Helping Digital Agency Owners Operate & Grow Their Business | Founder @ FlexOps | Agency Operations & Management

Hi, I’m Ross.

I help agency owners get unstuck and grow their business.

There are 5 key areas I tackle with my clients:

1. Founder - Understand what you want for the business and your role in it
2. Clients - Retain and grow clients through exceptional service
3. People - Get the right people, in the right place, doing the right things
4. Processes - Build a system that the agency operates on
5. Pipeline - Working with more of the right clients for your agency

I’ve helped my clients go from:

- Nearly quitting their agency → Loving their leading role and keen to grow
- A dysfunctional team → Organised, aligned and autonomous
- Losing clients from bad systems → Clear processes for the team to execute
- No defined customer → Calendar full of prospects that fit his ICP

If you are an Agency Owner struggling with these problems…

Send me a DM 📥

Let’s see if I can help.

Ross Brown

Jonathan Cottrell

Hey, I'm Jon and I'm founder of The Search Mechanics, a Google Ads agency.

We help businesses achieve a better performance from their Google Ads account.

One of our clients is on track to spend around £100k less this year, versus last year on their Google Ads Account. And guess what?
 
- Their average cost per sale has decreased by 14%
- Conversion rates are up 138%
- Return on Ad Spend has increased by over 50%

If you're looking to get more from your Google Ads account - drop me a message. I'd be happy to talk Google Ads with you!

Founder

We are a Google Ads Partner agency based in Kent that are working with some big UK companies. We’ve helped many of our clients get more website traffic from their PPC budgets, as well as more enquiries and sales, through careful optimisation and reducing wasted spend (we hate wasted spend!)

Hi, my name is Jonathan, founder of The Search Mechanics — and I’m currently living in a yurt while our house is being completely turned upside down by renovations.

Well… sort of.

We’re not actually living in the yurt. That’s our living room / dining room.

Instead, my wife, our two kids, our labrador Dexter, and I are squeezed into an annexe off the back of the garage - my old office, no less!

And I won’t sugarcoat it.

It’s hard. Bloody hard.

- Minimal space for anything
- Sleeping in bunk beds for - 115 nights (and counting)
- Keeping the yurt fire going 24/7 to stop everything going damp
- Condensation everywhere - the annexe was never meant for a family
- Power blackouts that mean midnight walks back to the house to reset it ; (
- And the builder invoices…. oh god, the invoices!! ££££££

But this is the sacrifice we’re making to create a home that gives us more space in the long run.

And that’s the point.

Most people never see the sacrifice behind the things they admire.
They only see the finished result and think, “I’d love to have that.”

It’s the same with building a business.

When I set up The Search Mechanics, there were 6+ months of late nights.
60-hour weeks.
Working on Google Ads accounts after a full day at my agency job - just to get things moving.

No one remembers that part.
And that’s fine.

Because sacrifice is rarely visible…
 …but it’s almost always required!

So for those sacrificing something at the moment to make that next step in life or business, I see you!

Google Ads Expert | Helping maximise efficiency across your Google Ads account

Beware of the scam via Google Ads, where people are impersonating staff at Thor Equities Group.

We've had a contact form come in yesterday:

"Name: Katie Smith Email: katie@thorequitiesmedia.com Tel: 14424534696 Monthly Budget: £50kpm+ Message: Hello! I’m currently looking for a company that has solid expertise and experience in Google/PPC advertising. I’d love the chance to explore a potential partnership with your team to work on these campaigns. If you’re interested in this project, please feel free to contact me via email."

It felt a tad off from the get go, but I went along with it anyways. 

They would only add us to their Google Ads account by email - not an MCC access request. No biggy, so I created a fake The Search Mechanics Gmail account that we supposedly "use" for our MCC.

In comes the email request to show we've given access, which to be fair looked quite real.

But the devil is in the detail!

It was from - adsserviceupdate@googlemail.com, not ads-account-noreply@google.com.

Then the Accept Invitation button linked you through to a sites.google.com domain - not the ads.google.com domain.

One for Ginny Marvin to have a look into. (I'd be happy to email over the email chain if you wish to investigate further?)

Keep those MCC's locked up guys and gals!

Humble Brag for Friday.

We can afford to pay our corporation tax in one go on Feb 1st. This time last year was a tad different, as we had to stagger it for the first time in 10 years of business.

I felt like a bit of a failure at the time because of that, we'd always have enough money in the bank to pay VAT and Corp Tax - but alas, 2025 hit differently!

So for those out there, with enough in the bank to pay your corp tax - we see you!

#tax #business #corptax

I sometimes feel guilty that we don't hire any staff at The Search Mechanics.

We're just not here to train execs up and steer them into the world of digital marketing .

It's just something we don't want to be doing. Sorry!

As I've said on numerous occasions on here, we're not here to build a big agency. We're here to do some good work for some good clients.

One of our main benefits is that we have around 27 years experience working within Google ads. Accounts aren’t handled by junior team members. It’s just myself and James Smith.

But our clients buy into this. They buy into our experience. They buy into the fact that if they pick up the phone to talk about their Google Ads account, they are talking to people with a solid knowledge of said account.

And we’ve just had this in from a new prospect just now…..

“I've just jumped off an internal call to discuss your proposal and I'm thrilled to share that we'd love to go ahead and partner with The Search Mechanics. 

Out of the few we've spoken to, your years of expertise stood out to us and we're confident this will be the beginning of a long-lasting, strategic relationship.”

Let’s go!!

#clients #googleads #ppc #google

A new B2B client has just signed off to start working with us for some Google Ads testing.

This is an interesting one within the Pharma industry, so looking forward to getting things set up and running.

First is a complete Google Tag Manager tracking run through across their existing website, so we can monitor everything efficiently.

Then a ground up new Google Ads account build.

Let's go!

#googleads #ppc #pharma #b2b

2 new Google Ads management contracts signed on the bounce this week.

2nd one sent out today at 11.17am - signed at 11.32am.

As James Smith said yesterday on Teams (Yes, we are happily using Teams, well, I say happily, we are using Teams....)

"Thank the lord for shit agencies, they make our lives so much easier!"

Let's go 2026!

The Search Mechanics LinkedIn business page has 119 followers.

We’ve been going for 11 years.

That’s roughly:
 • 10 followers a year
 • 1 follower a month
 • 0.03 followers a day

According to the internet, this means we’re doing it wrong.

According to our clients, it means we’re doing something right.

Likes, followers and impressions are nice, but as Mike Winnet always says:

"What are you spending your impressions or reach on?!!"

Doing good work that keeps clients coming back is better.

Ignore the numbers game on here. It means naff all.

#ineedashave #linkedin #followers #clients

I Know What You Did Last Summer, (In your Google Ads account)!

It's all in the Change History you see!

The Change History in a Google Ads account is a treasure trove of knowledge.

It shows why Brand plummeted when someone accidentally added an account wide brand negative.

It shows why the CPA rocketed when you moved from Target CPA to Max Clicks.

It shows every single change ever made, by anyone for the lifetime of the account.

I've managed to troubleshoot so many issues by jumping into Change History over the years - it's such a great insight tool.

#googleads #changehistory #ppc #search

2 phone calls and 3 emails so far from Google Ads support today, Monday 5th 2026, as of 11.12am GMT.

I feel like this is going to be a great year.

A list of good eggs (agencies/ people) we work with here at The Search Mechanics, in no particular order!

Fiona Moucq & Clare Gittins at Ethos - Personal Branding Agency

Lorenzo Luiso at Brick Digital - an SEO Agency who know their oranges

Kevin Kapezi at Growthack.io | The Beyond SEO® Agency - who also know their oranges

The gang at Growth Division - Tom Dewhurst and Tristan Gillen

Kevin Wilkie at UMBER CREATIVE LIMITED - design agency up north, like proper north (further than Birmingham!)

Harry Dance at Kayo Digital - an Umbraco first agency

Calum L. at Decato Studio - a very talented designer and good egg

Mat Bennett - a very good agency coach

Ross Brown - another very good agency coach 

That will do for now, stay classy!

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The Battle

Ross Brown

Jonathan Cottrell

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taplio

The Battle

Ross Brown

Jonathan Cottrell

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Jonathan Cottrell's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreJonathan Cottrell's LinkedIn Performance