After falling in love with a sailor, Leona Watson jumped aboard a yacht as the crew’s newest cook and sailed off into the sunset. Here she found her second love – bringing people together over good food, good wine and good times. In 2002, Leona decided to turn this passion into a career and Cheeky Food Events was born.

Cheeky’s unique team building offering took off with ease. “In the beginning, there were no competitors. The product didn’t exist, so early growth was very good,” Leona says. Then, the market started to flood, the Global Financial Crisis hit and Cheeky’s phones stopped ringing. After exhausting the traditional advertising methods, including numerous cold calls, Leona turned to Google. “Google Ads has steadily delivered 70-80% of our new business leads over the years and in 2018 it was closer to 90%,” Leona says. “Beyond that, 100% of our international leads come from Google. It’s a fast growing area of the business.”

Over 17 years Leona continued Cheeky’s evolution with the help of Google Analytics and an SEO specialist. She has since sold the company but is looking forward to seeing the next phase of growth as they expand to other Google products, like Display ads and Video campaigns. Leona now spends her time mentoring other small business owners and working on her next adventure with Google at the helm. “Google Analytics is great to have, there’s so much gold in it; from breaking down traffic sources, identifying tyre-kickers and even helping know how the business should speak.”