About Robert Zach

You work with me.

No account team, no project manager, no junior strategist sitting in on calls.

The work gets done by the person who built the system.

Easy Online Ads has existed since 2017 because in my first job I watched ad results get argued away for years, for as long as nobody tracked them to the order. Since then I have run every account myself and reported no number that would not survive that argument.

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Robert

Where this came from

In 2016 an agency argued my results away for the first time. The one rule I have worked by ever since came out of that.

I come from communication design and got into media buying through producing the marketing content. It never satisfied me. The copy and the strategy came from other people, and I designed and placed the ads. So I could never stand behind the result, and that was exactly what I wanted to do.

In 2016 I was the in-house marketer at bellicon, an e-commerce company with customers in five countries. Facebook ads had been around for a year, and bellicon was only just starting with them. I ran them myself, set up properly, and they brought orders. The partner agency did not take the numbers into account, it argued them away: whoever bought through retargeting would have bought anyway, and Google brand search delivered the click for a fraction of the price. My reading was different. Whoever typed the brand name into Google was too lazy to type the domain, and that click was being credited with a sale it never caused, while mine was being denied one it had. Neither of us could prove it. The Meta pixel was set up cleanly, but nobody had built a system that evaluated the sales across both channels. So the argument about the price of a click carried on.

In 2017 I went independent, and bellicon became my first client. For seven years I ran bellicon's Meta ads in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and the Netherlands and traced every order back to the ad through the Meta pixel. And for seven years the discussion carried on: Google brand search always had the cheaper click than a cold visitor from Meta, and the sales through Meta were argued away by the other agency's account manager every time. Cross-channel evaluation only arrived when a bigger agency later took over both channels. The tracking that would have settled this argument from day one I built from 2023 for lead generation, because there it becomes clear quickly which ad leads to a sale. Since then every account I run has had one rule: I do not report a number that would not survive that argument.

"If two numbers about the same sale can be argued about for years, the problem is not the numbers. The tracking that would settle the question is missing."

Where I played along myself

For a while I was part of the theater myself. This is what it looked like.

I call it performance theater when platform numbers are reported as if they were results and nobody traces a euro to the sale. I have not only seen it in others. I did it myself.

My first retainers were between EUR 250 and EUR 1,500 a month, depending on the size of the client. Whether that paid off for me I checked as little back then as whether the newsletter sold. The job was to fill a newsletter with cheap leads, and that is what I did. Meta's tracking was actually better then than it is today. Whether the newsletter then sold anything was not my job, and I did not know. The report was honest about the lead and silent about the sale, and nobody had signed up to own the gap between the two.

The clearest case was Anne Jansson, a business coach for health coaches. She came to me in February 2023 and, understandably, first wanted to know which digital sales formats worked before putting time into a foundation. So I delivered formats: all through 2023 I tested lead magnets and optimised cost per lead, because that is the number the dashboard rewards and almost every client is keen on. The leads came in at EUR 3.59 and looked great in the report. They did not buy.

In the first quarter of 2024 we switched the ads off and built the foundation: interviews with her best customers, a message in their own words, and only then ad budget again. Cost per lead rose to EUR 20 on purpose. The quarter closed at 407% ROAS, every sale traced back to the ad click. Same client, same channel, and the person on the account was the same as in 2023. The only thing that had changed was the number we were working toward.

Since then I have considered the cheap lead the most expensive lead there is. A report can be completely honest about the lead and completely silent about the sale. So decide which of the two numbers you are paying for before you sign, and make sure someone owns the gap between them. On my accounts, that is me.

Read the Anne Jansson case study →

Who I build for today

For nine years I worked mostly for coaches and consultants. Many of them chose on purpose not to become a company of ten or twenty people, and they were right to, a business should not become a golden cage. I would rather build for companies of ten to two hundred people that want to floor it and want to see the numbers before they release one more euro. That is who the method was always built for.

How I work

Three rules I do not negotiate.

If you can't measure it, don't do it.

Every decision on the account starts with a hypothesis about what is supposed to improve and a measurement to the qualified lead or the sale. Clicks, conversions and reach are interim readings. What cannot be measured that far I do not claim, and I keep pressing on building that tracking, even when it is inconvenient in month one.

Customers are the source of truth.

The message comes from interviews with people who have already bought. A workshop with your own team does not replace them, and neither does what worked at some other company. Where those interviews do not exist yet, I offer the No Guesswork Growth Protocol. It is not a prerequisite, and whatever customer voice you already have, support emails, notes from sales calls, goes into the marketing content from day one.

The system is the deliverable.

Ad account, pixel and audiences sit in your Business Manager from day one. The test log, the daily report and the playbook are built so that your own employee can take over the account later. Am I expensive? Yes. I also want you to be able to get rid of me, and still be glad you paid me.

Track record

The numbers, with the context.

Since 2017 I have worked with 64 clients, most of them coaches and consultants, plus e-commerce such as bellicon. On none of them has a junior run the campaigns.

Clients since 2017

Businesses that reached seven figures during our work together

Years with my longest-standing client, Iris Arimond, and counting

Four clients are published as case studies, each with the metric that was actually measured there: cost per order at bellicon, ROAS at Anne Jansson, a contract value at Renée Schäfer, and at Andrea Randt her own words. What I could not trace to the sale is not there. I would rather tell you that up front than have you find out on the call.

See the case studies →

Calibration

What I do not do, on purpose.

If you want any of these, we are not a fit. That is fine.

Claim results without tracking.

Before I claim any performance, the measurement to the qualified lead or the sale is built. Until then there are interim readings, not results.

Hide behind platform metrics.

Cost per click and click-through rate do not tell you whether your pipeline is healthy. Performance is measured against your CRM, your sales cycle and the sales your team actually closed.

Promise outcomes I do not control.

You get the process, the deliverables and the system your team will later run themselves in writing. A revenue number for a channel that depends on your sales team's response time and on the structure of your offers I do not promise. Anyone who does is bluffing, or their business model does not survive the first bad month.

Hand your account to a junior after onboarding.

I do not have one. On Meta that is me; on further channels, a named senior under me. You know the name before you sign, and the name stays.

Your move

If this sounds like the way you want to approach the next quarter, let's talk.

Up to 45 minutes. We qualify fit and I tell you the fastest next step, even if it is not me.

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