Navigating towards your future digital marketing ecosystem

July 28, 2026|Accountants, Kim's Blog, Lawyers, Marketing, Property, Strategy, Web Sites|

It was wonderful that the first webinar of Profile | Property Marketing Forum was on the topic of navigating towards your future digital marketing ecosystem. It was presented by Carl Hewitt and Becky Willis who focus on performance marketing and technical development for the regulated sector. Here are some of the highlights and Profile members can access the video and slide deck. Navigating towards your future digital marketing ecosystem.

Session contents

Understand your position on the digital marketing maturity journey
Consider new developments in web site technology, UX, search engines (GEO), social (organic and paid) and AI tools
Use a strategic and analytical framework to help you choose where to invest in new marketing tools
Reflect on case studies of property and professional firms choosing and using their martech tools
Glimpse the future “Digital Risk Index” thought leadership report for law firms

Carl is presenting the Digital Risk Index for law firms on 31st July 2026 at the Managing Partners’ Forum Retuning webinar Re-Tuning your firm | Managing Partners’ Forum

Speaker biographies

Carl Hewitt is Group CEO and Co-Founder of Hewitt Matthews Group, which is comprised of Hewitt Matthews | Digital Marketing Agency in Portsmouth, a UK digital agency specialising in performance marketing and technical development, with a focus on the regulated sector. As well as Quba Digital, a technical development, support and hosting agency acquired by the Group and operating in the same sectors.

10 years ago, Carl started the business at college with Reece Matthews. Today the business focuses on helping clients make good digital decisions in a world with too many channels, platforms, tools and competing opinions. Hewitt Matthews has assisted over 50 clients across property, legal and professional sectors. Carl Hewitt | LinkedIn

Becky Willis is Chief Commercial Officer at Hewitt Matthews and Quba Digital. She is co-Host of the Agency Hackers Podcast. She previously held director roles at agencies such as Just After Midnight, RedWeb and Cold Banana Studio. Becky Willis | LinkedIn

https://www.hewittmatthews.group/

https://www.quba.co.uk/

Six pillars of a healthy digital marketing ecosystem

Carl and Becky explained that the digital marketing world is increasingly complex and that they aim to reduce the feelings of overwhelm that many marketers experience. They asked delegates if they had £100K where would they invest it.

They explained why it feels more difficult now. They shared data showing the difference between the options we faced in 2015 compared to now. There are so many more options and opportunities now to reach and engage audiences that it is harder to prioritise. There is also more risk.

Decision-making has become the challenge. Being strategic requires us to allocate scarce resources, against unlimited options, in pursuit of a given aim. Yet today’s digital ecosystem is more complex that the traditional funnel – nowadays there are multiple touchpoints across many channels and they are all connected and impact each other. So it gets messy and is only as strong as your weakest link

Where are you in digital maturity levels?

Carl and Becky offered these six levels as a compass – to self-assess indicative scores (although they provide a service to conduct such an analysis in detail).

They guided delegates through a self-assessment (on a scale of 1 to 5) of the six pillars of a healthy digital ecosystem:

Visibility (e.g. GEO, social, PR, paid search)
Experience (For complex audiences navigating a lot of content, how do they feel when moving through your web site?, Where do they drop off? )
Data – Rather than rely on the HIPPO (highest paid person’s opinion) is the data reliable and integrated? Perfect tracking is rare
Technology (How does the technology fit together? Is it well adopted and connected? Do some still rely on spreadsheets? Is it in silos or seamless?)
Execution (Is it operational and tactical? Consistent?)
Direction (Are we aligned on strategies and priorities? How often do we change?)

They noted that your maturity depends on the lowest score – not the average across the six factors.

Reassuringly, they indicated that only 1% of companies achieve Level 5

They also noted some external factors that impact your effectiveness:

Discovery is fragmenting
Websites are becoming infrastructure (no longer just a brochure)
Technology options are multiplying
AI search and GEO is changing execution

For professional services firms, the web site is a shop window, an information hub and a way for others to validate us. It serves a bigger purpose – building trust, signposting information, personalising the experience and capturing attention and leads. Web sites have become an asset and part of the overall marketing and business development strategy.

They also noted that we are facing too much choice of martech tools. Since 2011 there has been a 10,000 per cent growth in tools. And it has doubled since 2020.

Reassurance about AI in digital marketing

While many marketers are naturally concerned about the impact of AI changing execution, Becky and Carl had some reassuring messages. Humans still judge, make decisions and are accountable.

They mentioned how bank tellers were terrified at the introduction of ATMs. They feared jobs would be lost. Yet banks expanded and elevated jobs and increased employment from 300,000 to 600,000.

The same fear existed when Photoshop was launched. Designers feared for their livelihoods. Yet designers moved to digital and the good designers can now do things faster.

With a smile, they reminded us that the introduction of spreadsheets didn’t kill accountants!

Digital Risk Index for the legal sector

Towards the end of the session, they shared highlights of a recent thought leadership survey they had conducted.

They interviewed around 30 senior marketers from firms and sets of various sizes to see what felt risky in their digital strategy.

Early themes included:

Less clarity
Measurement issues
Trying to remain ahead of the trends

Prioritising was also an issue. For example, knowing that material in Reddit influences ChatGPT search results is a concern if a firm doesn’t typically engage on this channel.

They finished with some case studies

A property investment company was struggling with improving its lead generation. They could not scale their Meta adverts further. Within 20 months, Carl’s team halved the cost per lead and developed a method to track leads to revenue. With remarketing on Meta they generated 444 deals valued at £1.5m revenue.

A construction regulatory body sought improvements with registrations and applicants. Improvements in strategy and backend systems yielded significant results.