These guides are for Vancouver owners who want to understand their online marketing before spending money on it, or who would rather do some of the work themselves. Each one is long, specific and practical. Read them in any order, though the budget guide is the most useful place to start if you have never worked out what a customer is worth to you.
None of them requires hiring us, and none of them is a sales pitch in disguise. Where a step is easier with help, we say so and link to the relevant service.
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How to set your first-year online marketing budget
Start from what a customer is worth to you, not from what an agency charges. This guide walks through the arithmetic with Vancouver examples and a worksheet you can fill in.
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Marketing in a renter-majority city: tenants, landlords and strata
In Vancouver the person who searches is often not the person who pays. Businesses that market to tenants, owners and building managers separately win more of the city's work.
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Setting up a service-area Google Business Profile in Vancouver
If customers don't come to you, Google expects you to hide your address and list the areas you serve. Here is how to do that properly and make the profile work for a Vancouver business.
How to set your first-year online marketing budget
This guide replaces "spend X% of revenue" with a method built on your own numbers. You work out what one customer is worth, how much you are willing to pay to win one, how many new customers you can actually handle, and therefore the most you should spend each month. It includes worked examples for a trade and for a café, a sample first-year timeline, and a fill-in worksheet.
You'll learn: your maximum cost per enquiry, your monthly marketing ceiling, how to split spend across a year and around Vancouver's seasons, and the minimum tracking needed to know what worked.
Best for: new businesses, owners considering an agency for the first time, and anyone who has spent money on marketing without knowing whether it paid off.
Setting up a service-area Google Business Profile
Many Vancouver businesses, including most trades, have no storefront. This guide explains how Google treats service-area businesses, why your home address should usually be hidden, how to choose service areas by drive time across the city and its bridges, and how to fill in, verify and maintain the profile. It includes a list of common problems, such as suspensions, duplicates and calls from the wrong areas, and how to fix them.
You'll learn: whether you are a storefront, service-area or hybrid business in Google's terms, how to set up the profile within Google's rules, and a simple monthly routine to keep it active.
Best for: trades, mobile services and home-based businesses, and anyone whose profile was set up years ago and never revisited.
Marketing in a renter-majority city
Read the renter-majority guide.
More than half of Vancouver households rent, so the person searching for help often isn't the person paying for it. This guide explains how to market to the three people involved in a lot of local service work: the tenant who searches, the owner who pays and the strata council or property manager who controls access. It covers website sections, profile changes, timing around move-out dates, and the mistakes that cost businesses this work.
You'll learn: how to write for tenants without giving legal opinions, what landlords and property managers look for, and how to build a page that wins repeat building work.
Best for: trades, cleaners, movers, painters, handypeople, locksmiths and any business that works inside apartments, condos and suites.
How to use these guides
Each guide ends with a checklist or worksheet, so you can measure where you stand before and after. Print it, fill it in, and keep it with your other business records; it is far easier to see progress when you can compare this quarter with last.
A sensible order for most businesses:
- Work through the budget guide and fill in the worksheet.
- Use the profile guide to fix your Google listing, the cheapest improvement for most local businesses.
- Read the renter-majority guide and add the relevant sections to your website.
If you finish all three and want help with the next steps, our services page explains what we do, the pricing page shows what it costs, and the areas page describes how we approach each part of the city.
Frequently asked questions
Are these guides really free?
Yes. There is nothing to sign up for. Read them, use them, and if you get stuck you can call, text or email us.
Do I need technical skills to follow them?
No. Each guide is written for busy owners. The budget guide needs a calculator and your own sales numbers; the profile guide needs a Google account and about an hour.
Will you add more guides?
We may, when there is something genuinely useful to say. We would rather keep three excellent guides than publish thin articles every week.