To show just how high the ceiling is for well-run businesses that really invest in their marketing, we want to introduce you to Trent Davison, co-owner of Snohomish Tree. One of Trent’s favorite parts of owning Snohomish Tree is talking to people. And thanks to a steady upward climb in sales over the past two years, that aspect of the work has become his main role. He spends most of his time on sales, conversation, management, and marketing.

When Trent first connected with us, Snohomish Tree had no online presence. He started off with a splash page (essentially a “business card” style website to provide basic info for local internet users) and pay-per-click advertising. To spread out the costs of building a fully functional, multi-page site, he had us build out one new page each month.

Snohomish Tree has seen handsome returns on their marketing. Some of those returns they’ve invested into scaling up they’re marketing, and the returns keep coming. This timeline shows their increase in leads over time:

Trent estimates that he normally closes about 30% of his leads, but recently he has seen stretches where he closes as much as 70%. We like to speculate that this could be from the highly tailored nature of online marketing. As your marketing funnel develops, it's possible that the leads you get could be more qualified.

Why marketing has worked so well for Snohomish Tree

Naturally, we’d expect to see some impact based solely on the fact that he started from ground zero. But thanks in no small part to Trent’s enthusiasm for marketing, they’ve grown enough to bring on a full crew of cutters and groundmen into their business. Now they’re looking forward to bringing on another crew to handle all the leads coming down the funnel.

It would be silly to attribute all of Snohomish Tree’s growth to marketing, of course. Growth comes first and foremost from providing value. If that’s not there, there’s nothing to market. Some of this increase in sales is natural, coming from relationship building, word-of-mouth and a growing community presence. But Trent has shared with us that he doesn’t think they would have had enough business to put a crew to work if it wasn’t for marketing. It seems the reason business is scaling up at such a rate is that Snohomish Tree takes their marketing seriously.

Trent is corresponding with us frequently, developing an articulate and detailed vision he has for his company. He treats marketing as part of his daily routine. An ordinary day sees him play the roles of business owner, salesman, and content creator. His video content is effective because his enthusiasm is contagious, and he puts a name and face to the brand.

Customers appreciate being able to feel some sort of connection to the people behind a business. We speculate that this is because we instinctively know that businesses care about money, but people care about people. Without a face to tie to the business, it can feel transactional. Whatever it is, Trent often comments to us on how new customers who’ve seen his face in videos treat him like an old friend.

-

If you treat your marketing as an expense and an obligation, that’s what it will be. If you treat marketing as an opportunity and a skill to be developed, you’ll see the returns you would expect from those things. Perhaps the reason for this is that your level of enthusiasm shows through in your messaging. Perhaps its because the more you do it, the better you understand what works. Ultimately, marketing is, at the end of the day, another investment --- a scalable one that you have a lot of control over.