Underdogs is a marketing studio built for small, independent businesses — the shop, the trade, the studio, the restaurant on the corner. We make you findable where your customers actually look, on a budget you can defend to yourself.
No retainers that outlive their results. No dashboards nobody opens. Three projects at a time.
Most small business marketing fails because it tries everything at once. We pick the three channels that pay for small local businesses and go deep on those.
When someone searches for what you do plus your town, you should be the first name they trust. We fix the listing, the categories, the photos, the reviews and the pages that tell search engines you are the local answer.
This is the highest-return work for nearly every local business, and it is the work most agencies skip because it is unglamorous.
We build a monthly number you can actually afford, split across the few channels that make sense for you, and a simple way to see what each one brought back.
If a channel cannot pay for itself in 90 days, we say so before you fund it — not after two quarters.
Email, text, your own website, the neighbours who already like you. A following on someone else's platform can disappear overnight with a policy change.
We help you build the list, the offers and the repeat business that keeps a small shop alive through a slow season.
We work with businesses where one person is doing the work, the books and the marketing after hours — and where every £ or $ spent has to come back.
Same shape for everyone, because it works: fix what is broken, then spend, then keep what pays.
We look at how you show up in local search, your map listing, your website, your reviews, and where your enquiries came from last year. You get a one-page summary of what is costing you customers, ranked by effort against return.
Listing, categories, hours, photos, review requests, and a website page for each service in the town you serve. This is the part that keeps paying for years, so it goes first.
A small ad budget aimed at the people who were already searching, plus one owned channel — usually email or text to the customers you already have. Small enough to learn from in weeks, not quarters.
We review what each channel brought in, keep the two that paid, and stop the rest. Then we set the next 90 days from that answer instead of a template.
Monthly, cancellable, and priced so a small business can carry it through a slow month. Ad spend is separate and always stays in your own account.
Two weeks. The honest audit plus a written 90-day plan you can run yourself if you want to.
For businesses that need to be found before they need to advertise. Three months minimum, then monthly.
Everything above, plus a managed local ad budget. Best after the foundation is in place.
Long, useful guides written for owners, not for other marketers. No email gate.
A step-by-step local plan: the map listing, the town pages, the review flow, and the 20-minute weekly habit that keeps it working.
Read the guide →What a realistic monthly number looks like, how to split it, and the 90-day test that tells you whether a channel deserves another month.
Read the guide →Search, maps, email, text, neighbours and referrals — a complete marketing system that does not depend on a feed you do not control.
Read the guide →Partly, and we will tell you which part. Fixing your map listing, asking every happy customer for a review, and keeping your hours and photos right costs time rather than money, and for a local business it is the biggest single lever. Paid ads are the part that needs a budget — so we leave those out until you have one.
You get the audit before you commit to anything ongoing, the report is one page in plain English, there is no twelve-month lock-in, and ad spend stays in your account so you can see it and stop it yourself. If we cannot explain what a channel paid back, we will say we cannot.
No. For most local services it is the weakest of the channels and the one that drains the most owner time. Your map listing, your website, review flow, email and referral work do the heavy lifting. If social genuinely fits your trade, we will say so and keep it to one platform.
Listing and review fixes often move enquiries within two to four weeks. New local pages usually take two to four months to build search momentum. Ads produce data in days but need about six weeks before the numbers are worth trusting.
Yes, as long as you serve a defined local area. The work is the same; the tools and the directory names change by country.
One of us reads every message. Tell us your trade, your town, and what you have tried — you will get a straight answer about whether we can help, usually within two working days.