Whether a company is a multi-million dollar franchise or a locally owned small store, the need to market themselves to potential customers remains the same. While larger businesses with millions of dollars in resources find this easy, many smaller businesses remain reluctant to truly invest in marketing as a true business expense.
We spoke with one of our clients who owns and operates their own businesses. The goal was to compare their marketing experience from when they did it in-house to how it is now being handled by an agency.
We spoke with Tage Harding, owner of Mobile Pet Shine. When asked about his marketing efforts that were being done in-house he had this to say: “We created and posted on our social medias the we created and managed ourselves. (We) had invested heavily into Google Ads and we were spending a lot of money on it but never really maintaining it.” I asked him how he felt this worked for Mobile Pet Shine, and he said: “The information we got back from Google was hard to analyze and get useful information from. The ads that we were putting out lacked a sort of personality of company feel to them. We just kept throwing money at it and hoping something stuck.”
Mobile Pet Shine is not the first or the last small business that will attempt their own marketing in-house. The struggle Tage faced is trying to operate his marketing while also running every other aspect of his business. He described the process as, “difficult to learn, time consuming and not cost effective. “Things fall through the cracks and if you’re not being consistent in your messaging you’re not doing it well.”
Around two years ago, Kim approached Tage from Mobile Pet Shine as a long-time customer regarding their marketing. Six months ago, he hired Shepheard Marketing to handle the company’s marketing efforts and continues to this day. I asked Tage a few questions about how he felt about using a marketing firm rather than in-house efforts. He said this when asked about the communication to potential clients through the methods of trained marketers: ”Absolutely worth the investment. Shepheard Marketing an amazing job speaking to potential customers in a way that grabs and holds peoples attention. (Kim) has been able to create a brand and persona for Mobile Pet Shine that directs people to us and to calls-to-action, mainly booking an appointment. I don’t know if we had the words to speak to our customers this way.”
In recent months, as their marketing keeps building momentum, Mobile Pet Shine has continued to grow and expand, and shows no sign of stopping. While this success couldn’t happen without their excellent service and professionalism, Tage himself credits their marketing as a large part of that success. He leaves any small or new business owners who are hesitant to invest in a marketing firm with these words:
“Just do it. Devote time and money into a pro. It is more efficient than any one business owner can do, as we can only handle so much even if you have good experience. Things fall through. Sometimes marketing is on the bottom of the list, which is silly considering how important it is. Don’t waste the money or the effort. You can save time and money finding someone to do it more efficiently than we can. I needed it to grow and become popular, we never would have reached this level without effective marketing.”