can make sense, and why Harry typically prefers to avoid overcomplicating bidding too early. They also touch on manual CPC and search impression share for brand campaigns, and explain why Google rep recommendations are not always the right move for your business. You will also hear their views on: * Google Ads audits for B2B lead gen * How to structure campaigns around service lines or search intent * Why exact match vs phrase match should be determined by the size of your search pool * When broad match and AI Max may or may not make sense * Why competitor campaigns often fail without the right landing page strategy * How to think about PMAX, Demand Gen and Display campaigns in lead gen accounts * Why negative keyword discipline and regular search term analysis are critical * The importance of balancing account consolidation with the need for spend control If you run Google Ads for a B2B company, a lead generation business, or you manage paid media for clients and want a clearer framework for how to structure, optimise and scale search campaigns, this episode is a strong introduction to the systems Harry and Dan use in real accounts. Hosts: Daniel Hughes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-h-771904141/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-h-771904141/] Harry Hughes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harry-hughes-6409b163/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/harry-hughes-6409b163/] https://www.mayfair-mediagroup.com/ [https://www.mayfair-mediagroup.com/]