ABOUT

Hi. I’m Ted Tronnes, founder of Gums City SEO. I want to share a bit about myself and where I'm coming from.

 

My professional career began as an advertising art director in the late 90s, and culminated 30 years later as a creative director, responsible for division-wide marketing efforts within various Fortune 500s. All the while, I was involved in strategy development and creative deliverables for enterprise clients and smaller businesses alike — everything from trade show exhibitions to TV commercials and everything in between. I know a lot about advertising.

 

Fifteen years ago I left the agency world to become a creative marketing consultant in Kansas City where I live. And while I often worked directly with companies like Pfizer or Bayer and other big names beyond KC borders, I also helped lots of local businesses and mom-n-pops in exactly the same ways. Oddly, it was through my helping the smaller clients that I began to appreciate the value of what I brought to “the little guy”— how much I helped them even within the confines of smaller marketing budgets.
 

But with any client— large or small — I never padded my fees with additional pass-through charges to cover costly overhead. I was an "agency-of-one" with a home office, so I had none. And this was my sweet spot. Rest assured, agencies with a team of staff and large office space do have heavy operational expenses, and naturally they charge their clients accordingly. They have to. But because I had no such overhead, I provided the same high-quality services that big agencies provide but which many smaller businesses could never have afforded. So it was in serving my smaller clients, with much greater personal interaction too, that I also enjoyed a deep level of job satisfaction. With them, I felt I had skin in the game. And over the years I got to help a lot of fledging businesses grow into thriving establishments.

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It's because of this experience that Gums City is dedicated to serving smaller clients who dont want to, or simply can't afford to "over-pay" for services they don’t need just to be in the digital game. Our philosophy stems from knowing that hiring a bigger agency doesn't mean better results, but it definitely means a higher cost for you. Nor does a bigger agency provide any difference in methodology or thoroughness. PPC and SEO services, to name a couple, are processes with almost zero variance in execution from client to client, industry to industry. 
 

So that's my story and the Gums City thrift advantage. Our aim is to deliver solid digital marketing programs that don't require big budgets.

 

If you think your practice might be a good candidate to join our roster, let’s have a conversation and see how it feels.

Cheers.

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Ted Tronnes

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