Single-minded marketing firm expands into Chicago

Single-minded marketing firm expands into Chicago

Adam Henige. Courtesy Netvantage Marketing

A marketing firm specializing in a single service has moved into Chicago, taking it one step closer to its goal of becoming a regional company.

Finding growth

Netvantage Marketing, which specializes in search engine marketing, has experienced double-digit growth five out of the last six years, prompting it to add its third office.

Next year, the firm, which is headquartered in Lansing and operates a Grand Rapids office, is on track to experience more than 20-percent growth.

It has also grown from a two-person operation to a nine-person company since it was founded in 2008 by Joe Ford and Adam Henige.

Both men currently serve as managing partners of Netvantage Marketing.

“We haven’t stopped growing since we started, primarily because of the strong partnerships we have with our clients — they trust us to do our best work for them, and we thrive on producing exceptional results,” Henige said.

Single focus

Henige said early on, he and Ford made the decision to focus exclusively on search engine optimization services, or SEO, forgoing website design and development, which many of their competitors also provide.

“It’s been one of the most-important decisions we made as a company,” Henige said.

He said even though it meant turning down paid work initially, as a long-term plan, it’s helped the firm grow in ways it probably wouldn’t have otherwise.

“As anyone who has tried to market via Google in the past couple of years will tell you, Google is moving extremely quickly,” Henige said. “They are changing how their algorithm works at a faster pace than they have in the history of Google. For us, considering it’s the only thing we do, it makes sure we stay on top of things.

“It’s been huge for our growth, because some marketing and web design agencies eventually throw their hands up and say we aren’t going to do this ourselves anymore, because we can’t keep up. We are going to look for a partner.”

The decision helped the firm expand with a Grand Rapids office in 2012.

Client base

Henige said the firm has built up its West Michigan client base, which has included Gordon Food Service, Autocam Medical and Brunswick Bowling.

“I think we have a pretty good thing going in Grand Rapids,” Henige said.

Chicago

As the firm sat back and took a look at what may be next, Chicago stood out as a great opportunity.

Henige said Netvantage will be able to provide the same level of service but at a lower cost, because of its infrastructure setup.

“The nice thing going into that Chicago market is our infrastructure is set up in Grand Rapids and Lansing and that’s not going to change,” Henige said.

Mike Hall, a Netvantage Marketing account manager, is heading up the Chicago office, which is located at 1035 W. Lake St.