Plan with Grace
Management Briefing · August 2026
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Plan of
Action

A four-phase programme to fix what's broken, build what's missing, and get paid acquisition performing before the September busy season — with a clear path to owned channels that reduce agency dependency over 12 months.

August 2026  ·  Confidential
Plan with Grace
Objectives
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Three objectives — two urgent before September, one over 12 months

1
Before Sep · 3.5 weeks
Get paid ads performing — and measurable
How: Fix conversion tracking on Google Ads (resolve with Seed or bring in-house). Once tracking works: test different audience angles and ad copy at small scale before scaling spend — not broad campaigns first. Identify what actually closes At Need vs Pre-Need. September onwards is the busy funeral season — every week of blind spend is wasted budget at the worst possible time.
2
Within 2 weeks
Build a real-time reporting dashboard — one source of truth
How: Connect HubSpot API → custom dashboard (v1 live w/c 11 Aug, pending access confirmation from Abbie). Charles sees sales, leads, and CPS in real time — without asking the agency. All future decisions on spend, channels, and the paid media question flow from this visibility. Once the dashboard is live, informed decisions replace guesswork.
3
Build owned channels that compound — organic, email, AI visibility
How: Keyword cluster content programme on TFM/FWG (450k/month addressable). New website built fresh — PWG owns the CMS and publishing workflow, content goes live without developer bottlenecks. HubSpot database: lifecycle sequences + failed-lead reactivation. Each owned channel permanently lowers CPS. Paid and organic run in parallel — content takes 3–6 months to rank while paid carries volume now.
September creates the deadline. Funeral demand rises from September and stays elevated through winter. The next 3 weeks are the last window to fix paid ads before they need to perform at scale. Paid and organic are not alternatives — they run together.
Plan with Grace
Four-Phase Programme
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Foundation first — then channels. Each phase unlocks the next.

Phase 0 · Complete
Ground Truth
Done — 7 Aug
  • True CPS confirmed (£452)
  • At Need unit economics (−£107/sale)
  • Channel mix audited
  • Tech stack mapped
  • Access requests in with Abbie
Phase 1 · Now
Measurement
Weeks 1–3 · before Sep
  • Dashboard v1 live (HubSpot)
  • Fix Google Ads tracking
  • UTM taxonomy standardised
  • Weekly report cadence
  • Seed tracking deadline: 15 Aug
Phase 2 · Months 1–3
Fix & Build
Sep–Nov 2026
  • 7 technical SEO fixes (robots.txt, HTTPS, schema)
  • New website built — PWG owns CMS + publishing
  • Buyer journey optimisation on key pages
  • Keyword cluster content programme (28 articles)
  • HubSpot lifecycle + failed-lead nurture live
Phase 3–4 · Months 3–12
Own & Automate
Nov 2026 – Aug 2027
  • Organic: 0.75% → 3–5% search capture
  • AI/GEO: 622 → 3,000+ commercial mentions
  • Voice agent automation — AI calls from winning transcript patterns
  • LinkedIn B2B (advisers, employers)
  • Agency retainer reduced or removed
Phase 2 — new website: A fresh build (owned, not a WordPress patch job) gives PWG a CMS they control. Content goes through Helen's FCA approval process — the CMS makes that faster, not slower. Publishing never waits on a developer. The keyword cluster strategy is focused: 4 clusters, not broad content. TFM for informational; FWG for commercial terms.

Phase 3-4 — voice agents: Once sales transcripts are being logged and analysed, the best-performing call patterns become the training data for AI voice agents that handle initial lead qualification, follow-ups, and cold-lead reactivation calls automatically.
Plan with Grace
Reporting Dashboard
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Dashboard v1 target: live w/c 11 August — Abbie's upgrades the only remaining step

V1 — HubSpot Only (target: w/c 11 Aug)
Pending Abbie — HubSpot Super Admin upgrade
4 KPI cards
Sales this week · True CPS · At Need leads · Pre-Need leads. Charles sees the numbers without asking the agency.
8-week trend charts
One per KPI. Direction matters as much as the number — spot deterioration before the month is over.
At Need : Pre-Need ratio
Target 1:3. Currently ~1:9. At Need is loss-making at current CPS — the ratio is a critical signal.
V2 — All channels (weeks 3–6)
Blocked — Abbie (Meta Business Admin)
Meta Ads layer
CPL by campaign, ad spend, lead gen form completions
Blocked — Abbie (GA4 Viewer)
Traffic layer
Sessions by source, landing page, bounce rate
Blocked — Corne (portal API endpoint)
Pre-Need payment status
Plan type split, DD active count, lapse rate
Access is the only blocker. Abbie has been excellent throughout — access upgrades are already with her and are the final step. Once HubSpot Super Admin is confirmed, v1 can be live in 2–3 days. The dashboard is built on standard APIs — it belongs to PWG, not locked to any agency or contractor.
Plan with Grace
Phase 1–2 — Fix What's Broken
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Five issues — two critical before September, three in Phase 2

🚨
Google Ads — broken conversion tracking
~£70k/month running without knowing which campaigns close sales. Seed has been unable to resolve. Without this fixed, no ad decision can be made confidently — and September is three weeks away.
Deadline: 15 Aug → Seed. If not fixed, escalate.
🚨
Ad testing discipline — small scale before broad spend
Large-scale campaign deployments without testing angles first are high-risk. The approach going forward: test 3–5 creative/audience variants at low spend, identify what converts, then scale only the winners.
Whoever manages ads — from Sep onwards
⚠️
robots.txt missing (funeralswithgrace.com)
Crawlers may be missing pages. One-line fix — quick win once the new website build starts.
Phase 2 new build
⚠️
HTTPS broken on 2 of 3 domains
SSL errors on thefuneralmarket.com and withgrace.co. Kills SEO ranking and erodes trust at a sensitive moment of purchase.
Phase 2 — new build + Corne
⚠️
No FAQPage schema across any domain
FAQ schema drives rich snippets in Google and feeds AI search citations directly. Competitors with schema get the mention; PWG doesn't. Straightforward to implement and has immediate organic + AI visibility impact.
Phase 2 — new website build + Peak Visibility
The new website build in Phase 2 resolves items 3–5 cleanly. A fresh build with proper site architecture eliminates the accumulated technical debt, gives PWG full CMS ownership, and means all three SEO issues are fixed as part of the build — not as separate patches on a legacy setup.
Plan with Grace
Phase 2–3 — Build & Optimise Channels
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Four channels — two to build from scratch, two to optimise and extend.

Priority 1 — Build
Organic Search + AI Visibility
28-article content programme across 4 focused keyword clusters. TFM for informational content; FWG for commercial terms (cremation, plans, pricing).

AI/GEO: Target purchase-intent queries where PWG is currently absent. Schema + structured content is the mechanism.

Adjacent — wills & estate planning: Natural cross-sell to Pre-Need customers. "Arrange funeral + write will" is a real search cluster. Partner with a will-writing service or simple referral for zero-CPS revenue.

Helen's FCA approval process built into the publishing workflow from day one — faster iteration, not slower.
Priority 2 — Build
HubSpot Email — Nurture & Reactivation
The database exists and isn't being used at scale.

Highest ROI first — failed-lead reactivation: People who enquired but didn't convert are a high-intent audience. A reactivation sequence costs almost nothing and may be the cheapest next-sale available right now. Confirm with Debbie if this has ever been run.

Lifecycle sequences:
· New lead → product education
· Active Pre-Need → payment milestones + annual check-in
· Post-sale At Need → bereavement support + referral ask

All copy through Helen's FCA sign-off before sending.
Priority 3 — Optimise
Paid Performance & AI Call Ads
Improve what's already running — don't just spend more.

Iterative testing framework: Run 3–5 creative/audience variants at low spend → find what converts → scale only winners. No broad deployments without validated angles first.

Google call ads: For At Need, searchers often want to call immediately — call-only ads (and AI-qualified inbound calls) may convert at a significantly lower CPS than click-through campaigns. Worth testing in September when demand picks up.

Buyer journey optimisation: Use Clarity session recordings to identify drop-off on the funeral plan and direct cremation pages. Small CRO improvements on high-traffic pages compound quickly.
When Bandwidth Allows
LinkedIn B2B
One audience first — don't spread across all simultaneously.

Start with financial advisers: Pre-paid funeral plans are an estate planning tool. Advisers recommend to clients with estates to settle — referral-based, no CPS if the relationship is right.

Then employers: Group Pre-Need plans as an employee benefit. Larger deal, longer cycle.

Warning: LinkedIn requires consistent personal presence. Only start if there's genuine, sustained bandwidth — a dormant LinkedIn page is unhelpful.
Channel sequencing is intentional. Starting all four simultaneously means none of them work. Priority: Organic + Email in parallel (Phase 2). Paid optimisation in parallel with Phase 1. LinkedIn when organic is running.
Plan with Grace
Business Case
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Fix the waste first. Then add organic. The compound effect reaches Month 6.

Scenario Monthly sales True CPS Monthly spend Annual spend vs Today
Today (Jul 2026) 188 £452 £85k £1.02m —
Fix tracking + iterative ad optimisation (Sep) 220 £360 £79k £948k −£72k/yr · +32 sales
Manage ads in-house — saves £6k/mo agency fee 220 £333 £73k £876k −£144k/yr · +32 sales
Organic adds 50 sales/month (Month 6) 270 £280 £76k £910k −£108k/yr · +82 sales
Organic at scale: 100 sales/month (Month 12) 320 £236 £76k £910k −£108k/yr · +132 sales
At Need breaks even at £345 CPS. Every £1 below £345 CPS is profit per At Need sale. Organic CPS (~£87) is well under this threshold. Pre-Need margin (£393 net/sale) is profitable at any CPS below £845.
New website: zero ongoing licence cost. Built fresh, owned by PWG — no agency dependency on publishing. Content goes live through an internal CMS without external dev time. The build investment is one-off.
Projections based on verified State of Play data. CPS reduction assumes conversion tracking fixed + iterative testing approach. Organic ramp assumes 28-article content programme over 6–12 months.
Plan with Grace
Paid Media — The Seed Question
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No decision yet — first build the visibility to make it with confidence

The goal of the next 3 weeks is not to decide — it's to see. Once the dashboard is live and Google Ads tracking is fixed, we'll know for the first time whether Google Ads is actually generating sales at all. That visibility is what makes the right decision obvious. Committing before we have that data repeats the same pattern.
Option A
Keep Seed — new terms
Renegotiate from flat retainer (£6k/month) to performance pricing (% of verified closed sales only). Requires tracking to be fixed first — that becomes the contractual condition.

If tracking stays broken, Seed can't be held accountable for anything — making this option untenable without the fix.
Condition: tracking confirmed by 15 Aug
Option B — Direction of travel
Bring in-house — iterative approach
Take over Google Ads + Meta management directly. Saves £6,000/month (£72k/year). All campaign data and history stays with PWG.

Critical: Google Ads requires iterative testing. Run 3–5 small-scale tests to find the angles and audiences that close — then scale only the winners. The known risk is broad campaign deployment without validated angles first — scaling something untested leads to fast, large losses with nothing to learn from.

This takes dedicated time. A structured testing cadence from week one is the difference between in-house working and not.
Decision after dashboard v1 is live
Option C
New performance-only agency
Brief a replacement on strict performance terms (% of sales, no retainer). Hard to find. Risks onboarding delays into the September busy period.
Risk: transition delay into busy season
Peak Visibility (SEO) — keep for now, review at Month 3
SEO results take 3–6 months minimum. It's too early to judge. Review with dashboard organic traffic data by November. If results aren't moving by then, the content brief can be managed in-house once the keyword cluster strategy is set.
Plan with Grace
Next Steps
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Actions split by this week and w/c 11 Aug — September is three weeks away.

Already done — Friday 8 Aug
Access upgrades requested from Abbie ✓
Abbie has been excellent throughout this process. Upgrade requests sent — HubSpot Super Admin, Meta Admin, GA4 Viewer, GSC Full User, Aircall API. Awaiting confirmation.
Done — Charlie
API request sent to Corne ✓
Request for read API endpoint or scheduled export from PWG portal — sales by date, plan type, payment status. Needed for dashboard v2.
Done — Charlie
w/c 11 Aug — three weeks before September
Seed: tracking deadline 15 Aug
Conversion tracking must be confirmed working by end of next week. If not, a decision on the paid media setup becomes urgent — September spend needs to be attributable.
Charles + Charlie → Seed
Dashboard v1 live — once Abbie's upgrades are confirmed
2–3 days to build once HubSpot Super Admin access is confirmed. Charles gets real numbers in real time — this is what enables all subsequent decisions, including the Seed question.
Charlie
Keyword cluster brief to Peak Visibility
Commission a keyword cluster map across 4 priority clusters (volume, difficulty, current gap). Becomes the content programme brief for Phase 2.
Charlie / Debbie
Website brief — scope and timeline for new build
New site built fresh — PWG owns the CMS and can publish content without external dependencies. Scope, timeline and approach to be agreed before Phase 2 starts.
Charlie + Charles