Digital marketing in Wollongong, run by the team that builds the website.
SEO, Google Ads and Facebook advertising planned as one program, instead of three suppliers pulling in three directions and none of them counting the enquiries.
Most Wollongong businesses are not short of marketing. They are short of a plan.
A cafe on Crown Street pays one person for Instagram, another for a website nobody has opened the back of in years, and a third for Google Ads pointing straight at it.
Each of them reports on their own patch. The social person shows reach, the ads person shows clicks, the web person shows uptime, and not one of them shows the only number the owner cares about, which is how many people got in touch.
Digital marketing only works when the parts know about each other. The ad has to land somewhere that answers the question it just raised. That page has to load properly on a phone in a Port Kembla car park. The terms you chase have to be the ones your customers actually type, which in the Illawarra is rarely what an agency three hours up the M1 would guess.
Three ways to get in front of Illawarra customers.
They do different jobs on different clocks. Read them as alternatives, not as a shopping list.
Search engine optimisation
The slow one, and the only one that compounds. We work on your pages, your content, your site structure and your Google Business Profile so you turn up when someone in Figtree or Thirroul searches for what you sell. You stop paying by the click, but you wait months rather than days for it.
SEO in WollongongGoogle Ads
The fast one. Someone has already decided they need a plumber, a conveyancer or a physio and is typing it into Google right now. Ads put you in front of that person today, and it stops the day the budget stops. It is also the quickest honest test of whether your offer converts at all.
Google Ads managementFacebook and Instagram advertising
The one that creates demand instead of catching it. Nobody scrolling Instagram on the train down from Thirroul is searching for you. Meta ads reach them anyway, which is what suits businesses whose customers do not yet know the service exists, or do not yet know they need it.
Meta AdsThe marketing and the website are the same argument.
Most agencies competing for this search sell you the traffic and leave the website to somebody else. That is where the money leaks. A click costs the same whether the page converts or not, so a slow page, a buried phone number or a form nobody finishes is a quiet tax on every campaign you run.
We build the sites as well. When a campaign is not converting we change the page it lands on that afternoon rather than raising a ticket with whoever built it. When search needs a service page written and structured properly, we write it and we build it.Website design
- One report, not three. Rankings, ad spend and enquiries in the same place, in plain English.
- No finger pointing. Nobody can blame the site, because the site is ours too.
- Local search knowledge. Dapto, Shellharbour and Kiama behave as separate markets, not as greater Wollongong.
- A straight answer. Including when the answer is that you do not need what you rang to buy.
If you can only do one thing, do them in this order.
This is the advice we give on the phone, and it regularly costs us work. We would rather say it than sell three retainers a budget cannot feed.
Fix the website first
Every channel below sends people to it. Doubling the traffic to a page that does not convert doubles nothing. If the site is slow, awkward on a phone or vague about what you actually do, that is the cheapest problem on this list and the only one that makes the other two work harder.
Then catch the demand that already exists
Search covers the people who are already looking. Ads tell you within weeks whether the offer stands up; SEO turns that into traffic you are no longer renting. Start with ads if the phone needs to ring this quarter, start with SEO if you can wait and want to stop paying per click.
Then create demand that is not there yet
Facebook and Instagram reach people who were not looking for you at all. It is the hardest of the three to prove and the easiest to waste money on, which is why it belongs last rather than first. It earns its place once you already know what converts.
You may never need the third one at all. If that is where you land, we will say so rather than sell it to you.
Digital marketing questions we get across the Illawarra.
What business owners ask before they commit to a marketing program.
How much does digital marketing cost in Wollongong?+
It depends entirely on which channels you actually need and how competitive your market is, so we quote the scope rather than sell a package. A Figtree salon and an Illawarra-wide construction firm need different programs and should not pay the same. You get the figure and the scope together, in writing, before you commit to anything.
How quickly will we see results?+
It differs by channel, and anyone quoting you one number for all of them is guessing. Google Ads produces enquiries in the first weeks. Facebook and Instagram take a little longer because the audience has to be found before it can be trusted. SEO is a three to six month job on most local terms. We will tell you which of those your budget actually buys.
Do I need all three, or can I start with one?+
Start with one. Splitting a modest budget across three channels usually leaves none of them with enough behind it to measure, so you learn nothing from any of them. Run one properly, find out what it returns, then add the next. Which one you start with depends on how soon you need the phone to ring.
What is digital marketing, exactly?+
It is the work of getting your business in front of people online and turning that attention into enquiries. In practice, for a local business, it comes down to three things: being found when someone searches, paying to appear when being found is not enough yet, and reaching people who were not looking. Everything else is a variation on those.
Can you run SEO and Google Ads at the same time?+
Yes, and for a lot of businesses that is the right combination. Ads buy visibility today while SEO builds visibility you stop paying per click for. Running both also means the search terms that genuinely convert in your ads account tell us what to target organically, which is information you do not get from either channel on its own.
You are called Wollongong Web Design. Do you really do marketing?+
We do, and it is the same team. The name says what most people come to us for first, and marketing is what they ask for next, because a new website with nobody visiting it is only half a job. The team behind this page runs search and social campaigns on Australian small business accounts every day.
One team for the whole job.
This page covers the three channels that move enquiries. Here is the rest of what we do, from the same team.
Tell us what the business needs to happen and we will map it to the one or two things that actually get you there, including when the answer is to fix the website before spending a dollar on traffic.
No obligation. We will tell you if a job is not worth doing.