I looked at how people around Bromley, Orpington, Chislehurst and Sevenoaks search for the services AV Innovation already provides. The opportunity is not simply to “run some ads”. It is to decide which projects are worth buying demand for first, what each one can afford to cost, and how far the economics can sensibly scale.
AV Innovation already covers high-value, considered projects: home cinema, whole-home automation, multi-room AV, lighting, security and networking. The supplied search research found competitors paying for visibility around the same services and catchment.
Competes on the same premium smart-home and cinema proposition, with strong commercial-intent calls to action.
Explicitly targets the same South London and Kent catchment and overlapping Control4 / integrated-home demand.
Search visibility changes by user, auction, device and time. The point is not that AV Innovation is “invisible”; it is that paid competitors can insert themselves above otherwise strong organic visibility at the moment of active consideration.
The first job is to create a hierarchy based on intent, competition and project economics. Supporting services such as Wi-Fi, lighting, CCTV and multi-room audio can increase project value, but do not all need separate acquisition campaigns on day one.
Direct product-led demand gives us a cleaner signal than very broad “smart home” searches. It is a sensible place to prove enquiry quality and establish what a qualified project can afford to cost.
Default allocation: 25%This is where project values can expand because lighting, blinds, climate, security, AV and networking can sit inside one brief. I would give this the largest share once lead quality is understood.
Default allocation: 45%Commercially attractive, but potentially more competitive. Search should capture active demand while visual paid media can later help create desire and retarget people already considering a project.
Default allocation: 30%“Start where the economics are easiest to prove. Scale the services producing the strongest commercial return. Keep tighter control over the more expensive searches until the results justify spending more.”
Search is the clearest opening identified here because it captures existing intent. It does not need to be the whole strategy. Once we know which project types convert and what an acquired customer is worth, wider paid media can support project discovery, showcase completed installations and stay in front of people during a longer consideration cycle.
That is why the model below is deliberately commercial rather than channel-led: the channel earns budget by producing profitable work.
This is not a revenue forecast. AV Innovation only needs to adjust the commercial figures it is likely to know. Media costs and conversion assumptions sit behind the model as working inputs, while project values, margin and budget remain easy to sense-check.
These are the figures AV Innovation is most likely to know. The media assumptions sit behind the model and are shown separately below.
Service mix: 25% Control4 / smart controls · 45% whole-home automation · 30% home cinema.
Realistic media assumptions: average CPCs of £4.20 / £5.00 / £6.50, click-to-enquiry rates of 3.5% / 3.0% / 3.0%, and enquiry-to-project rates of 18% / 15% / 15%.
ThinkingMan proposal used in the model: £950/month base fee plus £150 per completed Control4 / smart-controls project and £300 per completed whole-home or home-cinema project.
Calculation: the model uses the fixed media assumptions shown on the left to estimate enquiries and completed projects. Those projects are then multiplied by the project values you enter. Gross profit uses the margin you provide, and net contribution subtracts media spend and the proposed ThinkingMan fees.
| Service group | Annual spend | Clicks | Enquiries | Projects | Revenue | Gross profit |
|---|
Fractional projects are shown because this is an expected-value model over a 12-month period. Actual outcomes arrive as whole projects and will vary month to month.
The starting model gives us a commercial direction. Once campaigns are live, we use actual enquiry quality, project values and margins to decide where budget should move next.
We increase the share of budget behind those searches and expand into closely related automation terms.
We tighten the search terms, improve qualification and reduce spend until the quality of those enquiries improves.
We protect margin by pulling back on expensive searches and shifting budget towards the services producing better commercial return.
The base fee covers strategy, campaign management, tracking, optimisation and reporting. A smaller variable fee is tied to completed projects, so part of what AV Innovation pays us rises only when paid media creates commercial value.
plus a modelled £150–£300 per completed project, depending on project type.
Media spend is paid directly to the advertising platforms. The success-fee structure can be simplified once AV Innovation's actual project mix and tracking setup are understood.
Agency capability. Direct specialist relationship.
I personally handle the marketing science, strategy and account rather than passing it through layers of an agency.
If the opportunity looks interesting, the useful conversation is not “should we run some ads?”. It is what your average projects are actually worth, what gross margin you protect, how many qualified enquiries become work and how much additional capacity you want to fill.
