Published by Sue Johns-Chapman
Published Date 16.07.2026 
In June 2026, Don’t Panic Events named Forthea a finalist in five categories at the US Agency Awards, including a fifth nomination for PPC Agency of the Year. That kind of streak is not accidental; it does not come from repeating the same strategies year after year. It comes from our team asking a tougher question than most agencies: not just “did the campaign perform,” but “did it move the business forward, and how can we prove it?”
This post is our answer to that question. It offers a transparent look at the strategic thinking, innovative tools, and implementation behind our recent nominations.
Who We Are
Forthea is a Houston-based full-service digital marketing agency. Our 54-person team delivers integrated strategies across Paid Search (PPC), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), Analytics, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), and Web Design. We are a certified Google Premier Partner, an Inc. 5000 company, and US Search Award honorees, with client partnerships spanning multifamily residential, B2B manufacturing, multilocation franchise, legal, and e-commerce sectors.
Numbers tell part of the story: In 2025, we reached a record 94% client retention rate, and our senior analysts averaged over six years on the same accounts. But these numbers really show a culture of accountability in every engagement. We do not measure success by rankings or impressions alone. We include revenue, contracts, qualified leads, and business outcomes our clients can share with their own stakeholders. Five nominations at the US Agency Awards is a meaningful external validation of that standard, and we are genuinely proud to have earned this recognition five years in a row.
The Work Behind the Nominations
Each of our 2026 shortlisted campaigns shows a different side of the same philosophy: diagnose before you prescribe, build for the specific business rather than a template, and never stop at the metrics your client sees on a dashboard.
When the Problem Is Structure, More Budget Is Not the Answer
Our Best PPC Campaign nomination with Power Temp Systems, a Louisiana-based B2B manufacturer serving electrical engineers and procurement teams across industrial, data center, healthcare, and government sectors, begins with a structural audit, not a strategy pitch.
When Forthea took over the account, performance had leveled off even though spending was sufficient. The main issue was structural: overlapping keyword sets split conversion data across too many campaigns, which made it hard for Google’s Smart Bidding to optimize. At the same time, a high-intent search category for NEC 70, NFPA 70B, and OSHA 70E compliance standards were missing from the account. No competitor had targeted it, so we created a dedicated campaign for it.
In three structured phases, we organized the account by product type, launched the compliance and data center verticals, and started a conquest campaign to capture competitor-branded demand. Comparing Q1 2025 to Q1 2026, with a budget increase of less than 5%, conversions grew from 261 to 643, a 146% increase. Cost per conversion dropped from $132 to $56. The conversion rate rose from 3.8% to 5.0%, and average CPC fell by 43%. This is the result of disciplined restructuring.
Turning SEO Into a Revenue Channel You Can Defend
Our Campaign Effectiveness nomination for Paul Davis Milwaukee answered the question every SEO client eventually asks: “We rank well, but what is it actually worth?” It is the right question, and most agencies do not have a satisfying answer.
After establishing dominant rankings across Milwaukee’s highest-value restoration search terms, Forthea developed a proprietary AI lead-scoring model trained on Paul Davis Milwaukee’s business criteria, classifying every inbound call into nine categories, from highly qualified restoration leads to misdials, at scale. Across 4,722 scored calls, 40.8% were identified as qualified leads. We then built a custom revenue attribution dashboard that integrates CRM data, call tracking, and organic channel performance into a single, auditable view.
The 12-month result: $7.3 million in revenue and 2,356 jobs attributed directly to organic and Google Business Profile channels. Qualified leads grew from 312 to 1,462 year over year, and the qualified call rate improved from 32.5% to 42.2%. But the outcome that mattered most to the client was not metric; it was clarity. For the first time, they could see exactly where their revenue was coming from, identify gaps in their own sales pipeline, and make budget decisions based on business performance rather than marketing assumptions.
Outperforming Paid Competition with Pure Organic Precision
Forthea’s Best SEO Campaign nomination for The Green at Plum Creek focused on strategic keyword targeting in a highly competitive, fast-growing Central Texas market. Instead of pursuing broad, costly search terms, the team refreshed content around hyperlocal, intent-specific queries on key pages. As a result, organic sessions increased by 61%, total conversions rose by 265%, and completed apartment applications surged by 400%, all without spending additional money on paid media. This demonstrates the power of a precise organic strategy in a market dominated by heavy advertising.
Innovation That Keeps Clients Ahead of the Curve
The search environment in 2026 is different from that in 2022. Google’s AI Overviews are redistributing clicks. Performance Max has compressed auction-level transparency. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Mode are becoming discovery channels for buyers who may never see a traditional results page. Agencies that are not actively building for this environment are quietly losing foundation for their clients.
Forthea has invested ahead of this shift. Our in-house analytics team, led by PhD-level researchers has developed a suite of proprietary tools that operate well beyond what standard platform reporting provides: a marketing intelligence platform that replaces last-click attribution with full-funnel revenue modeling; a Multifamily Budget Planner helping residential clients tie budget decisions to leasing velocity targets; an AI Overview Impact Model that maps impression and click-rate exposure by industry and campaign category, allowing us to anticipate platform-driven performance changes before they register on a client’s dashboard; and the AI lead scoring model that drove the Paul Davis Milwaukee results above.
We have also formalized our practice in Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), building structured strategies to make sure our clients appear within AI-generated answers, not just below them. When a buyer asks an AI assistant which agency to trust or which restoration company serves Milwaukee, we want our clients to be the answer. That work starts now, not after the traffic drop.
What These Nominations Mean to Our Team
Awards are most meaningful when they recognize the people behind the work and the clients who make it possible. Here is what this recognition means to Forthea.
“We enter the US Agency Awards because the judging process demands the same level of accountability, we hold ourselves to every day. Five consecutive nominations for PPC Agency of the Year are meaningful not because of the streak, but because each year is a reminder of the standard we intend to keep.”
— Chris Pappas, CEO, Forthea
“What makes these nominations meaningful is that they represent clients who gave us the trust and the runway to build something real. The Paul Davis Milwaukee and Green at Plum Creek programs did not happen overnight. They were built on measurement, strategic patience, and a belief that SEO should be held to the same revenue accountability as any other marketing channel.”
— Natalie Hoben, SEO Service Lead, Forthea
“The results in these nominations are not solitary wins; they are the reflection of relationships and the knowledge built over years. Our analysts know the clients’ seasonality, their sales cycles, their competitive pressures. That depth cannot be easily replicated, and it is the reason our long-term partners consistently outperform.”
— Davis Baker, Senior Director, Client Strategy & Performance, Forthea
What to Demand from a Digital Marketing Partner
If your organization is evaluating a digital marketing agency for PPC, SEO, AEO, Analytics, CRO, Web Design, or any combination, the right benchmark is not impressions, rankings, or click-through rates. It’s about whether your agency connects what they do to what your business earns, and whether they prove it.
That is the question Forthea has been answering for five consecutive years at the US Agency Awards, and every day in between. The 2026 winners will be announced on August 6th. We are honored to be a five-category finalist and grateful to every client and partner whose trust and collaboration made this recognition possible.
