Contact Smarter Business Solutions

I love helping small businesses get better.  If you genuinely want to improve one or all aspects of your marketing/online footprint/presence, I’d love to have a conversation with you.  Not sure where to start.  I can provide you with a starting point and we can work together to create the full strategy on how to get to your short & long-term business goals.




About Smarter Business Solutions

My Goal: To leverage my combined industry knowledge with my marketing expertise to provide unbiased analysis in which to make your business smarter in order to make it more profitable.

That is just about all you need to know about SBS.  I want you to be better.  In order to learn more about who I am and what led me to wanting you to be better, continue reading about me.

Owner, Mark Dawson of SBS

My personal history is somewhat boring in nature, so if I concentrate on how I got to the point of realizing I could benefit your business; it might be of more value to you if I start there.

I was with Canada’s largest vehicle marketplace for almost 9 years assisting non-passenger vehicle (heavy truck, heavy equipment, bike, boat, sled and RV) dealers as an Online Strategy Consultant. At one point in time, I had the flexibility to assist dealers with any aspect of their digital marketing. Since my company didn’t have products to properly address all these components (and didn’t want to present messaging that helped dealers understand their importance of the components they didn’t offer products for), I was able to manipulate my position so that I could help dealers understand what they didn’t even realize they should be understanding. Eventually, I was told to stop servicing clients and focus on revenue generating activity. I had a huge problem with this.  Especially since these ‘non-revenue activities, could lead to revenue down the road and of course good service is ultra-important in building lasting relationships – especially at the outrageous prices (in my estimation) this company asked for.

Future-looking was not a strong suit of theirs.

I could see that many of the customers I helped across Canada had a number of gaps in their marketing and digital marketing specifically, that they didn’t have the time, money or base knowledge to commit to.

My experience in all facets of digital marketing (SEO, Video, Customer Lifetime Value, Client retention, PPC/AdWords/SEM, email marketing, branding, marketing strategy, etc.) is something that ALL of my dealers could use.  The problem was that they didn’t have the time to leverage everything that I know.

The second problem was that none of these businesses could afford me, BUT a few select businesses could afford a portion of me and make their businesses smarter and therefore be better.