What Climbing Trees does

Paid

We run paid search and paid social, and we trace every pound back to what it returned in your business, not what the platform says it returned. We test rigorously and report in numbers you can take to the boardroom. The outcome is spend that moves towards what’s working and away from what isn’t.

Organic (SEO)

We build organic search visibility on technical foundations first, then content that earns authority. The aim is rankings that are still working in two years, with a clear view of how search is changing as AI answers take a bigger share of it.

Digital PR

We earn coverage through stories worth running, in publications that matter to your audience. That coverage builds the authority that organic search and AI-generated answers both draw on.

AI Visibility (generative engine optimisation, or GEO)

We check whether AI-generated results mention your brand when your audience asks, and show you why they don’t. Then we build the visibility and authority to change that, so you show up in the answers that shape purchase decisions before anyone clicks through to a website.

Data & Strategy

We reconcile what each platform reports against your actual business data, find where revenue is double-counted or spend is working against itself, and turn the result into a roadmap that connects activity to commercial outcomes. You end up with one set of numbers you can defend at board level.

What makes Climbing Trees different

We operate without platform bias

We’re a Google Premier Partner and a Meta Business Partner, and we use those relationships entirely in our clients’ interest. We have no platform incentives and we don’t protect the retainer. Our advice follows the evidence, not the relationship.

We were building AI visibility before clients asked for it

We were doing GEO and AI visibility work for clients before most clients were asking about it, so this isn’t a service we’ve bolted on now that AI search is in the headlines.

Senior-led from the first conversation to the last report

We’re a small senior team. The people who understand your business are the people doing the work and making the calls, from the first conversation to the last report.

We choose who we work with

We screen clients before we take them on, and we publish how. Not everyone is right for us, and we’re not right for everyone. That selectivity protects the quality of the work, and it’s why most of our clients stay.

Independently assessed, not self-declared

We’re a Certified B Corporation, assessed independently on how we run the business every three years. Our office runs on 100% renewable energy, and our emissions have fallen from 5.3 to 3.69 tonnes of carbon per person per year since 2019. We hold the King’s Award for Enterprise in Sustainable Development (2024) and Cyber Essentials certification.

Who uses Climbing Trees

• Founders and Managing Directors whose marketing budgets are growing while revenue isn’t following, and who want to know why.

• Marketing Directors and CMOs at mid-market and enterprise companies who need performance data they can defend at board level.

• Heads of Ecommerce and Growth who need to see the gap between platform-reported return on ad spend (ROAS) and actual revenue, and close it.

• Charities and not-for-profits where every pound has to work twice as hard. We helped Greenpeace UK achieve 480% year-on-year growth in meaningful conversions.

• Retail and consumer brands, such as Olympus, where we delivered a 96% increase in transactions.

• Travel and hospitality brands, such as Avanti Travel Insurance, Unique Homestays and The Dolder Grand. For Avanti, traffic for the search term “travel insurance” grew by 8,126%.

• Education, healthcare and online health retail organisations, such as Regent College, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation and SimplyMeds Online.

The team behind Climbing Trees

Alex Holliman founded Climbing Trees in 2010. He’s a technical founder with no formal business training, who taught himself to run an agency and built Climbing Trees to prove that the most ethical approach to digital performance is also the most effective.

Climbing Trees is based in Earls Colne, Essex, and holds the King’s Award for Enterprise in Sustainable Development. Our team covers performance and paid media, SEO and organic, digital PR, data science, business growth strategy, people and finance. Everyone is listed with their role on our team page.

Alex Holliman, Founder and Managing Director: LinkedIn

How Climbing Trees works

Getting started. Book thirty minutes with us. We look at five things worth examining first, and you leave with a short, ranked list and a clear idea of what to do next. Enquiries get a reply within one working day, by email at hello@climbingtrees.com or by phone on 01206 587 207.

The Clearing™. For brands that aren’t sure where to start, The Clearing™ is our 90-day programme, from diagnosis to proof:

• Month 1, The Audit (find what’s true): we reconcile platform reporting against what’s happening in your business, and find where revenue is double-counted, where search conversions are credited elsewhere and where PR visibility goes unmeasured. You finish the month with one baseline.

• Month 2, Activation (fix what’s broken): we restructure paid campaigns, put technical fixes live, aim content and PR at the gaps worth closing, and set a starting point for AI visibility.

• Month 3, The Commitment (show what moved): we measure change against the baseline from month one, not against what the platforms report.

Everything we build in The Clearing™ is yours to keep, whatever you decide next: the reconciled baseline, a measurement framework, a prioritised roadmap, restructured campaigns and a 90-day performance read. After day 90 you can continue with us as a managed service or a focused project, or run the roadmap in-house with our support.

Who you work with. A senior team from the first conversation to the last report, with direct access to the people doing the work rather than a layer of account managers relaying messages.

How we use AI. We use AI to move faster. You still get a real person who takes your success personally. In the audit, AI analyses twelve months of account data in hours rather than days, and a consultant decides which anomalies matter. In the build, we generate copy and metadata variants in volume, and the person who knows your brand cuts them down. In reporting, anomaly detection flags changes as they happen. Strategy, judgement calls and anything we put our name to stay with people.