From SEM → to ZEN.
Most business owners meet digital marketing at its loudest, bid wars, algorithm updates, dashboards nobody explains. We take you somewhere quieter: a marketing engine that runs, that you understand, and that brings you leads while you get on with your actual business.
No lock-in contracts. No jargon. Founder-led from the first call to the last report.
You didn't start a business to become a marketing expert.
But here you are, reading about keyword difficulty at 11pm and wondering why your cost per lead doubled last month. We hear the same four sentences from almost every owner who calls us.
“Some months the leads come in. Some months, nothing.”
No system underneath it, just referrals, luck, and whatever the algorithm feels like this week.
“I'm spending on ads but I can't tell you what's working.”
Money going out, attribution nowhere. Nobody has ever shown you the full picture in one place.
“Leads come in, then they just disappear.”
No follow-up process, no CRM discipline, no one owning the handoff between marketing and sales.
“If this one channel dies, I'm in trouble.”
Everything riding on one platform or one referrer. That's not a strategy, that's exposure.
None of these are marketing problems, exactly. They're clarity problems. That's where we start.
Founder-led, start to finish.
We're Jorge Cedeño and Alejandra Pereira, married, and business partners, in that order.
In 2023 we moved into digital marketing working with companies in the United States, learning to make strategies hold up in one of the most competitive markets there is. We founded Maestros SEM to keep doing exactly that, with more control over the standard of the work.
Nobody handed us a playbook. We taught ourselves the long way, content, social media, paid advertising, SEO, and eventually the part almost nobody wants to touch: the operations and processes behind the marketing. That path shaped how we work. We're allergic to vanity metrics because we've had to justify every dollar of our own budget, and we document everything because we've inherited messes with no notes.
As projects grow we bring in specialists for specific parts of the work, but we don't hand you off. One of us sets the strategy, reviews the output and stays on your calls. Whoever executes a piece of your account works closely with a founder, to a documented standard.
Jorge Cedeño
Paid media & analyticsLives in ad accounts and tracking data, mostly asking one question: yes, but did it actually sell anything?
Alejandra Pereira
Marketing analyst / SEO, content & processBuilds the systems that turn a stranger into a lead, then writes them down so they survive your next hire.
Three services. One system.
We don't sell these as separate boxes to tick. Ads bring traffic, SEO compounds it, and consultancy makes sure the business behind them can actually handle it. Most clients start with one and grow into the rest.
Traffic you don't have to keep paying for.
Ads stop the moment you stop paying. SEO is the opposite, slower to start, then it just keeps working. We build the asset that carries your business when budgets tighten.
- Technical audit & fixes, speed, crawlability, indexation, mobile, Core Web Vitals.
- Keyword & intent research, not just what people search, but why, and how close they are to buying.
- On-page optimisation, structure, internal linking, and content written for humans first.
- Content strategy & production, a publishing plan tied to commercial intent, not a blog calendar for its own sake.
- Local SEO, Google Business Profile, citations, reviews, map pack visibility.
- Authority building, earned links and mentions, no shortcuts we'd have to apologise for later.
Best for: businesses that want to reduce their dependence on paid channels and build visibility that compounds.
Demand today, while SEO builds for tomorrow.
Paid media is the fastest way to find out whether your offer works. Done badly, it's also the fastest way to burn cash. We run accounts the way we run our own: tight tracking, honest attribution, and a bias toward killing what doesn't convert.
- Google Ads, search built around commercial intent, Performance Max, Shopping, display and remarketing.
- Meta Ads, cold audience testing, creative iteration, retargeting and lookalike structures, lead campaigns.
- Creative direction, hooks, angles and offers that earn the click, tested rather than guessed.
- Landing pages & CRO, because the ad is only half the job.
- Proper tracking, GA4, Meta Pixel, Conversions API, server-side where it earns its place.
- Weekly optimisation, monthly strategic review, and full account access. It's your account, always.
Best for: businesses that need leads now, or that want to validate an offer before investing in slower channels.
Fixing what happens after the lead arrives.
This is the part most agencies skip, and it's usually where the money is hiding. You can double your traffic and change nothing about your revenue if leads sit unanswered for three days, or if nobody owns follow-up. We map what's actually happening, then rebuild it.
- Lead management & lead journeys, what happens in the first five minutes, who owns it, where leads get lost.
- Channel diversification, organic, paid, referral, partnerships, outbound, owned audience. No single point of failure.
- Sales funnels & processes, offer structure, qualification, follow-up cadence, objection handling. Documented and repeatable.
- Operational improvement, handoffs, response times, capacity planning, and the frictions quietly capping your growth.
- Automation, CRM updates, follow-up sequences, notifications, reporting. If it happens the same way twice, it can run itself.
- AI implementation, lead qualification, content at scale, support triage, sales call analysis. Measured, and cut if it doesn't earn its place.
- Data tracking & documentation, you end up owning a documented system, not a dependency on us.
Best for: businesses already getting leads but leaking them in conversion, follow-up or operations, and owners who want to stop being the bottleneck.
How we work
The same four moves, whatever service you start with. In this order, because each one depends on the last.
A real conversation before any proposal
Your business, your numbers, what's actually broken versus what only feels broken. We ask a lot of questions. Some of them uncomfortable.
The whole picture on one page
Traffic sources, conversion points, lead journey, tracking gaps, operational bottlenecks. You get this map whether or not you hire us. For most owners it's the first time they've seen all of it at once.
Biggest impact, lowest friction, first
Campaigns, content, tracking, automations, processes, whatever the map says needs doing, in priority order. You see all of it as it happens.
Then it gets quiet
Weekly optimisation, monthly review, quarterly strategy, everything documented as we go, so the system belongs to your business rather than living in our heads.
We don't sell one solution to everybody.
We adapt the work to what your business actually needs and the pace of growth you're after. Here's what that looks like day to day.
A founder stays on your account
We bring in specialists as the work demands it, and we supervise every piece of it. You're never handed to an account manager relaying messages from people you've never met.
We document everything
Processes, decisions, results, what we tried and why it failed. You keep all of it. If we parted ways tomorrow you'd still have a working system.
We'll tell you when to stop spending
If a channel isn't working we say so, even when that means a smaller retainer. Long-term trust beats a good quarter.
Marketing and operations, together
Very few agencies will touch what happens after the lead lands. That's precisely where most growth is stuck.
No jargon tax
If we can't explain it in plain language we don't understand it well enough. You'll never be made to feel slow in a meeting.
Tooling set up, not rented out
We advise on the CRM, tracking and automation stack that actually fits your business, and set it up either as a one-time project or as ongoing work while your processes keep changing. Everything is registered in your name.
Are we a fit?
Probably yes, if…
- You have a business that already works, we're here to scale it, not invent it
- You want to understand your marketing, not just outsource it and hope
- You're open to changing processes, not only campaigns
- You can commit to three to six months, anything shorter and neither of us learns much
- You'd rather hear an uncomfortable truth early than a comfortable one late
Probably not, if…
- You want guaranteed rankings, or guaranteed leads by Friday
- You're shopping for the cheapest option on the market
- You want someone to post on Instagram and nothing more
- You need results without changing anything about how the business runs
We'd rather turn down work than take a project we don't believe we can move. It's less awkward for everyone.
Straight answers
Paid advertising can produce leads within days, though the first 30–45 days are mostly learning and optimisation. SEO usually shows meaningful movement between months three and six, and compounds from there. Consultancy work often produces the fastest wins, because fixing a broken follow-up process can change conversion in weeks. We'll be specific about your situation on the first call — vague promises help nobody.
No. Most clients start with whichever is most urgent and expand once they see how we work. We'll tell you which one that is, even when it's the smaller engagement.
Jorge and Alejandra lead every account — strategy, review and calls. Depending on the scope, we bring in specialists to execute specific parts of the work, and one of us works alongside them throughout. You'll always know who is touching your account and who is accountable for it: us.
You do, always. Everything is set up under your ownership from day one, and you keep all documentation if we stop working together. Agencies that hold accounts hostage are telling on themselves.
Primarily the United States. We started working with US companies in 2023 and built Maestros SEM around that market, so we're used to its competitiveness, its buyer behaviour and its time zones. Everything runs remotely on video calls, shared documentation and clear reporting.
It depends on the service and how competitive your market is. On the first call we'll tell you honestly whether your budget can produce the results you're after — and if it can't yet, what to do instead. That call is free either way.
Practical things: automating lead qualification, speeding up content production, triaging enquiries, analysing sales calls, building internal knowledge systems. We find where it genuinely saves time or improves output, implement it, measure the result, and remove whatever doesn't earn its keep.
We ask for an initial three-month commitment, because meaningful work can't be judged in four weeks. After that it's month to month. If we're doing our job you won't want to leave; if we're not, you shouldn't have to stay.
Let's find out where your growth is actually stuck.
Thirty minutes, no pitch deck, no obligation. Tell us about your business and we'll tell you what we'd do, the honest version, including the parts where you don't need us.
Prefer email? office@maestros-sem.com. Jorge or Alejandra replies to every enquiry personally, usually within one business day.