Digital marketing consultant for London businesses
I work with London businesses as an independent consultant. SEO, Google Ads, content and analytics. No account manager in the middle, and no central London office built into your fee. Remote, on UK hours, with one person on your account.
Why London businesses end up looking for a consultant
Most London businesses who get in touch have used an agency before. The story is usually the same. A senior team pitches. A junior runs the account. Six months later nobody can say what changed. That happens everywhere, not just London. But London makes it cost more, because the rent is in your fee before anyone starts work.
London also squeezes your margins. Ad costs are the highest in the UK. And most commercial search terms are fought over nationally, because firms all over the country target London too. A campaign that works fine in Leeds or Bristol can lose money here on the same numbers.
The answer is not to spend more. It is tighter targeting, better tracking, and a clear decision on which channel earns the first pound. That is the work I do. If paid search is wrong for your numbers, I will tell you on the free call rather than take the money.
What is different about marketing a London business
Competition is national, not local
For most commercial search terms, the firms you are competing against in London are not all London firms. National companies target the city because that is where the volume is, which means local terms carry national-level difficulty and budgets.
Costs start higher
Click costs in London sit at the top of the UK range, and agency retainers reflect central London overhead. The same monthly budget buys materially less here, so waste that would be tolerable elsewhere is not.
Location signals work at borough level
Google's local results are heavily influenced by how close you are. A business in Croydon will not rank in the Shoreditch map pack, whatever you do. So a plan built around ranking for ‘London’ alone misses how people actually search.
Buyers compare more before enquiring
Londoners have more options within reach and behave accordingly — more research, more comparison, more tabs open. Sites that convert here tend to answer objections on the page rather than leaving them to the enquiry call.
What I run for London clients
Most engagements use two or three of these. The audit decides which, and in what order.
SEO
Borough-level keyword mapping, technical fixes and the local links London actually offers. London SEO consultant ›
Google Ads & PPC
Tighter targeting and working conversion tracking, in the UK’s most expensive click market. London Google Ads consultant ›
Local SEO
Business Profile, map pack visibility and reviews — usually the largest source of enquiries for a London service business.
Analytics & CRO
Measurement that reflects reality, then improving what the existing traffic does once it arrives.
Content Marketing
Pages that answer what London buyers actually compare before they enquire, rather than filler built for a word count.
Email Marketing
The cheapest channel you already own, and the one most often left running on defaults.
Looking for one channel specifically?
Two of these have a page of their own, covering how that channel works in a London market in more detail.
SEO consultant, London
Why London search is decided at borough level, what to fix first on an older site, and where the legitimate local links are.
Google Ads consultant, London
The three places London ad budgets leak, what a realistic minimum budget looks like, and why percentage-of-spend fees misalign incentives.
How a remote engagement actually runs
Free audit call
Thirty minutes, no obligation. I look at your site, your ad account and your search visibility first. Then I tell you what I found. That includes saying when you do not need me.
A written plan with a price
What I would do, in what order, what it costs and what you should expect to see by when. If the plan does not convince you, you have lost nothing but the call.
The work, with visible progress
A shared document you can open at any time rather than a monthly PDF. You can see what is being done as it is done, which removes most of the reason monthly reports exist.
A call every month
What moved, what did not, what I am changing because of it. Scheduled around the London working day, and you are always talking to the person doing the work.
Leave whenever you want
Monthly rolling, thirty days’ notice, and you keep every account, document and asset. Nothing is held in my name, which is a question worth asking any agency before you sign.
A London agency or an independent consultant
Both work. They suit different businesses, and there are situations where the agency is genuinely the right call.
Working with me
- The person you speak to is the person doing the work
- No central London premises built into your fee
- One point of contact, no account-management layer
- Monthly rolling, you keep every asset
- I will tell you when a channel is wrong for your numbers
- Limited capacity — I take a small number of clients
A London agency
- A bench of specialists across every discipline
- Capacity to scale quickly across multiple markets
- Someone available when an individual is on holiday
- In-person meetings if that matters to how you work
- Senior people pitch; delivery is often more junior
- Higher cost, with overhead and management included
Put simply: an agency gives you more people. I give you more senior hours for the same money. More about how I work
What this costs in a London market
Market context, not a price list
London agency retainers often start around £1,500 to £2,500 a month for a single channel and climb from there, with a big share covering account management and premises rather than delivery. Independent consultants usually sit below that because the overhead does not exist.
I quote per engagement after the audit rather than publishing a rate card, because the honest price depends on what state the account is in. The figures below are the market context you can sanity-check any quote against — mine included.
Before you get in touch
No, and I would rather say so plainly than imply otherwise. I am a remote consultant working with London businesses on UK hours. If meeting in person matters to you, a London-based consultant or agency suits you better. I will say so on the call rather than talk you out of it.
Video calls at times that suit the London working day. A shared document you can open any time, instead of a monthly PDF. Direct access on email and WhatsApp between calls. In practice most agency relationships are already conducted this way — the difference here is that the person on the call is the person doing the work.
Yes, and the approach changes depending on where you are. A business in Zone 1 competes with density; one in outer London competes for a wider radius with fewer rivals nearby. Those need different keyword targets and often different channels, which is part of what the audit establishes.
London agency retainers often start around £1,500 to £2,500 a month for a single channel and rise steeply from there, with a significant share covering account management and premises. Independent consultants usually sit below that because the overhead is not there. I quote per engagement after the audit rather than publishing a rate card that would not survive contact with your actual situation.
Yes. Most engagements start with one — usually whichever is already running and underperforming — because fixing a live channel produces evidence faster than launching a new one. The audit will tell you which that should be.
Paid search can produce enquiries within days of launch, though it takes six to eight weeks of data before the optimisation is anything other than guesswork. SEO in a London market is a six to twelve month horizon for competitive terms, with earlier movement on longer, more specific queries. Anyone giving you firmer numbers before seeing your account is guessing.
All services
Each has a page explaining how it works, what it includes and what it costs. See all services
Free audit for your London business
A 30-minute call. Then a short written report on where you stand now. Yours to keep, even if we never work together.