Digital Marketing Training: SEO, PPC & AI Programmes for In-House Teams
In-house teams with strong fundamentals outperform agency-dependent ones. Generic training does not build lasting capability.
Why Most Digital Marketing Training Fails
Digital marketing training fails in one of two ways. The first is too theoretical: training that explains how search algorithms work, how bidding auctions function, or how AI language models are trained, without connecting any of this to the practical decisions a marketer makes on a Tuesday morning. Participants leave with a better conceptual understanding of the channel and no idea what to do differently with their campaign, their content calendar, or their agency brief.
The second failure mode is too tool-specific: training that walks through the interface of a single platform — how to set up a campaign in Google Ads, how to use a specific SEO tool, how to format a prompt in ChatGPT — without the strategic context that makes tool usage effective. Participants leave knowing how to press more buttons but not which buttons to press when, or why, or with what expected commercial outcome.
Both failure modes share a common root cause: the training is not built around the specific context, tools and challenges of the team receiving it. Generic training is built to be delivered to anyone. Effective training is built to be delivered to these people, in this organisation, facing these specific challenges, with these specific tools and objectives.
Every training programme at Laurelin Labs is built from scratch around the team receiving it. The content, the examples, the exercises and the case studies are drawn from real client engagements — American Express, Levi’s, ASOS, Sky, Post Office, Heathrow, Gymshark, Santander — and adapted to your specific sector, tool stack and skill level. Nothing is generic. Nothing is theoretical without application. And every session is delivered by a Director-level practitioner who has done this work at the highest level, not by a trainer who teaches it.
Programme 1: SEO + LLMO Fundamentals
The objective is not to turn participants into SEO practitioners — it is to give them the understanding they need to brief SEO work effectively
The SEO + LLMO Fundamentals programme is designed for marketing managers, content managers, product managers, brand managers and senior leadership who work with SEO regularly but do not own technical delivery. The objective is not to turn participants into SEO practitioners — it is to give them the understanding they need to brief SEO work effectively, evaluate the quality of work delivered by agencies or in-house practitioners, and make better strategic decisions about organic search investment.
How Search Works
The programme begins with a clear, practical explanation of how search engines work — not at the engineering level but at the level that informs marketing decisions. How does Google decide which pages to rank for a given query? What are the factors that determine ranking position? Why does a page with excellent content sometimes rank poorly, and how can you tell whether the problem is technical, relevance or authority? Understanding these fundamentals is the prerequisite for every other element of the programme, and it is frequently the element where marketing teams have the most gaps.
The RAG Framework and Opportunity Thinking
The RAG framework — Red, Amber, Green — is introduced as a practical tool for thinking about content opportunity. Participants work through a live example using their own site data, classifying keywords and identifying the gap between current performance and available demand. This session is consistently cited as the most valuable element of the programme by participants, because it gives them a concrete, repeatable methodology for assessing and communicating content opportunity — regardless of whether they are working with an agency, briefing an in-house team, or presenting to leadership.
Briefing and Reviewing SEO Work
The most commercially impactful skill for a non-technical SEO stakeholder is the ability to write a good brief and evaluate the quality of the work delivered against it. This session covers what a good content brief contains and what it should not, how to evaluate an agency’s technical audit recommendations and identify whether the prioritisation is sound, how to assess whether a keyword strategy reflects genuine commercial opportunity, and what questions to ask — and what answers to expect — in an SEO performance review.
LLMO: The AI Search Layer
The LLMO component introduces participants to the practical implications of AI-generated search for their content programme. What are AI Overviews and how are they generated? What content characteristics make a page more likely to be cited? What can you do with existing content — without technical intervention — to improve AI citation eligibility? And how do you know whether your content is appearing in AI-generated answers for your most important queries? This session is increasingly cited as the most commercially relevant new topic in SEO training, and it is the element that most agency-delivered training is not yet covering at a practical level.
Programme 2: PPC Essentials and Advanced
how to read a performance report and distinguish genuine performance from misleading metrics
The PPC programme is available in two formats: an Essentials half-day for marketing generalists and budget owners who need to understand paid search well enough to manage an agency relationship and make strategic investment decisions, and an advanced full-day for in-house PPC managers and marketing directors who are directly responsible for paid search performance.
Essentials: Understanding PPC as a Business Investment
The Essentials programme covers the fundamentals of how paid search auctions work, how Quality Score and Ad Rank determine where ads appear and what they cost, what the key structural components of a well-run account look like, how to read a performance report and distinguish genuine performance from misleading metrics, and how to evaluate whether your current agency setup is structured for your commercial objectives. The session is built around real account examples — sanitised from live engagements — so that every concept is illustrated with concrete commercial context rather than hypothetical scenarios.
Advanced: Strategy, Structure and Modern Platform Management
The Advanced programme covers the full scope of modern PPC strategy and management for practitioners. It includes audience architecture and the shift from keyword-centric to audience-centric bidding; Smart Bidding strategy selection and the data volume requirements for different bidding approaches; Performance Max campaign management, asset group configuration and brand cannibalisation mitigation; the brand versus non-brand strategic decision and its implications for ROAS reporting; and attribution model selection and the practical implications of moving away from last-click attribution. Each topic is addressed at the level of practical implementation, with specific guidance on how to apply the concepts in a real account.
Programme 3: AI for Marketing Teams
designed for any marketing professional who wants to use AI tools effectively in their day-to-day work
The AI for Marketing Teams programme is designed for any marketing professional who wants to use AI tools effectively in their day-to-day work — not as a technology curiosity but as a genuine operational capability. The session is practical throughout: every concept is demonstrated live, every framework is applied to a real task, and every participant leaves with tested prompts and documented workflows they can use the following day.
The Prompting Foundation
Effective prompting is the primary skill that separates teams generating significant efficiency gains from AI tools and those getting mediocre outputs. The session covers the principles of effective prompt construction — role definition, task specification, output format, context and constraints — and works through live examples of the same task performed with a weak prompt and a strong prompt, illustrating the quality difference concretely. Participants then practise prompting for their own most common task types, with feedback from the facilitator and from each other.
Content and Research Workflows
The content and research section covers the specific AI workflows with the highest commercial value for marketing teams: content brief generation from keyword data, audience research synthesis from multiple sources, competitor content analysis and summarisation, first-draft article production and editorial refinement, headline and meta description optimisation, and FAQ generation from source content. Each workflow is demonstrated live and accompanied by the specific prompt templates that produce the best results for each task type.
Data Analysis and Reporting
AI tools have transformed what is possible with performance data for marketing teams without data science skills. The session covers using AI to interpret analytics data and surface insights, generating narrative performance commentary from raw metrics, identifying patterns and anomalies in campaign data, and creating executive-ready reporting summaries from detailed platform reports. Participants work through a real reporting scenario using anonymised client data, producing a polished performance summary in a fraction of the time the manual process would require.
Quality Control and Risk Management
The session concludes with a practical framework for quality control — how to review AI outputs for factual accuracy, tone consistency and brand alignment, and how to build review checkpoints into AI-assisted workflows without eliminating the efficiency gains that make AI integration valuable. This section also addresses data governance: what types of information should and should not go into AI tools, and how to establish team guidelines that manage risk without being so restrictive that they prevent the tool from being useful.
The Laurelin Labs Training Difference
delivered by Piers Butler — co-founder and Strategy Director, with 15+ years of Director-level experience at iProspect, Croud and Brainlabs
Every training programme at Laurelin Labs is delivered by Piers Butler — co-founder and Strategy Director, with 15+ years of Director-level experience at iProspect, Croud and Brainlabs, working with clients including American Express, ASOS, Sky, Apple, Levi’s, Post Office, Heathrow, Gymshark, Diageo and Santander.
The examples used in every session are real. The RAG analysis illustrated in the SEO Fundamentals programme is the same methodology used for American Express across 20+ markets. The Performance Max management approach covered in the PPC Advanced programme reflects the most current practices from live account management. The AI prompts demonstrated in the AI programme are the same prompts used in active client workflows — tested in production, not designed for a workshop.
This practitioner-first approach produces measurably different outcomes than generic training: higher retention rates, because the examples are concrete and memorable; higher application rates, because participants leave with tools they can use immediately rather than frameworks they have to adapt; and higher satisfaction scores, because the training is clearly built for them, not for a generic audience of digital marketing professionals.
What You Receive
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you customise the training around our specific tools?
Yes — and this is a standard part of our process. Before every training session, we review your team’s current tools, platforms and workflows, and build examples and exercises around what you actually use. We do not deliver training about tools your team does not have access to.
What is the maximum group size?
We recommend a maximum of 15 participants for workshops where interaction and exercises are central to the learning. For larger teams, we recommend splitting into cohorts of similar level or running multiple sessions. Presentations and keynote-style sessions can accommodate larger groups.
Do you offer online or in-person sessions?
Both. In-person sessions — available in London and surrounding areas — tend to produce better engagement and interaction, particularly for full-day formats. Online sessions work well for half-day workshops and multi-session programmes where travel is impractical.
Can we combine multiple topics in one session?
Yes — for example, a full-day session covering SEO fundamentals in the morning and AI tools in the afternoon is a popular combination for marketing teams that need a broad overview across both disciplines. We will advise on the right structure based on your team’s level and learning objectives.
How far in advance do we need to book?
We typically require 2–3 weeks lead time for half-day workshops and 3–4 weeks for full-day programmes or multi-session series, to allow for briefing, customisation and materials preparation.
The Bottom Line
The return on investment from well-delivered training is frequently larger and faster than the return on equivalent investment in external consultancy or agency services — because it builds internal capability that persists and compounds, rather than producing a deliverable that must be re-commissioned when circumstances change. A content manager who understands the RAG framework will make better decisions about content investment for the rest of their career. An in-house PPC manager who understands Performance Max cannibalisation will catch problems that would otherwise cost the business significant budget. A marketing team that can use AI tools effectively will outperform a team of the same size that cannot, indefinitely, as long as AI tools remain part of the marketing technology landscape.
The question is not whether your team needs to get better at SEO, PPC and AI. It is whether the training they receive is specific enough, practical enough and expert enough to actually produce that improvement. At Laurelin Labs, that is the only type of training we deliver.
