Okay, great. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Client Spotlight podcast with MacRAE’S. My name is Crystal Bell-Smythe and today I’m happy to be joined by Chris Adams from Canadian Shade. So what we’ll do is we’ll just hear a little bit about their business journey and how working with MacRAE’S has helped them grow. And so, yeah, let’s just go ahead and get started. So, Chris, if you can just go ahead and introduce yourself, a bit about yourself and a bit about your role at Canadian Shade.
Thank you for having me on here. I’m very happy to be here and happy to ⁓ give my story. My name is Chris. I’m the director at Canadian Shade. ⁓ We’ve been in business for about 10 years. We sell, service and install retractable patio awnings in Southern Ontario. We started with one factory. ⁓
Yeah, of course.
It’s all Canadian made goods and we eventually grew. we service multiple Canadian factories representing Canadian products in our industry. ⁓ Kind of being their boots on the ground servicing, installing originally just the Toronto area. Now we’re all across Southern Ontario.
that’s amazing. you kind of answered sort of leading into my next question about, you know, who is it that you serve in terms of industry and location and then what it is you do. So that’s great to see that, you know, you’ve expanded beyond like the Toronto area into more of Southern Ontario, like you said.
Yeah.
We have, we have.
We are primary residential. We do some commercial, but primarily we service, ⁓ know, the way we engage our clients is more about providing shade for the backyard. That whole outdoor living lifestyle is what we specialize in.
Yes. Yes, definitely
with these summer months, we want to take advantage of that as much as possible. Yes, exactly. So if you could, like I know you just gave us a brief background, but if you could maybe in one sentence, if you could like describe your business, just boil it down to one sentence for me.
Sure, for sure. Yeah.
Sure, yeah. we, I guess if I put it into one sentence, ⁓ we sell service and install ⁓ shade products for the backyard.
Perfect, sounds great. Thank you. And then so leading into a bit about your partnership and working with MacRAE’S, what would you say it was that prompted you to look for a digital marketing partner?
So I actually come from a marketing background ⁓ I I was for several years doing this all on my own ⁓ and as the business grew I started to realize that even though I knew the industry and I knew you know how to do online marketing that there were the other 15 jobs I also had to do at the same time and something had to give and
Okay.
Hmm.
Right. Yes.
I didn’t know marketing started to take more and more of a backseat in my day-to-day operations and I couldn’t manage both running the business and properly paying attention to ⁓ engaging our customers, our potential customers, our leads. ⁓ And as fortune would have it, that’s when I met Robert, who’s our initial point of contact. ⁓ He kind of introduced me to his company and… ⁓
All right. Yep.
started the relationship from there. Yeah.
Yeah, so essentially came out of a necessity. You were pulled in too many directions and you’re like, I’m just going to have to leave this in the hands of ⁓ an agency to handle the marketing side of things.
Yeah,
Robert actually wasn’t, you guys weren’t actually the first. ⁓ I did go through a couple of, ⁓ you know, it started with a couple of, we all get the emails, you know, your website looks terrible, I can help, sort of deal. ⁓ I went through a couple of those, because I liked the price tag, but then, you know, it came down to the whole, what did you pay for, I guess, and nothing really worked well, so. ⁓
Okay.
Yeah.
I guess having that critical eye too is I knew what was good and what wasn’t ⁓ on reviewing. ⁓ So I quickly kind of churned through a couple and then eventually met you guys.
Yeah, that was going to be one of my follow-up questions is what made you decide on McCrae’s over maybe some of the other options that you were looking at.
Well ⁓ that was it basically. mean I was, you guys came across more, ⁓ well let’s say less like somebody in their basement doing the SEO. You know, you guys had, you know, immediately I was introduced to Tanveer and the team, creative, there was a creative person, was, ⁓ you know, somebody managing and then selling. ⁓
Okay, yeah, okay. ⁓
designers.
there was your whole team kind of comes together and I appreciated that and to be honest for the price point I’m like okay well I have now a whole marketing department basically doing my online marketing for me at you know less than the cost of hiring one full-time agent to do it so I was I I’m like okay well let’s let’s give this a shot let’s see what happens
it ended up working out so that’s great. ⁓ So what are some of the services that you ⁓ partnered with McRae’s for?
Primarily it was SEO. ⁓ I was kind of sold on the idea that I was spending a lot of money on Google advertising. ⁓ were in six figures annually, ⁓ dumping it into Google and getting results. Like, I can’t say it did a bad job, ⁓ but it was a consistent thing. And I liked the idea. ⁓
Right.
you know Robert and Tanveer kind of sold me on the idea that SEO is more of a permanent, especially in our industry which is a little bit lower, probably lower competition on keywords than say the insurance industry or real estate. ⁓ But you know the trades were, you know not everyone is working in that sphere of ⁓ online digital marketing so. ⁓
Right. Yeah.
it was easier to kind of compete on the keywords and I figured you know the investment now with you guys would actually save me money in the long term.
the long run. ⁓
services on our marketing which has has come to pass just this year actually so three years in and now the returns are starting to come back to us.
that’s awesome. That’s great to hear.
Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s what we like to hear, especially like you said in regards to SEO being more of a permanent thing ⁓ on the offside looking at like Google ads. That tends to be on the more expensive side of things. Yeah.
you
Yeah, so we started
there now now like there’s a lot of you know, guys are due content this year. We’re talking about ⁓ Something called a generative marketing I think Something like that. I don’t even know what that is So see here. I’m now I’m not even doing marketing anymore. So I’m not even I don’t know the terms anymore What’s going on three years in so?
Marketing. Yeah. Regarding AI. Yep. Definitely. Yep.
Right. All the different acronyms. Yeah.
What do they mean? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. And then obviously you’ve mentioned Rob and Tanvir. ⁓ you have an idea of maybe how many people on the MacRAE’S team that you’ve actually ended up working with and like in what capacity?
Yeah, yeah, I’m like, well, it sounds good. Let’s just do it. I like it. Yeah, sure.
Mm-hmm.
well, I, know, don’t know who is doing some of the backend stuff, ⁓ because they also, they also do our website. They actually did do a ground up rebuild of our website. Took it over from wix.com, which I used because it was easy and I could do it because I was doing it myself back then. They moved it over to WordPress, which is a lot more customization options. So they started with that.
Right, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Easy to, yeah, build yourself. Yeah.
Yeah.
know who does and then every time I have an issue with the website I just email Tanveer and he sends it off to somebody so I don’t know in the back end to answer your question I don’t know in the back end like how many people are there but regular contact I have you know Robert ⁓ once in a while Tanveer is the guy I you know talked to to get things done and then Catherine sends me ⁓
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
content. Right.
approvals for content creation and
what not. So that’s what those three kind of my three main points of contact and then everything else in the background is just kind of running. And it all works so I don’t have any need to question it. Yeah.
Yep, that’s that’s what we like to see you say. Everything’s working
on the back end. So it’s just minimal people you have to communicate with on a day to day. yeah, speaking of communication, how would you say the communication has been like, whether it’s Tanvir or Catherine or maybe Rob that you’re reaching out to, how has that experience been?
pretty much instant. ⁓
I’ll send a message to Tanvir. I’ll get a response within a day. That’s at the worst. ⁓ Sometimes it’s right away. ⁓ But yeah, I mean, I’ve met the team as well, right? They’re right here, I think in Toronto.
Yeah.
Yes. Yeah.
But yeah, the response, I just know I talked to Tanveer and he will delegate out everything. And he’s very fast on, he’s on the ball with that, so.
Yeah.
Yes,
that’s awesome. And so like just in terms of what you’ve described a bit with partnering with MacRAE’S regarding whether it was ⁓ the website or SEO content, things like that. Would you have some insights on some of the maybe outcomes or results that you’ve seen since partnering with MacRAE’S?
Yeah, so aside from all the time I’ve gotten back from not doing this all the time, ⁓ the first year, ⁓ so we started, our busy season starts in the spring and it goes through. We started as per their recommendation in October when we were slow ⁓ because building authority takes time and online.
Yes. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
and so I wanted that to be rolling by the time we hit spring. So the initial first few months was an investment with not a lot of real ⁓ things happening. ⁓ Yeah.
tangible results at that time,
After about month four or five that changed. So everything kind of started to slowly, steadily increase. All of the keyword searches, which they had researched as most searchable terms, started elevating, they started going up. ⁓ And that was a steady climb till, I mean, it’s always been climbing.
The first year it was a very steep climb that we came up and it started to level off but it’s always going up. New search terms are coming in. Now we’re looking at, now the team has recommended to create store pages, ⁓ sorry, allocation pages where they’re putting us in specific regions.
targeting geographical areas and that just kind of multiplies our authority within a geographic region and everything is kind of synergizing together. ⁓ Up until this point where just this year I cut my Google ad spend in half and I don’t have the whole complete numbers yet because the year is not over but ⁓
That’s amazing.
moment our leads coming in is up about 40%. So even though I’m ⁓ half of the money on Google Ads, we are well above even last year when we were running both the ads. And so it’s going up and I’m very happy with that. Because now I’m saving, now the investment has paid off and now I’m saving money on my marketing and we still have an increase in leads.
That’s great. Yes.
Okay,
yeah, that’s awesome to hear. mean, that’s the type of success we like to hear, so that’s great. And I mean, you kind of just touched on it, but was gonna ask, like, what would be the biggest win or impact for your business since partnering with MacRAE’S? But I guess that’s probably it, being able to cut your Google spend in half and still seeing the increase.
Yeah.
I think
there’s two very valuable parts for me. One is ⁓ obviously the leads, the lead generation. That’s really what we expect out of an SEO company. They’re not working. It’s our job to work those leads when they come in. we use other resources to try and improve those metrics. But the SEO is great. our…
We have an annual meeting every year and in that meeting we discuss both my aspirations moving forward for the logistics of the company ⁓ and then their recommendations on.
based on the authority that our website, because now that our website is high authority, for an example, there is a consideration of that authority could be used out of province. And even though I don’t know how to use it out of province or monetize that, I don’t have any infrastructure outside of Ontario, that gives me a thought on a direction we could take the company because we have that, our website has that, you can very quickly gain authority in other regions.
So that meeting creates, at me going into our slower season, it creates the ideas of what could happen next year, what we could grow into next year. And so I find those meetings to also be very, very valuable.
Yeah, that’s awesome. And it’s great to hear you’re sort of thinking about expanding beyond the current region just based on some of the success with the website and the digital marketing. So that’s awesome. Yeah, exactly. Got to keep growing with the times. Yeah. So would there be anything that you think we as MacRAE’S could do differently or suggestions you might have for ⁓ improvements overall?
You gotta keep moving. You gotta keep moving forward.
really can’t. I mean the only other SEO companies that I’ve had to comparative for, this isn’t a knock on you, but the bar was very low when I started. So I’ve, but ⁓ you know I don’t really have any comparative notes to other professional SEO companies that I’ve never worked with them in the past.
Okay.
Although I did come from that kind of background in marketing, mind you, this is 15 years plus ago. It was a different online game back then. But ⁓ you guys are very professional, very responsive. Even when I have an idea. ⁓
That’s not here.
to move forward with, ⁓ the team helps me flesh it out and see if it’s actually viable and worth doing or how to do it as far as marketing side. ⁓ always responsive. ⁓ Yeah, I don’t have any complaints.
Okay.
Yeah, that’s what we like to hear. So that’s great. Would you have any advice for any businesses that may be considering working with MacRAE’S?
Yeah, there, yeah.
Actually I did
have one complaint I did tell Robert last year is that he was giving me a lot more work than I was expecting because our leads that first year almost doubled and I called them some names first and I said you your guys what they’re doing is is awful and then I explained why so that’s kind of not really a complaint but yes it is.
Right.
Okay. ⁓
Yeah.
Yeah.
We did have to pivot a lot to keep up with the traffic.
Okay, I mean yeah, I complain from your side but I mean from our perspective that that’s good. Any more business? Yeah. So yeah, like sorry, any advice you would have for businesses considering working with MacRAE’S?
Yeah, you’re doing what you wanted to do, yeah.
Yeah, I mean if you’re if you’re a small business Especially if you’re regionally locate like if you’re a regional business and in the trades especially like that’s my Experience right now with you guys It is it is definitely worth doing Your you know as long as your as long as your budgets can afford it
it’s going to cost you more in the first six months and then it’s going to start costing you less. there’s no downside as long as you can make that initial investment. ⁓
It’s a, I don’t know what I’m supposed to talk about your, your, I’m not going to talk about your numbers, but, um, you know, it’s basically a monthly rate for converted hours worked and they do anything you want. Right. So like we’ve, I’ve asked all kinds of things for you guys to help out with and, know, and you just, like, okay, we got a guy for that. You know, as long as it’s online related. mean, you’re not installing my awnings for me, but you’re, know, you’re at least all the digital stuff you’re kind of managing.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
for me so ⁓ You know and that’s me coming from that industry if you’re not in an industry I’m a great parallel to say that ⁓ You know if you don’t know marketing you you guys definitely know marketing you guys know it as a as an original peer in that industry I can say that that is definitely the case with you guys, so
That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much, Chris, for your time today. It’s been great. Yeah, it’s been great getting to learn more about your story and just your experience working with MacRAE’S and just some of the success that you’ve had since partnering with MacRAE’S. So thank you to everyone listening and stay tuned for more stories of digital growth from MacRAE’S. Thank you.
You’re welcome, my pleasure.
Thank you. Thank you, Crystal.
A conversation with Chris Adams, Director at Canadian Shade
When Chris Adams started Canadian Shade ten years ago, he never imagined he'd one day cut his six-figure Google advertising budget in half while simultaneously increasing leads by 40%. But that's exactly what happened after partnering with MacRAE'S for digital marketing services.
Chris Adams brings a unique perspective to the client spotlight. With a marketing background himself, he initially handled all digital marketing efforts for Canadian Shade, a company specializing in retractable patio awnings across Southern Ontario. But as the business expanded from serving just the Toronto area to all of Southern Ontario, something had to give.
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