Finding the Best Digital Marketing Agency on the Gold Coast: An Honest Guide
Choosing a digital marketing agency on the Gold Coast isn’t about flashy reels or generic promises. It’s about results, local understanding, and working with a team who knows how to turn strategy into real, measurable growth.
At David Hannah Marketing, we work with driven businesses across trades, tourism, hospitality, e-commerce, health, property and tech. From high-ticket lead generation to local booking pipelines, we’ve helped scale dozens of brands using systems that are tested, transparent, and tailored to their market.
This guide is here to help you understand what to look for, which channels actually perform on the Gold Coast, and what kind of partner can make your marketing spend count.
Want to learn more? Book a strategy session here
Understanding the Gold Coast Market
The Gold Coast is a unique commercial environment. It’s fast-moving, hyper-local, and influenced by both tourism and permanent population trends. You’re not just competing with other businesses—you’re competing with noise, distraction, and changing seasons.
That means strategy needs to be grounded in the realities of this market. A café in Mermaid doesn’t market the same way as a luxury builder in Hope Island. A wellness clinic in Burleigh won’t scale with the same funnel that works for a trade business in Nerang. The right agency doesn’t just apply templates—they build campaigns based on behaviour, timing, opportunity and long-term ROI.
Which Channels Work Well?
We’re platform agnostic—meaning we don’t care where your results come from, as long as they come. But here’s what consistently works for local Gold Coast brands:
Google Ads: Still the king for bottom-of-funnel leads. Perfect for trade services, health clinics, legal, property, and anyone with an immediate solution to a high-intent query.
Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram): Visual-first storytelling for hospitality, tourism, lifestyle, and product-driven brands. Still one of the best tools for local audience engagement—especially when paired with proper retargeting.
Email Marketing: One of the most underrated tools in the digital stack. We’ve built flows that return $15 for every $1 spent, especially for product-based or booking-based businesses.
Video and content: If your business has a visual edge or experiential element, you’re wasting potential if you’re not using short-form video across reels, stories and ads.
SEO & organic: Valuable, but long-term. For established businesses or those in competitive markets, it's an asset worth building—but not your first port of call if you need fast results.
Real growth rarely comes from a single channel. It comes from a system where cold traffic, warm leads and existing customers are all addressed with specific, strategic intent.
How to Actually Find the Right Agency
Not all agencies are built the same—and not all will be right for your business. Look for more than just surface-level polish. What matters is:
- Clear results for similar clients, with detail—not just a logo parade.
- Platform diversity and actual campaign fluency, not just outsourced contractors.
- Custom strategies that reflect your business model, sales process and budget.
- Consistent reporting that shows you what’s working, what’s not, and what’s changing.
- A direct team you can speak to, not just an account manager relaying messages.
You should walk away from an agency briefing understanding the plan, the metrics, and how your business will be different in three months—not just how many impressions you’ll get.
What to Watch Out For
Some agencies look great on paper but fall short in execution. Common red flags include:
- Overpromising performance (“#1 on Google in two weeks”)
- Lock-in contracts without performance reviews
- Focus on traffic, not conversion
- No involvement in your CRM or lead follow-up process
- “Set and forget” ad management
If you’re only hearing about your campaign in a monthly report—or worse, not hearing at all—you’re not getting the service you’re paying for.
In-House vs. Agency: What’s the Real Cost?
Many growing businesses think about hiring in-house—and it can work, in the right context. But most internal hires are generalists. You’ll rarely find someone who can do deep audience segmentation, shoot and edit video, manage ad budgets across multiple platforms, write high-converting copy, track attribution, and build flows in your CRM. And if you do, they won’t come cheap.
With the right agency team, you get platform-level specialists, strategic oversight, creative input, and consistent performance monitoring—all at a fraction of what it would cost to hire a full in-house team.
Why the Pipeline Matters
Getting traffic isn’t the problem. Most businesses waste money because they don’t have the infrastructure to convert and retain that traffic.
That’s why everything we do is built around the pipeline—the full path from first click to final sale. A complete funnel is:
- Targeted traffic (ads, organic, referrals)
- Landing pages and offers that actually convert
- Automated follow-up sequences (email/SMS/CRM)
- Retargeting across social and search
- Structured testing and optimisation
- Reporting that feeds back into growth
If your campaigns aren’t feeding into this ecosystem, you’re leaving revenue on the table.
Pricing & Suggested Ad Spend by Industry
Below is a realistic view of minimum monthly commitments for campaigns that actually scale. These are not inflated—but they’re honest. Anything less generally leads to wasted spend or underperformance.Our team builds pricing around the complexity of the funnel, the number of platforms involved, and the resources required to execute it properly. But one thing we don’t do is sell underbaked plans that aren’t built for performance.
| Industry | Recommended Ad Spend/Month | Typical Monthly Management Fee |
|---|---|---|
| Trades & Services | $2,500 – $6,000 | $1,500 – $2,500 |
| Hospitality | $1,800 – $4,000 | $1,200 – $2,000 |
| E-Commerce | $3,000 – $15,000 | $2,000 – $3,500+ |
| Tourism & Travel | $2,500 – $8,000 | $1,800 – $3,000 |
| Property & Real Estate | $3,500 – $10,000 | $2,000 – $4,000 |
| SaaS & Tech | $5,000 – $25,000+ | $3,500+ |
Why David Hannah Marketing?
We’re not the biggest agency on the Gold Coast—and that’s deliberate. We’re a senior team of marketers, strategists, media buyers and creatives who actually run the accounts ourselves. We don’t handball your campaign to a junior or outsource it overseas. You get hands-on execution with real accountability and proactive reporting.
We’ve helped local businesses 3X their leads, triple their booking volume, and grow from side hustle to full-time income. We’ve scaled ecommerce stores from $0 to 6-figure months, run global tourism campaigns, and supported SaaS clients with enterprise sales strategies. But more importantly, we’ve done it while staying honest, data-driven, and clear about what’s possible.
We also don’t hide behind jargon. We’ll tell you what’s working. We’ll tell you what’s not. And we’ll tell you what to do next.
Final Word: Don’t Just Buy Ads—Build a System
Growth doesn’t come from sporadic campaigns or disconnected efforts. It comes from building a full marketing engine—one that brings in leads, converts customers, and drives repeat revenue.
That’s what we help businesses do every day.
Book a Strategy Session
If you’re ready to stop guessing and start scaling, book a free strategy session with our team. We’ll review your current marketing, identify your biggest opportunities, and give you a plan you can actually use.
Let’s build something that works. Want to learn more? Book a strategy session here