Chris Fawcett, Founder and President of Third Marble Marketing, advocates for small businesses. He believes that small businesses can indeed make a country stronger. At Third Marble, Chirs and team engineer affordable Google solutions to grow their client’s businesses. He says, “We rarely hear about how small businesses affect the U.S. economy, but did you know that 65% of all new jobs in the last 15 years came from small businesses? If we can support growth, we expect more jobs for small businesses. We believe we play a role in keeping this country strong by providing effective and affordable advertising services. We also agree that small business owners may not afford to spend hundreds of dollars a month on advertising. We hope to be the answer to this problem.”
For Instance, A Pizza Store!
Third Marble has a fascinating founding story, and it starts like this. One day, Chris was asked to build a website for a local pizza shop. He agreed, and the website was up and running in no time. However, the pizza shop owner said he wasn’t getting any phone calls from his website. Chris advised the pizza shop owner to try online marketing because he knows that having a website without advertising is like printing business cards and not handing them to anyone. “A few weeks later, the pizza shop owner called me with questions about a contract he was about to sign. The pizza shop owner was approached by a salesperson from an online advertising company that wanted to charge him USD 1200 a month on a 12-month contract for Pay per Click advertising. I couldn’t believe it – there’s no way there are that many searches for pizza in one month for that small geographic area.”
Chris tried numerous strategies to advertise the pizza shop online, including search engine optimization, email marketing, social media, and pay-per-click on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. He recounts, “After only a few weeks, it became very obvious that there was only one truly effective strategy – one that was cost-effective and didn’t consume hours of the owner’s time each week – Google Ads.” Yahoo and Bing didn’t generate enough clicks for small companies like a local pizza shop to make managing the campaigns worthwhile. Facebook and email marketing were too time-consuming for the owner and didn’t help generate many new customers. Chris adds, “Since Google Ads was generating 80% of all the traffic to the website, and budgets and resources were limited for the pizza shop, we decided to drop all other online marketing except for Google Ads.”
Working with the pizza shop was a revelation for Chris. “What fascinated me the most – I had a hard time even spending USD 300 per month, let alone USD 1200. How could that “reputable” company charge a little pizza shop USD 1200 per month? Were there other small businesses that needed this kind of help too?” he shares. Soon, Chris started asking other local business owners if they ever got business from their websites and had a positive experience with an online marketing company. Though their experiences varied, one typical response was No. “So, I started advertising a few more local companies online using Google Ads, and the results were the same as the pizza shop – more new customers and positive ROI,” recounts Chris.
Seeing the opportunity to start a small business that could help small business owners everywhere, Chris left his job and started Third Marble Marketing. “After a while, it became obvious that too many internet advertising companies out there are taking advantage of small business owners. In fact, the horror stories continue to come about “reputable” companies – including mis-billings, over-charges, lawyer calls, and the most frequently heard story: “I paid them all this money, and they said they drove all this ‘traffic’ to our website, but we haven’t gotten one phone call yet,” adds Chris. So, he vowed to make Third Marble Marketing a resource to help the small, local business owners grow their businesses by providing an affordable internet marketing strategy that effectively generates customers, NOT “traffic.”
Standing out from the crowd
Third Marble specializes in getting businesses on page one of Google with Search Engine Optimization Services and Google Ads Management. It helps clients with almost any kind of budget, from USD 300 to USD 20,000+ a month, with Google Ads. The company has experience with search, display, remarketing, shopping, and YouTube ads. They specialize in local search engine optimization and can help their national and e-commerce website clients.
Chris says, “Third Marble Marketing’s mission is to help local economies grow across the country by making Google Ads and SEO affordable and accessible to local and small businesses. Especially now, their potential customers are turning to Google to find businesses like theirs. Like many business owners, if they do not have the time to research and work full-time on their website to get to page one, our proven processes could be the simple, affordable answer.”
“Our best marketing strategy will always be word of mouth. With our high retention rate of clients, business owners often suggest us to other businesses. We are very thankful to have such amazing clients who put their trust in us and think to suggest us to others,” says Chris. In addition, they’ve seen success with Google Ads, their own SEO efforts, and LinkedIn ads.
When a business owner hires Third Marble, they’re hiring a team of Google Ads and SEO experts to apply their affordable, proven process to their business’s Google Ads and SEO efforts. They’ve spent over ten years streamlining their process so they can pass the savings onto them.
Third Marble hires folks who believe in their vision of helping local economies grow by engineering an affordable online marketing option with Google. Chris adds, “I consider myself lucky to have people working at Third Marble who care about each of our client’s goals and understand how important our services are to their business.” They are so hyper-focused on Google that they know every update and change, so they can pivot if/when necessary. “It makes it easier to continuously train the entire team. We typically have a company-wide training session at least once a week,” says Chris.
Chris adds, “Transparent reporting. I have heard so many horror stories or seen reports from other companies that don’t seem to report anything or, at the very least, aren’t clear. Our reporting is generated directly from our client’s Google Ads account and spit out in a way that makes sense.” It also reflects data fluctuations from the previous month, so you can easily track if your cost per click has increased, for example.
When clients sign up for Third Marble services, their account is assigned to an Account Manager. That Account Manager meets with the client to understand their marketing goals and dispurses that information to the rest of the team. Whenever the client needs to change their account, all they have to do is email their Account Manager. Then they will determine the best way to accomplish what the client needs with Google. With good communication from the client on their leads and changes in their business, Third Marble can create a campaign that will work for them.
“Efficiency. Our business is built around the Henry Ford assembly line concept. We have specific departments that perform specific tasks in accounts. This allows us to be efficient with our work, which keeps our overhead costs down and our pricing affordable for our clients,” says Chris. They also have their pricing designed to perform Google Ads management or SEO work, but if the client needs a little extra collaboration or help outside of those areas, they have options to make that happen for them too.
“We are a ‘Process-Based’ service vs. a “Project-Based” agency. Most full-service digital marketing agencies adopt a “project-based” approach to marketing management. It requires a team of people, perhaps each one is an expensive specialist, that meets regularly to figure out what custom plan is needed to achieve your marketing goals. These excessive meetings take time and cost money. This approach means that every client is a ‘project.’ They have project management tools and software and require a project manager. Projects have a beginning and end, but the steps between the beginning and end are not yet defined. You have to pay a project team to create all the steps to achieve your goals. A project-based service can deliver a customized result at a much higher price,” Chris adds.
A “process-based” service, like Third Marble, doesn’t need all the overhead. Processes have a beginning and end, and the steps between the beginning and end are already defined. A process saves time and energy by not reinventing the wheel with every new customer. Companies that provide a process-based service are more efficient and can deliver a more repeatable, predictable result for a lower price.
Key benefits customers get
Chris says, “A team of USA-based Google experts manage our Google Ads accounts. Our three service level plans are designed so the customer can better customize their preferred service, with the ability to upgrade or downgrade at any time.”
Their Expert Google Ads Setup Includes: Creating or linking to your Google Ads account, keyword research, all ad copywriting, ad extensions, and addition of our initial negative keyword list we developed with our over ten years of experience.
Regular Ongoing Optimization by their Team of Experts Includes: Adjusting keyword bids, bid management strategies, keyword matching, managing negative keywords, reviewing search terms for new keywords and negatives, mobile/desktop ratio optimization and bid adjustments, geo-targeting adjustments, ad Extension adjustments, ad copy optimization and A/B testing ads for higher response rates.
Progress so far
“We were obviously impacted by COVID in the spring of 2020, but we were able to recover by about Sept of that same year. 2021 was a huge growth year for us, and 2022 looks very good. In the second half of 2022, we’ve been hearing more stories about failing businesses, so we have some concerns about the beginning of 2023. We have definitely felt the slowdown in our prospecting efforts in the last few months,” says Chris.
During the recent slowdown, they have been refocusing on improving their internal processes to help them become even more efficient in what they do.
Ensuring clients satisfaction
Chris says, “Our monthly report is about 10 pages long. Our favorite highlights include a high-level view of clicks, the average cost per click, the average click-through rate, conversions, conversion rates, and monthly spending. We also include the previous month’s data so you can see if there are any trends from month to month.” For national accounts, it will even show you where in the US your clicks are coming from. It highlights the keywords that are driving the most traffic and conversions. Which ads are driving the most traffic and so much more.
“Our standard is to reply to emails and calls within one business day. So, our clients are never left hanging regarding their accounts,” adds Chris.
Innovation within the organization
Third Marble’s team is constantly training together. Google Ads is continuously changing and updating; as a result, they have to make sure they update their processes as needed. “So, our entire team gathers once a week to review accounts that need a bit more attention or be trained on new tweaks to our process to keep up with the changes,” says Chris.
In addition, even though their team works remotely most of the time, they come together in the office at least once a week. While also peppering in a team outing at least once a quarter. “Most recently, we rented a party bus to drive around the local neighborhoods with fantastic Christmas light displays. Fun times included snacks and karaoke on the bus when in transit to the next neighborhood. During our meetings, we include time for “headlines,” where the team can share a highlight from their week at work or personal life. It’s been an excellent way for the team to learn how their co-workers enjoy their time when not working on Google Ads,” he adds.
Helping small businesses
Third Marble’s mission is really to help US-based small business owners. So, they’re following a few trends right now. First, many people quit their jobs and started small e-commerce companies. They have picked up dozens of new e-commerce companies in the past year that were started due to COVID disrupting someone’s career.
Chris says, “We’re also looking to expand more into programmatic ads, specifically geofencing ads on mobile. We think the number of ways local businesses have to advertise is shrinking rapidly. Having a presence on mobile will become more important very quickly. To help expand our existing services, we’re also restarting our sales force expansion. We tried to start in early 2020 but abandoned it when COVID hit. People want to do business with people, so we plan to grow our sales team in 2023.”
Future-ready
“We just lowered our prices in December 2022. There aren’t too many businesses that can say that. We’ve been investing in systems and processes to further improve our efficiency and passing those savings on to our customers,” says Chris.
They also want to expand into programmatic ads. Chris adds, “Plenty of clients have asked us about it, so expanding our offering into what our customers ask about makes sense. We’ve been researching this space and have found one of the best Demand Side Platforms (DSP) for our client’s needs. We hope to have this new service up and running by the end of Q1 2023.”
They’re also creating classes for their clients and prospects. “There are so many small business owners out there with questions about how Google works and how it can help a small business grow that we decided to start offering online classes and 1 on 1 help sessions. Look for more of these classes in Q1 of 2023 as well,” Chris concludes.
For More Info: https://www.thirdmarblemarketing.com/