Position: President
Company: Granular LLC
What it does: Pay-per-click digital marketing
Career: Meyer founded Granular in 2014. This year, he invested in new search engine optimization-focused digital marketing agency Momentic. He is also co-founder and marketing director for nonprofit digital marketing organization MKEsearch. Previously, Meyer worked in paid search and digital marketing roles at Globe Education Network, Rasmussen College and Best Buy in the Minneapolis area.
The challenge
Granular is a niche digital marketing firm that only focuses on one aspect of a large industry: pay-per-click. Most digital marketing agencies offer a variety of services, Meyer said.
“Since we only specialize in paid search and paid digital advertising, we often get people looking at us like we can’t solve all of their business problems,” he said. “It is definitely a challenge because we’re going against someone that offers every kind of solution a business would be looking for.”
The resolution
The agency began developing relationships with other marketing firms in southeastern Wisconsin, and referring clients to them if their needs were outside Granular’s area of expertise, such as website help.
“We’ve actually become friends and we’ve become close with a lot of other agencies in town and even throughout the U.S.,” Meyer said. “In turn, a lot of other agencies are actually coming to us to help solve the one problem we’re good at, which is paid search.”
In addition, Granular executives invested in a new agency that launched this year, Momentic, that focuses on search engine optimization exclusively.
“A lot of agencies would bundle these together…but since we’re so strict to what Granular offers, we often get asked for SEO referrals,” Meyer said. “It’s definitely solving a pain point for Granular and for the clients we serve.”
The takeaway
“The biggest one was that I need to stick with my gut and build on our strengths,” Meyer said. “A lot of startups and agencies will at some point in their history have a pivot story. With me, I started with that mindset that we’re going to do this one thing (and) we’re going to do it really well forever.”
Even though clients were asking Granular to add services, Meyer held to his original mission. And he formed better relationships with other agencies around town.
“Even though we’re technically competitors, it’s like a different subset of competitors,” Meyer said. “It’s made a lot better, less competitive environment in the city for us.” n
