Hobfolk
Department 04 · Demand

Posted, and then
measured.

Anybody can put a post out. The part that is hard — and the part that gets skipped when everyone is busy — is reading what happened afterwards and cutting the half that did nothing.

Start a conversationSee the whole crew
You go home. It doesn't.Every promise gets a row and a due dateAnswered the same day, not the next working dayA drawing before the quoteUnverifiable is never a passA desk per department, one address eachNothing is sent that a human cannot read backThe folder exists before you price itYou go home. It doesn't.Every promise gets a row and a due dateAnswered the same day, not the next working dayA drawing before the quoteUnverifiable is never a passA desk per department, one address eachNothing is sent that a human cannot read backThe folder exists before you price it
The case for it

Demand & marketing

Half of it is not working. The job is finding out which half, every month.

Marketing in a company that makes things is usually one of two states: nothing goes out for five weeks, or something goes out constantly and nobody has ever checked whether it earns anything.

This desk does both halves. It plans and produces the work, it publishes on a schedule that does not depend on anyone having a free afternoon, and then it reads the numbers and tells you plainly which of it to stop doing.

Going at the thing rather than round it
Going at the thing rather than round it
The boardroom

“What to stop”

Ruth Devlin · Head of Demand · 1:12

Marketing is the engine, not the extra — and every month the report names what to stop paying for.

Captions on · the sound is worth it

What the desk does

Six things, every day, without being asked

Take the whole desk or one line of it. Everything below is included in the department retainer. None of it is an extra.
01

Content, planned and posted

A calendar built round what you are making that month. Written, art-directed, scheduled and published across the channels you use. Approval before anything goes out, for as long as you want it.
02

The analysis underneath it

Reach, engagement, click-through, and where it can be tracked, what it did to enquiries. A monthly read that names the posts that carried the traffic and the ones that were a waste of an afternoon.
03

Campaigns designed end to end

A proposition, the assets, the sequence, the landing page it points at, and the readout when it finishes. Not a set of graphics with no destination.
04

Google Ads, run properly

Build, structure, bidding, negative-keyword hygiene, and — the one everybody skips — checking that the landing page matches the advert. A lot of wasted ad spend is a page mismatch, not a bid.
05

Search and AI visibility

Technical health, schema, indexation, page speed, and the newer question of whether an AI assistant can find and cite you at all. Fixed at the source, not reported at you.
06

Outreach that gets a reply

Researched lists, sequenced approaches written like a person wrote them, and every reply routed straight to a human — the moment somebody answers, automation stops.
Off the bench

Surfaces this desk built and measures

Two storefronts running now, a live campaign landing page, and the same brand in print. All of it written, built and measured here — screenshots and artwork, not mock-ups.

A storefront, live and selling

Navigation, category structure, hero and the commission route — written, built and measured by this desk. Every product page under it carries its own schema, its own meta and its own alt text.

A landing page built for one live ad campaign

The headline is the ad's own pinned headline, word for word. A click that promises method statements and lands on a page about something else is the most expensive kind of waste, and it is invisible unless somebody checks.

A second storefront, sharing nothing with the first

Same office, same month, a completely different world — paper-craft botanicals and a hummingbird instead of timber and engineering drawings. The work is supposed to look like the client, not like us.

The same brand, off the screen and onto paper

A recruitment piece for the same boutique, set in its own room. A brand that only exists at 1440 pixels wide is half a brand — it has to survive print, a shop window and a phone screen without being redrawn each time.

On the record

This desk, already at work

The real cases this desk has been through, the guide to its most-asked-for document, and anything you can try before you talk to anyone.
Case study

Every listing live, none of them true

A hunch, checked properly, turned out to be exactly right

Read the case
Depth

What this desk knows

Marketing for a company that builds things is a different job from marketing software. The desk knows which numbers mean anything here.

Where the work comes from

  • The truth in this sector: most work arrives through people who already know you, and the site's job is to survive the check they run afterwards.
  • So the priority order is reputation surface first — case studies, capability, proof, the team page a procurement officer opens — and volume tactics second.
  • Long sales cycles measured properly. A monthly lead count is the wrong instrument for a job that closes in nine months.

Technical, before content

  • Indexation, crawlability, redirects, schema, sitemap and Core Web Vitals including INP fixed at source.
  • Plumbing before words, always. A store we run sat quietly broken for six months while good content was written for it; it converted the week the configuration was fixed.
  • Whether an AI assistant can find, read and cite you at all — increasingly the first place a buyer looks.

Paid

  • Structure, match types, and negative keyword hygiene run as a routine rather than a spring clean.
  • Landing-page match checked against the advert. A large share of wasted spend is a page that does not say what the ad promised, and no bid change fixes it.
  • Conversion tracking that is actually firing, verified on the live page — not assumed from a settings screen.

The readout

  • Monthly, in plain language, naming the pieces that carried the traffic and the ones that were a waste of an afternoon.
  • Where attribution cannot be established, the report says so instead of picking a flattering model.
  • The recommendation is usually to stop doing something. That is most of the value.

Every reply to an outreach sequence is routed to a human immediately. The moment a real person answers, the automation stops.

The run of it

How a job moves through

  1. A month is planned

    Against what you are making, not against a content calendar template.

  2. It is produced

    Copy, images, film. In your voice, from your own material.

  3. You approve it

    For as long as you want to. Most clients relax this after two months.

  4. It publishes

    On schedule, whether or not anyone was free that day.

  5. The numbers are read

    Monthly, in plain language, naming what to stop.

  6. Next month changes

    Because of what the numbers said, not because it is next month.

The limits

What this desk will not do

Every department has a written boundary. A service that claims no limits has simply not found its own yet, and you will find it for them.

Where this desk stops

  • Nothing is published under a real person's name without them seeing it. Your people are not a byline for generated copy.
  • It does not buy media without approval. Budgets are set by you and changes to them come back for a decision.
  • It does not claim a result it cannot evidence. Where attribution cannot be established, the report says so instead of picking a flattering model.
Questions

Asked before, answered here

Do we approve every post?
For as long as you want to. Approval-before-publish is the default and roughly two thirds of clients relax it after the first couple of months.
What if we have no photography?
Then the first month is largely spent making some. It is the highest-return thing most makers have never got round to.
Who owns the ad accounts?
You do, always, in your own billing. We are granted access and it is revoked in one click.
Will you tell us to stop doing something we like?
Yes. That is most of the value. A report that only contains good news is a report nobody should pay for.
Next department

Studio & materials

Where the things it publishes get made.

Open Studio

Which half of your marketing is not working?

Tell us, and we will say whether this desk fits. A no is quicker for both of us. This desk on its own is from £1,450 a month, thirty days' notice either way, and the first month is a paid trial.

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