For Years, We Thrived Without Marketing. Now What?

This week, in episode 222, we bring you another Entrepreneurial Fish Bowl with Chris Hutchinson. These Fish Bowls are our virtual brainstorming sessions where we offer business owners the opportunity to pose a challenge they’re facing to a group of owners and entrepreneurs from the 21 Hats community. This time, our volunteers are Alvin Elbert, founder of A.R.E. Manufacturing, and his daughter Megan Perona, who explain that their company had its best year ever in 2022 but has seen business fall off since then. For 40 years, A.R.E. grew slowly but steadily on word of mouth. More recently, however, the Elbert family has concluded that it’s time to do some real marketing. Like a lot of owners, though, they’re a little overwhelmed by the options, unsure where to begin, and wary of wasting money. They also happen to be going through a family ownership transition. The 21 Hats brainstormers begin by asking a lot of questions, including whether the owners have invested in search engine optimization, whether they’ve gone back to some of the customers they lost to China, and whether they’ve considered hiring a marketing agency.