Carpenter Oak

Craftsmanship Meets Clarity

Laura Butlin and the team at Carpenter Oak design and build exceptional timber-framed buildings, combining craft, sustainability and architectural expertise.

But while their work was distinctive and in demand, their digital presence wasn’t keeping up.

“We knew the quality of our product was really strong,” Laura explained. “but we weren’t doing a very good job of communicating that.”

The website was underperforming, ad spend was inefficient, and early-stage prospects were overwhelming the CRM – making it harder for the sales team to focus.

Carpenter Oak didn’t just need a better website. They needed a marketing framework that could support their long customer journey and match the strength of their brand.

What We Did

We ran workshops to map out customer types and sales phases. From there, we:

• Split out ‘prospect’ from ‘lead’ to clean up the CRM
• Installed phone and form tracking
• Improved Google Ads structure
• Re-optimised site content to improve rankings
• Advised on lead-nurturing content and reporting metrics

Pruning dead wood

We worked together to define the full sales journey—from email sign-ups to qualified enquiries—so marketing could focus on value, and sales could focus on closing.

We introduced new tools and tracking, and created a shared understanding of where contacts belonged in the funnel. Monthly reports now link spend, effort and outcomes.

They brought their internal teams into the strategy process, something that became key to unlocking the right structure, language and messaging.

Workshops uncovered distinct customer types and mapped a long, complex journey from initial interest to final purchase (sometimes as long as 10 years). This helped the team separate early-stage prospects from qualified leads, building clarity and confidence in the process.

During discovery, we helped the team define what truly qualifies someone as ready to buy. This led to five key pillars of qualification, milestones that typically shape a self-builder’s journey.

Together, we mapped content around: whether a contact had acquired a plot, obtained architectural drawings, secured a budget, received planning permission, and set a project timeline.

These became the foundation for deciding when someone should move from prospect to lead – bringing structure and confidence to their CRM and marketing efforts.

“It gave us that clarity to make some decisions that had been sort of floating around for quite a while,” said Laura.

Vu Director Dominic Cooper adds, “Real strategic change only happens when you build it together. Laura and the team brought experience, generosity, ambition and attention to detail. We just helped shape that by slicing up the process and zoning in on each part.”

The Solution

Through collaborative workshops and hands-on support, we helped Carpenter Oak bring clarity to their complex sales journey.

We introduced segmentation between prospects and leads, implemented tracking, and restructured their Google Ads, cutting spend by half. We defined five key qualification pillars to refocus the CRM and improve sales efficiency.

Alongside this, we optimised content to double SEO visibility and removed digital waste by streamlining tools and systems, reducing their environmental impact in the process.

“They offer really great value for money, their expertise is far beyond what we expected and we feel its a really rewarding relationship for both of us. ”

– Laura Butlin, Marketing Manager, Carpenter Oak

We can’t build you a lovely timber house like the geniuses at Carpenter Oak, but we can provide you with a simple framework for lasting growth.