Strategy Proposal · June 2026 · DRAFT

Gillie & Marc
The year ahead.

A flexible, five-campaign program for 2026 and 2027, built on the proven economics of your 50% Off Painting Sale. One repeatable engine: dedicated landing pages, a growing first-party database, and ad spend pointed only at the people who actually buy.

5
Campaigns included
+2
Always-on + organic layers
4.09x
Proven ROAS (paintings)
A$5.05
Proven cost per lead
Why we already know this works

We did not start from a theory. We started from a result.

The 50% Off Painting Sale was the first conversion-optimised campaign on your ad account in five years. In one three-week flight it built a net-new, AU and NZ only audience of art buyers at a sustainably low cost, and it sold paintings while it did so.

1,697

new opt-in subscribers

A$5.05

cost per subscriber (benchmark A$8 to A$25)

~17

sales, ~A$35,000 revenue, 4.09x ROAS

Two of those sales were bronze sculptures (about A$2,000 each) bought by brand-new collectors who came in through a painting ad, plus two in-person gallery visits traced directly to the campaign. That is the whole thesis of this proposal in miniature: a buyer who enters through one door will walk through the rest of the gallery. Each campaign feeds the next.

Full figures in the companion document: the 50% Off Painting Sale Final Report.

The approach

One engine, five times a year, plus always-on paid and organic search

You asked for five distinct promotional campaigns through the year, each with its own dedicated landing page, run when it suits you, priced individually so you keep full control. That is exactly the right model for a catalogue as broad as yours, and it is what we have built this proposal around.

Every campaign uses the same proven engine

  • A dedicated landing page that captures the email address before the sale
  • Conversion-optimised ads, AU and NZ first, weighted to the buyers (45 to 65+ women on Facebook Feed)
  • Clean tracking, retargeting pools, and an end-of-campaign report you can act on

Each campaign compounds the last

  • Every campaign grows one shared first-party database you own forever
  • A painting buyer becomes a warm audience for the bronze and garden campaigns
  • The always-on layer keeps the brand in front of that database between campaigns
Before campaign one

The measurement foundation

On the painting sale, your form widget told Mailchimp about every signup but only passed 11 of 1,697 leads back to Meta, a 0.6% match rate. Meta was optimising on almost-blind data and still delivered 4.09x. Fixing this once, before the program starts, makes every campaign that follows cheaper and sharper.

Expected effect, based on the painting-sale gap: a 20% to 40% improvement in cost-per-result on every campaign after this, purely from giving the algorithms honest signal. This is a one-off setup, not a recurring cost.

The program

The five flagship campaigns

Each runs as a self-contained three to four week flight with its own landing page, audience, and offer. Run all five in a year, or pick the ones that suit. Recommended ad spend is the budget paid to the ad platforms, separate from our management fee, and tunable up or down.

Campaign 1 · Proven

Painting Sale

The campaign we just ran, repeatable one to two times a year. Direct sales plus rapid list growth. Audience weighted to 45 to 65+ women, Facebook Feed first, AU and NZ. This is your highest-volume, fastest-return campaign.

Landing page: catalogue request / studio invitation. Primary metric: cost per subscriber and direct ROAS.

Campaign 2 · Higher value

Bronze Sculptures for the Home (Special Offer)

A focused offer on small and medium bronzes for the home, sold to your warm database first (the painting list, plus your three main newsletters) then to fresh lookalikes. Higher average order value than paintings, so a smaller audience can return more revenue.

Landing page: bronze-for-home collection with the offer. Primary metric: revenue and ROAS.

Campaign 3 · Seasonal

Garden Sculpture

Timed to the AU spring and summer garden season. Adds Google Search and Pinterest alongside Meta, because garden-art intent shows up in search. Audience: homeowners in affluent suburbs, garden and landscape enthusiasts, plus landscape designers.

Landing page: garden collection. Primary metric: enquiries and sales, seasonal weighting.

Campaign 4 · Considered

Large Bronze Commission Enquiry

A quality-over-volume campaign for high-value commissions. Fewer, better enquiries. Meta plus Google Search on commission intent, portfolio-led creative leaning on your public-art credibility. The goal is qualified conversations, not cheap clicks.

Landing page: commission enquiry, portfolio and process led. Primary metric: qualified enquiries.

Campaign 5 · B2B

Landmark Sculpture (developers and large-scale projects)

The most specialised campaign, aimed at property developers, councils, architects and urban planners. LinkedIn and Google Search lead, supported by precise Meta targeting. Creative built on your strongest proof: "the most prolific creators of public art in New York's history" and 250+ cities.

Landing page: developer and project focused, case-study driven. Primary metric: enquiries from qualified organisations.

The connective layer

Always-on brand awareness

Between the flagship campaigns, a continuous low-level layer keeps Gillie & Marc in front of your audience and drives traffic to the website and, to start, the small and medium bronze collections only. No paintings or large commissions in this layer for now, exactly as you asked. It warms audiences so each flagship campaign converts harder when it launches.

What it does

  • Retargets website and campaign visitors who did not buy
  • Keeps the bronze-for-home collection visible year round
  • Feeds warm audiences into every flagship campaign

How it runs

  • Meta and Google, low daily spend, always live
  • Monthly management and a light monthly ad budget
  • Reviewed and refreshed monthly
The compounding layer

Organic and AI search: owning the traffic you currently rent

Paid ads rent attention. The moment the spend stops, so does the traffic. Search engine optimisation does the opposite: it builds an asset that keeps bringing buyers in, month after month, at no cost per click. For Gillie & Marc it is an unusually strong fit, because you already have the two things organic visibility rewards most and cannot be faked: real authority and real demand. There is now a second organic front too: the AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Gemini) that increasingly answer a buyer before they ever reach a page of search results. We cover both.

Why it fits you

  • Real authority: "the most prolific creators of public art in New York's history", 250+ cities, decades of press
  • Real demand: people search bronze sculpture, garden sculpture, public art commissions and statue artists every month
  • A broad catalogue that maps neatly onto high-intent search across every collection

What we would do

  • Technical foundation: site health, speed, indexing, artwork schema, and the legacy issues our audit already flagged
  • Content and on-page: collection and artwork pages built to rank for the terms buyers actually type
  • Authority and local: turn your public-art story into link-worthy content, and own local search for the Botany gallery plus your New York and London presence

The new front: AI answer engines (AEO)

More buyers now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Gemini before they reach a search box. Answer engine optimisation makes Gillie & Marc the name those tools cite, and your authority is exactly what they reward.

  • Structure your facts, artworks and credentials so AI engines can read and quote them accurately
  • Build the entity and knowledge-graph presence that gets you named as the answer
  • Track how often the brand is surfaced and cited, and grow that share month on month

The synergy: every campaign landing page we build is also engineered to rank, so it keeps earning organic enquiries long after the paid flight ends. Paid fills the list fast, organic compounds quietly underneath. Over a year, the two together cost less per enquiry than either one alone.

Illustrative

The year at a glance

An illustrative cadence only. You tell us when to fire each campaign, and the always-on and organic layers run underneath the whole year.

WindowFlagship campaignUnderneath
Quarter 1Painting SaleAlways-on + organic, continuous
Quarter 2Bronze for the Home + Large Commission Enquiry
Quarter 3 (spring)Garden Sculpture
Quarter 4Landmark Sculpture + a second Painting Sale (optional)
Pricing

What it costs

Two numbers, always kept separate, exactly as you asked: our management fee (what you pay 121 Group to plan, build and run the work) and the ad spend (what is paid to Meta, Google and LinkedIn, which you fund and fully control). Every campaign management fee includes its dedicated landing page. All figures are in AUD and exclude GST.

Per-campaign management fee (standalone)

CampaignManagement fee (one-off)Recommended ad spend (per flight)
1. Painting SaleA$4,500A$8,000 to A$10,000
2. Bronze for the HomeA$4,500A$6,000 to A$8,000
3. Garden SculptureA$4,500A$5,000 to A$7,000
4. Large Bronze Commission EnquiryA$5,500A$5,000 to A$7,000
5. Landmark Sculpture (B2B)A$6,500A$6,000 to A$9,000

Each management fee covers: strategy and offer design, a dedicated landing page, audience and creative direction, full campaign build, daily optimisation across the flight, and an end-of-campaign report. These standalone fees apply to one-off campaigns. Always-on customers get all five included at no extra management fee (see below).

Always-on brand awareness

ChannelManagement feeRecommended ad spend
Always-on, Google AdsA$2,500 / monthfrom A$1,500 / month
Always-on, Meta AdsA$2,500 / monthfrom A$1,500 / month

Priced per channel: run one or both. Minimum three-month term so the audiences have time to compound, cancellable monthly thereafter.

Ongoing organic and AI search (SEO and AEO)

ItemManagement feeNotes
SEO and AEO retainer (technical, content, authority, AI visibility)A$2,000 / monthMonth one includes the technical audit and fixes. No ad spend: this drives unpaid organic traffic and AI citations.

SEO and AEO compound over time, so we recommend a six-month minimum to see them through to results.

One-off measurement foundation

ItemFeeWhen
Conversions API, Enhanced Conversions, tracking and retargeting setupA$1,950Once, before campaign one

The always-on offer: all five campaigns included

Become an always-on customer (either scenario below) and we build and run all five flagship campaigns for you each year at no extra management fee, a management value of more than A$25,000, with the measurement foundation included too. You fund only the ad spend. The per-campaign fees above apply only to one-off, standalone campaigns.

For your review, Adam: these figures are a recommendation, not yet locked. The painting-sale precedent was a A$5,000 management fee against ~A$8,500 ad spend, so this ladder sits in line with that while pricing the more complex B2B work higher. Adjust before this goes to the client. Always-on is A$2,500 per channel: the two ongoing scenarios are A$5,000 per month (Meta + Google) and A$7,000 per month (plus SEO and AEO), before any per-campaign fee. Worth sense-checking against client appetite.
Budget scenarios

Two ways to run the ongoing engine

Your flagship campaigns are billed per campaign (above), run as and when you choose. Underneath them, an ongoing engine keeps you visible all year. Here are the two ways to run it. All figures exclude GST; ad spend is separate and client-funded.

Scenario A

Always-on paid: Meta + Google Ads

Meta Ads, always-on (mgmt)A$2,500 / mo
Google Ads, always-on (mgmt)A$2,500 / mo
Monthly managementA$5,000 / mo
All 5 flagship campaigns / yearincluded
Ad spend you controlfrom A$3,000 / mo
Scenario B

The same, plus SEO and AEO

Meta Ads, always-on (mgmt)A$2,500 / mo
Google Ads, always-on (mgmt)A$2,500 / mo
SEO and AEO (mgmt)A$2,000 / mo
Monthly managementA$7,000 / mo
All 5 flagship campaigns / yearincluded
Ad spend you controlfrom A$3,000 / mo

As an always-on customer, all five flagship campaigns are built and run for you each year at no extra management fee. You fund only the campaign ad spend during each flight. Start with Scenario A and layer SEO and AEO in whenever you are ready.

Next steps

How we start

#StepWho
1You pick the first one or two campaigns and rough timingGillie & Marc
2We complete the measurement foundation (one week)121 Group
3We build the landing page and campaign, you approve before launchTogether
4Campaign goes live, we optimise daily and report at the end121 Group

The painting sale proved the engine. This proposal simply points it at the rest of your catalogue, on your schedule, for the year ahead. When you are back from Rome we will walk you through it and lock the first campaign.

Prepared by Adam Ducquet · 121 Group · June 2026 · Companion document: 50% Off Painting Sale Final Report.