FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

Search Party was founded in January 2024 by Seth Chalmers after almost a decade working with DMOs and tourism organizations—including senior leadership roles at a major destination marketing agency. That experience provided an inside view of how traditional agency structures work, and revealed an opportunity to offer something different.

Seth's path—starting as a designer, then discovering a passion for interactive development—informs the left-brain/right-brain approach behind Search Party's work. We understand both the technical side (building tools, optimizing campaigns, implementing tracking) and the strategic side (what actually drives arrivals, assessments, and stakeholder satisfaction for DMOs).

Search Party exists to offer a different model: experienced strategists running your campaigns directly, transparent pricing with aligned incentives, and zero layers between you and the people making decisions. Low overhead. No bureaucracy. Just expertise applied to your goals.

We're a small team of experts, and we plan to stay that way. We're growing strategically—bringing in people who help keep our ethos of approachable expertise intact. No layers of bureaucracy. No "account services" team to relay messages. You work directly with experienced strategists who run your campaigns and make the decisions that matter.

Some clients need just paid media strategy and execution. Others need a full team—development, creative, SEO, or video production. We bring in specialists based on what will actually move the needle for your business, not based on what billable hours we need to hit.

Think of it like having a fractional CMO who can assemble the exact team your project needs, without the overhead of a traditional agency. Every person working on your account has deep expertise in their discipline—whether that's paid media, development, SEO, or creative strategy.

Tourism and destination marketing is our specialty—we've worked with Visit West Hollywood, Visit Truckee-Tahoe, Visit Oxnard, and many other CVBs and tourism organizations. We understand the unique challenges of marketing destinations: seasonal fluctuations, stakeholder politics, limited budgets, and the need to balance awareness with measurable visitation.

That said, we also work with B2B SaaS companies, professional services firms, and other businesses that need strategic paid media, SEO, or interactive development. If you have clear goals and respect data-driven decision making, we can probably help.

We charge transparent service fees based on the scope of work we're managing—whether it's media buying (as a percentage of your gross budget), platform development (project-based), SEO strategy (monthly retainer), or other strategic services.

The model varies, but the principle stays the same: no hidden margins, no markup on third-party costs, no sneaking extra fees into invoices. This structure aligns our incentives completely with yours. For media, when you get more clicks, impressions, and conversions for your budget, we win too.

We're not incentivized to waste your money or push solutions that earn us bigger margins. We're incentivized to get you results. See our About page for more details on how we structure engagements.

Fast. No 50-page proposals that take three weeks to write. No waiting for committees to approve strategy decks. If we're aligned on goals and scope, we can usually kick off within a week.

For paid media campaigns, we can launch in 7-10 days depending on creative assets and account access. For development projects, we scope and start within days, not weeks. For SEO or ongoing strategy work, we begin with an audit and roadmap, then start executing immediately.

It depends on what you need, but here's the general flow:

Discovery: We start with a strategy session to understand your goals, audience, competitive landscape, and success metrics. This isn't a sales pitch—it's a working session where we figure out if we're a good fit and what the roadmap should look like.

Fast Launch: Once we're aligned, we move quickly. We set up tracking, build campaigns, configure platforms, or start development work. We don't wait for perfection—we launch and optimize.

Continuous Optimization: This is where most agencies fail. We don't check in weekly or monthly—we monitor campaigns regularly and make adjustments as needed. Budgets shift, ads get optimized, landing pages get tweaked, and you get same-day responses when you have questions.

Scale What Works: Once we find what's driving results, we double down. More budget to winning campaigns. More content around high-performing topics. More features for tools that users love.

Development—yes, when it makes sense. We can handle front-end development, analytics implementation, and technical SEO directly. For larger platform builds or design-heavy projects, we partner with Partywave, a web design and development agency we've worked with for years.

Creative—it depends. We can write ad copy, landing page content, and strategic messaging. For video production, photography, or brand design work, we bring in specialists. For deep technical SEO and organic search strategy, we partner with Rankable.

The goal isn't to do everything ourselves—it's to assemble the right team for your project without agency bloat and markups.

For paid media: Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta (Facebook/Instagram), LinkedIn, TikTok, programmatic display and video (DV360, TTD, StackAdapt), YouTube, and emerging platforms as they make sense.

For analytics: Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager, Looker Studio, custom dashboards, and whatever visualization tools make the data actually useful for you.

For development: Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, modern web performance tools. We build fast, accessible, conversion-focused sites and tools.

For SEO: Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, Semrush, Google Search Console, and a lot of manual analysis. Tools are helpful, but they don't replace strategic thinking.

By your goals, not ours. If you're a DMO, success might be assessments, arrivals, or event registrations. If you're B2B, it's probably qualified leads or pipeline contribution. If you're e-commerce, it's revenue and ROAS.

We don't optimize for vanity metrics like impressions or reach unless those are genuinely tied to your business objectives. We focus on conversions, engagement, and outcomes that actually matter to your bottom line.

You'll get transparent reporting—clear dashboards, regular updates, and honest assessments of what's working and what's not. No smoke and mirrors. No jargon to hide underperformance.

Honest answer? Most agencies are incentivized to maximize their own revenue, not yours. They markup media costs, push services you don't need, staff your account with juniors, and respond to questions on their timeline, not yours.

We're different because:

• You work directly with the strategists running your campaigns—no account manager middlemen
• We only bring in specialists when they'll actually move the needle, not to pad billable hours
• Transparent pricing with no hidden markups or vendor margins
• Same-day response times and continuous optimization, not weekly check-ins
• We start from your goals and reverse-engineer the strategy, rather than selling you a pre-packaged service

If you want a big-name agency with fancy offices and a roster of Fortune 500 clients, we're not it. If you want a team that treats your budget like their own and obsesses over results, let's talk.

Absolutely. Not every engagement needs to be a six-figure annual retainer. We can start with:

• A paid media audit to identify what's broken and how to fix it
• A 90-day campaign pilot to prove ROI before scaling
• A specific platform build or landing page project
• An SEO roadmap and technical audit

If it works, we scale. If it doesn't, you haven't wasted months and tens of thousands of dollars figuring that out. Low risk, high accountability.