Blog
Practical articles for business owners and managers who want marketing to deliver. We write about strategy, advertising, automation and data to help you make better decisions about your budget.
Written by the ScaleLab team in plain language, without unnecessary jargon.
Paid advertising
ChatGPT ads are set up in Ads Manager at ads.openai.com: a business account, verification and a payment card, then a campaign, ad groups and ads. Some settings, such as country, currency, time zone and campaign objective, cannot be changed later. Before launch, check that your site lets the OAI-AdsBot crawler in and that the pixel or Conversions API records each enquiry exactly once.
Website development
A company website must show who stands behind it: name, address, phone, email, registration details and the supervisory body where the activity is regulated. Selling online adds the final price including taxes, delivery, the 14 day right of withdrawal and how complaints are handled. Everything else is not required by law, but it decides whether a visitor sends an enquiry.
Website development
The platform follows from who will maintain the site after launch, what happens to your content if you leave, and what ownership costs over three years. WordPress gives you control and a full export, but needs maintenance. Hosted builders take the technical work off you and limit what you can export. Custom development is for sites that are part of a process.
Hosting and maintenance
The domain should be registered to the company, not to the agency or a former employee, because transferring a .bg domain needs a contract that is either notarised or signed with the electronic signatures of both parties. Renewal is paid up to 30 days before the term expires, and 40 days after expiry the registration is terminated and the name released. From any supplier, ask for access to the registrar, DNS, hosting, the CMS and the backups.
Website development
Core Web Vitals are three metrics: LCP for loading, INP for responsiveness and CLS for layout shifts. The good thresholds are 2.5 seconds, 200 milliseconds and 0.1, measured at the 75th percentile. Real user data lives in Search Console and PageSpeed Insights, and the fixes usually start with images, fonts, plugins and hosting.
SEO
Rankings are lost to missing URLs, not to a new design. Record your current URLs, traffic and enquiries per page before anything changes, then build a one to one redirect map with permanent server-side redirects. Google advises keeping redirects for at least a year and warns against sending many old URLs to the new home page.
Website development
Someone looking for a dentist, a builder or an accountant decides three things at once: do you do this, do you cover their area, and can they trust you. So every service gets its own page, the service area and opening hours are visible, and the phone number dials with one tap. Then you measure calls, forms and bookings rather than visits.
Paid advertising
Since 24 August 2026 ChatGPT has shown ads in 31 European markets, and since 31 August businesses can run them themselves through a beta of Ads Manager. The ads are seen by adults on the Free and Go plans, and in Europe you should plan mainly on country-level targeting. The channel is new and the terms may change, so test it with a small budget, a clear goal and stop criteria agreed in advance.
Paid advertising
In healthcare, pharma, finance and insurance, advertising platforms add their own rules: certification, advertiser verification, restricted targeting and required information on the landing page. Rejected ads often come down to a missed step rather than the message itself. Plan the checks, the sign-off and the approval time before the campaign, and take legal questions to a lawyer.
SEO
When clicks from Google fall while rankings look the same, the cause may be AI summaries, a core update, seasonality or a technical problem. Each leaves a different trace in Search Console, including the new report for AI Overviews and AI Mode. Protect commercial pages and brand queries first, and report enquiries and orders to management, not just clicks.
Social media
A video content strategy starts with what video needs to change for the business, not with the format or channel. Every video has one job: to introduce the company, to answer questions before a purchase or to remove the last hesitation. A clear idea, good sound and consistency matter more than expensive production. If you use AI for realistic images or footage, deepfake content has to be labelled from 2 August 2026.
Paid advertising
From September 2026 Google will automatically move campaigns that use auto-created assets or campaign-level broad match to AI Max. New Dynamic Search Ads campaigns can be created again until January 2027, and the automatic upgrade of the remaining ones starts in February 2027. Before the change, review your exclusions, negative keywords, conversion data and ad copy so that you make the decisions, not just the system.
Hosting and maintenance
Mandatory dual price display ended on 8 August 2026, and selling prices are now stated in euro only. Now is the time to check not just the prices on the site but also the basket, invoices, order emails, product feed, structured data, ad accounts and GA4 reports. The currency of an existing Google Ads account cannot be changed, so that decision needs a plan.
Cybersecurity
From 2 August 2026 the transparency rules in Article 50 of the AI Act apply: chatbots must say they are AI, realistic generated images and video (deepfakes) must be labelled, and AI text on matters of public interest must be disclosed unless a person has reviewed it and takes editorial responsibility. The Digital Omnibus on AI postponed the high-risk rules, but not these. Start with an inventory of AI tools, disclosure texts and internal approval.
Email and automation
An AI chatbot helps when it answers repeat questions, collects the details of an enquiry, books appointments and works out of hours. It hurts when it hides the human, gives wrong answers or collects data with no clear purpose. Connect it to your enquiry process and CRM, measure the share of conversations that become enquiries, handovers to a person and response time, and bear in mind that from 2 August 2026 the AI Act requires chatbots to say they are AI, unless that is obvious from the context.
Paid advertising
Clicks and CPC tell you what attention costs, not whether advertising brings in money. That is what cost per enquiry or order (CPA), revenue against ad spend (ROAS) and the share of visitors who send an enquiry show. The more Google Ads automates campaigns, the more it matters that the platform gets accurate conversion data, because that is exactly what it optimises for.
Social media
At Cannes Lions 2026 Meta announced Brand memory, which Meta says will learn a brand's style from its existing ads, along with more generated text and more languages. AI speeds up variants, copy and formats, but brand risk remains in consistency, claims and realistic images of people. Work with written brand guidelines, human approval and testing, and plan for the AI Act duty to label realistic synthetic content from 2 August 2026.
Integrated marketing
From 15 June 2026, Consent Mode is the only control that decides whether GA4 collects data for Google Ads, while the Google Signals setting only affects reporting. That means a badly configured cookie banner now directly reduces or distorts the data your advertising receives. Check the defaults, the four signals and a Tag Assistant test, then compare the numbers before and after the change.
SEO
A core update is a broad change to Google's ranking systems, not a penalty aimed at a particular site. Once the update has finished, wait at least a week, compare periods by page and query type, and separate the drop from seasonality and technical problems. Recovery comes from helpful first-hand content, not from rushed changes made in a panic.
SEO
AI Overviews and AI Mode do not require llms.txt, special markup or content rewritten for AI: Google says these features rely on the same ranking systems as ordinary search. What helps is original first-hand content, clear answers, a site Google can crawl and index, and an up-to-date Google Business Profile and Merchant Center. The good news is that this work also pays off in the classic results.
Website development
Online stores and other e-commerce services now have to meet the accessibility requirements introduced by the European Accessibility Act. Microenterprises providing services are exempt, and for breaches committed after 1 June 2026 fines apply in full. In practice the benchmark is the EN 301 549 standard, which includes WCAG 2.1 Level AA, and the first checks are keyboard use, contrast, alt text, forms and checkout.
Email and automation
Marketing automation is built in order: map the customer's path first, bring the data together in one place, and only then choose software. Start with the steps where delay costs customers, such as replying to a new enquiry. Setting up your email domain is part of the system too, because Gmail and Microsoft require bulk senders to authenticate.
Email and automation
SPF, DKIM and DMARC are three DNS records that prove to mailbox providers that your emails really come from your company. Gmail and Microsoft require all three from senders of around 5,000 or more emails a day, and Gmail also watches spam complaint rates and easy unsubscribing. Set them up step by step, start DMARC at p=none and read the reports before you tighten the policy.
Email and automation
Third-party cookies are becoming less reliable because of consent rules, browsers and people who decline tracking, even though Chrome is not removing them. A company can advertise and measure steadily by relying on its own data: enquiries, orders and an email list of people who signed up themselves. Add clearly requested consent, contextual advertising and tracking tied to real sales.
Cybersecurity
With the amendments to the Cybersecurity Act of February 2026, NIS2 requirements cover many mid-sized companies in sectors such as manufacturing, food, ICT and healthcare, and indirectly their suppliers too. Significant incidents are reported with an early warning within 24 hours, a notification within 72 hours and a final report within one month of the notification, and management carries personal responsibility. Start by checking scope, listing your assets and assessing risk.
Hosting and maintenance
According to a Patchstack report, 91% of new WordPress vulnerabilities in 2025 were in plugins, and heavily exploited vulnerabilities were first attacked a median of about 5 hours after disclosure. Hosting-level defences stop only a small share of these attacks. That is why WordPress security rests on regular maintenance: a clear update policy, few plugins, tested backups, secure access and monitoring.
Integrated marketing
A marketing strategy is not working when you cannot say what the business gets in return for its marketing spend. Typical signs are spend that grows without more enquiries or orders, reports that count different things and channels run separately. Before you change channels or contractors, check the goal and the tracking on your site.
Integrated marketing
AI speeds up repetitive marketing work: first drafts, ad variants, sorting enquiries and summarising data. It does not decide what the business needs to achieve or whether ad spend comes back as revenue. The value depends on a clear goal, data you can trust and a person who checks every output.
If an article describes a question your company is facing too, look at the services through which we work on it.
All ScaleLab services, from the website and tracking to advertising and integrated digital marketing.
