Digital marketing in Cork, measured in enquiries.
Cork does not behave like the rest of the country, and any agency that treats it as one more county on a list will waste your money. It is a real second city with its own established agencies, its own media, and a genuine preference for dealing with Cork firms. That preference is not sentiment — it is a reasonable instinct that someone local will understand the market better.
We will not pretend to be from Cork. What we will say is that the preference cuts both ways: it makes Cork search results less crowded with outside competition than Dublin, and it means a Cork business that shows up properly online is competing against a small number of local firms rather than the entire country. That is a winnable position, and most Cork businesses are not in it.
What we run for Cork businesses
Five services, and most Cork clients need two of them rather than all five. One channel run properly beats a small budget spread across everything.
Google Ads
The fastest route to the phone ringing. Cork needs the county split properly: the city and its suburbs behave like an urban market with real competition and real click prices, while Bandon, Macroom, Mallow and the west are cheaper and far less contested for the same search.
Meta ads
Facebook and Instagram carry unusual weight across Cork, and especially outside the city. Parish, town and community pages are heavily followed from Youghal to Bantry, and a job done well in a small town is seen by the whole town.
SEO
The compounding one. In Cork that means the town-level searches rather than the county ones, and it means getting your Google Business Profile into proper order, because for a local Cork search the map results take most of the attention before anyone scrolls.
Web design
A great many Cork businesses have a conversion problem rather than a traffic problem. People are already finding them and leaving. A fast site that works on a phone and actually asks for the enquiry usually beats spending more on ads.
Social media management
Run for you, in your own voice. In a market where reputation travels by word of mouth, a page that looks current is part of being taken seriously.
Why Cork campaigns underperform
The same four things, in most Cork accounts we have looked at.
The county is treated as one market
Cork is the largest county in Ireland and driving from Bantry to Youghal takes the guts of three hours. A single campaign across it spends most of its budget reaching people who will never travel to you and who you would never travel to.
West Cork is either ignored or over-served
Clonakilty, Skibbereen, Bantry and Dunmanway are a genuinely different economy — tourism, agriculture, seasonal trade — with much cheaper advertising and far less competition. Businesses either pretend it does not exist or advertise into it as though it were the city.
Student searches are not filtered out
UCC and MTU put a large student population into the city, and they generate search volume that looks commercial and is not. Without negative keywords for courses, jobs and student terms, a city campaign pays for clicks that were never going to buy.
Nobody is competing on the map
For most local Cork searches the map results sit above everything else, and they are decided by proximity, reviews and how completely a Google Business Profile is filled in. Plenty of Cork businesses have a profile that has not been touched since it was created.
How we work
No office visit, no retainer dressed up as a partnership, no quarterly deck. You deal directly with the person running your account.
Week one we take access, fix what is obviously broken and get tracking in place so that the numbers from week two are real. From there, one short report a week: enquiries, cost per enquiry, and what we changed. If something is not working you hear it from us first.
Where in Cork we work
Campaigns are built around the towns you actually serve, because in a county this size that distinction decides whether the budget produces work or just reach.
- Cork city
- Douglas
- Ballincollig
- Carrigaline
- Glanmire
- Midleton
- Cobh
- Mallow
- Bandon
- Kinsale
- Blarney
- Youghal
- Fermoy
- Macroom
- Clonakilty
- Skibbereen
What it costs
€1,500 a month covers one advertising channel — Meta or Google — managed properly, all of your social media run, and every lead followed up. €2,500 a month covers both channels, a new website, and everything in the first package.
Month to month, cancel any time, no setup fee. Advertising spend is separate and paid by you directly to Google or Meta from your own account, so you keep control of the budget and own the account when you leave.
If a website is the only thing you need, that is a one-off €1,500 with no monthly fee at all.
Straight answers.
Often you should not, and we will say so. If you want someone who can sit in your office, or who knows the trade on a personal level, hire a Cork agency — those are good reasons. Use us if you care more about the campaign being run properly week to week than about where it is run from, and if you want to talk to the person doing the work rather than an account manager.
We know it from the campaigns we run in it rather than from living there, and we are straight about the difference. What that means in practice is that we will ask you more questions at the start than a local agency would, and we will not assume we know your customer better than you do.
Only if you have a verified Cork address, because the map pack is driven by physical location and proximity to the searcher. If you have premises we will get your Google Business Profile into shape to compete there, and for a local Cork search that is frequently the highest-value work available. If you do not, we focus on the ordinary results and on paid.
Often more than the city, if you can serve it. Competition is much lower, clicks cost a fraction of the city rate, and the towns have strong community networks that amplify a good job. The constraint is travel, so we build the targeting around how far you will genuinely go.
Paid channels produce enquiries in days, usually inside a week of Google Ads going live. SEO is measured in months. Cork is more competitive than most counties, so we are conservative about search timelines and explicit about which one you are buying.
Yes. Ask for the free growth audit and we will check where you appear in Cork search results, who is outranking you, what your competitors are advertising and what your website does to visitors. Back within 24 hours as a PDF, with no call attached.
Talk to someone who will tell you if it is not worth doing.
Ask for the free growth audit and we will check where you appear in Cork search results, who is outranking you, and what your website does to visitors when they land. Back within 24 hours as a PDF, with no call attached.