Every client asks for the same thing eventually: more reach, more bookings, more orders, faster. The instinct is always to bring in an influencer or turn on ad spend this month. Before we do that for any project, we run through the same checklist. This is that checklist, written down so it's consistent across every client we work with, not just tribal knowledge in one person's head.
Fix the foundation before you pay for reach
Before touching ad spend, check where the traffic actually lands. If orders, bookings, or sign-ups route through a third-party platform - a delivery aggregator, a booking widget, a marketplace listing - every one of those clicks reinforces that platform's visibility, not the client's own website.
Search engines tend to reward websites that steadily build their own audience, branded searches and repeat visits over time. Run an ad campaign or bring in an influencer while the client's conversion path still points at someone else's platform, and the client ends up paying twice while building very little long-term value of their own.
Our rule of thumb is to get the client's own website live and their own booking/ordering path working first, and give it a little time to establish itself - indexing, analytics, real user behaviour - before sending paid traffic at it. Only then does paid promotion build the client's own presence rather than renting someone else's.
Two content types, run side by side
Every posting calendar we build has two kinds of posts:
Storytelling posts, what we call "Edit" posts (roughly 20-30% of the mix): something with warmth or humour, written so people feel something rather than just read an offer.
Ad posts: direct, strong call-to-action - what's on offer, what it costs, what to do next.
A CTA only converts once someone already recognises the brand, or is curious enough to click through and check who's talking. All-ad, all the time reads as spam. All-story, never asking for the sale, leaves money on the table. In most cases, the two should run alongside each other.
Where the link goes, and why
Never put the destination link in the body of the post itself. In our experience, posts with outbound links to another platform tend to receive lower organic reach.
Put the link in the first comment instead. This isn't just about avoiding a possible reach penalty - we've also noticed that a post with visible comments underneath tends to invite a bit of curiosity, which often encourages another small interaction with the post.
Where a client is uncomfortable losing the link from the post entirely, the workable compromise is placing it inside the image or video itself - small, tasteful, in a corner - visible without turning the creative into a flyer.
Trust compounds. It doesn't spike.
Earlier versions of Facebook appeared to reward a single post with near-instant engagement and conversions. We've found that's largely not how it works anymore. More often, someone converts today because of posts they saw two or three weeks ago, not the one that went up an hour ago. People generally need to see a page show up repeatedly before they trust it enough to click, and click enough times before they trust it enough to buy or book.
This is the argument for posting consistently over a long period rather than in bursts timed to a campaign. It also means a client shouldn't expect this week's post to explain this week's bookings - the causal link is delayed by weeks, not hours.
Quality of engagement beats volume of reach
Across client projects, a page with fewer posts but real comments, real shares, and genuine back-and-forth with local followers tends to convert better than a page with high impressions and thin, passive likes. If 100 people see a post and 15 click through because they were the right 100 people, that beats 1,000 impressions producing 10 clicks. Chasing raw reach numbers before the page and the destination site are in shape often just wastes the spend.
Two supporting habits worth building into any account we run: posting consistently rather than in bursts, and spending time actively commenting on other relevant local or industry pages ("going out and being part of the neighbourhood") rather than only posting and waiting. Social media is still a social space - a page that only broadcasts and never engages elsewhere quickly starts to feel transactional.
Don't scale before you're ready
Virality is not always good news. A sudden spike in demand - a viral post, a trending mention - tends to expose whatever isn't yet built to handle volume: kitchen throughput, service style, fulfilment capacity, staffing. Quality often drops exactly when the most new people are watching, and that goodwill doesn't always come back easily. Before pushing for reach, make sure the operational side can actually absorb the response if it works.
Don't neglect the offline side
The digital plan is never the whole plan. Leaflets, business cards, a printed menu, a QR code prompting a review at the point of sale, and a leaflet drop as a local partnership with a nearby business the client already knows - these are low-effort channels most small clients have simply never set up, and they sit entirely outside the algorithm.
Read the trend, not the best week
A couple of strong weeks can make a business feel like it's taking off, while the trailing months tell a different story. We generally prefer to look at the multi-month trend before recommending a change in strategy, and set expectations against that trend rather than against the best recent day. For a seasonal business, the realistic goal for a slow season isn't a blowout - it's not losing money on the quiet weeks.
The sequence, summarised
Confirm the client's own site/booking/ordering path works and is what traffic will land on.
Launch or fix that foundation first; wait for it to settle before spending on reach.
Run Edit and Ad posts side by side, roughly 20-30% Edit.
Links go in the first comment, or tastefully inside the creative - never in the post body.
Post consistently; don't expect this week's post to explain this week's results.
Judge content by engagement quality, not raw reach.
Confirm operations can handle a spike before chasing virality.
Set up the offline channels (leaflets, business cards, printed menus, QR reviews, local partnerships).
Evaluate against the multi-month trend, not the best recent week.
This is the checklist before ad spend gets approved on any project - not because paid reach doesn't work, but because it only compounds once everything it points at is actually worth pointing at.