Hi, my name is Mark and I'm the founder of Peak Synergy Marketing. I'd like to tell you a little more about my journey. Back in the Wild West days of the internet, before Google and social media, I graduated from business school and I started to learn about marketing outside of a classroom. At that time, traditional media ruled the advertising universe and it took some serious big bucks to play. I assumed I would end up at a big multinational company and go on to build huge international marketing campaigns. Little did I know that the first dotcom bubble was about to burst and destroy my plans. My first job was at a small, family run business. I learned quickly that businesses in the real world were not operating the way I was taught in business school. Rather, they made decisions on gut instinct without complex formulas or a carefully weighted cost benefit analysis.

A few years later, I landed a job working for a self proclaimed “Internet Marketing Guru”. At first it was a dream job… I got paid to learn and then coach business owners in things like building websites, affiliate marketing, SEO, PPC, copywriting and more. There was a lot of great content but there was a dark secret: This was a house of smoke and mirrors. As the curtain came back it was revealed that everything was based on a lie. There was no mystical wizard with secrets to reveal. This person was not the successful businessman he claimed to be, the one who had made money building a business and then sharing his secrets with the world. The only real money he had ever made was by selling the very product that claimed to teach people how to make money online. A large majority of the people being sold into the program had no real business experience and in some cases didn’t even know how to send an email. When I brought up these concerns they were dismissed saying that these people would just spend their money with a different guru if we didn’t take it so why not just take the money and run. I soon came to learn it wasn’t just this one ‘guru’, it was virtually the entire industry made up of snake oil salesmen selling Ponzi schemes.

Next, I landed a job with one of the largest media companies in the world. While learning the ropes of traditional advertising I also learned how out of touch these companies were with the real world businesses they claimed to serve. It reminded me of how out of touch business school classes were. Everyone touted their digital prowess but were just fumbling in the dark with no real idea of what worked and what didn’t. This media company was so focused on stopping the bleeding from their legacy products that they had to make up for budget short falls by hiding huge management fees for digital advertising in their contracts with local businesses. They were also cutting back drastically on what they were doing in house. When I first started they had a local team of designers that could turn out spectacular ad designs in a matter of hours but by the time I left they had laid off the entire department and outsourced the work overseas. The quality of the work plummeted and the turnaround time was changed from hours to days. 

From these lessons we've set out to create something different with Peak Synergy Marketing. We focus on the needs of real world, small and medium sized businesses, who don’t have big budgets or marketing departments but still understand the value of a well run marketing campaign. We value true collaboration with business owners rather than feeding them a one-size-fits-all solution. We focus on doing the prep work up front so we aren’t wasting time on ineffective campaigns. And lastly, we focus on knowing and tracking the metrics that help businesses reach their goals.