The Story of Vantage's Founder: Steve and Vancouver PPC

Our Vancouver PPC agency’s founder has a neat story about natural talent and helping people grow their businesses.

Steve was soon offering growth advice for his colleagues’ PPC accounts on weekends, which led him to realize that helping people grow their unique businesses was the most fulfilling part of his week

Vantage Search Marketing began as a twinkle in Steve Claridge’s eye as he strode across Théâtre Maisonneuve’s stage, graduating with a major in marketing and a diploma in graphic design.

On the train from Montreal to Union Station, Steve fantasized about a comfortable chair, a windowed office, eager account people approaching him for ingenious strategies, and a delicious hand-delivered, Thai lunch.

Steve’s formative years at Concordia infused, deep within his heart, a hunger for cost-effective advertising, encouraging him to apply for one of the biggest and best traditional ad agencies in Toronto, DDB Canada.

The interview went well, but Steve had doubts about the job offering. Steve was hesitant to enter a “Mad Men” pyramid organization that he’d have to slowly climb to gain recognition for his strategies. He wanted to start high.

Steve returned to his hometown of Vancouver where his résumé had done some legwork beforehand, landing him a job at a large online ticketing and promotion company as the Search Marketing Manager.

With little corporate training due to a lack of knowledge of search marketing within the company, he was thrown into the fire. Steve found himself managing hundreds of thousands of dollars in PPC spend across Google Ads, Bing (when it was known as AdCenter), Yahoo, and Facebook.

The first year’s results were surprising to everyone except Steve.

Steve’s emphasis on ROI-positive strategies yielded substantial revenues. His boss took note and tasked Steve with creating his own PPC team to manage the company’s ever-growing account.

While managing the PPC behemoth of his day-to-day job, Steve’s talents didn’t go unrecognized in his social circles.

Steve was soon offering growth advice for his colleagues’ PPC accounts on weekends, which led him to realize that helping people grow their unique businesses was the most fulfilling part of his week.

Steve continued to provide cost-effective advertising for his current employer, but day-by-day he strengthened his ties with current and prospective consulting clients–people he knew he could offer increased growth and cost-effective online advertising if he only had more time.

This would continue for a few years till Steve finally felt that he was ready to leave his in-house position so that he could help and really get to know his multiple client’s businesses. Vancouver PPC was born.

Demand for personable PPC management continuously increased and it allowed Steve to expand his personal startup, hiring another employee and moving from his home to an office.

Steve brought Kevin aboard the Vancouver PPC train. His incredible attention to detail, which he cultivated working for Mercedes and Volkswagen, made him an easy choice for PPC, where his skills quickly translated into thorough, technically sound campaign builds and tactics.

Steve’s ability to strategize and Kevin’s ability to execute put them at the helm of campaigns spending millions of dollars annually.

Eventually, with many clients heralding from elsewhere in Canada and even in the US, the Vancouver PPC name didn’t sound right anymore.

The business was re-branded and Vantage Search Marketing became a reality.

Soon after, Steve and Kevin were bringing more able bodied hands aboard the newly-minted Vantage ship. The originally PPC-focused agency expanded into different specialization with new members contributing to landing page design and optimization, tracking, analytics, and additional networks such as Facebook or Pinterest.

Steve’s twinkle of a dream had transformed, through hard work, into a substantial business that was providing numerous clients with ROI-positive PPC (and soon he even had a window in his office).

Now, Steve’s escape from corporate pyramids has produced our tight-knit team of digital marketing experts dedicated to Steve’s original goal: cost-effective advertising, though better known as ROI-positive PPC (ROIPPPC for short) to us.