We Answer The Phone Because We Have Been The One Waiting.
Search Converts is run by people who also run a contracting business. We have submitted a form and waited three days for a reply. That experience shapes more of how we work than any framework does.
160 leads, overnight,
from three posts
Roughly ten years ago Zach Wennstedt heard about local buy, sell and trade groups and posted a few simple ads, mostly to see what would happen. By the next morning there were 160 leads waiting. No ad spend. One local group. Three posts written the night before.
That number is unusual and we do not pretend it is repeatable on demand. What mattered was the lesson underneath it: the channel almost nobody was looking at outperformed the channels everybody was fighting over, because it reached people who were already asking their neighbors for a recommendation.
Since then we have run essentially every kind of marketing there is. Paid search, paid social, programmatic, connected TV, direct mail, radio, email, organic search. To this day the only thing that brings customers in faster than a well-run local community is Google and AI search.
That is not a sales pitch for any one channel. It is the reason this website spends so much time telling you which channels will not work for you.
Fourteen years,
in order
Most agencies claiming these services did not exist five years ago. Here is ours, honestly.
Search optimization, keyword domains and hand-built websites. The work that everything since has been built on top of.
Building keyword domain networks and static sites at volume, through several algorithm updates that removed a great deal of what the industry believed at the time. Surviving those is where the skepticism on this website comes from.
Zach began operating a bath remodeling company alongside the agency. Answering the phone at seven on a Saturday evening, quoting jobs, losing work to whoever called back first. It changed how we think about lead response permanently.
What began as one local group became a network of private and public buy, sell and trade communities across the United States, now over 200,000 combined members. Running them teaches you what gets engagement and what gets somebody removed, daily.
Paid search, paid social, programmatic display, connected TV, direct mail, radio, video and email. Run for clients and run for our own businesses, which is a meaningfully different standard of care.
A conversion-first agency covering paid media, creative, AI systems and consulting. Search and AI-search optimization runs through Eye To Ad Media, which specializes in exactly that. Two dedicated teams rather than one team doing both badly.
Fourteen free calculators, nine free audits and a great deal of published research, most of which argues against buying something. It is an unusual way to run a marketing site and it is working.
We are also
somebody else's client
Alongside the agency, Zach operates a bath remodeling company. Not as a case study or a demonstration account — as a business with vans, installers, payroll and customers who call at inconvenient hours.
That changes things in ways that are difficult to fake. When we tell you that response time decides who wins a job, it is not because we read a study. It is because we have been the second company to call back and watched the work go elsewhere. When we say a $40 lead that never qualifies costs more than a $300 lead that closes, it is because we have paid for both.
We also run our own advertising on our own money. Every channel described on this site has been tested against a P&L we personally care about before it was recommended to anybody. That is the whole reason so many pages here end with a section explaining who a channel is wrong for.
And a network most agencies cannot offer
We own and administer private and public local buy, sell and trade communities across the United States, now past 200,000 combined members. It is an unusual asset for a marketing company, and it means we can put local businesses in front of genuinely local audiences inside communities we actually run. Details are on Social My Business.
Moderating those groups every day also teaches something no advertising course does: exactly where the line sits between a post people find helpful and a post that gets a business removed. That knowledge feeds directly into the social and paid social work.
Six things we do
that cost us money
Each of these makes us less profitable in the short term. All of them are why clients stay.
Not as a percentage of your ad spend. A percentage fee gives an agency a financial reason to recommend spending more, which is a conflict of interest sitting quietly inside most of this industry.
Retargeting is over-credited. Half your email opens are bots. Roughly half a programmatic dollar reaches a publisher. All of it is on this site, sourced, including where it costs us a sale.
Fourteen calculators, no signup, no email gate. They run in your browser and we never see what you type. Several of them will tell you not to buy the service on the page they sit on.
Your accounts, your pixel, your audiences, your creative. During the engagement and after it ends. Agencies that run ads inside their own accounts are holding assets that are yours.
Some budgets cannot support some channels. We would rather say so in week one than bill you for a year of finding out, even though the second option pays better.
Nobody can honestly guarantee rankings, lead volume or revenue. What we commit to is diligent work, honest measurement and telling you plainly when something is not working.
None of this is noble. It is self-interested on a longer timeframe. Clients who buy things they did not need leave within a year. Clients who buy the one thing that worked stay for a decade, and they tell other people.
Headquartered in Denver.
Growing businesses everywhere.
Zach grew up in Boulder and the roots here run deep. Our team is headquartered in Denver, and a meaningful share of our clients are Colorado businesses.
Almost none of this work requires proximity, though. We grow businesses across the United States and worldwide, and Denver is where the desks are rather than a limit on who we help. If you are local and would rather meet in person, call first so the right person is in the building.
Want to know if we can help?
Tell us what is going wrong. We will point at the two or three things that would move it and name the ones you can skip. Nine free audits, and you keep the findings either way.
Start a conversationAbout the
company
The work goes back to 2012, when Eye To Ad Media was founded in Denver building search optimization, keyword domains and hand-built websites. Search Converts LLC is the entity behind the broader agency work — conversion, paid media, creative, AI systems and consulting. Fourteen years is genuinely unusual in this industry, where a great many agencies offering the same services did not exist five years ago.
The people you speak to. We are deliberately small, which means the person who answers your first call is the person who would run your account. You will not have a discovery session with one team and then receive a proposal written by somebody you never met. The tradeoff is that we take on fewer clients than a larger agency would.
Yes. Zach operates a bath remodeling company alongside the agency — a real business with installers, payroll and customers who call at inconvenient hours. It is the reason the arguments on this site about response time, lead quality and cost per closed customer are stated so bluntly. We have been on the receiving end of bad marketing advice with our own money on the line.
Search and AI-search optimization runs through Eye To Ad Media, which has specialized in that work since 2012. Search Converts handles conversion, paid media, creative, AI systems and consulting. Two dedicated teams rather than one team doing both badly, which is what usually happens when an agency lists search as one item among thirty.
Because it is what we would want to read. Several of the free calculators on this site will tell you a channel does not suit your budget. Several pages explain who a service is wrong for before explaining who it is right for. That costs us some sales and saves us a great many bad-fit clients, who are expensive for everybody involved.
Yes, across the United States and Canada. Denver is where the office is rather than a limit on who we work with, and almost none of this work requires proximity. Our local community network spans groups across the country, and the paid media, conversion and email work is delivered over calls and shared dashboards regardless of where anybody sits.
Start a conversation
Tell us what is going wrong and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right people to fix it. One business day.
Your information is never sold or shared. We respond within one business day.