The Signal — Findability

I was the Marketing Manager — here's why that role is broken.

2026-03-18T00:00:00Z

I've been a Marketing Manager. More than once. I've held the title in-house, I've done it as a freelancer for a decade, and I've worked in an agency where we hired them for our clients. I know the role inside out — and I know exactly where it falls apart.

Not long ago, I was handed a position description for a marketing manager role. It could've been written for any mid-sized business in Australia. The title, the 38-hour week, the reporting line to the boss. And then the responsibilities:

Strategic planning. Campaign management. Digital marketing — SEO, SEM, social, email, online ads. Content creation across every channel. Brand management. Event coordination. Market research. Budget management. Team collaboration with sales, designers, and external agencies.

One person. All of that.

If you've ever written a PD like this, I'm not having a go at you. I've written them too. It's what we've always done — because it's the only model most businesses have ever been shown.

But I want to be honest about what actually happens when you hire against a list like that.

What really happens

You get a generalist. Someone who can do a bit of everything but doesn't have the depth to do any of it exceptionally well. That's not a criticism of the person — it's a criticism of the model. You're asking one human to be a strategist, a writer, a designer, an analyst, a media buyer, an event planner, and a brand guardian. Simultaneously. For one salary.

What happens in practice is triage. The urgent stuff gets done — the trade show booth, the social post that's overdue, the ad that needs to go live tomorrow. The important stuff — positioning, messaging, understanding your customer, building systems that compound — gets pushed to next week. Every week.

I know because I've lived it. You spend your days in execution mode and your nights wondering why nothing's moving the needle. The KPIs say "grow leads by 20% year on year" but nobody's done the foundational work to understand which leads matter, what message resonates, or whether the website is even talking to the right people.

The position description measures activity. Posts per week. Emails per month. Follower growth percentage. These aren't bad metrics, but they're lagging indicators at best and vanity metrics at worst. They tell you what happened. They don't tell you why, and they definitely don't tell you what to do next.

The gap nobody talks about

Here's what's almost always missing from the marketing manager PD:

Who are we, and why should anyone care?

I don't mean a logo and a tagline. I mean genuine brand strategy — how the business makes money, who it serves, how it wins, and how it's different from the three competitors the customer is also looking at. That's not a task you knock off between the Wednesday social post and the Friday trade show prep. That's foundational work. And if it's not done properly, everything built on top of it is guesswork.

Most PDs skip straight to execution. "Develop and execute strategic marketing initiatives" — sounds great in a document, but without clear positioning and messaging, you're just making noise. Busy, expensive noise.

The other thing that's almost always missing is a feedback loop. The PD will mention analytics and reporting, but there's rarely any mention of a system that connects what you're measuring back to what you're deciding. Measurement without a loop is just record-keeping.

What I figured out

After years of doing this — as the in-house person, as the freelancer, as the agency — I started to see the same pattern everywhere. The role was trying to combine two fundamentally different types of work: strategic thinking and production execution. And most marketing managers are only really wired for one of those.

The thinkers get stuck producing content they know isn't quite right but don't have time to fix. The doers execute brilliantly on a strategy that was never properly set. Both are frustrated. Both are burning out. And the business owner is wondering why they're spending $100K–$120K a year and still can't answer the question "is our marketing working?"

The model is broken. Not the people.

Where I landed

I don't do the traditional marketing manager thing anymore. What I do now is split the role into what it always should have been: strategy and execution, handled separately, each done properly.

I do the strategy. I work through a framework that starts where most marketing skips — with clarity about the business, its position in the market, who it's actually for, and what success looks like in specific, measurable terms. Not "enhance brand awareness." Real outcomes.

The execution — the content, the ads, the SEO, the emails, the reporting — is handled by AI. Not as a gimmick. As a genuine production system that can operate across every discipline, consistently, without the bottleneck of one person trying to do it all.

It sounds like it shouldn't work. But it does. Because the strategy is right before anything gets built. And because the execution doesn't get tired, doesn't get distracted, and doesn't have to choose between writing the blog post and analysing the campaign data. It does both.

What this means if you're a business owner

If you're about to hire a marketing manager, or you've got one who seems busy but nothing's really moving — it's probably not their fault. Look at the PD. Look at what you're actually asking one person to do. Then ask yourself:

Is the foundational strategy done? Do we know our position in the market, our message, our audience — not in vague terms but in specific, testable terms?

If the answer is no, hiring an executor won't fix it. You'll just be paying someone to run faster in the wrong direction.

The best marketing managers I've known — and I'd include past versions of myself in this — weren't great because they could do everything on the PD. They were great because they knew which parts of that list actually mattered, and they fought to spend time there instead of drowning in the rest.

The difference now is that we don't have to fight anymore. The model has changed. Strategy can be done by a human who understands the business. Execution can be done at scale, across every channel, by AI that doesn't compromise because it ran out of hours in the week.

That's what I'm building. And this blog — along with everything else you'll see from us — is made that way.

Welcome to The Signal

2026-03-25T00:00:00Z

Most marketing blogs exist to sell you marketing services. This one exists to help you understand what's actually happening — and what's not.

The Signal is where we share what we're learning, testing, and building at Findability. No jargon. No fluff. No "top 10 tips" that sound good but don't change anything.

Why "The Signal"?

Because the biggest problem in marketing isn't a lack of ideas — it's too much noise. Every platform wants your attention. Every agency promises results. Every guru has a framework.

The signal is the stuff that actually matters. The patterns that repeat. The principles that hold up across industries, budgets, and business models.

That's what we write about here.

What to expect

We'll cover the real work of building a marketing system — from brand strategy through to measurement. We'll share what's working for our partners (with their permission), what we're testing, and what we've learned the hard way.

If you're a business owner who's been burned by marketing before, this is for you.

Welcome to The Signal.

The Religion: Ten things we believe and where they came from.

2026-03-28T00:00:00Z

Every business has a culture. Most of them are accidental — a vibe that forms around whoever got hired first, whatever habits stuck, and whatever the founder tolerates on a bad day.

We didn't want that. So we wrote ours down.

We call it The Religion. Ten beliefs that guide how we work, how we think about money, how we treat people, and how we treat ourselves. None of them are original. All of them were earned — through mentors, through books, through getting it wrong, and occasionally through getting it right.

Here's what we believe and where each belief came from.

01. Reputation is the ultimate currency.

This one comes from Gary Vaynerchuk, who has been saying it for years across every platform he touches. The core idea is simple: in a world where everything you do is public and permanent, the way people talk about you when you're not in the room matters more than the number in your bank account. Trust compounds. Opportunities come to people with a track record of doing what they said they'd do.

Warren Buffett put it differently: "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it." Same idea, longer time horizon.

We put it first because everything else on this list flows from it.

02. How you make your money is more important than how much you make.

Also Gary Vee. And it's the natural follow-on from the first point — if reputation is the currency, then this is the instruction manual for earning it.

The logic is straightforward. Making $50k doing work you're proud of is a bigger win than making $500k doing work that hollows you out. Not because money doesn't matter — it does — but because the internet has a long memory, and shortcuts have a way of catching up. How you earn it is either building your reputation or eroding it. There's no neutral.

03. Utilisation, recovery, cleanliness.

This one comes from a mentor of mine, Antony Loomans, from the mid-2010s. It's a framework for thinking about the economics of your time, and once you hear it, you can't unhear it.

Utilisation is what you do with your time — the actual work. Recovery is what you get paid for that time. And cleanliness is how easy it is to actually collect the money you're owed.

You can be a brilliant web designer charging $5,000 a site, but if your clients are notoriously hard to get payment out of, your recovery might be high but your cleanliness is terrible. Conversely, a salaried role might feel like it undervalues your time, but if the same amount lands in your account every Wednesday without fail, that's about as clean as it gets.

The real insight is that most people only think about one of these three. Thinking about all three at once changes how you evaluate every opportunity.

04. All progress depends on the number of uncomfortable conversations you're willing to have.

Tim Ferriss wrote a version of this in The 4-Hour Workweek: "A person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have."

We've adapted the wording, but the idea is the same. The things you're avoiding — the price increase you haven't mentioned, the boundary you haven't set, the feedback you haven't given — those are the things standing between you and progress. Not your tools, not your strategy, not your budget. The conversation you're not having.

Ferriss frames fear as a compass. The thing you're most afraid to do is usually the thing you most need to do. We've found that to be uncomfortably true.

05. In business today, you're a media company first, and a ______ business second.

Gary Vee again. The blank is yours to fill — plumber, accountant, café owner, whatever you do. The point is that before anyone can buy from you, they have to know you exist. And in the age of TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube, the only way to stay visible is to produce content.

This isn't about becoming an influencer. It's about recognising that the cost of distributing your message is now essentially zero, and that the businesses who show up consistently are the ones who stay top of mind. Every business is a media company now. The only question is whether you're doing it deliberately or not at all.

06. Work in facts, not opinions.

I picked this up from Antony Loomans as well, and he likely picked it up from W. Edwards Deming, who is often credited with the line: "In God we trust; all others must bring data."

It sounds obvious until you sit in a meeting where a major decision is being made based on what someone reckons. Opinions feel like insight, but they're usually just preference dressed up in confidence. Facts are harder to find, slower to gather, and occasionally inconvenient — but they're the only foundation worth building on.

This applies to marketing more than most fields. "I think the blue one looks better" is an opinion. "The blue version converted 14% higher over 2,000 sessions" is a fact. We try to work in the second one.

07. If it's not in writing, it doesn't exist.

My first job out of university was doing marketing for a home loan company. Within 90 days the boss shut that division down and I was pushed sideways into working as a mortgage originator at Provincial Home Loans. It wasn't the right move, but it taught me something I've never forgotten.

In lending, everything has to be documented. Verbal agreements mean nothing. Promises that aren't on paper don't hold up. And the moment you treat a handshake like a contract, you're exposed.

It's not about distrust — it's about clarity. Writing things down forces both sides to be specific. It eliminates the "I thought you meant..." conversations. And when things go sideways (they always do eventually), having it in writing is the difference between a misunderstanding and a crisis.

08. Progress is non-linear.

James Clear nailed this in Atomic Habits. He describes the "Valley of Disappointment" — that period where you're putting in the work but seeing no results. You expect a straight line up. What you get is a flat line, then nothing, then nothing, then what feels like overnight success.

He calls it the "Plateau of Latent Potential." Your effort is being stored, not shown. And most people quit right before the line bends upward.

We put this in The Religion because it's the belief that holds everything else together when things feel slow. Marketing is non-linear. Business growth is non-linear. Personal development is non-linear. If you expect a straight line, you'll give up too early. Every time.

09. Self care, self respect, pay yourself first.

Another one from Loomans, though the "pay yourself first" piece goes all the way back to George S. Clason's 1926 book The Richest Man in Babylon. The rule is simple: before you pay anyone else — suppliers, staff, the tax office — set aside a portion for yourself. Not what's left over. First.

But the full triad matters. Self care means you have the energy to show up. Self respect means you don't accept less than you're worth. And paying yourself first is the practical step that builds the financial foundation for the other two.

Most business owners pay themselves last, run on empty, and wonder why they resent the thing they built. This is the antidote.

10. Listen 10x more than you talk.

Gary Vee talks about listening more than you talk constantly — he usually puts it at twice as much. For me personally, the multiplier needs to be higher. I have ADHD, which means my brain is generating ideas and responses faster than most conversations move. The temptation to jump in, to finish someone's sentence, to redirect — it's always there.

So I set the bar at 10x. Not because I hit it every time, but because aiming for 10x means I might actually land at 2x, which is still a massive improvement over where my default sits.

The principle underneath is simple: you learn nothing while you're talking. Every insight, every opportunity, every moment of genuine connection happens when you shut up and pay attention. The best marketers, the best leaders, the best partners — they all listen more than they talk.

What do you believe?

That's The Religion. Ten things we come back to when we're making decisions, evaluating opportunities, or just trying to figure out if we're on the right track.

None of these are rules. They're beliefs. They guide us, but they don't trap us. And they'll probably evolve — we might add an eleventh, or retire one that stops earning its place.

But for now, these are the ten things we believe. And we reckon that's a pretty solid foundation.

Why we built Bendigo UFS Optical their own landing page

2026-05-13T00:00:00Z

A confession before we start: Bendigo UFS Optical didn't ask us to do any of this.

We built them their own optometry-only landing page anyway. Unsolicited. On our own time. On our own dime. Then we sent them the link.

We did it because we believe the best way to pitch a marketing strategy is to ship it. Slide decks describe what's possible. A working landing page proves it. So instead of writing a proposal explaining how a focused landing page could help them get found on Google for "Bendigo optometrist," we just built one and handed it over.

Here's the strategic thinking behind the build — and the principle underneath it that any regional service business can borrow.

The setup

Bendigo UFS Optical has been around since 1872. They have a 3D retinal camera, designer frames, a not-for-profit cooperative behind them, and an optical manager who actually knows your name. By any honest measure, they're a better choice than the chains lining up either side of them on the high street.

And yet — until last week, if you typed "Bendigo optometrist" into Google, you'd find them somewhere south of the fold. Beaten by Specsavers. Beaten by OPSM. Beaten by directory listings.

That's not a brand problem. It's a Google problem. And the way most agencies would have fixed it is the wrong way.

The obvious move

The default play when a business isn't ranking for its most obvious keyword is to fix the website. Audit the metadata. Rewrite the page titles. Restructure the navigation. Beef up the content. Get the dev team to address core web vitals. Three to six months of work. A budget line. A steering committee. A roadmap.

We didn't do that.

Why not

Here's the trap. The main Bendigo UFS site has to serve pharmacy, optical, nurse-on-duty, vaccinations, community health programs, staff profiles and member benefits. Every page is a compromise. The optical category sits inside a navigation that also has to make room for medication advice and flu shots.

You can spend nine months rebuilding that site and you still won't beat Specsavers for "Bendigo optometrist" — because Specsavers' entire site is about optometry, and yours has to be about everything.

So we asked a different question. What if the optical practice had its own front door on Google?

What we built

We built bendigooptometrist.com.au. One page. One audience. One outcome.

The domain itself is the play. Google still treats exact-match geo-keyword domains as a signal — not the dominant one it used to be, but enough of one to tip the scales for local search when paired with relevant content. The URL is what someone searching "Bendigo optometrist" half-expects to find. So we built what they expect.

The page itself runs three plays at once.

A heritage play. UFS has been operating since 1872. That is not a number Specsavers can match. We led with it — "See life clearly. Right here in Bendigo." — and reinforced it with 150+ years of service in the trust section.

A community play. UFS is a not-for-profit cooperative, owned by members, governed locally. We named that, then stacked it with the things only a local independent can offer — your optometrist knows your name, your history, your prescription. We're not pitching efficiency. We're pitching care.

A friction-reduction play. Bulk billing available. No referral needed. Same-week appointments. The form asks for the minimum that lets the practice book you in — name, phone, preferred time. Every CTA is one of three options: call, book online, or fill the form. Choose your level of commitment.

The principle underneath

There's a generalisable lesson here, and it's one we keep coming back to.

Big websites try to do everything. Landing pages do one thing.

When a business has a flagship asset (main site, full product, full menu, all categories) and a flanking asset (one offer, one geography, one audience), the flanking asset will out-convert the flagship every time. Because it doesn't have to compromise.

This isn't new. Direct response marketers have been running this play for forty years. What's changed is the cost of execution. A focused landing page on its own domain used to be a six-figure decision. Now it's a long weekend.

When this play works

It works in a specific situation. The main site has to be already pulling its weight on brand-led search — you don't want to cannibalise, you want to flank. The keyword you're targeting needs clear, narrow intent: "Bendigo optometrist," "wedding photographer Melbourne," "emergency plumber Geelong." Broad and informational keywords don't behave the same way. You need something to say that the chains can't say back — heritage, cooperative ownership, specialist expertise, a 30-year warranty. The differentiator has to be unfakeable. And the conversion path has to be short. Book an exam. Get a quote. Request a callback. Not "subscribe to our 12-part email course."

It doesn't work for complex B2B sales cycles, brand-led purchases, or anything where the buyer needs to meet half the team before they sign. You can't shortcut those.

What we're measuring

The page went live last week. We're not claiming rankings results yet — search takes time, and pretending otherwise is the kind of marketing-agency lie that gives the industry its reputation.

Over the next 90 days we'll watch position for "Bendigo optometrist" and the long-tail variants ("optometrist near me Bendigo," "kids eye test Bendigo," "bulk bill optometrist Bendigo"). We'll track phone calls and form submissions attributed to the new domain. We'll compare cost per booking against the main site. And we'll test whether the heritage-and-community angle outperforms a more generic value-prop landing page — we have a hypothesis on that, and we'll know in three months.

We'll publish the numbers when we have them. Good, bad, or middling.

If this sounds familiar

If you're a regional business that gets beaten on Google by a chain you know you're better than, the answer is almost never "rebuild the website." The answer is usually "give the highest-value part of your business its own front door."

And on the question of whether you'd hire us to do that — we'd rather you saw the work than read the pitch. That's why this post exists. That's why Bendigo UFS Optical have a brand new landing page sitting on a domain we registered for them. We'd rather build the proof than write the proposal.

If you reckon there's a gap in your own search presence we should look at, come and have a chat. Worst case, you get an honest read on whether the play would work for you. Best case, we go and build it.