Tell us a bit about your business.
I live in a rural community with about 50,000 people between two towns. After spending time working for the local university and freelancing for a while, I really wanted to create a world-class agency that even small businesses could afford. We do work nationally with a lot of businesses, but we try to subsidize local businesses that just can’t afford big marketing budgets, let alone online media budgets.
From there, we have specialized in helping small businesses in rural areas with websites, PPC and CRM deployments. Part of that is using/recommending the Site Booster service to make sure their local listings are fantastic for local searches. And, teaching them the value of local searches when most of the local business owners are not tech savvy.
How has your business progressed recently and what do you attribute that to? Where do you see your business in one year?
Our business has progressed, by the grace of God, to move forward each day as we do our best to serve our customers. We see this next year really stepping into bigger contracts and businesses. We’ve struggled to attract solid talent and afford skilled workers with our business model. So, we have become Microsoft partners. We hope to offer additional services to bigger companies so that we can subsidize smaller ones while paying fair salaries to attract even greater talent. Then, we can provide a better service and hopefully create a never-ending loop of excellence.
One of our biggest decisions for the year has been to launch a new, affordable CRM/email marketing platform for the types of small businesses we serve in order to provide additional technological support.
What are your favorite tools or resources that help you do business smarter, and how have they made a difference?
I think our best tools have been Reporting Ninja, WordPress, WaveApps and AppSumo.
YouCanBook and eSign Genie are new tools we are testing for the year. We do like Teamwork Projects for project management and ticketing.
We haven’t been pleased with many sales/CRM/marketing platforms, so we are currently developing our own to offer our client base.
What advice would you offer to businesses like yours just starting up?
Stay away from gurus. Look to the Ogilvy, Bruce Barton and David Kennedy—people who really understand advertising. Get certifications and skills. Even if you are not the implementer, it gives you a better understanding of how to serve the client and ensure you are meeting their needs.
Above all, work in such a way that you bring repute not only to yourself but to your craft as well.
Where can customers find and connect with your business?
pullmanmarketing.com or on Twitter.
Submitted January 2018
