This section explains how I plan digital marketing for particular UK sectors, where the rules on what you may say, the time customers take to decide and the businesses competing for the same click all differ. It is written for owners and marketing leads who want to know, before a first conversation, whether a consultant understands how their kind of business wins customers.
Each sector page treats the channels together: search, paid ads, the website, email and measurement. If you only need help with one channel, the sector pages in the SEO, Google Ads and Facebook ads sections go into more depth, and they are linked further down.
Sectors covered, grouped by what drives the work
The eight sectors listed below this page fall into four rough groups. The group usually says more about the right plan than the sector name does, so start with the description that sounds most like your business.
Regulated advice and care
Private clinics, solicitors, accountants and fintech firms sell something a regulator watches closely. Marketing for private clinics and healthcare practices sits under the CAP Code and, for many treatments, the rules on advertising medicines. Law firms and professional services have SRA or professional body requirements to meet. Almost anything a fintech or payments business publishes about its product can count as a financial promotion. In all three, the copy has to be accurate and permitted before it is persuasive.
Bookings and seasons
Hotels, venues and tour operators sell dates, and dates expire. Much of the work for hotels and hospitality businesses is about winning the booking directly instead of paying commission to an online travel agent. Tour operators also plan around booking windows that open months before departure and, for holidays that include flights, ATOL protection that must be explained properly to the buyer.
Long decisions with several people involved
Estate and letting agents, property developers and education or training providers serve customers who research for weeks or months, compare several options and often decide with a partner, a parent or an employer. The marketing has to stay useful across that whole period, and the follow-up after a first enquiry matters as much as the enquiry itself.
Online retail
For ecommerce and retail businesses the sale happens on the website, so the numbers are clearer but the margins are thinner. Product feeds, delivery and returns costs, and what a customer is worth across repeat orders decide how much each sale can afford to cost in advertising.
Why the sector shapes the plan more than the channel does
Google Ads, search engine optimisation, Facebook and Instagram ads and email marketing work the same way for a dental practice as for a tour operator. What changes is everything around them. Four things in particular vary between sectors, and I look at each one before suggesting where any money should go.
What you are allowed to say
The ASA applies the CAP Code to online ads and to the claims businesses make on their own websites, and several sectors carry extra rules on top. Prescription-only medicines, Botox included, cannot be advertised to the public. A financial promotion must be fair, clear and not misleading, and a business that is not FCA-authorised needs it approved by a firm with FCA permission to approve financial promotions. Solicitors must publish price and service information for certain work under the SRA Transparency Rules. I write within those limits from the first draft, rather than handing over copy for a compliance team to cut back.
How long people take to decide
Someone booking a hotel room for Friday decides in an evening; someone choosing a training course or a new home may take a season. The length of the decision sets how much weight goes on meeting demand that already exists, mostly through search, and how much on staying useful while people think, through email, retargeting and content that answers their questions.
Who stands between you and the customer
Many sectors have an intermediary that captures demand first: online travel agents for hotels, Rightmove and Zoopla for estate agents, comparison sites for financial products, marketplaces for retailers. Part of the plan is deciding how much to keep paying that intermediary and where your own website can take business back at a lower cost.
What counts as a result
A clinic counts booked consultations, a retailer counts orders after returns, a law firm counts instructed matters and a college counts enrolments. If the tracking records form submissions while the business is paid on completed cases, every channel will look better or worse than it really is. Agreeing the one result that matters is the first job in any sector.
Sector pages here and in the channel sections
The pages in this section are for businesses that want marketing run across several channels with their sector in mind. Each channel section also has sector pages of its own, which go deeper into one platform:
- SEO by sector, for ranking in Google search and Google Maps
- Google Ads by sector, for search, shopping and Performance Max campaigns
- Facebook and Instagram ads by sector, for paid social campaigns
If you already know which channel you need, start there. If you are not sure, or several suppliers each run one channel and nobody looks at the whole picture, this section is the better place to begin.
How sector work usually runs
- Rules and market first. I read the regulator’s guidance that applies to you, look at how competitors present themselves in search results and ads, and note any intermediary taking a share of your customers.
- Measurement. Before changing a campaign, I check that the enquiries, bookings or sales that matter are being recorded, with cookie consent handled properly under UK GDPR and PECR.
- A plan with an order to it. You get a written plan setting out which channels to use, in what order, with what budget, and judged by which number. The same written plan, worked up in full, is what my digital marketing strategy and consulting service delivers.
- Delivery and review. I run or support the work, and we review results against the agreed number at a regular interval, moving budget between channels as the evidence builds.
Mistakes that turn up in every sector
- Copying a competitor’s ad claims on the assumption that they must be allowed. Plenty of live ads break the CAP Code; their owners simply have not been reported yet.
- Treating every enquiry as equal, when one type of customer is worth several times another.
- Paying an intermediary commission on customers who were already searching for the business by name.
- Spreading a seasonal business’s budget evenly across twelve months, so the busiest weeks are underfunded and the quiet ones waste money.
If your sector is not listed
The list covers the sectors I have written up in detail, not the only businesses I will talk to. Most businesses share one of the four patterns above, so the questions are the same: what you are allowed to say, how long your customers take, who sits between you and them, and what counts as a sale. Send me a short description of your business and I will tell you plainly whether I am the right fit and, if I am not, what kind of specialist to look for.