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Your media budget should
produce customers.
Not just numbers.

Lead generation or e-commerce: connect Google Ads and Meta Ads to qualified leads, sales and margin, so you know exactly what to improve — and what is ready to scale.

For companies already investing €2,000/month or more in media, or ready to do so.

Choose your time directly · No long-term commitment · Confidential conversation

Steven Marchais · Albi, France8 years connecting advertising to business reality.Google Ads · Meta Ads · Lead generation · E-commerce
€42.09mmeasured conversion value
316,913clicks
31,162conversions
8 yearsof experience
Cited as an expertby Bruno Guyot
2 mandatesaccepted per quarter

Consolidated data from 1 January to 17 August 2026 · Campaigns anonymised

Different contexts. The same standard of evidence.B2B, local retail, services and e-commerce: the steering model adapts to your economics and growth stage.

01 · The gap

Your numbers can stay green while your growth deteriorates.

An account may need repair. It may also be ready to scale. In both cases, one question decides what happens next: what do your campaigns actually produce for the business?

Advertising report+34%conversions
Sales team · today

“Nobody answers the phone.”

That gap is the problem.
01 Lead generation

More forms do not automatically create more opportunities.

Volume matters only when the right people answer, progress and become customers.

ClicksvolumeLeadsformsQualifiedintentCustomersvalue
Healthy scaling grows the pipeline, not just the form count.
02 E-commerce

ROAS can remain green while margin moves backwards.

Promotions, product economics and existing customers can make revenue look healthier than the value it creates.

RevenueSales
CostsMedia · product · promo
=
ValueActual margin
Growth becomes durable when value rises faster than its cost.
03 Signal & decision

Every conversion sent to Google is a lesson.

If the platform learns from low-quality actions, it will find more of them — faster and at a higher cost. Feed it the outcome the business actually values.

Automation amplifies the definition you give it. It cannot repair that definition for you.
Incomplete signalClickFormBlind optimisation
Business signalQualified leadCustomer or marginActionable decision

The question reporting must answer

A click is a promise. A customer is proof.

A lead and an order do not follow the same economics. Track the measure that improves the decision, not the one that makes the campaign look best.

The ad platform saysYour leadership team must know
“Conversions are rising”How many became customers — and which ones?
“ROAS remains healthy”How much net margin did this growth create?
“Budget is under control”Where is the next euro most likely to create value?
Lead generationThe truth is in the pipeline

A contact only has value if it can become an opportunity.

01ClickIntent
02LeadContact
03QualifiedRelevance
04OpportunityPotential
05CustomerRevenue

The useful question: which campaigns produce the opportunities your sales team genuinely wants to call back and move forward?

E-commerceThe truth is in the economics of the sale

An order only has value if it contributes to margin.

01TrafficDemand
02ProductFit
03BasketIntent
04SaleRevenue
05MarginValue

The useful question: which sales remain genuinely profitable after media, product costs, promotions and fulfilment?

02 · The 5 leaks

Acquisition is a system.
One leak is enough.

Before repairing or scaling, find where the chain breaks between spend and outcome.

The ruleDo not touch the budget before finding the leak.
01
Promise

Does the right person immediately understand why they should move forward?

02
Targeting

Does your budget meet a market that can, will and is ready to buy?

03
Experience

Does the journey turn interest into action without adding friction or doubt?

04
Signal

Are Google and Meta learning from real customers or from the easiest actions to measure?

05
Value

Do sales, revenue and margin close the loop back to the platform?

What the diagnosis producesYou see what constrains growth, what deserves amplification and what must be true before spending more.
The feedback loop

The platform must learn from your customers, not just your forms.

A useful measure does not stop at the action: quality and value must travel back to Google and Meta.

Open loop · the signal stops
ClickForm
The platform optimises volume without knowing which contacts become customers.
Closed loop · quality returns
Qualified leadCustomerValue

CRMGoogle / Metaquality signal returned

The platform learns to seek the profiles and sales that genuinely create value.

03 · From analysis to progress

Growth is built through better decisions.

Every month follows a short cycle: understand, decide, measure and learn before correcting, consolidating or accelerating.

01Connect

Bring business reality back into the account

Campaign data is connected to qualified leads, sales, margin and field feedback. Reporting no longer stops at the platform.

02Diagnose

Separate symptoms from causes

Find the break in the promise, targeting, experience, signal or value before adding more budget.

03Decide

Choose the decision that matters

Every priority answers a precise question, carries a hypothesis and has a business measure that can prove or disprove it.

04Learn

Keep, correct or accelerate

The result informs the next decision. Scale what works and repair what weakens profitable growth.

What remains visible to your teams

A traceable decision cycle, not a black box.

Leadership, marketing and sales can connect every action to the question that triggered it and the result that will be used to judge it.

  • 01 What the figures say
  • 02 What you decide
  • 03 What will be used to judge the decision
Decision cycleCurrent month
KeepThe segment producing the strongest qualified opportunitiesImpact confirmed
TestA more specific promise on the pageClear hypothesis
StopThe campaign consuming budget without creating marginBudget released
Value should be judged every month

Month to month. No long-term commitment.

Continue while the relationship remains useful. Stop whenever it no longer does.

Freeto stop at any time
Performance analysis workspace overlooking Albi
The whole system before isolated settingsA good decision connects campaigns, customer experience and business economics.

04 · Observable decisions

A method only matters if it changes the outcome.

Two examples show how a business signal changes the work: qualified demand for lead generation and profitable growth for e-commerce.

Consolidated Google Ads view

Repeated decisions at a scale where approximation becomes expensive.

Campaign details remain confidential. The operating scale remains verifiable.

Clicks
316,913
Conversions
31,162
Conversion value
€42.09m
Consolidated Google Ads view showing 316,913 clicks, 31,162 conversions and 42.09 million euros in conversion value
1 January to 17 August 2026 · Campaigns anonymised
Lead generation

Three situations, read in sequence: demand quality, local intent and commercial outcomes.

The starting point

One or two enquiries a week, with too few matching an offer whose average order value was €17,000. The volume looked reassuring, but the sales team spent its time filtering. At that value, every poor enquiry costs twice: first the click, then the sales time.

The defining decision

The turning point did not come from a campaign setting. It came from the field: market research conducted in person with the target audience to understand what truly drives a buyer’s decision. That understanding shaped a dedicated sales page. The advertising was then rewritten to deliver exactly the promise made on that page.

Before1–2enquiries / week
After2–3enquiries / day
The observed result

From 1–2 enquiries a week to 2–3 enquiries a day over two years. Conversion rate rose from 1% to 3.5%. Cost per lead fell by 53%. More than 650 qualified enquiries in total.

See the decisions madeField → Page → Campaign
  1. 01

    Field researchObserve the target audience in context before changing any settings.

  2. 02

    Dedicated sales pageWrite it from the research, not from the existing website.

  3. 03

    Word-for-word alignmentBuild campaigns that deliver exactly the promise made on the page.

  4. 04

    Qualification fed backJudge campaigns on usable enquiries, not submitted forms.

Your campaigns will never be better than your understanding of the audience. Settings come afterwards, in that order.
The starting point

More than 160 stores, €22.7m in revenue and only 2,500 followers for the entire network. Measurement could not show which stores the website was actually helping. The digital programme still had to prove its value to a network of independent members.

The defining decision

Before spending more, two missing foundations were required: measurement that told the truth store by store, and an audience the brand would not have to buy again with every campaign. That is where the work began.

Owned community
2,50036,000
×14 in 18 months · €0.11 per follower
The observed result

From 2,500 to 36,000 followers in eighteen months, at €0.11 per follower, for a cumulative reach of around 1.46 million people. The engagement is complete and the figures are final.

See the decisions madeMeasurement first, audience second
  1. 01

    Complete measurement auditConsent management, tracking plan, GA4 and Meta, with tagging that follows the sale through to in-store collection.

  2. 02

    Store-level steeringTrack calls, direction requests and viewed store pages, location by location and city by city.

  3. 03

    Community and seasonal campaignsMaintenance advice, the spring catalogue and network visibility.

  4. 04

    Analyse who actually respondsOver the measured period, 73% of clicks came from people aged 55 and over, with major regional differences.

A rented audience disappears when the campaign stops. An owned community continues to work for you.
The starting point

Projects worth several thousand euros, a local service area and one finding from the first month: more than eight contacts out of ten came by phone, not by form. Optimising for forms meant optimising against the real signal.

The defining decision

A leaking roof does not compare three quotes for two weeks. The customer calls the company that inspires confidence now. The advertising was built around that reality: be present at the moment of urgency and remove doubt from the advert itself.

January€29.60February€12.60April€6.72
The observed result

Cost per contact divided by more than four in four months: approximately €29.60 in January, €12.60 in February and €6.72 in April.

See the decisions madeUrgency & reassurance
  1. 01

    Two separate messagesSeparate urgent work from planned projects, with campaigns for each intent.

  2. 02

    Reassurance in the advertsFamily business, more than twenty years of experience, RGE Qualibat certification and ten-year guarantee.

  3. 03

    A clearly local positionSpeak like a contractor from Gaillac and the Tarn, not a national roofing brand.

  4. 04

    Calls as the primary conversionRepair measurement when a filter prevented leads from being recorded.

For work worth several thousand euros, advertising does not sell the project. It earns enough trust for the customer to pick up the phone.

Every context is different. These figures show what the method has produced, not a promise of identical results.

The question to ask nowWhat decision would become possible if campaigns finally connected to the business outcome?

Discuss your acquisition

05 · What experience changes for you

What eight years of real accounts help you avoid.

Your media budget should not finance your provider’s learning curve.

8years

Decisions already tested against reality

Lead generation, e-commerce, long sales cycles and profitability.

Google AdsCertification

Technical expertise in service of the decision

Certification validates platform knowledge. The real work is controlling what automation learns and amplifies.

3editions

Three years at SMX Paris

2024, 2025 and 2026: comparing methods and staying current as platforms evolve.

External recognition

Cited as an e-commerce expert by Bruno Guyot

An independent reference point on the senior expertise available for your campaigns.View the reference ↗

Three years · one continuous discipline

Turn industry insight into better campaign decisions.

Platforms change quickly. These events provide better questions, opposing points of view and practices tested by other specialists.

2024 → 2026three editions, in chronological order
Steven Marchais, senior acquisition consultant

One responsibility that never changes hands

You stay in control. You gain better reasons to decide.

You do not delegate either your judgement or your understanding of acquisition. You gain one accountable point of contact who connects teams, explains each decision and takes responsibility for the reasoning behind it.

  • 01One accountable point of contactYour history, constraints and decisions remain in the same hands.
  • 02Decisions that are explainedYou know what changes, why it changes and how the result will be judged.
  • 03Useful disagreementThe work often begins with a disagreement that prevents unnecessary spend.
The subjectPlatform managementDirect steering
Starting questionHow can the campaign be improved?What prevents spend from becoming a business outcome?
PrioritisationAdd every possible optimisationChoose no more than three priorities whose impact can be verified
ReportingDescribe what happenedExplain what is known, what remains uncertain and what you decide
ResponsibilityDistribute subjects across several contactsKeep one person accountable for the complete reasoning
CommitmentSecure a contractual termEarn the continuation of the relationship every month

Every tool in its place

Your business sets the direction.

Google, Meta, Microsoft, analytics and CRM tools support the decision. They do not define it.

Google AdsGoogle Ads
Meta AdsMeta Ads
Microsoft AdsMicrosoft Ads
LinkedIn AdsLinkedIn Ads
TikTok AdsTikTok Ads
Google Analytics 4Google Analytics 4
Google Tag ManagerGoogle Tag Manager
Looker StudioLooker Studio
Merchant CenterMerchant Center
ShopifyShopify
WooCommerceWooCommerce
HubSpotHubSpot

Answers before a decision

Entrusting a media budget deserves precise answers.

01Is this relevant if the objective is to scale, not fix a crisis?

Yes. The same discipline protects both situations: identify what already deserves more budget, what would break under additional volume, and which business measure should authorise the next step.

02How is this different from an agency?

You work with one accountable senior consultant. No junior learns with your media budget. Work is prioritised around no more than three decisions at a time and the engagement remains month to month.

03Do you work with both lead generation and e-commerce?

Yes. The economics differ, not the standard. Lead generation is connected to qualified opportunities and signed customers. E-commerce is connected to incremental sales, acquisition cost and margin.

04What are the five leaks?

A diagnostic framework covering the complete chain: Promise, Targeting, Experience, Signal and Value. It reveals where attention and budget stop turning into business outcomes.

05Is the initial assessment a full audit?

No. It uses your website, customer journey and publicly visible signals, without access to your accounts. It produces a first hypothesis and the checks needed before a deeper diagnosis.

06Why no long-term commitment?

Because the value of the work should be judged every month. The relationship continues because it remains useful, not because a contract prevents you from leaving.

Two simple ways to begin

Choose the conversation that will help most.

The leak will not stop while you wait.

There is one question this page cannot settle: yours. You have seen the method, the cases and the figures. What they cannot tell you is what this would mean in your situation. Two ways to find out. Neither commits you to anything.

I accept two new engagements per quarter to guarantee the level of attention each account requires.That is also what keeps this conversation pressure-free: I have no reason to force yours. A clear no is a useful answer.
  • Before the conversationYour website and public signals already provide useful context.
  • When the conversation endsYou leave with a clear priority and the next useful decision.
No account access for the first conversationConfidential information · Month to month · No long-term commitment
A direct first conversation

Choose the time that works for you.

This conversation establishes two things: whether your situation can produce more, and whether we are the right fit to do it together. You leave knowing whether it is feasible and where it would begin.

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