The evolution of marketing commenced with the introduction of digitalization. This evolution has granted businesses the ability and the opportunity to reach more people through better mediums. Additionally, the evident technological developments are providing the right assets for fulfilling the marketing industry’s essential requirements.
So far, technology has transformed marketing by making campaigns more personalized and efficient, creating a more integrated system for customers and marketers alike.
With these advancements, the demand for enhanced marketing tactics for businesses are on the rise. The ability to master and leverage these trends is becoming one of the most sought-after skills.
Currently, the marketing space is dominated by companies that are consistently providing their clients with effective marketing strategies and tools to enhance their business, and Third Marble Marketing is one prominent name among such companies.
Third Marble Marketing specializes in getting businesses on page #1 of the Google search results with Search Engine Optimization services and Google Ads Management. The company helps its clients with almost any kind of budget—from $300 to $20,000+ a month—with Google Ads.
Third Marble’s vision is to help small businesses grow. Whereas its mission is to engineer affordable Google solutions to grow its client’s business with efficient processes. The company operates on the core values of being transparent, client-focused, efficient, collaborative, and excellent in the marketing industry.
Third Marble has proven experience with search, display, remarketing, shopping, and YouTube ads. They also specialize in local search engine optimization and can also help their national and eCommerce website clients. The company has specific departments that perform specific tasks in accounts.
The Commencement
Chris Fawcett, the founder and CEO is at the helm of the company’s ascending success. Third Marble started when the owner of Chris’s favourite local pizza shop asked him to build a website. He agreed, and after the website was up and running for a while, the pizza shop owner was not getting any phone calls from his website. Chris told him that he needed to do some online advertising. “If you build it, they will not come,” Chris said. “Having a website without advertising it is like printing business cards and not handing them to anyone.”
A few weeks later, the pizza shop owner called Chris with some 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 $1200 a month on a 12-month contract for Pay per Click advertising.
Chris could not believe it – there was no way there are that many searches for pizza in one month for that small of a geographic area. So, Chris advised the pizza shop owner not to sign that contract and began advertising the pizza shop’s new website. He tried numerous different strategies to advertise the pizza shop online, including search engine optimization, email marketing, social media, and pay-per-click on Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
After only a few weeks, it became very obvious that there was only one truly effective strategy—one that was cost-effective and did not consume hours of the owner’s time each week—Google Ads.
For such a small company, Yahoo and Bing did not generate enough clicks to make the management of the campaigns worthwhile. Facebook and email marketing were too time-consuming for the owner and did not help generate many new customers.
Since Google Ads was generating 80% of all the traffic to the website, and budgets and resources were limited for the pizza shop, the team decided to drop all other online marketing, except for Google Ads.
What fascinated Chris the most – he had a tough time even spending $300 per month, let alone $1200. How could that ‘reputable’ company charge a little pizza shop $1200 per month? Were there other small businesses that needed this kind of help too?
So, Chris started asking other local business owners if they ever get business from their websites and if they ever had a positive experience with an online marketing company. Their experiences varied, but there was one common response – ‘No.’
So, Chris 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.
Seeing the opportunity to start a small business that could help small business owners everywhere, Chris did quit his job and started Third Marble Marketing. After a while, it became very obvious that there are too many internets advertising companies out there that 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 by: “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.”
So, Chris vowed to make Third Marble Marketing a resource to help the small, local business owners grow their business by providing an affordable internet marketing strategy that effectively generates customers, NOT ‘traffic’.
Outstanding Leadership
Chris’ dedication to learning ‘all things Google’ has been a huge asset to Third Marble Marketing. He is and continues to be one of the top Google experts in the entire company, who helps to train the rest of the employees. His training keeps the staff up to date on the latest changes concerning Google. His focus on keeping a positive work culture is part of what makes working for Third Marble special.
As a recovering industrial engineer, Chris has always been focused on efficiency and making things work better. It is just the way his brain is wired. Growing up, he always enjoyed taking things apart to see how they worked.
As a child, very few of his toys lasted exceedingly long. Chris was always trying to make them go faster or fly higher. For example, he can tell you that Lego motors do not last very long when you connect them to a car battery.
Chris went to Virginia Tech when he found out that they were one of the top-rated Industrial Engineering schools in the nation. In the ‘80s, Japan was out-manufacturing America, and Chris wanted to make a difference, and that’s still one of his main motivations today.
After college, he started working for a marketing company that was using advanced technology to improve its marketing decisions. They quickly entered the eCommerce space in the early 1990s, and that is how he started his career in internet marketing. After several eCommerce jobs from 1992 to 2009, Chris started Third Marble to help the average American small business compete online.
What Sets Third Marble Apart
As established before, Third Marble’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 that their potential customers are turning to Google to find businesses.
If they, like many business owners, do not have the time to research and work full time on their Google Ads and SEO to try to get to page one, Third Marble’s proven processes could be the simple, affordable answer. Because when a business owner hires Third Marble, they are hiring a team of Google Ads and SEO experts to apply its affordable and proven process to their business.
Third Marble has spent over ten years streamlining their process. The company hires folks who believe in its vision of helping local economies grow by engineering an affordable online marketing option with Google. People working at Third Marble care about each of their client’s goals and understand how important their services are to the businesses they cater to.
As established before, Third Marble is hyper-focused on Google to such an extent that it knows every update and change, so it can pivot if/when necessary. The company’s reporting is generated directly from its client’s Google Ads account and spit out in a way that makes sense. It also reflects data fluctuations from the previous month, so clients can easily track if their cost per click has increased, for example.
Efficient Collaboration
When a client signs up for Third Marble’s services, their account is assigned to an Account Manager. The account manager meets with the client to understand what their marketing goals are and disperses that information to the rest of the team.
Whenever their client needs to make a change to their account, all they have to do is email their Account Manager. Then, Third Marble figures out the best way to accomplish what the client needs.
Third Marble’s business is built around the Henry Ford assembly line concept. The company has specific departments that perform specific tasks in accounts. This allows it to be efficient with its work, allowing overhead costs down and keeping pricing affordable for its clients.
The company has the pricing designed to just perform Google Ads management or SEO work, but if the client needs a little extra collaboration or help outside of those areas, Third Marble has options to make that happen for its clients.
Third Marble is 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; each one is an expensive specialist, who meets regularly to figure out what custom plan is needed to achieve one’s 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 very customized result at a much higher price.
A ‘process-based’ service, like Third Marble, does not 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.
Enabling Innovations in the Marketing Space
Google is constantly changing, but they have always remained true to their one purpose, and that is to give a google searcher their most relevant search results possible. Years ago, the algorithms were easier to understand. Today, Google uses more artificial intelligence in its algorithms for determining the organic search results.
Even the bidding options and algorithms in Google Ads have expanded dramatically. Also, Google Ads has grown more complicated and requires more analysis than it did several years ago.
Since Third Marble is always focused on bringing its client’s business on page one of Google, they are just continuing the ride of the AI and ML wave. Third Marble learns, and researches each update, rectifies how it is changing its client’s results and adjusts its processes to keep its clients on page one of Google.
Surmounting the Adversities of the Pandemic
Having the team separated from each other has been a challenge for Third Marble. Partly just because they all really enjoy each other’s company, and the rest is that sometimes it is just easier to work in the office together for some projects. The team had just moved into a bigger office space before the pandemic hit, which was a really exciting move for Third Marble.
They got about a year into enjoying that space, and now it sits as an overhead cost while everyone works from home. The company is doing its best to understand this time is a struggle in diverse ways for everyone on the team, and they are all navigating this tough time the best way they can. Though, they miss seeing each other and getting together for company activities.
Inspiring the Aspirants
“Google is constantly updating and changing; prepare your staff to stay on top of all the changes that Google makes,” says Chris.
Clients tend to expect instant results and that just does not happen. Google Ads is a database marketing tool. Chris’ opinion is, “Remember to analyse the data; what works for one client may not work for another.”
Marketing campaign requires data. A brand-new campaign has no data, so it takes time to collect enough data for the system to make intelligent, predictable decisions, and adjustments to the bidding. Be sure to manage their expectations.
Chris also mentions, “the more you spend, the better the results.” Clients can see results with modest budgets; however, it takes longer to optimize the campaign for a positive ROI. The same concept applies here. “More data means better decisions and better results,” he adds.
To get there faster, you need data, which means you need a healthy budget to create data trends.
Chris’ advice is “Know what people want, how they think, and how they search.” The increase in voice search and digital assistants has increased the variety of search terms.
“Know how this affects how people search for your client’s products and services,” he adds.
A Thrust towards a Better Future
Third Marble Marketing will continue to streamline processes to keep overhead costs down so that it can pass those savings onto its clients. Third Marble Marketing is conducting shopping ad studies to update its current process and is witnessing significant success while fulfilling its clients’ requirements.
