Search strategy & intelligence.
Diagnose the problem before choosing the channel.
Work out where search is being won and lost before deciding what to do.
We look at demand, how your customers search, your competitors and category, the places discovery happens, where commercial intent appears, what builds preference and what can be measured. Then we decide what deserves action, and which capabilities, if any, it needs. It can be a standalone engagement or the first stage of the work.
View all capabilitiesRecent work
Fieldfolio
A B2B wholesale marketplace whose app-first categories did not match how buyers searched. How buyers actually looked for products decided the architecture before anything was built.
- +2,050%
- Top-3 ranking keywordsFieldfolio · Mar 2023 to Nov 2024 · published case study
- 1,200+
- Category pages, from 30Rebuilt around how buyers search
- #1
- "Wholesale marketplace"Google ranking · published case study
Our view
A channel brief is not a diagnosis.
Clients often arrive asking for SEO, paid search, GEO or content. Those are proposed mechanisms. The strategic question is whether that is actually where the commercial problem sits.
So before we recommend anything, we establish what demand exists, where customers discover their options, where intent becomes commercially valuable, what influences preference and what can genuinely be measured. Only then do we decide where investment belongs.
Before we recommend anything
What we need to know before we recommend anything.
Understand demand
What are customers asking for, searching for and trying to solve? How is that changing?
Create discovery
Where do customers actually encounter and evaluate their options?
Capture intent
Where does behaviour turn into meaningful commercial intent?
Build preference
What makes one brand more credible, relevant or likely to be chosen?
Prove impact
What can we measure, what can we infer and what remains unknown?
What strategy looks at
Where we look for evidence.
What you leave with
Decision clarity, not a document.
The format follows the problem. What stays constant is what you can do with it.
- 01
Diagnosis
Where the problem and the opportunity actually sit, and the evidence behind that view, with what is observed kept apart from what is estimated.
- 02
Priorities
Opportunities ranked by commercial value and what each depends on, not by how much activity they create.
- 03
Recommended action
Which capabilities deserve investment and which do not, and what happens first, sequenced by dependency.
- 04
Measurement
How you will know whether the work changed anything, and what can and cannot be attributed.
Standalone
Strategy does not require a retainer.
Search strategy & intelligence can be a standalone engagement. When it is done, we may carry out the recommendations, your internal team may, or another specialist partner may take on part of the work.
Execution is scoped separately, as its own decision.
In practice · Hobbies Direct
More spend was not the answer. Better commercial signals were.
Hobbies Direct's ad spend was climbing, but search was not being managed against margin or customer value. We mapped every query to product margin and customer value first, then rebuilt paid search around intent and briefed organic content from the same map, with revenue reporting connecting the two.
- +77%
- Revenue, while ad spend fell 20%
- +96%
- Paid revenue, year on year
- +46%
- Organic revenue, year on year
Search strategy & intelligence · SEO & search performance · Paid search & media · Data, measurement & insights
View the Hobbies Direct case study
Client voice
Firewire built the attribution framework before any content was created, so we always had clean data on what each channel contributed. The SEO wasn't cannibalising paid. It was bringing in customers we weren't reaching before. We would recommend them without hesitation.
We engaged Firewire to overhaul our SEO. They have incredible knowledge and understanding of SEO and have increased our organic traffic by 680%. Their work is high quality and produces results.
I went in expecting another agency pitch deck. What I got was a P&L conversation, a clear ROAS target, and a paid search engine that delivered against it. 34:1 ROAS is not something I thought possible from Google Ads.
After a run of bad experiences with other competitors, Firewire were able to deliver results, doubling our organic leads, and have been a pleasure to work with. We highly recommend.
Selected clients
Questions, answered
Questions, answered.
01 Do we need Search strategy & intelligence before engaging another capability?
No. If the problem is already clear, engage that capability directly. Strategy is where to start when it is not.
02 Can this be a standalone engagement?
Yes. It is scoped as its own piece of work, and there is no obligation to have us carry out the recommendations.
03 Can our internal team execute the strategy?
Yes. The recommendations are written so your team, or another partner, can act on them. Where you want us involved in execution, that is scoped separately.
04 What information or access do you need from us?
Read access to the platforms that hold the evidence, typically Google Search Console, GA4 and any ad accounts, plus your commercial context: margins or unit economics, targets and what you have already tried. Public search data covers the rest.
Ready when you are.
Be found first. Be chosen naturally.
Tell us what is changing, where you think the problem sits and what you have already tried. We will tell you honestly whether Search strategy & intelligence is the right place to start.