★ August 2026 — the funnel converted, and we found out exactly why Prova is hard to find
August did two useful things at once. First, the funnel started converting again: self-serve account creations rose 2 → 9, email verifications 4 → 6, and the Google Ads conversion event recorded 16 completions having read zero in July — total key events 6 → 28. That points firmly to July's dip having been measurement and flow rather than demand — though Applikation have not yet confirmed the root cause, so it stays on the list. Second, following Chris's question on the 12 August call — "why can't I find us when I search Martyn's Law compliance?" — CMG ran two full diagnostics, delivered 25 August. The answers are specific and fixable. On paid, Prova enters only about a quarter of the auctions it is eligible for, and on the core campaign 74.75% of the misses are lost to budget against just 5.48% lost on rank — when we do enter, we hold top of page 73.5% of the time, comfortably the best in the auction. On organic, 21 of 55 live pages — 38% of the site — are not in Google's index at all, because the sitemap is invalid XML, no sitemap has ever been submitted, and the Martyn's Law hub's pagination is canonicalised back to page one. Search Console returned this month after the Cyber Essentials work and gives the plain read: 34 clicks from 735 impressions, every one of them from a brand search. Meanwhile LinkedIn Ads was paused for August by agreement, with its media carried into September and October, and Google Ads absorbed the load — £1,714.82 spend (+26%), 2,792 clicks, schools clicks +54%. Enforcement window unchanged: April 2027.
Phase Status
Phase 2
Live · second month on £5k/mo essentials
Months to Enforcement
7
Martyn's Law live April 2027
Self-serve key events
28
From 6 in July · tracking restored
Google Ads spend
£1,715
+26% · 2,792 clicks · schools +54%
Search impression share
25.2%
August · top of page 73.5% when we enter
Pages missing from Google
21
Of 55 live pages · sitemap + pagination faults
What happened this month
The funnel recorded real completions — though the root cause is still open
Account creations 2 → 9, email verifications 4 → 6, and the Google Ads conversion event logged 16 conversions after reading zero in July. Total GA4 key events rose 6 → 28. That supports July's reading — a measurement and flow disruption from the Cyber Essentials site-security work rather than a demand fall. The formal diagnosis is still open with Applikation, so we are treating the recovery as strong evidence rather than a closed case until they confirm what changed.
Google Ads visibility diagnostic delivered (25 August)
A direct answer to the 12 August question. Prova enters roughly one auction in four — 23.78% over the diagnostic's 30-day window, 25.17% across August as a whole. On the core Martyn's Law campaign 74.75% of the misses are lost to budget and only 5.48% to rank, and when we do enter we take top of page 73.5% of the time (absolute top 63.4%, about three times the next best advertiser). The exact phrase Chris searched showed our ad 21 times in a month — he was never realistically going to see it. The fix list starts with reallocation, phrase match and landing pages, and needs no additional money to begin.
SEO & indexing diagnostic delivered (25 August)
The site is not indexing properly, for two specific reasons. sitemap_index.xml is invalid XML and no sitemap has ever been submitted to Search Console. And pages 2–5 of the Martyn's Law hub carry a canonical tag pointing back to page one, while pages 6–8 return 404 — so most of the article archive is unreachable. Net: 34 of 55 live pages indexed. Also logged: a missing H1 on all 88 crawled pages (one template fix) and 82 broken internal links, with the redirect map already written.
Search Console reconnected — and the read is honest
GSC returned after the Cyber Essentials work: 34 clicks from 735 impressions in August. Every click came from a brand query — prova risk (12), christopher hotchkiss (2), chris hotchkiss (1). Not one click from a Martyn's Law search. That is the indexing problem showing up in the numbers, and it is precisely what the fix list addresses.
LinkedIn Ads paused for August by agreement
The education flight ended 31 July and, following a conversation with Chris, paid social was held for the month rather than relaunched immediately. August's LinkedIn media is carried forward and deployed across September and October, weighted to the head-teacher window. Spend, impressions and clicks are therefore zero for August; Google Ads absorbed the paid load.
Google Ads took the load — schools stepped up again
Spend £1,714.82 (from £1,365.93), total clicks 2,792 (from 2,260), search clicks 1,085 (+27%). Schools clicks 215 → 332 (+54%) on £486.43. Core Martyn's Law CTR eased to 18.84% from 21.01% as the campaign bought deeper into its own tail — expected at this volume, and still well ahead of the category.
Watch item — GA4 has been reading LinkedIn Ads as organic social
With LinkedIn paused, GA4's "Organic Social" sessions fell 1,024 → 6 — while the Page's genuine organic activity held steady (impressions 953 → 850, clicks 72 → 64) and the team kept posting. The sponsored traffic was never UTM-tagged, so GA4 classified it as organic LinkedIn. Every prior month's organic-social figure was therefore mostly paid. Fix: UTM tagging on the September relaunch, so paid and organic separate cleanly from here.
Watch item — non-UK traffic rose as PMax display scaled
GB share of country-attributed users fell 84% → 72% while US users rose 255 → 632. The diagnostic found PMax delivering 20,022 tablet impressions against 446 on desktop — in-app display inventory, not decision-maker behaviour — and contributing just 0.09% of its impressions to Google Search. Recommendation: pause PMax and move its £145/month into the budget-capped search campaign.
Glossary & Conventions
A short reference for anyone reading this without the day-to-day context. We use these terms consistently throughout.
| Phase 1 / 2 / 3 | Foundations (Feb–Jun) → Awareness & Education (now, Jul–Dec 2026) → Hard Conversion (Q1–Q2 2027) |
| Aside | A deliberate, time-boxed investment in foundational quality (research, creative master, diagnostics) ahead of distribution. Not a slipped deadline. |
| Standard Tier | Premises with 200–799 expected occupancy. Must have public protection procedures from April 2027. |
| Enhanced Tier | Premises with 800+ expected occupancy. Must have public protection measures from April 2027. |
| Impression share | The share of auctions we actually entered, out of those we were eligible for. Prova is at 25.17%. Lost IS is split into budget (we couldn't afford to enter) and rank (we entered and lost) — the distinction decides where money goes. |
| Quality Score | Google's 1–10 rating of a keyword, built from expected CTR, ad relevance and landing page experience. Low scores raise the price of every click. |
| Canonical tag | A signal telling Google "this page is a duplicate — index the other one instead". Pages 2–5 of the Martyn's Law hub carry one pointing at page 1, which is why the archive isn't indexed. |
| CRM / GHL | GoHighLevel — confirmed marketing automation platform. Replaces HubSpot. |
| CTOR | Click-to-open rate (clicks ÷ opens). Isolates creative quality from deliverability — the primary email engagement metric. |
| GSC | Google Search Console — organic-search reporting. Decoupled in July by the Cyber Essentials work; reconnected and reporting again from August. |
| 28 Piece | The 28-asset content drop spanning Q&A videos, SEO landing pages and explainer content sized for cross-channel reuse. Live across the site and YouTube. |
| £5k / £15k tiers | Two H2 budget scenarios. £5k/mo = essentials only (Google Ads, LinkedIn maintenance, CRM access, reporting) — live since 1 July. £15k/mo = re-activation (adds SEO, Display, Direct Mail, full organic, podcast) — the target once Prova's raise closes. |
▸ The pattern this month — from "is it working?" to "here is exactly what to fix"
Two months of open questions closed in August. The conversion dip resolved itself once the site-security work settled, and the funnel recorded its first meaningful batch of self-serve completions. And the question Chris raised on the 12 August call now has a documented, evidenced answer across both channels — with the reassuring detail that this is not a competitive problem. On paid we win the auction decisively when we enter it; we simply enter one in four. On organic the content exists and is written — Google just cannot reach 38% of it. Both root causes are plumbing, and most of the fixes are one-off engineering tasks that sit with Applikation rather than requiring new budget. The task for September is to execute that list before the head-teacher window, with the carried-forward LinkedIn media going in behind it.
The Master Plan
A reminder of the architecture this report measures against. The plan is sequenced around three phases. Phase 1 (now complete) earned the right to be listened to — building the assets, the audience understanding, and the measurement spine. Phase 2 scales education across decision-makers. Phase 3 captures urgency-led demand in the months immediately before April 2027.
▸ Plan status — measured against £250k, running on £5k since July
This tab still shows the original £250,000 / 12-month architecture, because it remains the plan of record and the yardstick for what "fully resourced" looks like. August was the second month on the temporary £5,000/month budget (see the Budget tab), so most Phase 2 channels below remain held until spend is restored toward the ~£15k re-activation tier. The sequencing logic doesn't change — only the timing. One August caveat worth reading alongside this matrix: the SEO & indexing diagnostic found that 38% of the site is not in Google's index, which means the SEO channel below has been under-delivering for reasons that have nothing to do with budget — and fixing it costs engineering time rather than media spend.
Phase 1 · Done
Foundations & Authority
Feb–Jun 2026 · Months 1–6
"Measured, consultative, policy-aware."
Phase 2 · Now
Awareness & Education
Jul–Dec 2026 · Months 7–12
"Clear, reassuring, instructional."
Phase 3
Hard Conversion
Jan–Jun 2027
"Confident, direct, outcomes-led."
Trigger
Enforcement Begins
April 2027
Standard & Enhanced Tier obligations live.
▸ Source documents
The Master Marketing Plan v3.4 (February 2026) and the original Budget Plan are both live working documents. Find them in Tab 9 (Documents).
Channel × Phase Matrix
Live · producing data
In Build / Repeater
Aside / Investment
Held — content not yet active
| Channel | Annual £ | % of Total | Phase 1 (Now) | Phase 2 (Jul–Dec) | Phase 3 (Q1–Q2 27) | Role in mix |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SEO & Content | £25,000 | 10.0% | Live (May) | Live | Live | Authority hub. 28-page content engine live in the Martyn's Law hub — but the August crawl finds only 29 indexable article pages and 21 of 55 site pages missing from Google's index. Indexing fixes come before any further content investment. |
| Organic Social (LinkedIn) | £16,500 | 6.6% | Live | Live | Live | Credibility & thought leadership. 1.5 posts/week minimum, anchored to Chris and Q&A library. |
| Paid Social (LinkedIn) | £38,500 | 15.4% | Aside | Test → Scale | Scale | Sector message-market fit. Education flight ran 10 Jun – 31 Jul; paused for August by agreement with the media carried into September–October at the head-teacher window. |
| Paid Search (PPC) | £37,500 | 15.0% | Live | Live | Scale | Capture intent. The only paid channel running in August (£1,714.82). Entering 25% of eligible auctions; restructure into Commercial Intent and Generic & Awareness specified for September. |
| Display & Retargeting | £35,000 | 14.0% | Build (M3+) | Live | Live | Sustained brand presence; sector audiences with frequency capping. Planned live June 2026 — now held under the £5k budget. |
| Direct Mail | £22,500 | 9.0% | Build | Wave 1–2 | Wave 3 | Authority packs to sceptical/legitimacy-driven sectors (PoW, schools). QR-tracked. |
| Events / Webinars / Sponsorship | £20,000 | 8.0% | Plan + ISE Build | ISE + Webinars | Industry Roadshow | Anchor was the International Security Expo (Sept 2026) — cut for the period under £5k. Partner-led webinar series and speaker placements return with the £15k re-activation. |
| Trade Press / Advertorial | £17,500 | 7.0% | Hold | Months 7–9 | Live | Sector-press credibility. Plain-language, never promotional. Placement window Q3. |
| Podcast / Audio | £5,000 | 2.0% | Filming | Sponsorship | Continued | Single sector-relevant show sponsorship Months 7–8. Filming infrastructure live now. |
| Owned Stack (Web + CRM) | £5,000 | 2.0% | Build | Live | Optimise | Site, GA4, GSC, GoHighLevel CRM (12 tracks / 71 email families). Foundational — touches every other channel. |
| — | — | Repeater | Repeater | Repeater | Cross-posts Prova Risk LinkedIn Page content. No bespoke creative — incidental reach + presence only. | |
| X (Twitter) | — | — | Repeater | Repeater | Repeater | Cross-posts Prova Risk LinkedIn Page content. Same model as Facebook. |
| — | — | Repeater | Repeater | Repeater | Cross-posts Prova Risk LinkedIn Page content. Same model as Facebook. | |
| TikTok | — | — | Live (Building) | Repeater | Repeater | Cross-posts the YouTube Shorts library. Three consecutive months of growth — 494 → 752 → 1,120 impressions — and its first followers in August. Worth keeping on the schedule. |
| Contingency / Flex | £27,500 | 11.0% | Drawing | Reserved | Reserved | Protected reserve. Released against legislative triggers, sector efficiency wins, or capacity needs. |
✓ What this matrix is doing
Every channel is sequenced. Where a channel reads "Held" in Phase 1, that is by design — not a gap. Facebook, X and Instagram run as repeaters: they cross-post Prova Risk LinkedIn Page content to maintain presence and capture incidental reach without consuming bespoke creative time. TikTok started as a repeater but in May produced standalone impressions via the YouTube Shorts cross-post — so it's now tracked separately on the Performance tab.
Sector context (directional)
Sector budget allocation (approximate)
£250,000 split by sector audience, with partners treated as influence multipliers across the Universal pot.
| Sector | % | £ |
|---|---|---|
| Universal (incl. Partner) | 35% | £87,500 |
| Places of Worship | 25% | £62,500 |
| Schools | 25% | £62,500 |
| Hospitality | 10% | £25,000 |
| Retail | 5% | £12,500 |
| Total | 100% | £250,000 |
Tone & positioning by phase
From the Brand Book — calibrated by where the audience is in their readiness journey.
| Phase | Tone | Audience state |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 | Measured, consultative, policy-aware | "What is this? Do we really need to do this?" |
| Phase 2 | Clear, reassuring, instructional | "We need to do it — but we don't know how." |
| Phase 3 | Confident, direct, outcomes-led | "Show me the fastest route to readiness." |
Consistent rule
No fear-led sensationalism. Prova positions as the calm route to readiness.Activity Log — Where We Are
Complete
In Progress
Aside — Strategic Investment
Pending
Scheduled
Held
Diagnostics — Paid & Organic Visibility
Google Ads Visibility Diagnostic — delivered 25 August
Verified live in the account rather than from exports. Headline: Prova enters roughly a quarter of eligible auctions — 23.78% over the diagnostic's 30-day window, 25.17% across August — and holds top of page 73.5% of the time when it does. On the core campaign, 74.75% of lost impression share is lost to budget and 5.48% to rank; on Schools the split reverses — 0.00% lost to budget, 34.71% to rank. Ten ranked root causes and a costed, net-cost-neutral reallocation plan.
SEO & Indexing Diagnostic — delivered 25 August
Search Console, a Semrush site audit (146 pages) and a Screaming Frog crawl, reconciled. 55 live indexable pages, 34 indexed, ~11 that Google has never discovered. Two root causes: an invalid, never-submitted sitemap, and canonicalised hub pagination. Delivered with a 100-keyword audit across 11 clusters (PROVA_SEO_Keyword_Audit_100_Aug2026.xlsx).
Fix list — awaiting dev execution via Applikation
The organic fixes are one-off engineering tasks and sit with Applikation: repair and submit the sitemap, remove the canonical tags from hub pages 2–8, restore pages 6–8, add the H1 to the page template (one fix, 88 pages), deploy the written redirect map for the 82 broken links, and take
/test2/ down. The paid fixes sit with CMG and need no dev access.Budget & Commercial Status
Second month on the £5k essentials budget
No change to the operative budget in August. The £5k continues to protect Google Ads, LinkedIn (maintenance), CRM access and reporting. It is not performance-related; it holds while Prova completes its raise. The route back to the ~£15k re-activation tier remains the funding round and the enterprise conversations.
August LinkedIn media carried into September–October
With paid social paused for the month, August's LinkedIn media allocation was not spent. It is carried forward and deployed across September and October rather than lost — timed deliberately against the head-teacher window when schools return.
Responsibility handover to Jack and the Applikation team
The handover progressed through August and its commercials and date were agreed: Luke ran both Jack and Chris through the Prova marketing strategy, and the split agreed on 4 August holds — CMG retains paid social, paid search and CRM administration plus the video series to February 2027, with reactive content and site development moving across. The diagnostics were scoped partly to give the incoming team a documented baseline.
What remains held or descoped under £5k
Paused pending £15k: SEO batch 2, Display & Retargeting, Direct Mail waves, new organic production, LinkedIn scale-up. Cut for the period: Events / ISE, Trade Press, the webinar series, new video shoots. Display & retargeting and the additional LinkedIn sectors are first to switch back on when spend is restored.
PPC / Paid Search
August — the channel absorbed the paid load
Full-account spend £1,714.82 (from £1,365.93), clicks 2,792 (from 2,260). Search clicks 1,085 (+27%) at £1.44 average CPC. Schools grew again: 332 clicks (+54%) on £486.43. Core Martyn's Law CTR eased to 18.84% and Schools to 12.15% as both campaigns bought further down their tails — the expected trade when volume scales, and still strong in absolute terms.
Conversion tracking — reading again, root cause still with Applikation
The GA4 → Google Ads conversion spine came back online in August: 16 conversions recorded against zero in July, and 28 key events across the property. The campaigns can now be optimised against conversion signal rather than clicks — which also unblocks the PMax decision, since it has been set to "Maximise Conversions" with nothing to learn from. The underlying diagnosis — exactly what the site-security work broke and whether it could recur — remains open with Applikation.
Account restructure specified — execution in September
From the diagnostic: split the core campaign into Commercial Intent and Generic & Awareness so low-volume high-intent terms stop sharing a budget with head terms that consume it; add phrase match (all 214 keywords are currently exact, so the long tail is invisible); repoint ads away from the homepage onto the sector and hub pages; raise Brand max CPC from £0.45; fix
[does martyn's law apply to schools], currently unservable at a £0.01 bid. Net cost neutral.PMax — recommended for pause
£157.69 in August for 1,707 clicks, of which 0.09% of impressions were on Google Search. 20,022 tablet impressions against 446 on desktop points to in-app display inventory. Recommendation is to pause it and redirect the ~£145/month into the budget-capped search campaign, rebuilding the YouTube retargeting separately at ~£2/day if wanted.
SEO & Content
Search Console reconnected — organic reporting resumed
Re-verification completed after the Cyber Essentials work. August: 34 clicks, 735 impressions, 4.63% CTR, average position 21.5 on desktop and 8.0 on mobile. Every click came from a brand query. The homepage carries 23 of the 34 clicks at position 4.41.
The Timeline-page problem turned out to be site-wide
June's working theory — one page losing its rankings — was too narrow. The August crawl shows 21 of 55 live pages missing from the index and only 29 indexable article pages under /martyns-law/ against a working assumption of 60–70.
/martyns-law/timeline-and-enforcement/ remains the single biggest impression driver on the site at 1,140 impressions a quarter, position 54.9, zero clicks. The content inventory needs reconciling against the crawl before the next video batch publishes into it.Staging-domain canonical leak — confirmed fixed
An earlier crawl showed 22 pages, including every sector landing page, carrying a canonical pointing at the WP Engine staging domain — effectively telling Google not to index them. The August crawl shows zero staging canonicals; all self-canonical correctly. The damage lingers in slow recovery, and it explains why the sector pages still sit at position 14–39 despite being the commercial priority.
Backlinks — the real ceiling, now being worked by Applikation
The diagnostic flagged this as the hard limit on everything else: Search Console lists three linking pages, all B2B contact-scraper directories, and no earned links at all from a trade body, partner, publication, school network or diocese. No amount of technical fixing outranks High Speed Training or Sign In App without authority. The Applikation team have picked this up and started outreach directly — it now sits with them rather than CMG. CMG's remaining input is to keep the target list and the anchor/landing-page priorities aligned with the keyword strategy, and to report the link profile monthly from Search Console so progress is visible.
SEO batch 2 & new publication cadence — held under £5k
The second content batch and cluster pages remain paused pending the £15k tier. Note the sequencing point from the diagnostic: publishing into a hub Google cannot crawl wastes the content. The indexing fixes come first regardless of budget.
CRM & Email (GoHighLevel)
Nurture widened beyond education for the first time
August was a workflow-only month: 29 sent, 29 delivered, 17 opens (58.6%), 3 clicks (17.6% click-to-open), zero unsubscribes. The notable detail is not the volume but the spread — the Hospitality and Other nurture sequences fired for the first time alongside Education, and the Education track reached EMAIL 7 (re-engagement). Real self-serve scope-checks are now reaching the CRM and being sorted into the right sector track automatically.
No newsletter sent in August
The monthly newsletter is held at a quarterly cadence under the £5k budget, so no broadcast went out in August after July's (222 sends, 81.2% open, 35.3% click). This shows up in GA4 as Email disappearing from the channel mix (26 new users → 0). Next broadcast is the September/October edition, which should carry the schools-window messaging.
Applikation integration — purchase signals now reaching GA4
The conversion events recorded in August indicate the GA4 integration work with Applikation is landing. Remaining items: confirming the conversion action definitions so Google Ads optimises against the right signal, and completing the data sync that prevents duplicate transactional emails.
Paid Social (LinkedIn Ads)
Paused for the month — a timing decision, not a performance one
The education flight ran 10 June – 31 July and finished having delivered its best month (reach 84,323, +40% on −54% spend). Rather than relaunch into August, paid social was paused following a conversation with Chris, with the media held back and deployed across September and October instead — landing when head teachers are back and searching. August therefore records £0 spend and zero delivery.
Relaunch — with UTM tagging this time
One change goes in with the relaunch: proper UTM tagging on every ad. Without it GA4 has been classifying LinkedIn sponsored traffic as organic social, which overstated organic and hid paid social's real contribution to on-site behaviour. Tagging it correctly means September gives the first clean read of what paid social actually drives on site.
Owned Web (provarisk.co.uk)
The site converted — and the tracking proved it
Account creations 2 → 9, verifications 4 → 6, ad conversions 0 → 16, key events 6 → 28. On-site search rose again (996 → 1,335, +34%) and engagement events +8%, on slightly lower traffic. Fewer visits, more of them doing something — the right direction.
Page speed slipped — worth watching, not yet urgent
Clarity performance score 80.3 → 78.4 and largest contentful paint 2.95s → 3.31s. Scroll depth eased 36.6% → 32.2% and active time 37s → 35s. Friction signals stayed clean (zero rage clicks). Page speed also feeds the Google Ads landing page experience score, so it is on the same fix list as the indexing work.
Landing page strategy — still pointing at the homepage
The biggest-spending campaign still sends its traffic to the homepage, and Google scores that landing page experience "below average" — every homepage-pointed keyword sits at 2–3/10 Quality Score while every sector-page keyword sits at 5–7/10. The dedicated pages already convert better:
/is-my-organisation-in-scope/ runs a 4.75% CTR against the homepage's 3.47%. Repointing is a CMG task and starts in September.Video Content
YouTube had its strongest month — views +29%
August views 6,038 (from 4,663), watch time 39.7 hours (from 36.4), thumbnail impressions 3,036 (from 789) and the channel's first new subscriber in the reporting period. Two back-catalogue pieces carried it: "Why You Should Start on Martyn's Law Now" (2,005 views) and "Why Martyn's Law Exists as Its Own Legislation" (1,370) — both from the May library, both finding new audiences with no paid support.
Three new shorts published in August
"Are Places of Worship Exempt from Martyn's Law?" (3 Aug, 231 views), "The Martyn's Law Timeline, and Why It's Shorter Than You Think" (13 Aug, 150) and "All Four Martyn's Law Procedures in One Minute" (26 Aug, 37). Steady publication from the existing library, at no marginal production cost.
New video series live — September batch packaged and handed over
The new series from the June shoot is published and running. The batch from the July filming day is now packaged for syndication: transcripts, platform-specific captions, landing-page mapping and an upload manifest, split across the CMG and Prova teams. One sequencing caveat from the SEO diagnostic — publishing into a hub Google cannot crawl wastes the SEO value, so the indexing fixes should land alongside the batch, not after it.
Organic Social
LinkedIn Page — organic held steady
Organic impressions 850 (from 953) across 7 posts, 488 unique, 64 clicks, 19 reactions (from 23 organic). Essentially flat month on month. The Page's total impressions fell from 93,962 to 850 — but that is entirely the sponsored campaign coming off, not a change in organic publishing. Paid and organic are reported separately on the Performance tab for exactly this reason.
Chris Hotchkiss personal account — back up after the July leave
Impressions 909 (from 567) and members reached 507 (from 247) — both roughly doubled as posting resumed. Followers reached 3,500 (+17 in the month). A single post on 13 August drove 212 impressions. The founder channel remains the cheapest authority asset in the mix; 2–3 reactive posts a month in Chris's own voice is the recommendation that continues to hold.
Repeaters — TikTok and Facebook both up
TikTok impressions 752 → 1,120 (+49%) on 4 posts, and it picked up its first 2 followers. Facebook 52 → 139 on 5 posts. Small numbers, but both moving the right way at effectively zero marginal cost, and both a useful hedge while organic search is blocked. Instagram had no activity in August.
Enterprise Pipeline & Sectors
September head-teacher window — the priority
Schools is the P0 sector and the window is open now. Paid schools clicks grew 54% in August, and
martyn's law schools carries 480 UK searches a month at a difficulty of 13–15 — a soft target we do not rank for. The carried-forward LinkedIn media, the schools ad-copy rebuild and the education page rebuild all point at this window.Places of worship — joint-priority sector with no paid presence
The Places of Worship campaign is paused, alongside Hospitality, Retail and Terrorism/Protection — four of eight campaigns dark. Traffic is still arriving for the sector (the sitelink pulled 2,598 interactions from other campaigns, and the PoW page took 124 sessions in August) with no campaign structure behind it. Reinstating it is a £15k-tier decision; the disapproved ads in the Terrorism/Protection campaign should be resolved regardless so it is ready to unpause.
ISE September & wider Phase 2 expansion — held pending the raise
The ~£40–50k International Security Expo stand, Direct Mail, Display & retargeting, Trade Press and the webinar series remain out of scope under £5k. All return with the £15k re-activation once Prova's funding position allows.
Research — Keywords for SEO & PPC
★ August update — the Semrush pull revises this, and the news is good
The landscape below was built in February 2026 from the original SEMrush overview. The 25 August bulk export refreshed 46 of the 100 audited keywords with verified UK volume and difficulty, and it changes two assumptions. First, the core term is bigger than we had it: martyn's law is 6,600/month (not 5,400) and martyns law 3,600 (not 2,900). Second, and more usefully, the market is far easier than assumed — 34 of the 46 verified keywords carry a difficulty of 20 or below. martyn's law schools is 480/month at a difficulty of 13–15 depending on the pull, and we do not rank for it; martyn's law compliance, the query Chris searched, is 90/month at difficulty 0 and we rank 59th. We are not losing this category to competition. We are losing it to technical health and an absent backlink profile. The Keyword Tracker tab carries the full audit.
Keywords mapped
600+
Across regulatory, sector, intent variants
"martyn's law" volume
6,600
UK monthly searches · revised up, Semrush Aug 2026
Avg CPC range
£0.00–£0.61
Low overall · category not yet competitive
Coverage gap (Aug audit)
70
Of 100 audited keywords not ranking at all
Keyword landscape — Volume vs CPC by cluster
Each point is a keyword. X-axis: monthly UK search volume (log scale, so the niche terms remain visible alongside the core regulatory terms). Y-axis: paid cost-per-click (£). Hover any point for the keyword. The lower-right region — high volume, low CPC — is the strategic sweet spot.
Source: SEMrush UK keyword analytics ("martyn's law" overview, Feb 2026) — superseded for 46 keywords by the 25 August 2026 bulk export; see the Keyword Tracker tab for the current figures. Estimated values ("est.") are derived from Google Ads and GSC where SEMrush did not return an exact volume — clearly marked in the keyword table below.
| Cluster | Keyword | Volume / mo | CPC (GBP) | Live activity | Note / intent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brand | prova risk | — | — | PPC + Organic | Branded · 76.9% CTR · position 1 · protect with brand bidding |
| Brand | prova news / prova official website | — | — | Organic | Branded long-tail · low volume · ranking |
| Regulatory core | martyn's law | 5,400 | £0.00 | PPC live | Top regulatory term · pillar page target · 10.7% PPC CTR |
| Regulatory core | martyns law | 2,900 | £0.52 | PPC live | Common misspelling · 63 PPC clicks in window |
| Regulatory core | what is martyn's law | 390 | £0.24 | PPC + SEO | Education-stage query · pillar Q&A page |
| Regulatory core | martyn law | 320 | £0.61 | PPC live | Variant misspelling · highest CPC in cluster |
| Regulatory core | martin's law | 390 | £0.00 | PPC live | Variant spelling · zero CPC = uncontested |
| Regulatory core | terrorism protection of premises act | ~140 | ~£0.40 | PPC live | Full Act name · institutional / legal-stage |
| Tier classification | standard tier / enhanced tier (martyn's law) | ~50–80 | £0.00 | SEO build | Self-qualification · interactive tier-check tool concept |
| Sector — Schools | martyns law schools | 50 | £0.00 | SEO build | Schools landing page · targeting head teachers + governors (post-correction) |
| Sector — Schools | school terrorism protection plan | ~30–60 | — | SEO build | Long-tail · Phase 2 content target |
| Sector — PoW | church martyn's law / mosque protective security | ~40–80 | — | SEO build | Diocese-led variant · grant eligibility messaging |
| Sector — Hospitality | licensing martyn's law / hotel terrorism plan | ~30–60 | — | SEO build | Phase 2 target · pair with licensing consultant network |
| Solution category | protect duty software solutions | ~120 imp | — | Page rebuild target | 120+ GSC impressions · 0 clicks · ranking but no compelling page |
| Solution category | compliance readiness platform | low | — | SEO build | Solution-evaluation intent · Phase 2 content |
| Local — paid intent | martyns law software solutions london / surrey | 50 ea | £0.00 | PPC live | Geo-modified intent · low volume but high specificity |
| Local — paid intent | martyns law support london / surrey | 50 ea | £0.00 | PPC live | "Support" intent · helpful framing |
| Adjacent SaaS | risk assessment software UK | ~600 | ~£2.50 | Phase 2 | Comparison-stage · higher CPC · adjacent category |
| Adjacent SaaS | compliance training platform | ~400 | ~£3.00 | Phase 2 | Phase 2 comparison content |
Source: SEMrush UK keyword analytics (Feb 2026 export, "martyn's law" overview), supplemented with live Google Ads search-term data and Google Search Console queries to 6 May 2026. Superseded for 46 of these keywords by the 25 August 2026 Semrush bulk export — see the Keyword Tracker tab for current volumes and difficulty. Figures shown ~ are estimated where SEMrush returned no exact volume; figures in bold are confirmed exact-match.
✓ Three things this table tells us
1. The category is uncontested at PPC level. CPCs across the regulatory core sit between £0.00 and £0.61 — there is no incumbent advertiser owning Martyn's Law search demand. We are paying education-stage prices for an audience that will pay conversion-stage prices in 2027. 2. Misspellings are valuable. "martyns law" (2,900 vol, £0.52 CPC) and "martin's law" (390, £0.00) together carry significant volume — capturing them in PPC at zero or near-zero cost is a structural advantage. 3. The biggest gap is no longer copy — it is indexing. "protect duty software solutions london" sits at position 6.4 in August, on page one, and still earns zero clicks. The August diagnostic explains why that pattern repeats across the site: 21 of 55 live pages are not in Google's index at all. Page-build work still matters, but it comes second — the indexing fixes on the Keyword Tracker tab are the sprint with the highest leverage.
Channel Performance — July vs August Read
Total Impressions by Channel — July vs August 2026 (log scale)
Impressions per channel on a logarithmic Y-axis so the channel set stays legible across several orders of magnitude. LinkedIn Page organic and Personal are shown separately from sponsored so nothing double-counts. LinkedIn Ads shows no bar in August — the campaign was paused by agreement and delivered nothing; Search Console shows no bar in July, when it was decoupled.
August totals: Google Ads all-networks 58,905 impressions (2,792 clicks) · YouTube thumbnail impressions 3,036 (6,038 views) · TikTok 1,120 · LinkedIn Personal 909 · LinkedIn Page organic 850 · Search Console 735 · Facebook 139 · Email 29 delivered · LinkedIn Ads 0 (paused). Reading log scale: each gridline is a 10× step.
★ How to read August — the funnel converted and the blockers got named
August is a diagnostic month with a genuinely good conversion story underneath it. The funnel converted: account creations 2 → 9, ad conversions 0 → 16, key events 6 → 28 — July's tracking wobble has cleared in the numbers, with Applikation still to confirm the root cause. Google Ads absorbed the paid load with LinkedIn paused, taking spend to £1,714.82 and schools clicks to 332 (+54%). Search Console came back and told us plainly that organic delivers brand traffic and nothing else. And two diagnostics answered the "why can't I find us" question with specifics: we enter a quarter of the auctions we could, and Google cannot reach 38% of the site. Three honest caveats run through the cards: paid social delivered nothing (by design, media carried into September–October), no newsletter went out, and traffic quality skewed non-UK as PMax display scaled.
✓ Data note — Search Console is back
July's report flagged that securing provarisk.co.uk for Cyber Essentials had decoupled Google Search Console from the property. Re-verification is complete and organic-search reporting resumes from August, so the Organic Search card below carries real data again. The same site-security change is the likeliest root of July's conversion-tracking dip, which has also cleared — though the formal diagnosis remains open with Applikation.
Google Ads — Paid Search + Performance Max
July (1 – 31 July)
Full-account spend
£1,365.93
Search £1,215 + PMax £151
Clicks (all)
2,260
Search 855 · PMax 1,405
Martyn's Law CTR
21.01%
Core cluster
Schools clicks
215
16.01% CTR
August (1 – 31 August) — absorbed the paid load, schools scaled again
Full-account spend
£1,714.82
+26% · Search £1,557 + PMax £158
Clicks (all)
2,792
Search 1,085 (+27%) · PMax 1,707
Martyn's Law CTR
18.84%
−2.2pts · deeper into the tail
Schools clicks
332
+54% · 12.15% CTR
Top August search terms
| Term | Clicks | Spend |
|---|---|---|
| martins law uk | 181 | £265.07 |
| martins law | 159 | £232.06 |
| martyn's law | 78 | £118.54 |
| what is martyn's law | 71 | £102.10 |
| martyn's law uk | 70 | £101.76 |
| martyn's law schools | 65 | £95.23 |
| martyn's law for schools | 37 | £53.70 |
All 214 keywords in the account are exact match, so this list is the whole picture — there is effectively no long tail. Adding phrase match is the fastest route to the naturally-phrased questions head teachers actually type.
August campaign split (full account)
| Campaign | Spend | Clicks | CTR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Martyns Law (core) | £1,064.05 | 723 | 18.84% |
| Martyns Law — Schools | £486.43 | 332 | 12.15% |
| Prova Risk — PMax | £157.69 | 1,707 | 3.27% |
| Brand | £6.65 | 30 | 46.88% |
| Total | £1,714.82 | 2,792 | — |
Brand remains the cheapest thing in the account by a distance — 46.9% CTR on £6.65 — and is throttled at a £0.45 max CPC with keywords flagged "below first page bid". Raising it is on the September list.
▸ The visibility finding — we win the auction, we just rarely enter it
Prova's search impression share was 25.17% across August — we sit out roughly three auctions in four. (The diagnostic's own live account check, over the 26 July – 24 August window, put it at 23.78%; both readings say the same thing.) But this is not a ranking problem: across August we took top of page 73.5% of the time, against 53–80% for the rest of the field, and the diagnostic measured our absolute-top rate at roughly three times the next best advertiser. The two main campaigns have opposite constraints: core Martyn's Law loses 74.75% of its impression share to budget and only 5.48% to rank (money), while Schools loses 0.00% to budget and 34.71% to rank (bids and quality). That distinction decides where every extra pound goes — and it means Schools cannot be fixed by spending more on it.
✓ Read — more volume, a softer CTR, and conversions finally visible
With LinkedIn paused, Google Ads carried the month and did it well: spend +26%, search clicks +27%, schools clicks +54%. The core CTR easing to 18.84% is the expected trade when a campaign buys further down its own tail at higher volume — the absolute click count rose from 618 to 723. The more important change is that conversion tracking is working again (16 recorded against zero in July), so from September the account can be optimised against completions rather than clicks. Three things go in next: split the campaign so commercial-intent terms stop competing with head terms for the same budget, add phrase match, and repoint the ads off the homepage.
Organic Search (Google Search Console)
Clicks (Aug)
34
All from brand queries
Impressions
735
June comparison: 1,066
CTR
4.63%
Brand-driven · not representative
Avg position (desktop)
21.5
Mobile 8.0 · 564 desktop impressions
Every click came from a brand search
| Query | Clicks | Impr | Pos |
|---|---|---|---|
| prova risk | 12 | 43 | 1.0 |
| christopher hotchkiss | 2 | 20 | 6.5 |
| chris hotchkiss | 1 | 37 | 5.2 |
| public protection procedures | 0 | 18 | 13.6 |
| qualifying premises | 0 | 15 | 12.3 |
| martyn's law places of worship | 0 | 20 | 26.5 |
| shopping centre security regulations uk | 0 | 123 | 56.7 |
Not one click from a Martyn's Law query, in August or across the whole three-month window.
Top pages — the homepage carries it
| Page | Clicks | Impr | Pos |
|---|---|---|---|
| / (homepage) | 23 | 258 | 4.4 |
| /people/ourteam/ | 7 | 129 | 7.1 |
| /about-us/ | 1 | 87 | 6.1 |
| /for-the-retail-sector/ | 0 | 210 | 40.6 |
| /for-the-education-sector/ | 0 | 50 | 11.7 |
| /for-places-of-worship/ | 0 | 42 | 14.2 |
| /martyns-law/ | 0 | 12 | 14.0 |
The sector pages — the commercial priority — sit at position 12–41 and take no clicks. The retail page alone shows 210 impressions at position 40.6.
▸ The indexing finding — Google cannot reach 38% of the site
The August diagnostic reconciled a Screaming Frog crawl, a Semrush audit and Search Console. Of 55 live, indexable pages, Google has indexed 34; 10 are known but not indexed and ~11 have never been discovered at all. Two stacked faults explain it. (1) The sitemap is broken and was never submitted — sitemap_index.xml returns an XML parse error because something prints before the declaration, and Search Console shows zero submitted sitemaps, ever. (2) The Martyn's Law hub's pagination is canonicalised away — pages 2–5 carry a canonical pointing back to page 1, and pages 6–8 return 404, so every article that only appears beyond page 1 is unreachable. Underneath that: only 29 indexable article pages exist under /martyns-law/ against a working assumption of 60–70; the H1 is missing on all 88 crawled pages (one template fix); 82 internal links are broken with the redirect map already written; and the backlink profile is three scraper directories. There are no manual actions and no security issues — this is misconfiguration, not a penalty, and most of it is one-off engineering work.
Website Sessions (Google Analytics & Microsoft Clarity)
GA4 — July (1 – 31 July)
Active users
3,756
Full month
Form starts
411
form_start events
Key events
6
Tracking disrupted
GB users
3,034
84% of country-attributed users
GA4 — August (1 – 31 August) — fewer visits, far more completions
Active users
3,530
−6% · paid social off
Form starts
415
+1% · held
Key events
28
From 6 · tracking restored
GB users
2,379
72% of country-attributed · from 84%
GA4 — August new-user channel mix
| Source | August | July |
|---|---|---|
| Direct | 1,899 | 1,143 |
| Paid Search | 933 | 732 |
| Organic Video | 198 | 81 |
| Cross-network (PMax) | 166 | 216 |
| Organic Search | 42 | 67 |
| Referral | 34 | 263 |
| Organic Social | 4 | 1,007 |
| 0 | 26 |
Paid Search grew again (732 → 933) and YouTube referrals more than doubled. Email went to zero because no newsletter was sent. See the attribution note below on Organic Social.
GA4 — August engagement & key events vs July
| Event | August | July |
|---|---|---|
| Page views | 7,761 | 7,911 |
| User engagement | 3,027 | 2,813 |
| Scroll events | 2,143 | 1,962 |
| On-site searches | 1,335 | 996 |
| Form starts | 415 | 411 |
| Ad conversions | 16 | 0 |
| Account creations | 9 | 2 |
| Email verifications | 6 | 4 |
Average engagement time per active user rose 33s → 35s.
✓ The one that mattered — the funnel is converting again
July's report called the sign-up dip a measurement and flow problem rather than a demand problem, on the grounds that form starts had doubled at the same time. August confirms it. On slightly lower traffic, account creations rose 2 → 9, email verifications 4 → 6, and the Google Ads conversion event recorded 16 completions after reading zero — total key events 6 → 28. On-site searches rose 34% and engagement events 8%. Fewer visits, more of them doing something. This also unblocks paid-search optimisation, which has been running blind on click signal alone. One caveat: the formal diagnosis is still open with Applikation — we know the numbers recovered, not yet precisely what broke, so it stays on the 30-day list until they close it out.
▸ Attribution note — LinkedIn Ads has been reading as "Organic Social" in GA4
GA4's Organic Social sessions fell from 1,024 in July to 6 in August. That is not a drop in posting: the LinkedIn Page published through August and its organic impressions held at 850 (from 953) with 64 clicks (from 72). The explanation is attribution. LinkedIn sponsored traffic was never UTM-tagged, so GA4 classified it as organic LinkedIn — and the match is near-exact (June: 958 ad clicks vs 948 organic-social sessions; July: 1,116 vs 1,024; August: 0 vs 6). Every prior month's "Organic Social" figure in this report was therefore mostly paid. UTM tagging goes on with the September relaunch, after which paid and organic separate cleanly — and the genuine organic-social baseline will be visible for the first time.
▸ Traffic quality — the UK share slipped
GB users fell from 84% to 72% of country-attributed users while US users rose 255 → 632 and Singapore 80 → 113. The likeliest source is PMax display inventory: the diagnostic found PMax delivering 20,022 tablet impressions against 446 on desktop, a ratio that does not describe how decision-makers browse. It costs little but it dilutes every headline traffic number, which is part of the case for pausing PMax and moving the money into search.
UX signal — Microsoft Clarity
Sessions (Aug)
3,858
−9% vs July · 3,800 unique
Avg scroll depth
32.2%
Down from 36.6%
Active time / user
35s
Down from 37s
Rage clicks
0
From 6 · friction clean
▸ Read — softer engagement, cleaner friction, slower pages
Clarity eases back a little: sessions −9% with paid social off, scroll depth 36.6% → 32.2% and active time 37s → 35s. Friction signals are clean — rage clicks fell to zero. The one to note is page speed: the performance score slipped 80.3 → 78.4 and largest contentful paint 2.95s → 3.31s. That matters twice over, because Google Ads scores landing page experience partly on speed, and the account's homepage-pointed keywords already sit at 2–3/10. Site speed joins the same fix list as the indexing work.
LinkedIn Ads — Paid Social
July (1 – 31 July) — the flight's best and final month
Impressions
93,009
Sponsored content
People reached
84,323
+40% vs June
Clicks
1,116
CTR 1.20% · £0.49 CPC
Spend
£548.27
−54% vs June
August (1 – 31 August) — no delivery
Impressions
0
Campaign paused
People reached
0
No flight running
Clicks
0
—
Spend
£0.00
Media carried to Sept–Oct
A Read — a deliberate pause, timed at the schools window
The education flight ran 10 June – 31 July and ended on its strongest month: 84,323 people reached, a 40% increase on 54% less spend, with CPC roughly halving. Rather than relaunch straight into August — the quietest month of the year for the target audience, with schools closed — paid social was paused following a conversation with Chris and the media held back. It is now being deployed across September and October, when head teachers and governors are back and actively looking. Nothing is lost: the audience, creative and campaign structure are all banked, and the additional sectors (places of worship, hospitality, retail) remain built and waiting on the £15k tier. One change goes in with the relaunch — UTM tagging on every ad, so the traffic reports as paid social rather than organic.
GoHighLevel — Email / CRM
July (1 – 31 July) — newsletter month
Sends
255
250 delivered
Open rate
78.4%
196 opens
Click-to-open
41.8%
82 clicks
Unsubscribes
3
1.2%
August (1 – 31 August) — automation only, no broadcast
Sends
29
29 delivered · workflows only
Open rate
58.6%
17 opens
Click-to-open
17.6%
3 clicks
Unsubscribes
0
Clean month
| Which workflows fired in August | Sent | Opens | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| End-user nurture — Education | 12 | 6 | Reached EMAIL 7 (re-engagement) |
| End-user nurture — Hospitality | 4 | 3 | First entries · 2 clicks |
| End-user nurture — Other | 3 | 1 | First entries · 1 click |
| Martyn's Law — Tiered Assessment | 3 | 1 | Standard Tier + out-of-scope routing |
| Contact Us entry | 4 | 3 | Includes notification to Chris |
| Newsletter welcome | 3 | 3 | 100% open |
| Total | 29 | 17 | No broadcast sent |
✓ Read — small numbers, but the machine is sorting people correctly
Volume is low because no newsletter went out — the broadcast is held at a quarterly cadence under the £5k budget, and that shows up in GA4 as Email dropping from 26 new users to zero. The interesting detail is the spread. For the first time the Hospitality and Other nurture tracks fired, alongside Education reaching its re-engagement email and the Tiered Assessment workflow routing both a Standard Tier and an out-of-scope result. That means real people are completing the scope check and being sorted into the right sector sequence automatically — which is exactly what the 12-track architecture was built to do. It also lines up with the rise in account creations. The September/October broadcast should carry the schools-window messaging.
YouTube — Native Video Library
Views (Jul → Aug)
6,038
From 4,663 · +29%
Watch hours
39.7
From 36.4 · +9%
Thumbnail impressions
3,036
From 789 · nearly 4×
Thumbnail CTR
3.0%
From 5.32% · wider surfacing
| Top August videos (native YouTube) | Views | Watch hrs |
|---|---|---|
| Why You Should Start on Martyn's Law Now | 2,005 | 11.2 |
| Why Martyn's Law Exists as Its Own Legislation | 1,370 | 4.1 |
| Question's about Martyn's Law | Asked & Answered | 655 | 6.2 |
| PROVA Risk Animated Explainer | 577 | 7.7 |
| The 200-Person Rule Most Organisations Get Wrong | 459 | 2.5 |
| Are Places of Worship Exempt from Martyn's Law? (new, 3 Aug) | 231 | 0.5 |
| The Martyn's Law Timeline, and Why It's Shorter Than You Think (new, 13 Aug) | 150 | 0.6 |
✓ Read — the best month the channel has had, with no paid support
Views up 29% to 6,038 and thumbnail impressions nearly four-fold to 3,036 — YouTube surfaced the library far more widely in August, and the watch time followed. The CTR falling to 3.0% is the arithmetic of that wider surfacing rather than weaker thumbnails. What stands out is which videos did it: two May pieces, "Why You Should Start on Martyn's Law Now" and "Why Martyn's Law Exists as Its Own Legislation", found audiences months after publication. That is the compounding behaviour a library is supposed to show, and it makes the September batch worth landing properly — with transcripts and hub pages that Google can actually crawl.
LinkedIn — Company Page
Impressions (organic)
850
From 953 · 7 posts · broadly flat
Impressions (sponsored)
0
From 93,009 · campaign paused
Organic clicks
64
From 72 · 488 unique reached
Reactions (organic)
19
From 23 organic · 68 incl. sponsored
▸ Read — the headline drop is the ads, not the posting
The Page's total impressions fell from 93,962 to 850. Almost all of that is the sponsored education campaign coming off — organic held at 850 from 953, on a similar posting cadence (7 posts against 8 in July), with clicks 64 from 72. Organic publishing continued as normal through August. This is the clearest illustration of why the report separates paid and organic on this Page: read together, they make a deliberate media pause look like a content collapse. Like for like, organic reactions eased only slightly — 23 to 19. The headline fall from 68 is again the sponsored posts coming off, which were collecting reactions organic alone does not.
LinkedIn — Chris Hotchkiss (Personal)
Impressions (Jul → Aug)
909
From 567 · +60%
Members reached
507
From 247 · +105%
Followers
3,500
+17 in month · from 3,483
Audience quality
Strong
31% London · 28% senior, 24% director
✓ Signal — back on, and reaching the right people
Reach roughly doubled as posting resumed after July's leave, with a single 13 August post driving 212 impressions. The audience composition is the part worth noting: 28% senior and 24% director-level, 31% London, with Mitie, OCS, ISS, Control Risks, Amey and VINCI Facilities all represented. That is the buying committee for Enhanced Tier premises, reachable at zero media cost. With paid social paused through August and organic search blocked, the founder channel has been doing disproportionate work. The recommendation stands: 2–3 reactive posts a month in Chris's own voice, weighted to policy commentary.
Cross-post Reach — TikTok, Facebook & Instagram
TikTok (Aug)
1,120
+49% vs July · 4 posts · first 2 followers
Facebook (Aug)
139
From 52 · 5 posts
Instagram (Aug)
—
No activity recorded
Combined impressions
1,259
From 804 · +57%
▸ Read — TikTok keeps compounding
TikTok is now three months into a consistent climb: 494 → 752 → 1,120 impressions, on 3–4 cross-posts a month, and it picked up its first followers in August. Facebook nearly tripled off a very low base. Neither is a priority under £5k and neither should be over-read at this scale — but both are genuine net-new reach at effectively zero marginal cost, and worth keeping on the schedule while organic search is blocked. Instagram recorded no activity this month. X (Twitter) remains a pure repeater with no standalone reporting.
Direct Mail (Physical)
▸ Why the physical wave is still on hold
The channel is proven and ready — the "Through Bubble" master creative won the Education A/B test and the A5 flyer went to print in June — but the ~£17,050 physical wave (postage, print, creative on bought DBS/TPS data) is out of scope under the £5k budget and re-activates at the £15k tier. Nothing is lost: the creative and audience are banked. It remains the strongest candidate for the head-teacher window if spend is restored — still pending confirmation that postal addresses were purchased in the data buy.
Keyword Tracker — Position Tracking & the Indexing Audit
Headline read
Tracked keywords in top 100
0
Of 54 · unchanged since June
Pages indexed by Google
34
Of 55 live pages · 21 missing
Non-brand organic clicks
0
August, and the full 3-month window
Keywords audited (Aug)
100
11 clusters · 11,890 combined UK volume
▸ The diagnosis changed this month — and it is bigger than one page
Since June this tab has carried a working theory: seven keywords fell out of the top 100, all of them on /martyns-law/timeline-and-enforcement/, so the cause was probably a page-level technical fault. The August crawl shows that was too narrow. The problem is site-wide indexing. Of 55 live, indexable pages Google has indexed 34; 10 are known but not indexed and roughly 11 have never been discovered at all. Two stacked faults cause it: the sitemap is invalid XML and has never been submitted to Search Console, and pages 2–5 of the Martyn's Law hub carry a canonical tag pointing back to page 1 while pages 6–8 return 404. With no sitemap and a paginated archive that dead-ends, Google's only route to the content is top-level links — which is exactly what the index reflects. The Timeline page is a symptom, not the disease.
Where the organic traffic actually comes from
Search Console, August 2026. 34 clicks from 735 impressions. Every click is a brand search — someone who already knows the name. Across the full three-month window, not one click has come from a Martyn's Law query.
| Query | Clicks | Impressions | Position | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| prova risk | 12 | 43 | 1.0 | Brand |
| christopher hotchkiss | 2 | 20 | 6.5 | Brand |
| chris hotchkiss | 1 | 37 | 5.2 | Brand |
| shopping centre security regulations uk | 0 | 123 | 56.7 | Non-brand |
| martyn's law places of worship | 0 | 20 | 26.5 | Non-brand |
| public protection procedures | 0 | 18 | 13.6 | Non-brand |
| qualifying premises | 0 | 15 | 12.3 | Non-brand |
| place of worship martyn's law notification | 0 | 13 | 18.9 | Non-brand |
| protect duty advisors | 0 | 5 | 30.8 | Non-brand |
★ The query that started all of this
Chris searched "Martyn's Law compliance" and could not find Prova. Across the three-month Search Console window that query returned 136 impressions, zero clicks, average position 59 — page six. Chris said he checked to page five and gave up; he was one page short. On the paid side the same phrase is an exact-match keyword that showed our ad 21 times in a month. Both channels were invisible on the same query at the same time, which is why he could not find us anywhere. Semrush puts that keyword at 90 UK searches a month at difficulty 0 — nobody is seriously competing for it. Ranking 59th for it is entirely self-inflicted, and entirely fixable.
The 100-keyword audit — where we actually stand
Delivered 25 August as PROVA_SEO_Keyword_Audit_100_Aug2026.xlsx. 100 keywords across 11 clusters with UK volume, difficulty, live position, target URL and recommended action. Volumes from the Semrush UK bulk export; positions from Search Console.
Ranking status across the 100
| Status | Keywords | Combined volume |
|---|---|---|
| Top 3 | 1 | 10 |
| Page 1 | 2 | 50 |
| Page 2 — striking distance | 5 | 60 |
| Page 3–5 — deep | 8 | 4,610 |
| Beyond page 5 — invisible | 14 | 1,790 |
| Not ranking at all | 70 | 5,370 |
| Total | 100 | 11,890 |
Three keywords out of 100 are on page one, and one of them is our own brand name. By priority: P0 Schools 14, P1 48, P2 26, P3 12.
The market is smaller and easier than assumed
| Keyword | UK volume | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| martyn's law | 6,600 | 30 |
| martyns law | 3,600 | 41 |
| what is martyn's law | 720 | 22 |
| martyn's law schools | 480 | 15 |
| martyn's law training | 210 | 15 |
| how to comply with martyn's law | 140 | 0 |
| protect duty | 110 | 16 |
| martyn's law compliance checklist | 110 | 0 |
| martyn's law compliance | 90 | 0 |
34 of the 46 verified keywords carry a difficulty of 20 or below. This is not a hard market — we are losing it on technical health and authority, not competition. 18 of the 46 now trigger an AI Overview, which cites indexed pages only.
Closest to a win — the page-2 cluster
Queries already within striking distance of page one. These need on-page optimisation and internal links only — no new content, no new budget. They are the fastest organic movement available once indexing is fixed.
| Query | Impressions | Position | Next move |
|---|---|---|---|
| protect duty software solutions london | 45 | 6.4 | Already page 1 — strengthen internal links and title |
| martyn's law timeline | 4 | 11.3 | Rescue the Timeline page; it is the biggest impression driver on the site |
| martyn's law standard tier | 1 | 12.0 | Tier explainer — procedures, Standard Tier language |
| public protection procedures | 45 | 12.4 | Dedicated page; the exact statutory term for Standard Tier |
| qualifying premises | 35 | 12.9 | Scope explainer, linked from the in-scope checker |
| martyn's law enhanced tier | 60 | 14.7 | Enhanced Tier explainer — measures language |
| standard duty tier | 4 | 16.0 | Consolidate with the tier explainer |
| place of worship martyn's law notification | 13 | 19.6 | PoW sector page — joint-priority sector, currently dark on paid too |
| when does martyn's law start | 8 | 19.8 | Timeline page again |
▸ The page that should worry us most
/martyns-law/timeline-and-enforcement/ carries 1,140 impressions at position 54.9 with zero clicks. It is the single biggest impression driver on the site. The content exists, Google shows it to people over a thousand times a quarter, and nobody ever sees it because it sits on page six. Rescuing that one page is the highest-leverage organic action available, and it is on-page work rather than new content.
SEMrush position tracking — still flat
The 54-keyword tracked set (direct Martyn's Law terms plus adjacent categories) returned zero rankings in the top 100 for the second consecutive reporting period, with a visibility index of 0.00. That is consistent with the indexing findings rather than a separate problem: pages Google has not indexed cannot rank.
| Direct keyword | Search vol (UK) | Difficulty | Gap / next move |
|---|---|---|---|
| martyn's law | 6,600 | 25 | Pillar page; blocked behind indexing and authority |
| martyns law | 3,600 | 25 | Same page, variant spelling |
| what is martyn's law | 720 | 26 | Definition page exists — needs to be indexed and linked |
| martyn's law schools | 480 | 13 | P0. Difficulty 13 and we don't rank. Rebuild the education sector page — it doubles as the PPC landing page |
| martyn's law training | 210 | 20 | No training page exists on the site at all |
| terrorism protection of premises act 2025 | 170 | 46 | Authority play — Act-named landing page |
| martyn's law update | 90 | 29 | Suits the news/hub cadence once the archive indexes |
| protect duty | 110 | 0 | Bridge article: Protect Duty → Martyn's Law. Difficulty 0 |
★ Changing what we track — the set moves from category to industry language in September
The 54-keyword set on this tab was built in May 2026, six weeks after the content library launched and before Prova had any first-party demand data of its own. With nothing to observe, the honest approach was to track the category broadly: 19 direct Martyn's Law terms plus 35 adjacent terms across visitor management, the Licensing Act, lockdown systems and hostile reconnaissance — high-volume categories where we assumed the same buyers were searching. That assumption can now be tested against real data, and it does not hold. August gives us three independent first-party signals, and all three point at the same, narrower place: people who already know the legislation exists and are working out what they have to do about it. From the September report the tracked set follows that demand.
The three signals that changed our mind
Each of these is first-party data from August. None of it existed when the current tracked set was chosen.
1 · Google Ads search terms — a seam of informed queries
80 unique search terms in August. Behind the head terms sits a distinct group of queries from people already past the "what is it" stage:
| Search term | Impr | CTR | What it tells us |
|---|---|---|---|
| martyn's law standard tier requirements | 8 | 12.5% | Tier-aware — knows the thresholds |
| martyn's law scotland | 58 | 20.7% | Devolution question — specialist |
| martyn's law training / course (cluster) | 50 | 8.0% | Looking for a provider, not a definition |
| martyn's law compliance | 21 | 9.5% | Readiness intent |
| martyn's law for education settings | 17 | 0% | DfE's own phrasing |
| martyn's law statutory guidance | 14 | 14.3% | Going to the source document |
| martyn's law requirements | 12 | 8.3% | Obligation-stage |
| sia martyn's law guidance / martyns law sia | 7 | 0% | Searching by regulator |
| dfe martyn's law | 4 | 0% | Searching by government department |
| martyn's law software | 2 | 0% | First solution-category query |
Small volumes, but the shape is the point. Nobody types "standard tier requirements" or "SIA guidance" unless they already know they are in scope.
2 · Search Console — statutory language ranks best
Now that Search Console is reconnected, the pattern is clear: our strongest non-brand positions are all on the exact statutory vocabulary, not the head terms. The head terms sit on page 5–6; the statutory terms sit on page 2. Positions below are the rolling three-month Search Console window used in the SEO diagnostic, which is wide enough to include the lower-volume tier queries; August-only positions are within a point of these.
| Query | Avg position |
|---|---|
| public protection procedures | 12.4 |
| martyn's law standard tier | 12.0 |
| qualifying premises | 12.9 |
| martyn's law enhanced tier | 14.7 |
| place of worship martyn's law notification | 19.6 |
| protect duty consultants | 27.5 |
| protect duty advisors | 30.8 |
| martyn's law (head term) | 42.5 |
| martyn's law compliance (head term) | 59.0 |
Sector language is surfacing too — shopping centre security regulations uk alone drew 123 impressions in August, and the retail sector page holds 210. None of that vocabulary is in the current tracked set.
3 · YouTube — the library is being surfaced against demand
Thumbnail impressions rose 789 → 3,036 in August, nearly four-fold, as YouTube pushed two May explainers to new audiences months after publication. That is the platform matching the library against live search and suggested demand rather than us distributing it. Video-level search-term data is being added to the tracker from September so this signal can be read directly rather than inferred.
What comes out, and what goes in
The set moves from roughly 35% direct / 65% adjacent to roughly 70% direct / 30% adjacent, at a similar total size (~54 → ~60 keywords).
Out — generic category terms that have not paid
| Cluster | Terms | Combined vol | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visitor management | 10 | 4,660 | No ranking, no impressions, no observed overlap with Martyn's Law intent in five months of search-term data |
| Licensing Act / event risk | 9 | 3,870 | High volume, wrong buyer — dominated by licensing and HR queries |
| Lockdown hardware | 10 | 2,280 | Physical product intent; Prova is a readiness platform, not hardware |
| Removed | ~29 | 10,810 | Retain 3–4 as a watch-list |
This was a reasonable hypothesis with no data behind it. It has now had five months to show overlap and has shown none — 10,810 monthly searches that never belonged to us. Tracking them made the visibility index look like a content problem when it is an indexing and authority problem. A small watch-list stays in place so we notice if that ever changes.
In — four clusters built from observed demand
| New cluster | Examples | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Statutory language | public protection procedures · public protection measures · qualifying premises · standard tier · enhanced tier · responsible person · expected occupancy | Best non-brand positions we hold (12–15) |
| Obligation & readiness | martyn's law requirements · statutory guidance · compliance checklist · how to comply · martyn's law policy · martyn's law training | Google Ads informed-query seam; difficulty 0–15 |
| Sector-specific | education settings · primary school · universities · places of worship notification · shopping centre · licensed premises | DfE phrasing in paid; 123 retail impressions in GSC |
| Regulator & authority | SIA martyn's law · martyn's law regulator · gov.uk / Home Office guidance · protect duty advisors · protect duty consultants · martyn's law scotland | New in August paid; consultant terms already at pos 27–31 |
| Solution category (small) | martyn's law software · compliance software · readiness platform | First appearance August — the commercial end |
These are lower volume individually but they are the terms an in-scope organisation actually types, they carry far lower difficulty, and we already rank better for them than for anything generic.
▸ One category we will not track, bid on or write for
Two August search terms referenced the personal backstory behind the legislation rather than the legislation itself. Those are being added to the negative keyword list and are excluded from the new tracked set. This is a standing editorial rule for Prova and it does not change because demand exists: we market the Act and the readiness obligation, never the events behind it. Flagging it here so the exclusion is a recorded decision rather than an omission.
▸ What this means for reading next month's tracker
Two practical consequences, worth setting out now rather than explaining afterwards. First, September's tab will show a new baseline, not a like-for-like comparison. Roughly half the tracked terms will be new, so the visibility index and the "keywords in top 100" count restart from a fresh starting point — a change in those numbers next month will reflect the new set, not a change in performance. The current set's full history is preserved and the four months of data remain on the archived reports in the dropdown. Second, expect the tracked volume total to fall — from roughly 22,400 monthly searches to something closer to 12,000 — because we are removing 10,810 searches of high-volume category terms that were never going to convert. That is a deliberate trade of headline reach for relevance, and it is the same trade being made on the paid side with the campaign restructure.
✓ Why now, and not sooner
A tracked keyword set should follow demand, not guess at it. In May, six weeks after launch, Prova had no search-term history, no reconnected Search Console and no video library long enough to generate its own signal — so tracking the category broadly was the only honest option. Five months of Google Ads search terms, a reconnected Search Console and a library YouTube is now actively surfacing give us something better: evidence of what in-scope organisations genuinely type. There is also a timing argument. As April 2027 approaches, the language shifts from "what is Martyn's Law" to "what must we have in place" — and the first signs of that shift are in this month's data. The tracker should be pointed at where the demand is going, not where it has been.
Fix order from here
The SEO diagnostic sets the sequence, and it matters — publishing more content into a hub Google cannot crawl wastes the content.
With Applikation — unblocks everything else
- Fix the sitemap XML so it parses
- Submit the sitemap in Search Console — zero have ever been submitted
- Remove the canonical tags from hub pages 2–8
- Restore hub pages 6, 7 and 8 (currently 404)
- Add the H1 to the page template — one fix, 88 pages
- Deploy the redirect map for the 82 broken internal links
- Take
/test2/down — it is live and indexed - Backlink outreach — now underway. Three scraper directories is not a link profile, and it is the ceiling on everything else. Applikation have started this directly (trade bodies, partners, school and diocesan networks)
Before and through the schools window (CMG)
- Rebuild
/for-the-education-sector/as a genuine ranking page — it doubles as the PPC landing page, so it lifts Quality Score at the same time - Attack the nine page-2 queries above — on-page and internal links only
- Rescue the Timeline page — 1,140 impressions at position 55
- Reconcile the content inventory against the crawl before the September video batch publishes
- Keep the backlink target list and landing-page priorities aligned with the keyword strategy — the outreach itself now sits with Applikation
SEO batch 2 and the new publication cadence remain held under the £5k budget. But note: none of the seven fixes above is a content cost. They are one-off engineering tasks, and they are the prerequisite for any content investment that follows.
Asides & Strategic Investments
A The principle
Where activity has shifted from the original timeline, it has shifted because the team made a deliberate call to invest in the underlying quality of the asset rather than ship to deadline. The cards below show each of those calls, what produced them, and what they yield. The combined effect is a Phase 1 that has cost less in media spend and more in foundational investment — which is exactly what the plan expected. One caveat runs across every card below: since 1 July the programme has been on the temporary £5,000/month essentials budget, so several of the assets these investments produced (the additional LinkedIn sectors, the Direct Mail wave, the partner-audience activation) are built and banked but held until spend is restored toward the £15k re-activation tier. The August addition to this list is Aside 08 — the two visibility diagnostics, which are the clearest recent example of the principle: a fortnight spent establishing why the channels underperform, rather than spending more into channels we could not yet explain.
A · Aside 08 · Complete — delivered 25 August 2026
Paid & organic visibility diagnostics — finding out why, before spending more
On the 12 August call Chris asked a direct question: "why can't I find us when I search Martyn's Law compliance?" Rather than adjust bids and hope, CMG stopped and ran two full diagnostics — one on Google Ads, verified live in the account, and one on SEO and indexing, reconciling a Screaming Frog crawl, a Semrush site audit and Search Console. Both delivered 25 August, absorbed within the £5k budget.
Why we stopped to diagnose
The obvious response was to spend more on the terms Chris searched. The data shows that would have wasted the month: martyn's law compliance is exact-match with roughly 21 impressions of monthly inventory — there was nothing there to buy. The budget had to follow a structural fix, not precede it.
What it produced
Two evidenced documents with ranked root causes, a net-cost-neutral reallocation plan for paid, a sequenced seven-item engineering fix list for organic, and a 100-keyword audit across 11 clusters. Also a plain-language summary written for Chris, and a documented baseline for the incoming Applikation team.
What it ruled out
No manual actions, no security issues, no misapplied negative keywords, no search-partner leakage, no competitor outranking us. One earlier explanation was corrected too: Google Search ads have no per-user frequency capping — that mechanism exists on Display and YouTube only.
Why it was worth it
The honest answer turned out to be the better one. We win the auction decisively when we enter it, and the content exists — we simply enter one auction in four and Google cannot reach 38% of the site. Most of the fixes cost engineering time rather than media budget, which is the right shape of problem to find while the raise is still closing.
A · Aside 01 · Complete
Education sector email creative master research — "Through Bubble" won
8,000-record data buy plus an A/B creative test run through April. Aim was to find the master creative concept that the £22,500 direct mail budget and the 5,000-record Tier 1 wave will run on. Test concluded: the "Through Bubble" creative concept won.
Why we paused
Going to a 5,000-record physical wave with unproven creative would burn through the data + print + postage budget. Test small with email first, find the winner, then go physical with confidence.
What it produced
A locked Education sector master creative concept — Through Bubble — copy, headline, CTA framework — that now scales into the physical Direct Mail Tier 1 wave and Phase 2 Paid Social rotation.
Spend
£3,120 data (8,000 records) + 2 days execution (£1,500) = £4,620 invested to de-risk the £22,500 channel budget.
Why it was worth it
The Through Bubble winner now underwrites every downstream creative decision in the Education sector — saving rebuild cost across Direct Mail, Paid Social, and the Schools-cluster PPC ad copy.
A · Aside 02 · Complete
LinkedIn InMail Partner Research Campaign — delivered
Off-budget £4,800 quoted package: £3,000 incentive + £800 setup + £1,000 outreach. Discovery investment to identify and qualify partner audiences (licensing consultants, diocese officers, security operators) for Phase 2 paid social activation. Now complete and producing a qualified partner audience asset.
Why it was a discovery investment, not a spend
It was not media spend going against unproven creative. It has produced a usable partner audience asset that the £38,500 Phase 2 paid social budget will run against. Without it, paid social would have been guessing at audience definitions.
What it produced
A qualified, segmented partner audience list with demonstrated interest in Martyn's Law content — ready to plug into LinkedIn campaign targeting in Phase 2.
Why it's off-budget
Billed separately from the CMG monthly fee structure as a one-off discovery commission. Treated correctly as Phase 1 capital expenditure that produces a Phase 2 operating asset.
Parallel evaluation
Overloop AI was in evaluation as an alternative to Sentrama. If it performs, the per-record cost of partner-audience building drops significantly — but the evaluation is paused under the £5k budget and resumes with the £15k re-activation.
A · Aside 03 · Complete
Head Teacher interview programme
Head teacher research programme — 9 one-to-one interviews delivered week commencing 18 May at £100 incentive each. Output: a head-teacher-native language library now feeding the Education sector SEO landing page, the master DM creative, and Phase 2 schools-cluster PPC ad copy. Direct evidence already visible in May email performance (Head Teacher follow-up campaign: 74.3% open / 68.6% click).
Why qualitative on top of quantitative
The Education sector survey returns the what; the head teacher interviews return the language. PPC ad copy, SEO H1s, and Direct Mail openers are stronger when they use the exact phrasing the buyer uses about the law — not the phrasing CMG or Chris would naturally reach for.
What it produces
A messaging library of head-teacher-native phrases. Direct input into the Education-sector SEO landing page, the master email creative, and the Phase 2 schools-cluster PPC ad copy.
Spend committed
£900 incentive (9 × £100). Roll-up: total Education research spend to date £2,360 against an indicative £4,000 ceiling. Headroom for further rounds in PoW and Hospitality.
Why it's worth it
£100 per interview is a rounding error against the £62,500 Schools sector budget. Getting the language right is a leverage exercise — better copy compounds across every channel for the rest of the year.
A · Aside 04
Schools governance correction (15 April)
Mid-research, a regulatory reading emerged: the responsible person for local-authority-maintained schools is the governing body (governors), not the local authority itself. Targeting was reset to head teachers and governors. Multi-Academy Trusts (different governance pathway) excluded from current mass-marketing scope.
What had been built around the previous reading
Targeting frameworks pointing at LA Directors of Education. Some PPC keyword variants. Some sector-page headline language.
What we changed
Reset of the schools targeting pathway to governing bodies + head teachers. Exclusion of MATs from the current wave (different decision-making pathway, different timing). PPC schools cluster reworked. Sector page headlines amended.
Cost of the correction
Absorbed within the existing M3–M4 schools workstream allocation. No incremental £ spend. ~3 days replanning.
Why finding it now matters
If this had been caught after the £62,500 Schools sector budget had started flowing into Phase 2 paid distribution, the rebuild would have cost a meaningful share of that £62,500. Phase 1 research is precisely the place where corrections like this should land.
A · Aside 06 · In production — publishing across H2
"Musts" series — Captain Chris long-form + short-form sub-cuts
The video originally scoped for the Tesco meeting hit scripting issues in the edit, so it was reframed as the canonical "Musts" walk-through of what's mandatory under Martyn's Law. Six short Captain Chris clips published on 15 June, and a fuller series was filmed on 24 June — within June's budget. Post-production carries into July (the filming/edit-timeline delay), producing the long-form plus 60–90s sub-cuts for social, email and partner pack. No new shoots are funded under the £5k budget after this.
Why we paused on the original cut
Scripting errors made the first edit unusable. Pushing it through would have produced an asset that worked once (for the Tesco meeting) and then needed re-shooting for any other distribution. Re-scripting now produces an asset that lives across the funnel.
What it produces
A long-form Captain Chris "Musts" video that becomes the canonical regulatory walk-through (anchored to the published statutory guidance), plus a set of short-form clips that feed LinkedIn, YouTube Shorts, the email programme, and the partner pack.
Spend impact
Re-scripting and re-edit cost absorbed within the existing creative workstream. No incremental budget call. Long-form + sub-cuts come out of one shoot day.
Why it's worth it
The first Captain Chris explainer carried 96.5% of the channel before the library existed and is still in the monthly top five a year on: Captain-Chris-format content is the highest-leverage asset Prova carries. Doing this one right and producing six derivative cuts beats doing it fast and producing one cut.
A · Aside 07 · Reframed — internal-team handover
Knowledge transfer & handover to the Applikation team
Reframed at the 4 August review and progressed through August. CMG hands reactive content production and site development to Prova and the Applikation team, while retaining paid social, paid search, CRM administration and the video series to February 2027. Luke ran both Jack and Chris through the marketing strategy during August, and the two diagnostics were scoped partly to leave the incoming team a documented, evidenced baseline rather than a verbal handover.
Why now
The £5k budget can't fund CMG delivering everything, so output is protected by moving day-to-day content in-house while CMG keeps the three highest-leverage pillars (paid social, paid search, CRM) plus the video series. One session transfers the system, the content schedule and the lead/segmentation logic in one go.
What it produces
A clean split of responsibilities and a shared playbook: what each lead source means, how the CRM nurture fires, what a "qualified" lead looks like, and how Prova's team runs the reactive social + content calendar without dropping the thread while budget is constrained.
Cost
A one-day, separately-priced session (commercials being finalised by Candace and Chris). Sits alongside — not inside — the £5k monthly essentials.
Why it's worth it
It keeps momentum during the lean period: CMG concentrates on the measurable, converting channels the budget protects, and Prova's team absorbs the rest — rather than letting content simply stop until the £15k re-activation.
A · Aside 05
Captain Chris Tech Explainer (event-grade and site-grade)
Two cuts of the Captain Chris explainer produced in M4: an event-specific cut (used at the investor event), and a Tesco-conversation-specific cut. When it was the channel's only substantial asset it accounted for 96.5% of all views. It still performs: 577 views in August, fourth-highest on the channel, four months after the 28-piece library launched alongside it.
Why two cuts
Event-grade and commercial-conversation-grade audiences need different framing; cutting once and reusing was cheaper and faster than re-shooting. The platform page rework will host the canonical version.
What it produces
A canonical proposition video that the rest of the funnel hangs off. Already the strongest single content asset in the system.
Spend
~1.5 days editing across the two cuts (£1,125). Underwritten by the same source asset.
Why it's worth it
The explainer carried the entire channel before the library existed, and it is still in the monthly top five — there is no clearer signal that Captain-Chris-format content is the highest-leverage asset the system carries. Every additional cut compounds reach.
Budget — the £250k Plan and the Temporary £5k
Original annual plan
£250,000
2026 · ~£20.8k/mo · the plan of record
Operative budget (August)
£5k/mo
Unchanged · month 2 of 6 · temporary
Spend to 31 May (Phase 1)
£62,607
Phase 1 · last reconciled snapshot, end May
Re-activation target
£15k/mo
£90k over 6 months · once the raise closes
★ How to read the budget now
Two things are true at once. The £250,000 plan (below) remains the strategy of record — it's what "fully resourced" looks like, and Phase 1 deliberately under-spent it to build assets first. But since 1 July the money behind the plan has been a temporary £5,000/month while Prova completes its raise, underwritten by the lead investor to year end. Most of the plan's Phase 2 channels are therefore held. CMG's recommendation, across all the planning docs, is to restore to a £15,000/month re-activation tier as soon as the raise allows — because the paused channels (SEO, retargeting, organic) compound, and rebuilding them cold closer to April 2027 is slower and more expensive. One August qualifier: the diagnostics showed that a meaningful share of current under-performance is structural rather than financial. The indexing fixes and the paid-search restructure both cost engineering and account time, not media — so they should proceed at £5k, and they make every pound of the eventual £15k work harder.
View 1 — the £250k plan by channel (spend to 31 May)
| Channel | Annual Budget | % of Total | YTD Spend | % Used | Remaining | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SEO / Content | £25,000 | 10.0% | £11,168 | 44.7% | £13,832 | On track |
| Organic Social | £16,500 | 6.6% | £8,250 | 50.0% | £8,250 | Ahead |
| Paid Social | £38,500 | 15.4% | £1,875 | 4.9% | £36,625 | Phase 2 build |
| PPC (Paid Search) | £37,500 | 15.0% | £6,235 | 16.6% | £31,265 | On track |
| Display & Retargeting | £35,000 | 14.0% | £750 | 2.1% | £34,250 | Phase 2 build |
| Direct Mail | £22,500 | 9.0% | £5,370 | 23.9% | £17,130 | On track |
| Events / Webinars / Sponsorship | £20,000 | 8.0% | £4,875 | 24.4% | £15,125 | On track (ISE prep) |
| Trade Press / Advertorial | £17,500 | 7.0% | £188 | 1.1% | £17,312 | Held — Phase 2 |
| Podcast / Audio | £5,000 | 2.0% | £647 | 12.9% | £4,353 | Filming infrastructure |
| Owned Stack (Web + CRM) | £5,000 | 2.0% | £4,500 | 90.0% | £500 | Phase 1 heavy |
| Contingency / Flex | £27,500 | 11.0% | £18,750 | 68.2% | £8,750 | Drawing — strategic |
| Total | £250,000 | 100.0% | £62,607 | 25.0% | £187,393 | 5 of 12 months elapsed |
▸ Two channels worth a quick read
Owned Stack — 90% used, by design. Foundational infrastructure (CRM migration, GA4 + Search Console setup, lifecycle architecture) is heaviest in Phase 1. The remaining £500 covers ongoing maintenance through Phase 2 and 3. Contingency — 68.2% drawn ahead of plan. Released against the LinkedIn InMail Partner Research package (£4,800 off-budget asset), the Education email A/B test (£4,620), and accelerated foundations work. The £8,750 still in reserve is held for legislative-trigger work and ISE September.
View 2 — the temporary £5k budget · Jul–Dec 2026
What the £5k funds each month
| Line | £/mo |
|---|---|
| Reporting & account management | £1,750 |
| PPC / Google Ads media | £1,000 |
| Google Ads management | £750 |
| LinkedIn Ads management | £500 |
| LinkedIn Ads media | £250 |
| CRM system & access | £250 |
| Standing run-rate | £4,500 |
Plus one-offs: content-scheduling day £750 (Jul) and LinkedIn sector setup £1,500 (Aug), and a £750 flex reserve — £30,000 total over six months. Split: ~72% agency services / 25% media / 3% reserve. August actual media: £1,714.82 on Google Ads and £0 on LinkedIn, with the LinkedIn allocation carried into September–October rather than lost.
£5k essentials vs £15k re-activation
| £5k/mo | £15k/mo | |
|---|---|---|
| 6-month envelope | £30,000 | £90,000 |
| Google Ads / PPC | ✓ | ✓ |
| LinkedIn Ads | Maintenance | Scaled + sectors |
| CRM + reporting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Organic social | Recycled only | Full |
| SEO batch 2 | — | ✓ |
| Display & Retargeting | — | ✓ |
| Direct Mail | — | ✓ |
| Podcast / Acast | — | ✓ |
CMG's recommendation is £15k wherever possible; £5k is a time-boxed holding position.
▸ What's cut or held vs the £250k plan
Nine channels in the plan above are affected. Paused (return at £15k): Display & Retargeting (£35k), SEO batch 2 (£25k), Direct Mail (£22.5k), Podcast/Audio (£5k), full organic social, and LinkedIn scale-up (held at maintenance vs the planned Paid Social ramp). Cut for the period: Events / ISE (£20k), Trade Press (£17.5k), the webinar series, new email campaigns, and new video shoots. Website changes move to Prova / Applikation (off CMG scope). The £5k deliberately protects only the proven, measurable channels — Google Ads, LinkedIn (maintenance), CRM and reporting.
✓ Where August's money actually went
Media spend in August was £1,714.82, all of it Google Ads — the paid-social allocation was held back and is being deployed across September and October at the head-teacher window. Two diagnostics were delivered within the standing agency allocation rather than as an additional cost. The low-cost priorities the £5k can absorb next are the Google Ads restructure (net cost neutral, and it should lower CPC) and pausing PMax, which frees roughly £145/month straight into the budget-capped search campaign. The organic fixes need Applikation's time rather than marketing budget. The one optional, costed ask is £500/month into the new Commercial Intent campaign — the highest-return increment available before the schools window closes.
Next 30 / 60 / 90 Days
✓ Closed out in August
August closed two of the programme's open questions. The funnel converted again — account creations 2 → 9, ad conversions 0 → 16, key events 6 → 28, supporting July's reading that the dip was plumbing rather than demand. Search Console reconnected after the Cyber Essentials work. Two diagnostics were delivered on 25 August answering Chris's 12 August question across both paid and organic, with ranked causes and costed fixes. Google Ads absorbed the paid load (£1,714.82, schools clicks +54%) and YouTube had its best month (6,038 views, +29%). Three items carried over from July's list also closed: the internal-team handover commercials and date were agreed, the new video series went live, and the LinkedIn relaunch-or-bank decision was taken — banked, with the media redeployed to the September head-teacher window. One item stays open: the root-cause diagnosis of the conversion-tracking disruption sits with Applikation.
— Now redundant / not happening under £5k
Paused or cancelled under the reduced budget, so not carried forward as active work: Direct Mail physical wave · Display & Retargeting · Paid Social scale-up to additional sectors · SEO batch 2 & new publication cadence · Trade Press placements · Phase 2 webinar series · ISE September stand · Jason Fox approach · Overloop / Centrama evaluation · monthly newsletter (held quarterly). Each returns with the £15k re-activation, not before. Note: none of the indexing or paid-structure fixes below sits in this list — they are engineering and account work, not media spend.
Decisions Needed from Chris
| Decision | Window | What it unblocks | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dev resource for the seven indexing fixes | This month | The highest-leverage item on the list and it needs no marketing budget — only Applikation's time. Fixing the sitemap and the hub canonicals should surface 21 pages Google currently cannot reach. Every other organic action depends on it. | Pending — Prova / Applikation |
| Funding round & budget restoration (£15k) | Gated on the raise + enterprise deals | The master unlock. Restoring toward £15k re-activates SEO batch 2, Display & retargeting, organic production, Direct Mail and the additional LinkedIn sectors. Everything in the "redundant under £5k" list depends on it. | Pending — Prova / investor |
| PMax — pause or keep | This month | £158/month delivering 0.09% of its impressions to Google Search and skewing the traffic mix non-UK. Pausing frees ~£145/month straight into the budget-capped search campaign. Trade-off: it also stops the YouTube retargeting, which can be rebuilt standalone at ~£2/day. | CMG recommendation |
| Expect a lower impression count next month | Now — before the number lands | The account restructure deliberately caps the generic head terms to protect the commercial-intent budget. Total impressions will fall while qualified volume rises. Worth agreeing the trade before the September report rather than after it. | For agreement |
| Content inventory reconciliation | Before the next video batch | The crawl finds 29 indexable article pages under /martyns-law/ against a working assumption of 60–70. Some is 404ing, some was never published, some sits behind the broken pagination. Worth confirming what is genuinely live before commissioning more. |
Pending — Chris / Applikation |
| September head-teacher data | Now — window is open | Confirm whether head-teacher postal addresses were purchased in the data buy — determines whether Direct Mail is an option for the schools push if budget allows. | Pending — Candace |
| Additional £500/month into Commercial Intent | Optional, before the window closes | The highest-return increment available: taking the new Commercial Intent campaign to ~£35/day would roughly triple qualified schools and compliance traffic. A specific, costed ask rather than a general one — and it addresses the exact problem Chris raised. | CMG recommendation |
| Enhanced Tier product build | Pending enterprise engagement | Enterprise conversations indicate Enhanced Tier (800+ expected occupancy · public protection measures) needs building. Scope, timing and cost still to surface. | Pending — Chris |
★ The 90-day picture
August turned a vague worry into a specific, documented fix list — and the encouraging part is what the diagnostics ruled out. There is no penalty, no manual action, no security issue, and no competitor beating us in the auction. On paid we win top of page 73.5% of the time when we enter; on organic the content exists and is written. What is broken is plumbing: a sitemap that doesn't parse, an archive Google can't crawl, ads pointing at the wrong page, and all 214 keywords locked to exact match. Most of those are one-off engineering tasks that cost time rather than media budget, which is precisely the right shape of problem to have while the raise is still closing. The next 30 days are about execution against that list, timed at the schools window with the carried-forward LinkedIn media going in behind it. Seven months to April 2027.
Useful Documents
▸ How these relate to this report
The numbers, narratives and decisions in the rest of this report are summarised from these documents. If you want the full underlying detail behind anything in Tabs 1–9 — the ranked root causes behind the visibility findings, full audience profiles, the original strategy logic, or the granular budget picture — go to the source.
Google Ads Visibility Diagnostic
Why Prova is hard to find on paid search, verified live in account 501-212-4313 rather than from exports. Impression share split by campaign (budget vs rank), Quality Scores and their components, the landing page evidence, PMax placement analysis, and a costed, net-cost-neutral reallocation plan. Ends with a plain-language summary written for Chris.
SEO & Indexing Diagnostic
Why 38% of the site is missing from Google's index. Reconciles a Screaming Frog crawl, a Semrush site audit (146 pages) and Search Console. Covers the sitemap and pagination faults, the historical staging-domain canonical leak, broken internal links, the backlink position, and a sequenced fix order. Includes the 100-keyword audit (PROVA_SEO_Keyword_Audit_100_Aug2026.xlsx) in 03 Research & Insight → SEO Research.
Original Master Marketing Plan (v3.4)
The 12-month strategic plan this activation tracker measures against. Includes the three-phase model, sector allocation, channel-by-phase strategy, governance rhythm, risks and dependencies. Read this if you want the rationale behind any decision in the report.
Open in Google Docs ↗Target Audience Map
Definitive Prova buyer personas. Head teacher, MAT COO, vicar, mosque trustee, retail head of operations, hospitality compliance director, and the partner / reseller. Pain points, decision triggers, channel preferences and what each persona needs to move forward.
Open in Google Sheets ↗Budget — £250k Plan + £5k Mini-Budget
Two documents behind the Budget tab: the original £250k Activation Plan (Actuals vs. Projections + agency time tracker), and the PROVA Marketing Investment Plan (Jul–Dec 2026) that defines the temporary £5k budget and the £15k re-activation tier. For the full monthly breakdown, work directly off these.
Open in Google Sheets ↗September Video Batch — Syndication Pack
The syndication package for the batch filmed on the July production day: per-video transcripts, platform-specific captions, landing-page mapping and a split upload manifest across the CMG and Prova teams. Sequence this behind the indexing fixes so the hub pages it publishes into are crawlable.