Helping Alder Hey Children's Charity Get More From Its Digital Marketing
Helping Alder Hey Children's Charity Make Every Click Count
True to our name, Dock has been known to take to the water from time to time. Like when we took part in a dragon boat race to help Wong’s Jewellers raise funds for Alder Hey Children's Charity. The race itself went surprisingly well. But more than our ability to glide down the Mersey, what stands out from the day is the connection we made with a much-loved Liverpool institution. Here's how we went from supporting Alder Hey Children's Charity on the water to helping them get more from their digital marketing.
One Day at a Time
After the race, we spoke to the Alder Hey Children's Charity team and offered to build them a free Shopify website for their online store to help raise funds for the charity.
They gratefully accepted. So we delivered the website, handed it over, and, aside from the occasional check-in, left them to go about their good work.
Then in early 2026, a casual chat with our contact (about dog walking, of all things) brought Dock back onto Alder Hey Children's Charity’s radar. The charity had expanded its marketing team, but its Google Ads account needed attention. Could we help?
A straightforward arrangement was made for us to spend a day, see what we could find, carry out any quick fixes we could, and report back to Alder Hey Children's Charity with our findings and recommendations.
We carried out a comprehensive audit of their Google Ads, Google Analytics and SEO, detailing around a dozen pages of issues.
For example, Google Tag Manager was recording every mobile webpage load as a phone call. Tracking modules were configured incorrectly. Ads were disapproved, links were broken, and events, products, news and fundraising categories all needed re-optimisation.
Ad groups for fundraising events and the annual Alder Hey Children's Charity pyjama campaign required our attention, as did campaigns promoting the Alder Hey products and their local charity shops. Any issues risking account suspensions were tackled first, along with traffic cross-over for the main hospital site, and then remaining tasks were organised by priority, ready for the team to work through.
Three days was all it took to audit, report, plan and implement the recommended work. Corrected tracking issues, fixed disapprovals, refined targeting and refreshed campaigns all helped get the Alder Hey Children's Charity Google Ads account back into shape, ready for their internal team to take over.
No lengthy project or unnecessary commitments. Just the right expertise, when they needed us.
Here When We're Needed
As Alder Hey Children's Charity developed its internal team, we shared our work and remained available for further assistance.
We see this a lot. People are busy dealing with the day-to-day demands of running their organisations. The technicalities of digital marketing often take a back seat to more urgent matters.
With senior expertise across different digital disciplines, we can step in to address technical issues, offer advice or help internal teams tackle something new.
We don't need to tie clients into expensive retainers. We'd rather build relationships where people trust us to tell them what needs doing, even when the answer is less than they might expect.
As long as we maintain that trust, we'll have work to do. We prefer it that way.
Close to Home
One reason we're so keen to support Alder Hey Children's Charity is how much the hospital means to the city.
The majority of Dock’s team have children. We're local, many of us have relied on their services, and we're proud to have Alder Hey Children's Charity on our doorstep.
For some of us, that connection is particularly personal.
We know first-hand what the hospital means to families across Liverpool and the wider North West.
Being able to give something back to an organisation that's done so much for our own families makes the work that bit more meaningful.
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